Milton Erickson & Conversational Hypnosis
Milton Hyland Erickson was the pioneer of conversational hypnosis, the handshake induction, and many other facets of hypnosis and NLP.
Erickson was essentially self taught, many of his theories of hypnosis and the power of the unconscious mind coming from his own experiences, for example, Erickson was dyslexic and overcame his dyslexia via auto hypnotic "flashes of light" or "creative moments" as he described them in his paper “Auto hypnotic Experiences of Milton H. Erickson”
Another of his experiences that helped to found his beliefs and views on hypnosis happened when he was 17. Erickson had contracted polio, and was so severely paralysed that doctors were sure that he would die.
One night when he was at his worst, he had one of his "auto hypnotic experiences." As Erickson lay in bed he overheard the doctors telling his parents that he would be dead by morning. Erickson felt extremely angry that anyone should tell a mother that her child would be dead by morning.
Erickson’s mother came into his room and Erickson asked her to push his dresser up against the side of his bed at an angle.
Erickson had asked for the dresser to be moved because the angle of the mirror on the dresser allowed him to see through the window, Erickson was determined to see one more sunset before he died!
Erickson saw a vast sunset covering the whole sky, even though there was a tree outside the window, blocking his view - but Erickson subconsciously removed the tree, in his mind so that his view of the sunset was not spoiled.
After seeing the sunset Erickson lost consciousness for three days, and when he awoke he asked his father why they had removed the fence, tree, and boulder that had been outside the window. Erickson had not realized that he himself had blotted them out of his consciousness when he fixed his attention so intensely on the sunset.
As Erickson recovered, bedridden and hardly able to speak, he became aware of the significance and power of non-verbal communication, or body language, the tone of voice, and how the non-verbal communication often contradicted the verbal ones.
Erickson believed that the unconscious mind was always listening, and that whether the person was in a hypnotic trance or not, suggestions could be made which would have a hypnotic influence, so long as those suggestions were not rejected by the unconscious mind.
The person could be aware of this, or completely oblivious that something was happening. Erickson would see if a person would respond to one of various kinds of indirect suggestion, and in this way, what seemed like a normal conversation would either induce a hypnotic trance, or create a change in the behaviour or state of the subject.
Erickson became famous for using conversational hypnosis to slip unconscious suggestions to people in all kinds of ordinary situations, including in his books, lectures, and seminars.
Erickson theorised that hypnotic trances are a common, everyday occurrence, for example, when waiting for buses and trains, driving a car, reading or listening, or even exercising, it is quite normal to become focus on the activity so intensely that a trance state is entered, and the person’s attention becomes removed from any other stimuli.
These states are so common and familiar that most people do not consciously recognise them as hypnotic phenomena, but instead think of them as day dreaming, or a kind of “automatic pilot”
One sign of these common everyday hypnotic trances is the way that people will tend to gaze off to the right or left (this overlaps with NLP and eye accessing cues), and develop a far away, blank, or dreamy look.
Sometimes the persons eyes may close, their bodies can become immobile or rigid (this is a form of hypnotic catalepsy), some reflexes such as swallowing may be suppressed, breathing may become slower and shallower, and the person may momentarily become oblivious to their surroundings while they complete an inner search of their unconscious mind for the new idea, response, or frames of reference that will rebalance their orientation and perception of reality.
It is in these moments that the power of conversational hypnosis can be employed.
Erickson developed both verbal and non-verbal hypnosis trance inducing techniques, and pioneered the idea that the common experiences of wonderment, engrossment and confusion are in fact just different types of trance.
Indirect Techniques
Where “ordinary” hypnosis is authoritative and direct, Erickson's approach is permissive, accommodating and indirect. For example, a traditional hypnotist may say "You are going into a trance," an Ericksonian hypnotist would say "you can comfortably learn how to go into a trance". In this way, the subject can accept the suggestions they are most comfortable with.
Because the induction takes place during the course of a normal conversation, Ericksonian hypnosis is often known as Covert Hypnosis or Conversational Hypnosis.
Erickson maintained that it was not possible to consciously instruct the unconscious mind, and that authoritarian suggestions were likely to be rejected by the subconscious. The unconscious mind responds to openings, opportunities, metaphors, symbols and contradictions, meaning that conversational hypnosis should be "artfully vague," allowing the subject to fill in the gaps as though they themselves originated the suggestion and as though they are acting upon their own will and thoughts.
Confusion Techniques
Conversational hypnosis employs the fact that a confused person has their conscious mind busy and occupied, and is likely to draw upon the unconscious to make sense of things.
A confused person is in a natural trance of their own making, and so goes readily into that trance without resistance. This confusion be created in conversation by ambiguous words, complex, endless, or meaningless sentences, pattern interruption or numerous other techniques to lead the person to search inwardly, to their unconscious, to make sense of what is happening.
This is one of the corner stones of conversational hypnosis.
Erickson also famously developed The Handshake Induction, which is another technique relying on disorientating, or confusing the subject.
By taking a form of behaviour that has been learned and is automatic and altering or freezing this behaviour midway (this is called a pattern interrupt – the normal pattern of behaviour is interrupted causing confusion), the person literally has no mental space for this.
They are stopped in the middle of unconsciously executing a behavior that does not have a middle and the mind responds by suspending itself in a trance until either something happens to give a new direction, or it snaps out of it.
The skill with pattern interrupts or conversational hypnosis is to recognise that momentary confusion and suspension of normal processes and to exploit it by either quickly and easily inducing a trance, or making suggestions that will be accepted at the subconscious level.
By interrupting the pattern of a handshake that the subject expects to experience, the hypnotist stuns the subject momentarily while they try to make sense of what is happening.
If the handshake continues to develop unexpectedly, a simple non-verbal trance is created, which may then be reinforced verbally.
All of these responses happen naturally and automatically without telling the subject to consciously focus on an idea.
Whether you want to call it conversational hypnosis, Ericksonian hypnosis, or covert hypnosis, the technique is very real, as has been demonstrated, is incredibly powerful, and can be easily self taught.
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