Calgary Conference Transcript with Mrs. Erickson

The following is an excerpt from a transcript of a conference held June 17th and 18th 1962 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It was sponsored by the Calgary Medical and Dental Hypnosis Society.

John B. Corley, MD, appears to have arranged the event. Afterwards, he and his wife drove Dr. and Mrs. Erickson from Calgary to their next lecture stop in Glacier Park, Montana, and along the way they stopped at the Corley’s cabin in Banff.

The doctors attending the seminar had requested that Erickson devote at least half a day to induction techniques. Additionally, they requested that he provide instruction on the handling of specific medical psychosomatic issues. Some were also interested in learning regressive techniques used to identify specific problems.

Mrs. Erickson: People often ask what I use hypnosis for, except of course, demonstrations. What is the point of it? There are three different uses [of hypnosis] and the best is that it is fine relaxation. If a person is tense or keyed up or has too much to preoccupy them and if you can get five minutes or even two minutes and just drop into an autohypnotic state, it calms you down beautifully.

I hate not being able to remember something and if there is something I am trying to call to mind and I just can’t, it makes me exceedingly frustrated. If I can go into an autohypnotic state and mull it over a little and then wake up, I find that what I was trying to remember will almost invariably pop into my head. Of course, that frequently happens anyway but I think hypnosis facilitates it. Also, I have the type of personality in which I find it exceedingly difficult to make a decision.

Whenever I have to decide on something, if there is a good reason on one side, I can think of an equally good reason to counterbalance it. But I find that you can go into the state of hypnosis and instead of trying to make a decision, you can instead let all the points—pros and cons—and the various aspects enter into your mind, and when wake up you often find that everything settles into place very nicely and sometimes the answer is quite obvious. At least it is easier to weigh the possibilities.

Then the other thing that people are always asking me is, “How do you know when it is time to wake up?” Well, there again, I have three different possibilities. If you have some definite purpose in mind you go into this state and do it and then you wake up. Or another possibility is, you may have a certain length of time, which is more frequent with relaxation. You may have 10 minutes, and you know you won’t be interrupted so you say: “Well, in 10 minutes I will wake up,” and you seem to be able to keep track of time nicely. The other thing is, no matter how deep a hypnotic state I go into there are certain things I am going to wake up for. If the building caught fire, I haven’t the slightest doubt that I would wake up. I wouldn’t just sit here while everybody left. And since Milton’s office is in our home, if Milton has me demonstrating hypnosis, then I am completely at his service and won’t wake up until he is through. But if I know there is no one in the house then I will wake up if the telephone or the doorbell rings or one of the children comes in. But any other noises—traffic or the dog barking and so on—are no bother at all.

Now I don’t have the only method there is. My daughter [Betty Alice] does exceedingly well when being hypnotized and she does it rapidly—faster than I, but I like to keep my eyes open. Her method is to close her eyes and have her hand start moving up, and when it reaches her face, she is in a marvelous trance. I like to pick a fixation point, something that light can be reflected off of, something irregular in shape. I usually like to focus on a piece of jewelry and see the reflected light.

I have a friend who also uses a fixation point and the way she does it is that she looks at an object and watches it grow in size, and the surroundings close in until finally there is just one large object. I don’t see any size changes whatsoever. I like to observe the changes that take place in the different senses—in sort of a circular way. You just sit passively and allow it to occupy the center of your attention and then observe what is going on. The first thing I usually observe is that things on the periphery of vision become a little blurry and somewhat meaningless. They are present in my field of vision all the time, but I don’t put them together and recognize what they are unless I turn my attention to them. Now if I turn my attention to something like the leg of a table, I could think, “Yes, that is the leg of the table.” But unless I do that, it doesn’t have any meaning.

Then I usually turn my attention to the field of hearing, and the same thing is taking place there. I realize the sounds have become muffled and sometimes there is a clock ticking or an air-conditioning humming; sometimes there are traffic noises. But again, unless I stop and think of what I am hearing, it doesn’t have any meaning. It’s just background noise.

The next thing I like to check up on are the sensations in my body. The more distant parts—the hands and feet—are blurrier and again meaningless unless I turn my attention to them. I may think: “How do I have my feet placed? Are my ankles crossed? Then I go back to the field of vision and with time it has closed in considerably. It is a much smaller field of vision and a great deal blurrier around the edges. But my hands and ring are still perfectly clear. The same thing is true of sounds. I can still hear the air-conditioner, but that’s about all. At this point my arms and legs seem sort of detached; disconnected. I also invariably notice an interesting change in the light. I could stay in this state indefinitely and just observe this because it is fascinating. The light is different somehow, and there is an edge surrounding everything—it is a light bluish red. I think it is a physical thing; I don’t think it is a psychological thing. It has something to do with the fact that the lens of the eye is completely relaxed and yet I am not fully focused on my hand, but I am giving my complete attention to my hand. I have the convergence of the eyes just as if I had focused on the hand, but the lens is not contracted. I don’t think I could do that in a waking state.

Dr. Erickson: Then there is the change at the corneal and conjunctival junction with the alteration in the shape of the palisades. That has been written about and published as Strasbourg and Venezuela versions. Since it was published, we learn about now and then, here and there. Go ahead, Betty. (Roxanna Erickson note: Dr. Erickson is referring to anatomical features in the eyes that are associated with visual hallucinations. He then makes reference to public incidents in which groups of people have share the experience of alterations in visual perceptions: In 1518, a “Dancing Plague” of mass hysteria was recorded in Strasbourg, France. This event was later referenced as “Strasbourg hallucinations” associated with LSD incidents. The Venezuela reference refers to a broader phenomena related to ingestion of psychoactive plants, or shared spiritual events. It is uncertain where this was referenced in the literature that Erickson comments on. More recently, a Strasbourg Visual Scale has been devised to more scientifically evaluate the physiological processes associated with visual hallucinations.

Mrs. Erickson: I am in a good hypnotic state right now. What else?

Dr. E: Are you enjoying it?

Mrs. E: Yes.

Dr. E: Do you happen to know where you are?

Mrs. E: Do you want me to figure it out or not?

Dr. E: No. Just give a spontaneous answer.

Mrs. E: No. I could figure it out if it is important.

Dr. E: You could figure it out by a process of reassociation of ideas. So, your eyes are open, your legs and arms are disconnected. Is that correct?

Mrs. E: There again if there was any point to it, I could connect them up again.

Dr. E: That your personal sense of awareness is limited to what?

Mrs. E: Do you mean what is occupying my attention?

Dr. E: Your feeling of keenness of the present.

Mrs. E: Oh dear, well I am looking at my turquoise ring and the light on my hand and how there is a bluish edge on things around it, and on my skirt.

Dr. E: Is that bluish edge on your skirt?

Mrs. E: Yes. I am trying to figure out what color it is around my hand because it is on top of the red. [laughs]

Dr. E: Now, there is profound anesthesia in her legs. She is not particularly interested in that. She is interested in this light experience. Now our friend in Venezuela goes into an autohypnotic trance induction in this fashion. When we were down there, he was very curious about hypnosis, and he wanted to know what it was. Mrs. Erickson recognized it in terms of her own experience. There is a very nice account in the Journal of Science where someone else had discovered this light refraction or diffraction, or whatever it is. One of our friends looked it up in the matter of microscopic anatomical changes that occur in hypnosis, in the eye, in the cornea, in the conjunctive. I don’t know all the changes of the palisades concerning the convolutions and the changes that take place. Now, she doesn’t really know where she is. It really isn’t important. There is only one real particular interest. It is not my voice, not your presence. She is tremendously interested in her personal psychological experience of the light and the different colors.

Have I been talking, Betty?

Mrs. E: Yes.

Dr. E: Have you paid attention?

Mrs. E: Not particularly. I think I could go back and figure out what you were talking about.

Dr. E: You think you could go back and figure out what I was talking about?

Now here is autohypnosis developed in Betty in which rapport is maintained. She can direct her attention passively in any particular direction. It takes a certain amount of effort… When you think through a research plan and you know you can work it out this way, you can work it out that way, what are the arguments for lining up problems one way and what are the arguments for lining up the research problem another way? And you can see them lined up so very nicely and you can appraise them; you evaluate them in what you would literally call an ‘objective fashion.’ You are not really personally emotionally involved in it. There is an objectivity that is of tremendous importance in appraising values. In the matter of personal restrictions—shall I go to this party or shall I not? What are the real reasons you would go or not go? So, you simply line up the pros and cons, and you do it in an exceptionally passive fashion. As I mentioned, our daughter, Betty Allice, got elected for the drive here, and she is in a profound trance. Betty Alice tells me it is painful to watch her mother go into an autohypnotic trance because she is so slow about it. “But Daddy if you want me to slow it down to illustrate a point, I can do it,” Betty Alice would say, and she will be glad to do it for the worthwhile purpose. If I were to ask Betty here to speed up if it were a worthwhile purpose, Betty could speed up very nicely. Betty likes to keep a scheduled feeling. Betty Alice likes to see her hand, she likes to see her jewelry, or she can look across the room at that picture on the wall or the statue on the other side of the room. It doesn’t make any difference. I have a piece of Swedish glass on my desk, and she can use the light reflection from that. Use anything just so you have a point of fixation. Now Betty keeps that point of fixation in ordinary proportions. The friend she mentioned could fixate on this table for example and it grows larger and larger, and there she is looking at a tremendously large object but there is no wall, there is no ceiling. There is this large all-encompassing object, or she will see this size, any particular size. You always let your patient find their own spontaneous way of doing things.

Betty says you don’t concentrate. You passively look at that space there. You are not really concerned if you see it because it is within your visual field, so you passively, gently look. Betty can use convergence. I always let my eyes diverge and move. I don’t know how to do it any other way. Now when Betty said: “leg of the table,” she could have continued until she got clear to the top of the table and then she could have included the objects on top of the table. But it is a slow process of reassociating because she has lost things, just as you in a profound state of reverie can forget.

She knows I am talking but she could lose contact with that if she were not interested in the general background of awareness. She knows I am lecturing somewhere to somebody for some purpose and there is a vague, general understanding. She could lose that, or she could elaborate on this or that. She knows I am talking to you, that Dr. C. is in the audience. Now her arms and legs seem detached, but it is sufficient to know exactly how a patient behaves with a saddle block. Your patient with a saddle block isn’t going to get up and show you how to do the twist [a popular dance in that era] or how to walk across the room. The patient isn’t in a saddle block but neurologically there is a saddle block right here and it is rather a painful experience to put her suddenly into a situation where she would have to reassemble her body awarenesses, for she has lost them.

And in losing them, thereby, you get an anesthetic.