Posts Tagged ‘phd’
This is an excerpt from the Milton Erickson Biography and taken from the contribution by Philip and Norma Barretta.
On one occasion when Norma and Philip were meeting with Erickson, someone in the group asked Erickson a question about smoking. According to Norma, at that moment, Erickson coughed – and he continued coughing for the next half hour — in between words, phrases, and sentences. → Read more
The following is an excerpt from the biography on Milton Erickson and was taken from an interview with Paul Lounsbury and Nancy Winston in May 1993.
Paul C. Lounsbury and Nancy Winston were married from 1987 to 2003. They live in New York. Lounsbury is a marriage and family therapist and Winston is a clinical social worker and therapist. → Read more
I have been asked to make a recording of an induction technique. After much thought on this matter, I believe I can be of much more service in another way. My own induction techniques are expressive of me, of my timing, of my rhythm, my personality, my emotional feeling, my attitude toward my patient. So it is with anybody else, and so it should be with anybody else. An induction technique is not a series of words, phrases, sentences. Nor is it just a matter of suggestions, intonations, inflections, pauses, and hesitations. An induction is both simply and complexly a matter of communication of ideas and understandings and attitudes by the doctor to his patient. → Read more
Sep 16
Instant Change
To be in Milton Erickson’s presence was to invite him to teach. And teach he did! Almost everyone who spent time with him can remember precisely the words he said that changed life forevermore. Even people who read his words often comment that “his voice goes with them.”
I am fortunate that when I think of my father, I vividly remember many times when just a few words changed me instantly. In this case, Dad and a family friend, Margaret Mead, worked in tandem. Although the event and words are crystal clear, I don’t remember who said what-they complimented each other beautifully. → Read more
In December of 1973, when I was 26 years old and had recently earned a master’s degree in clinical psychology, I met Milton Erickson. I was working in the San Francisco Bay Area as a couples and family counselor and serendipitously the opportunity to visit Dr. Erickson presented itself. (The transcript of this initial meeting is in my book, Experiencing Erickson, Zeig, 1985.) → Read more
Recently, I began experiencing stabbing ear pain, shortness of breath, a dry cough, unremitting headaches, and signs of high blood pressure. The online doctor told me I needed to go to the ER right away.
At the ER, tears welled in my eyes and I was anxious. I had taken a COVID-19 nasal swab test and spent six hours in the ER waiting and wondering. I tried to reach a calm state, but I was scared. → Read more
Aug 26
Interview: Derald Wing Sue
Derald Wing Sue was born in Portland, Oregon and is Chinese American. He grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood and remembers being teased due to his ethnicity. Although the prejudice and discrimination negatively affected Sue, it prompted him to study multiculturalism and later, cross-cultural counseling.
Sue is a certified hypnotherapist in Portland. He has authored 23 books and has written on various topics including multicultural counseling and psychotherapy, psychology of racism and antiracism, cultural diversity, cultural competence, and multicultural organizational development. His most recent book co-authored with Lisa Spanierman, the revised edition of Microaggressions in Everyday Life (2020), is on multicultural competencies and the concept of microaggression. Sue has also co-authored with David Sue Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice (2015) which was controversial due to the authors’ philosophy on multicultural counseling. → Read more
Milton Erickson was undoubtedly a master technician, but the humanistic element he added to his therapy made it even more powerful.
When I first visited Erickson in 1973, he was working with a patient I will call John, who probably had been diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic when he was hospitalized. *Erickson used brief therapy with John, in that it was strategically targeted, although the therapy took place over the span of several decades. → Read more
Aug 12
Improving Communication Between Physically and/or Mentally Abusive Parents and Their Children
Edgar, a child of five, is the oldest son of a marriage that has lived with great economic and family pressures. The mother began going to therapy two years ago for her distress because of her pregnancy. She left treatment. A short while later, she asked for an emergency appointment. She told me by phone that she had just gotten Edgar out of the hospital, and he did not want to return home because he was afraid of his father who, in an attack of fury and impatience, had hit him against the wall, fracturing his cranium.
I met with the whole family in therapy because that permitted me to understand the family situation, to perceive their emotions, and to explore their resources. Once I have an idea of the family structure and the context in which the problem occurred, I can tell a story (or build a story together with the children) that represents the problem and different solutions. In an abuse situation, it is necessary to censure actions, not the persons implicated, trying to see them as parents who make mistakes. In this case, I constructed the story because the child was immobile in a chair, not wanting to look at anyone, much less participate. → Read more
Aug 05
Revisiting the Past
The voice of the man on the phone was cracked and old. He and his wife were in their seventies and for 20 years the family had not been able to have a Christmas, a birthday, or any celebration together. There were four children and it was the enmity and resentment from Melissa, now 40- years old, to Michael, now 45, that precluded any type of family gathering. Melissa had announced, at age 20, that Michael had sexually molested her from the time she was ten until she was fourteen. Ever since then the family had been torn apart.
Melissa led an isolated life. She had never been in a relationship with a man and she had never even had a roommate. She was a lawyer but had never practiced and worked sporadically at jobs that were beneath her education. She attributed all this to her abuse by Michael. → Read more
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