Ericksons Utilisation approach

To recap, Erickson's approach emphasises the use of Hypnosis to help clients learn to use their own potential to accomplish therapeutic goals. So he would organise the session around the unique experiences, difficulties and resources of each individual client.

The difference between his approach and classical methods is that the power of the suggestion is derived from the clients associations to it rather than its authority or repetition. He asserted that encouraging clients to explore their natural resources can be much more productive than using the direct style of trying to make them consciously follow repeated instructions and commands.

His style of "Accepting and Utilizing" can be much more challenging than using standardized scripts but has the potential to become more therapeutically significant to the client because it is personally relevant. Building up a therapeutic alliance in this way also creates rapport and expectation. A further consequence of this method is that the transition from "Conversation" to "Induction" to "Deepening" can sometimes become blurred into one process.

He lists his initial objectives as follows:

* Acceptance and Rapport.
* Response Attentiveness and Optimism.
* Assessing abilities and resources (e.g. frames of reference).
* Transforming frames of reference which guide behaviour
* Creating Expectancy.

He uses indirect (the permissive and accommodating style) suggestion to implement the resources he identifies. The difference can be seen in comparing the two styles ...

Direct programming: "You are going into trance."

vs.

Indirect suggestion: "You can comfortably learn how to go into trance."

He believed that indirect suggestions, help the unconscious mind search for more subjective solutions that are elusive to the conscious mind without challenging the Client directly through a confrontation with the clients critcal faculties (Xref: Part.1.1)

Rossi coined the phrase "Interspersal Approach" to describe the method of presenting words that evoke an exploratory response within each suggestion.

The suggestion below, given to a client who felt her feelings were being repressed illustrates interspersal ...

"Notice how good it feels to describe those feelings as freely as you wish"

Repression vs. Freedom is the clients theme, which is echoed indirectly in the suggestion. It becomes the common denominator ... the interspersal avoids the habitual responses of the conceptual mind and elicits a subconscious scan of even unlikly possiblities and subsequently comes up with an association of subject and object at a deeper linguistic level .

Another variation is to intersperce the clients situation within a story or a metaphore, such as ...

"When I express my feelings so freely I feel so relieved ...

... its as if they have escaped, and I'm glad to let them go."

This is a surface struture metaphore because it relates fairly directly to clients concern.

A deep struture metaphore doen't have the same obvious relationship, but it does have an association, a relationship or a resonance with, some deeper resourse the Client already has which have the potential to provide insight.

Shaun Brookhouses' example - The Trucker who felt uncomfortable with the "mean" truckers image - and became a gardener after listening to the Cinderella story, which has the theme of transformation.

Notice that a theme is identified but there is no interpretation going on because Erickson held that interpretation at its best was overly simplistic. He left interpretation to the Clients own subconscious, which can make its own associations because a metaphore is inherently a generalisation rather than a specific experience. As we discovered in eliciting creative visualisations (Xref: Part.1.5) a generalisation is more likely to create homeopathic resonance and less likely to step on our clients toes.

Which brings us back to that familiar old dog ... "like cures like"!