Milton H. Erickson - Personal History

Personal History

Erickson frequently drew upon his own experiences to provide examples of the power of the unconscious mind. He was largely self-taught and a great many of his anecdotal and autobiographical teaching stories are collected by Sidney Rosen in the book My Voice Will Go With You. Erickson identified many of even his earliest personal experiences as hypnotic or autohypnotic.

Erickson grew up in Lowell, Wisconsin, in a modest farming family and intended to become a farmer like his father. He was a late developer and was both dyslexic and color blind. He overcame his dyslexia and had many other inspirations via a series of spontaneous autohypnotic "flashes of light" or "creative moments", as described in the paper Autohypnotic Experiences of Milton H. Erickson

At age 17, he contracted polio and was so severely paralysed that the doctors believed he would die. In the critical night when he was at his worst, he had another formative "autohypnotic experience".

E: As I lay in bed that night, I overheard the three doctors tell my parents in the other room that their boy would be dead in the morning. I felt intense anger that anyone should tell a mother her boy would be dead by morning. My mother then came in with as serene a face as can be. I asked her to arrange the dresser, push it up against the side of the bed at an angle. She did not understand why, she thought I was delirious. My speech was difficult. But at that angle by virtue of the mirror on the dresser I could see through the doorway, through the west window of the other room. I was damned if I would die without seeing one more sunset. If I had any skill in drawing, I could still sketch that sunset. R: Your anger and wanting to see another sunset was a way you kept yourself alive through that critical day in spite of the doctors' predictions. But why do you call that an autohypnotic experience? E: I saw that vast sunset covering the whole sky. But I know there was also a tree there outside the window, but I blocked it out. R: You blocked it out? It was that selective perception that enables you to say you were in an altered state? E: Yes, I did not do it consciously. I saw all the sunset, but I didn't see the fence and large boulder that were there. I blocked out everything except the sunset. After I saw the sunset, I lost consciousness for three days. When I finally awakened, I asked my father why they had taken out that fence, tree, and boulder. I did not realize I had blotted them out when I fixed my attention so intensely on the sunset. Then, as I recovered and became aware of my lack of abilities, I wondered how I was going to earn a living. I had already published a paper in a national agricultural journal. "Why Young Folks Leave the Farm." I no longer had the strength to be a farmer, but maybe I could make it as a doctor.

Recovering, still almost entirely lame in bed, and unable to speak, he became strongly aware of the significance of non-verbal communication - body language, tone of voice and the way that these non-verbal expressions often directly contradicted the verbal ones.

I had polio, and I was totally paralyzed, and the inflammation was so great that I had a sensory paralysis too. I could move my eyes and my hearing was undisturbed. I got very lonesome lying in bed, unable to move anything except my eyeballs. I was quarantined on the farm with seven sisters, one brother, two parents, and a practical nurse. And how could I entertain myself? I started watching people and my environment. I soon learned that my sisters could say "no" when they meant "yes." And they could say "yes" and mean "no" at the same time. They could offer another sister an apple and hold it back. And I began studying nonverbal language and body language. I had a baby sister who had begun to learn to creep. I would have to learn to stand up and walk. And you can imagine the intensity with which I watched as my baby sister grew from creeping to learning how to stand up.

He began to recall "body memories" of the muscular activity of his own body. By concentrating on these memories, he slowly began to regain control of parts of his body to the point where he was eventually again able to talk and use his arms. Still unable to walk, he decided to train his body further, by embarking - alone - on a thousand mile canoe trip with only a few dollars. After this grueling trip, he was able to walk with a cane. This experience may have contributed to Erickson's technique of using "ordeals" in a therapeutic context. (See below).

Erickson was an avid medical student, and was so curious about and engaged with psychiatry that he got a psychology degree while he was still studying medicine.

Much later, in his fifties he developed post-polio syndrome, characterized by pain and muscle weakness caused by the chronic over-use of partially paralyzed muscles. The condition left him even more severely paralyzed, but having been through the experience once before, he now had a strategy for recovering some use of his muscles, which he employed again. After this second recovery, he was obliged to use a wheelchair, and suffered chronic pain, which he controlled with self-hypnosis:

It usually takes me an hour after I awaken to get all the pain out. It used to be easier when I was younger. I have more muscle and joint difficulties now... Recently the only way I could get control over the pain was by sitting in bed, pulling a chair close, and pressing my larynx against the back of the chair. That was very uncomfortable: But it was discomfort I was deliberately creating.

In the early 1950s, anthropologist/cyberneticist Gregory Bateson involved Erickson as a consultant as part of his extensive research on communication. The two had met earlier, after Bateson and Margaret Mead had called upon him to analyse the films Mead had made of trance states in Bali. Through Bateson, Erickson met Jay Haley, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, amongst others, and had a profound influence on them all. They went on to write several books about him.

In 1973, Jay Haley published Uncommon Therapy, which for the first time brought Erickson and his approaches to the attention of those outside the clinical hypnosis community. His fame and reputation spread rapidly, and so many people wished to meet him that he began holding teaching seminars, which continued until his death.

Milton H. Erickson died in March 1980, aged 78, leaving four sons, four daughters, and a lasting legacy to the worlds of psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, pedagogics and communications.