Hypnosis: Erickson and the Start of Conversational Covert Hypnosis

Milton H. Erickson could arguably be described as the greatest hypnotherapist of the 20th century. His experience was vast, having an interest in hypnosis from his early teens to his death at the age of 80 in 1980. During most of his career as a therapist he was seeing up to 10 clients a day and also finding time to write some of the most influential and profound books on hypnosis that are available to us to this day.

Throughout his life Erickson employed a process which we now know as reframing. By using reframing any event or circumstance can be viewed in a different way and from a different perspective. When this is done often the meaning we attach to the event or circumstance changes too. Erickson had much need of such an attitude when, in his late teens, he found himself struck down with poliomyelitis. This rendered him unable to speak or even move, simply to survive he had to be encased within an iron lung and had to spend months in this device in the kitchen of his father’s farm. Now, most people in such a situation would tend to succumb to self pity and negativity and yet, in Erickson’s case, he managed to turn this horrendous circumstance into an opportunity to learn. And the things he was to learn were to influence his work throughout the rest of his long and productive life.

Forced to observe the conversations between his sisters, their friends and other relatives but unable to take part, he began to realize that the content of the words spoken plays just a small part in what is being communicated. He realized that we naturally seem to imply so much more by the way the words are said, the tonality employed and the gestures and expressions used. So much more was being said indirectly than what would seem to be the case merely from the content of the words. The lessons he learned from this period were to form the basis of indirect hypnosis.

What we have now come to know as indirect hypnosis sometimes goes under the guise of conversational hypnosis or even the somewhat more dramatic covert hypnosis. Up to the time of Erickson’s new approach most hypnosis had been of the direct variety, the hypnotist directly instructing the subject what to do and how to do it. This works just fine for some people, those willing and able to simply take orders, others however tend to react in a different way and may even respond by doing the opposite to whatever is being suggested. If you are told that “your eyes are getting heavier and heavier” and they aren’t you will tend not to take the subsequent suggestions very seriously. Erickson’s indirect hypnosis got around this problem by employing what is now known as permissive language, suggesting that the client “may notice the eyes getting heavier” or they “might become aware of a tendency for the eyes to feel a little heavier”. Using words such as “may”, “might”, “could” etc. allowed the subject to respond in their own way to the induction and gives a far gentler, more cooperative feel to the process.