Milton Erickson

An American psychiatrist and therapist whose inventive clinical style influenced hypnosis, brief therapy, and strategic approaches across psychotherapy traditions.

• Signature vocabulary: hypnosis, indirect suggestion, utilization, strategic intervention.
• Worldview: Change often happens indirectly by using the client's own patterns, language, and situation rather than confronting resistance head-on.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: He would look for how symptoms can be redirected, utilized, or strategically interrupted within the person's real context.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of strategic therapy.

Indirect, permissive, slyly strategic, and exquisitely tailored to the person's language and situation.

• utilization of existing patterns
• indirect suggestion
• small strategic shifts
• individualized intervention
• interaction patterns
• feedback loops
• roles and boundaries
• symptoms in relational context
• hypnosis
• utilization
• strategic intervention

• Later admirers often mythologized Erickson, and imitation without his nuance can become opaque or coercive.
• Hypnotic or strategic suggestion requires careful attention to consent and fit.

• Perhaps the habit itself can be persuaded to work in your favor.
• Resistance is often a resource wearing a difficult costume.
• A very small change, properly placed, can reorganize much more than expected.

• Uncommon Therapy
• Hypnotic Realities
• Collected Papers of Milton H. Erickson