Therapy Stories
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The Sceptic Who Saw a Fishpond
She was sure hypnosis was nonsense. Then Milton Erickson pointed at a filing cabinet and asked her friends whether they could see the fishpond. Within minutes, the sceptic was watching students walk past…
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The Busboy Who Kept Filling a Full Glass
Milton Erickson shifted his saucer an inch, and waiters came to refill his cup without knowing why. He also kept a locked drawer of sealed predictions to test his own intuition. What his…
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The Rock That Wasn’t
Milton Erickson strained to lift a heavy rock, then threw it at a 6-foot-6 psychiatrist. It was made of foam. The lesson stayed with Carl Hammerschlag for life, and science explains why his…
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Saved by Silence
Surrounded by a gang in New York, a former mime couldn’t run, fight or talk his way out, so he went silent. What happened next reveals how threat works, why some people are…
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Tommy, the Monster Slayer
Tommy was eight, terrified, and about to be hospitalised for schizophrenia. Then a team of therapists behind a one-way mirror asked him to draw his monster, and gave him the power to destroy…
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The Cactus Cure
Milton Erickson sent a man with a drinking problem to look at cactuses. Thirty years of research on craving, attention and if-then plans suggests he was onto something.
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Meeting the Person You Used to Be
Roger talked in circles. Not the ordinary kind of dwelling that anxious people do, but something tighter and more exhausting — the same three or four thoughts, looping back on themselves, no matter…
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The Woman Inside the Trance
In 1962, Milton Erickson’s wife went into trance in front of a room of doctors, and described exactly what it felt like, while it was happening.
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The Gleam in His Eye
Arlene Wolberg didn’t go to Milton Erickson’s house expecting a session. It was sometime between 1945 and 1949, and her husband Lewis, a psychiatrist himself, was still shaking off an illness. The…