Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M.D. Volume 1 Paperback – June 1, 1975

I've been wanting to get this book for a very long time I'm glad I finally pulled the trigger, condition was good I'm happy with my purchase

This book is the inverse of The Structure of Magic. That book was about how to be relentlessly specific, which functions as a BS filter. For example, "my wife doesn't love me anymore" requires mind-reading, so you could ask "how do you know she doesn't love you anymore?". That question doesn't call the original statement into question, but asks for the evidence for the claim, based in sensory experience. Usually the answer is something like "she doesn't look at me in some particular way that I never told her I liked", which gives you something to work with.As for THIS book, this is the opposite--essentially how to BS for constructive purposes. You can use it to catch on to a politician's game, or--should your own thinking begin to sound a bit too much like what this book shows you how to do--to catch your OWN BS and knock it off. This book is about how a brilliant hypnotist talked, which is actually pretty simple in theory. He would mention things to shift your attention. Like this: did you notice just how much of your weight is going into your chair? You probably didn't before, now you do. You do that with enough things and in a certain way, you have people in a different state of mind. If you're good (and trying to help) you can talk them into not actively thinking/feeling bad about their problems, and have them in a state of mind where they can see things differently.Then you can say things that don't have any actual meaning to help them. Like this: there was an experience some time in your past, where you learned a very valuable lesson, and your subconscious knows the one, and I want you revisit that experience as you remember all you have learned since, because there is something very, very important that you have yet to learn from that experience. I don't know if your subconscious will prefer to tell you about it in consciousness, or to keep it to itself as a secret, but it will help you in the upcoming weeks and months as you go about your daily life in a new way you didn't know was possible.See? No meaning whatsoever, but it can still be life changing, because--and this is what this book shows you--it takes advantage of the fact that we all need things to make sense, so that if nothing is really being said, we'll invent the meaning ourselves. By saying meaningless things that suggest categories of having a better life, people rummage through their brains and find wonderful things pretty easily. It's a particularly respectful way of doing therapy, because you can help the person without imposing your own "stuff" on them. They just go in and find whatever they need themselves.

Anyone that is interested in Erickson Milton method (Milton Model), and learning his Linguistic pattern breakdown for hypnosis, this book is invaluable. It is must book to have. It's simply written and easy read. It analysis and breaks down complex hypnotic patterns in a simple way.I loved the section Inquiry with Aldous Huxley, this section is the encounter of two titans, two geniuses, and two highly creative intellectual. This section was like reading a profound entertaining story. Every session between these two is filled with hypnotic sessions that can be use as reservoir of reference.Terms like Meta-Tactic III and Huxley deep reflection,and somnambulate trance.This book is definitely one of the top ten books I ever read. Every page is filled with nectar of mind altering information. Every section Dominant Hemisphere, non-Dominant Hemisphere, construction and use of Linguistic Causal Modeling Processes, and Transderivational Phenomena.As I was reading this book, specially in the Huxley section, I fell into this magical trance and my neuropath way of my brain, my map of the world was changing and becoming more flexible. This really help me to view the world in the more flexible way. It helped me to improve my thinking process as well.Highly recommended for everyone that is interested in how the brain encodes our five senses and process these signals.

Milton Erickson, is my mentor. I can not give you an honest appraisal of this book as I read and practise every thing written about the man, his style of Hypnosis, and the use of NLP. Richard Bandler has once again put together a book of Erickson's work, which is to me a Bible in the use of Clinical Hypnosis as practised by Erickson. I have been practising for 42 years and I am still learning Erickson's methods and motivators.I would highly recommend this book to any one who has any interest in learning about Hypnosis it's mysteries and how to apply it with skill. Erickson was a master of Hypnosis and dealt with all facets of this medium. He understood what he was doing but was unable to put it into words for others to follow. This is where we are lucky with Dr. Richard Bandler coming into the picture and putting the works of Erickson into the written form so that others may be able to understand it, and eventually practise it as Erickson did. I read the same books over at least 5 times before I attempt to interpret the method to my own use.As stated Erickson is my Mentor. I can not be subjective or objective of any thing written about this man, his work, or his methods. Another marvelous book.

Ericksonian assumptions have become NLP assumptions; his capacity to enter in to the client's model with the "grace and power of a master" in actively listening with a finely tuned expressive awareness was remarkable, and an inverse metal model (lovingly coined by Bandler and Grinder the Milton Model) recreates the basic hypnotic patterns regularly conjured by the esteemed hypnotist in eliciting a third level of consciousness - an acceptance state. More than once it is pointed out Erickson had an extraordinary capacity to work with the most intractable of resistances and restraints (Bateson) offered up by clients. To quote one of my favourite co-creators' line, if "people who come for therapy are not bad, sick, crazy or evil but are making the best choices available in their model of the world" then Erickson embodies this belief almost as a principle and 'embeds' (the spelling 'imbed' is also used) in the overlap and intersection of unconscious meanings of phenomena: "there is a positive intention motivating every behaviour; and a context in which every behaviour has value" as low resistanceParts 1 and 2 provide a close reading of Erickson's case notes written in a somewhat medicalised unspecified predicate style after an identification of the patterns of his work have been briefly described. Throughout there is an attempt at a deeper appreciation of how Erickson elicits deep trance states that access and utilise both hemispheres - each with a different quality, speed and accuracy of response - and similarities to the techniques Bandler and Grinder have already developed, for example visualisation, are often compared. Part 3 goes into much more of the construction of grammar, like Magic 1, and is a study of the maximal direction techniques of meta-patterning principles broken into five categories of distinction: causal modelling, transderivational phenomena, ambiguity, lesser included structures and derived meanings.A special enquiry with Aldous Huxley at a planned retreat into various states of psychological awareness exploring the nature and character of altered states, reveals the famous author's skill at 'deep reflection'. This allows him to marshal his thoughts at a deeper level, similar one wonders to Einstein's focused daydreaming or maybe what today might be a variation of mindfulness (Kabat-Zinn)? Absorbing insights into Huxley's inchoate description-making are described as he attempts to explore his unconscious with his some of Erickson's interventions reported back as "the external stimuli felt outside language without knowing as an undefined something until a suggestion of something was coming" or a "physical activity impinged upon my train of thought leading to amnesia of experience."NLP is "a set of strategies in restoring the balance of unconscious processes in learning versus the dominant brain in the age of the accountant", and, "we can do learning a whole lot better...by suspending our maps of knowledge and participating in (unconscious) assimilation." (search for Grinder 'What is NLP? 2008, 5:42 mins'). If further Clark I Hull's research indicates there are scant differences between the waking and hypnotic states, except in response to suggestions and remembering events, then a disruption in educational fields surely beckons. How about a light trance induction at the start of maths class for example?There are so many open loops in Patterns 1 it is hard to know which one to close (Bluma Zeigarnik); that if If Magic 1 be the father to the meta beast known as NLP, then Patterns1 is surely its mother or seductive mistress. Mind blowing and crucial reading. One of my Robinson Crusoe books.

Recommended++++

Hier geht es ganz zum Anfang zurück. Sehr guter Einblick in die Arbeit von Milton Erickson. Anspruchsvoll, aber es zahlt sich aus.

NLP創始者による天才催眠療法家エリクソンの芸術を分析した本。エリクソンの言葉のパターンだけでなく、非言語の部分までかなり詳細に考察している。感想としては、1.エリクソンなしに今のNLPは生まれなかっただろうということ、やっぱりこの人はすごい。2.このエリクソンの深さを分析しただけでなく、一般レベルの人にも学べるように翻訳したNLPもすごいということ。NLPも創始者レベルまでになるとかなり、精緻な理論的ベースがあるということが分かる。1と2の２つの天才性が交わったのがこの本ということだろう。同書は二巻本で、VOLUME 2もある。

Very useful and practical.If offers real cases and clear explanations. It useful in a wide range of contexts. Reading the 2nd volume.