Volume 4: Advanced Approaches to Therapeutic Hypnosis

by Roxanna Erickson Klein, RN, PhD, Ernest Rossi, PhD and Kathryn Rossi, PhD

This volume contains some of Erickson’s most brilliant yet controversial papers about utilizing the patient’s classical symptoms of anxiety, confusion, and resistance in psychotherapy and therapeutic hypnosis. Even reading the first paper about Erickson’s “confusion technique in hypnosis” tends to make some readers confused about how this pioneering work is supposed to operate. What are the basic principles of working with the patient’s conflicts, confusion and resistance? Like many pioneers, Erickson tried to explain his thinking as he reported his actual experiences with patients, but one looks in vain for a clear protocol that students can follow to repeat his therapeutic success. The patient’s urgent needs and Erickson’s highly original approaches interact to generate complex therapeutic responses that always seem to be one-of-a-kind situations that defy scientific analysis.