Feeling No Pain P.3
The following article by Jerome Beatty and ads were originally published in the November 1945 issue of The American Magazine (In the public domain https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_American_Magazine_(1906-1956))
Additional photos of Milton H. Erickson are supplied by The Milton H. Erickson Foundation Archives
Edited by Sarah Clinebell, Archives Specialist
Twenty-six of Dr. Erickson’s former students are practicing psychiatry in army and navy hospitals and are among the steadily increasing number using hypnosis in treating fighting men who are suffering from those psychiatric breakdowns which cruel physical and mental torture bring to the best of men. After the war many of these doctors will return to private practice, and hypnosis will be increasingly available to civilians. Today psychoanalysis is mostly available only to the rich, for treatment sometimes consumes 100 hours or more at from $10 to $25 an hour. While hypnosis can’t be used in all cases, in a great many it will shorten the number of hours necessary, and cut the bill.
The treatment of war neuroses, Dr. Erickson explained, is much like that which cured Dorothy of her fear of water. Events in warfare, buried in the unconscious mind, which are causing such emotions as fear or guilt are brought out, relived, and driven away by the use of careful and patient psychiatric treatment – not by merely saying, “Now you won’t feel frightened or guilty anymore.” Hypnosis, or a reasonable facsimile of it produced by the use of drugs, is reported to be curing hundreds of psychoneurotic men in the armed services.
Dr. Erickson believes that the use of hypnosis in curing war neuroses will advance tremendously its acceptance by qualified psychiatrists, and he is convinced that he can help the cause best by continuing his research, lectures, and teaching in order that more genuine experts will be available. He realizes, however, that there remain many psychologists and medical men who still don’t agree with him.
Recently a professor of psychology at one of our great universities, who has done much with hypnotism, wrote a book on the subject. A medical journal asked Dr. Erickson to review it, and since the psychologist, in Dr. Erickson’s opinion, underrated the therapeutic value of hypnosis, and also contended that a small percentage of men and women can be hypnotized, Dr. Erickson’s review was withering.
When the review appeared, the professor wrote Dr. Erickson, “Pistols for two; coffee for one. I still regard you as our outstanding authority on hypnotism, but on certain points my peculiar constitution does not agree with you.”
Dr. Erickson chuckled when he showed me the letter. “I’ll convince him yet,” he predicted.
