How to Coach Yourself and Others Beware of Manipulation | Page 245

8.3. Milton H. Erickson – Biography from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Milton Hyland Erickson
Born 5 December 1901 (1901-12-05)
Aurum, Nevada
Died 25 March 1980 (1980-03-26)
Phoenix, Arizona
Occupation psychiatrist and psychotherapist
Spouse(s) Helen, Elizabeth
Milton Hyland Erickson (5 December 1901 – 25 March
1980) was an American psychiatrist specializing in
medical hypnosis and family therapy. He was founding
president of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis
and a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the
American Psychological Association, and the American
Psychopathological Association. He is noted for his
approach to the unconscious mind as creative and
solution-generating. He is also noted for influencing brief
therapy, strategic family therapy, family systems therapy,
solution focused brief therapy, and neuro-linguistic
programming.
Personal history
Erickson frequently drew upon his own experiences to provide examples of the power of the
unconscious mind. He was largely self-taught and a great many of his anecdotal and autobiographical
teaching stories are collected by Sidney Rosen in the book My Voice Will Go With You. Erickson
identified many of even his earliest personal experiences as hypnotic or autohypnotic.
Erickson grew up in Lowell, Wisconsin, in a modest farming family and intended to become a farmer
like his father. He was a late developer and was both dyslexic and color blind. He overcame his
dyslexia and had many other inspirations via a series of spontaneous autohypnotic "flashes of light" or
"creative moments", as described in the paper Autohypnotic Experiences of Milton H. Erickson
At age 17, he contracted polio and was so severely paralysed that the doctors believed he would die. In
the critical night when he was at his worst, he had another formative "autohypnotic experience".
E: As I lay in bed that night, I overheard the three doctors tell my parents in the other room that their
boy would be dead in the morning. I felt intense anger that anyone should tell a mother her boy would
be dead by morning. My mother then came in with as serene a face as can be. I asked her to arrange the
dresser, push it up against the side of the bed at an angle. She did not understand why, she thought I
was delirious. My speech was difficult. But at that angle by virtue of the mirror on the dresser I could
see through the doorway, through the west window of the other room. I was damned if I would die
without seeing one more sunset. If I had any skill in drawing, I could still sketch that sunset. R: Your
anger and wanting to see another sunset was a way you kept yourself alive through that critical day in
spite of the doctors' predictions. But why do you call that an autohypnotic experience? E: I saw that
vast sunset covering the whole sky. But I know there was also a tree there outside the window, but I
blocked it out. R: You blocked it out? It was that selective perception that enables you to say you were
in an altered state? E: Yes, I did not do it consciously. I saw all the sunset, but I didn't see the fence and
large boulder that were there. I blocked out everything except the sunset. After I saw the sunset, I lost
consciousness for three days. When I finally awakened, I asked my father why they had taken out that
fence, tree, and boulder. I did not realize I had blotted them out when I fixed my attention so intensely
on the sunset. Then, as I recovered and became aware of my lack of abilities, I wondered how I was
going to earn a living. I had already published a paper in a national agricultural journal. "Why Young

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