How to Coach Yourself and Others Beware of Manipulation | Page 253

Erickson would often compliment the patient for a symptom, and would even encourage it, in very
specific ways. In one amusing example, a woman whose in-laws caused her nauseous feelings in the
gut every time they visited unexpectedly was "taught" to vomit spectacularly whenever the visits were
especially inconvenient. Naturally the in-laws would always sympathetically help her clean up the
vomit. Fairly soon, the annoying relatives started calling in advance before turning up, to see if she
were "well enough" to see them.
The subject of dozens of songs, "emphasizing the positive" is a well known self-help strategy, and can
be compared with "positive reformulation" in Gestalt Therapy.
Prescribing the Symptom and Amplifying a Deviation
Very typically, Erickson would instruct his patients to actively and consciously perform the symptom
that was bothering them (see the nailbiting example under #Resistance), usually with some minor or
trivial deviation from the original symptom. In many cases, the deviation could be amplified and used
as a "wedge" to transform the whole behaviour.
INTERVIEWER: Suppose someone called you and said there was a kid, nineteen or twenty years old,
who has been a very good boy, but all of a sudden this week he started walking around the
neighborhood carrying a large cross. The neighbors are upset and the family's upset, and would you do
something about it. How would you think about that as a problem? Some kind of bizarre behavior like
that.
ERICKSON: Well, if the kid came in to see me, the first thing I would do would be to want to examine
the cross. And I would want to improve it in a very minor way. As soon as I got the slightest minor
change in it, the way would be open for a larger change. And pretty soon I could deal with the
advantages of a different cross - he ought to have at least two. He ought to have at least three so he
could make a choice each day of which one. It's pretty hard to express a psychotic pattern of behavior
over an ever-increasing number of crosses.[14]
Seeding Ideas
Erickson would often ensure that the patients had been exposed to an idea, often in a metaphorical
form (hidden from the conscious mind) in advance of utilizing it for a therapeutic purpose. He called
this "seeding ideas", and it can be observed to occur at many levels both coarse and fine grained, in
many of his case histories. In a simple example, the question "Have you ever been in a trance before?"
seeds the idea that a trance is imminent - the presupposition inherent in the word before is "not now,
but later".
Avoiding Self-Exploration
In common with most brief therapy practitioners, Erickson was entirely uninterested in analysing the
patient's early psychological development. Occasionally in his case histories, he will briefly discuss the
patient's background, but only as much as it pertains to the resources available to the patient in the
present.
INTERVIEWER: You don't feel that exploring the past is particularly relevant? I'm always trying to
get clear in my mind how much of the past I need to consider when doing brief therapy.
ERICKSON: You know, I had one patient this last July who had four or five years of psychoanalysis
and got nowhere with it. And someone who knows her said, "How much attention did you give to the
past?" I said, "You know, I completely forgot about that." That patient is, I think, a reasonably cured
person. It was a severe washing compulsion, as much as twenty hours a day. I didn't go in to the cause
or the etiology; the only searching question I asked was "When you get in the shower to scrub yourself
for hours, tell me, do you start at the top of your head, or the soles of your feet, or in the middle? Do
you wash from the neck down, or do you start with your feet and wash up? Or do you start with your
head and wash down?"

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