My Voice Will Go With You by Milton Erikson,
Sidney Rosen
It is for
good reason that My Voice Will Go With
You has been included among the
classics of psychology. The book from which I had learned about Milton
Erikson has probably changed my life and is called 50 Psychology Classics, which has listed among other great books,
the one recommended here. Many , if not most of the stories told in the book
(some of them resumed here and on the blog) recall the Pygmalion Effect
and the revelations about astonishing power of the human mind…„Therapy is liking spiting in someone’s
soup- they could eat it, but won’t like it”
My Voice Will Go With You is about a famous, great
psychologist Eriksson, who had a method of hypnotizing his patients, telling
them the exact, appropriate story for their condition. Last night I was reading
the episode with this woman who made love mechanically, without any pleasure.
Eriksson told her how boys masturbate and their ancestors did the same …half of
the ancestors of these boys being women. He told the woman about these ancestors
in order to induce in her the idea that she can have pleasure and she did:
while Eriksson was telling his story the woman exclaimed: “doctor Erikson, you
are the first man who gave me an orgasm” and ever since, she changed her
partner and enjoyed orgasms every time she made love -she experienced
one or two or three orgasms…wow.
Another
interesting fact learned from this book is that acne can be cured in a
strange way, yet simple way. A woman came to see Doctor Erikson because her son
suffered from severe acne. The doctor advised her to take her son on a holiday,
in a cabin where all mirrors have to be removed. Indeed, after spending 10 days
there, the young man was cured and other people as well, using the same
technique: not being able to see their faces, their acne- cured the
condition.
I wish I
could meet someone who could hypnotize me. Doctor Erikson suggests to a
patient under hypnosis to win in the first step the bronze medal and then twice
the gold medal, at the Olympic Games.
A case which has attracted my attention regards weight loss. Here we have a few women who wanted to lose
weight, the first one came to the doctor’s office with very long nails, which
have been very well noticed by Milton Erikson. But this woman was not really
willing to make an effort to be slimer and wouldn’t obey the prescription, so
she abandoned trhe cure. The other women lost weight, in one situation with an
unuasula method: she was made to gain
weight to begin with, in order to break the pattern, because her experience
with dieting was: lose weight and then put it back, lose and gain it again, and
again. By changing the usual habit, the doctor was successful.
With another patient, divorce was avoided.
I keep
reading from this interesting book and I reached the story of the “pianist”,
who was obliged by his mother to play the piano for Four hours! Each day. The
boy found this routine excruciating and started biting his nails. With time,
the nails almost vanished, with the boy “eating „into his fingers. There was
blood on the piano, but the mother did not give up her obsession. To make
matter worse, the father insisted on the boy going to medical school, in spite
of his lack of interest. Because the already grown young man had no desire to
graduate medical school, he cheated in the open, in order to be excluded. The
father wanted Doctor Milton Eriksson to cure his son’s habit of biting his
fingers, convinced that it was because of his horrible hands that the medical
schools denied his applications.
Doctor
Eriksson understood what the problem was, through hypnosis cured the biting and
encouraged the man to use his well developed skills as a musician, which he
applied playing the organ. The young man graduated Law School, helped his
brother become a car dealer and the two of them together helped their younger
sister.
There are a
few other patients who are cured of claustrophobia, with the doors and
windows being closed inch by inch.
There’s so
much one can do with the help of hypnosis!! Any of you know about this? Could
you hypnotize me?? I am interested: let me know!
……….
In another
story a policeman is cured of drinking,
eating too much and smoking. He had grocery, liquor store and a habit of
getting cartons of cigarettes. By telling him to walk a lot in between drinks
and to buy groceries for one meal only, plus to buy only one pack of cigarettes
at a time, Eriksson made this patient conscious of what he was doing. The
doctor agreed with the patient, encouraged him to have as many drinks as he
wanted, but to walk a mile to another bar in order to get another drink.
Whistleberries
A girl was in the classroom, when she farted. She ran
away from there, locked herself into the room and wouldn’t leave. She contacted
doctor Eriksson, who gave her a cure: to cook beans, known as whistleberries,
eat them and dance, allowing for verious farts, while she jumped around,
naked. Milton Eriksson explained the complexity and difficulty in keeping solid
and fluid substances inside the body and leting only gas come out. The woman
was cured.
Cinamon Face
The girl in this story hated everybody, because she was
called freckles. The way out was a joke. The doctor told the girl he knew
she stole cookies from a cinamon cookie jar, the girl laughed and got over her
issue
Psoriasis
A woman cmplained to the doctor that she had dandruff all
over her body. Milton Ericksson said that she only had a third of the dandruff
she had estimated and this way he treated yet another patient.
No erection
This time there is a man who had had his first sexual
experience in a bawdy house and found it terrible. After that, for twenty
years he had no erection, even if tried and paid various women. He found a
woman he loved and wanted to marry, but still did not get an erection. Doctor
Eriksson talked with the man’s would-be wife and told her to prevent the man
from touching her breasts, genitalia, anything. After a few weeks, the man
„raped” the woman and got over his problem. This was because the doctor moved
the issue, the problem outside the man.
Slurp, Slurp
In this story we meet a girl who was sucking her thumb. Here
we learn that „Therapy is liking spiting
in someone’s soup- they could eat it, but won’t like it” Doctor Ericksson
tells the girl that she could suck her thumb, but should do it properly, with
something like a program, 20 minutes at a time, especially for those she
didn’t like. Making the act conscious, as opposed to unconscious as she had
done it before and making it something of an obligation, the girl was cured.
Learning by
experience
Milton Eriksson says that we best learn by experinece: take
the case of swiming, if we try it on a chair it wouldn’t do-we have to learn
it in the water. We learn about the man who gave his kids to taste engine
oil, to smell amoniac...so that they will be careful when the time will come to
taste cigarettes, alcohol or drugs.
There are some controversial aspects: at one point there is
a little spanking, which is against the law today, even if mild...as well as
holding a child for a few hours, which, even without aggression, any violence
is not cusher and may again be outside the law nowadays. On the whole, the book
is very good and an excellent, even entertaining read.
