ANTECEDENTES DEL PROBLEMA

WEDNESDAY

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

(Blinky is the sacrum of a cow that one of Erickson’s sons fixed up to look like a cow’s head. Two small lights have been put in for eyes. Electrical equipment was put inside so that after the plug is removed, stored electricity is discharged.)

E: (To Mrs. Erickson.) Betty, is there any way of turning on Blinky? Mrs. E: Yes.

E: How do you like my friend Blinky back there? Stu: It seems to be a curious observer.

Mrs. E: OK. Should I disconnect it now, Milton? E: While everybody looks on?

Start looking. She’s going to unblink Blinky. (Blinky keeps blinking even though disconnected). And Blinky is predominantly right-eyed.

Now Christine gave me some information this morning. She had a headache after being in a trance. I like to have that information come out later, and I am glad that you didn’t tell it right away, because when you undertake to change the thinking of a person — whenever you upset their usual habitual patterns of thought−you very often have a headache resulting.

And now, none of you probably noticed it, but, in inducing trances I give the suggestions in such a way that it’s their natural response to have a headache, I let them have it. But I also intersperse suggestions

that they will not become alarmed, or unduly frightened.

(Erickson addresses Christine directly.) How did you feel about your headache?

Christine: I was very puzzled when it occurred, but I recognized when it did happen, that it had happened before. I related it to my first experience with hypnosis, at which time I was very disappointed during the training session by the fact that the instructors seemed to permit the students to give post- hypnotic suggestions which were not in keeping with their training, and not in keeping with the knowledge that the trainees had of the one to whom they gave the suggestions.

E: I know. When I was on the teaching staff of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, I always took care to give suggestions to everybody... so that anybody who took the seminar or workshop did not suffer unduly, and did not suffer a headache, thereafter.

Christine: But — my interpretation may have been wrong — but it seemed to me that the trainees who were giving suggestions to another trainee were really overstepping their competence.

E: (Nods head. He is smiling and looking at Christine.)

Christine: And I... I was very disillusioned maybe, or upset with the instructors for permitting that. On the other hand, since I am not a psychologist myself, I just was also confused and really didn’t know if I judged the situation correctly. And I had first observed everybody else working with everybody else and I stayed to be the last one to be used, and I felt that the person who was working with me was particularly insensitive, maybe, and really gave such absurd suggestions that I really just couldn’t accept it.

And yet I was trying to go along and be polite and not destroy her learning experience. And maybe that is why I have a headache and maybe this is what I relive every time I have an induction. I don’t know.

E: Well, you don’t need to relive it anymore.

Now, out of my farm boy experience, I studied agriculture in grade school and learned about the importance of rotating crops. I explained it in great detail to an old farmer, who made every effort he could to understand what I was talking about in regard to the importance of growing corn in one field one year, oats another year, alfalfa another year and so on. I found out that he always complained I gave him a headache. (Laughs.) Because he learned to change his ideas.

And, later, when I was in college, I sold books one year in a certain ethnic farming community. And there I learned another thing: You did not rotate your crops on your own responsibility. Now a father of a family would call in his married sons and his neighbors and they would all discuss the importance of rotating crops. Then, on the responsibility of the entire community, the farmer could rotate his crops. But if he did it all on his own, he got a headache. (Smiles.)

And for human behavior — we start from childhood to become rigid, very rigid in our behavior, only we don’t know that. We think that we are being free, but we are not. And we ought to recognize it. (Looking down.) Now, in this ethnic neighborhood — I won’t tell you the ethnic group involved, but they were all farmers. In selling books, I would stay overnight with some farm family. I always was charged for my meals.

And with one family, I arrived at noon and so I asked for dinner. The young man was harvesting hay and his father had come to help him. Before we ate, a long chapter of the Bible was read and then a long, long grace was said, and then we ate. And then, a long grace was said, and another chapter of the Bible was read.

As his father got up to leave the table, he reached into his pocket, took out his wallet and said, “I had two medium-sized potatoes, I had some gravy, I had two slices of bread, I had two pieces of meat.” He named the other food that he had eaten, and he added up the cost and paid his son the cost of the meal.

I asked him, “Why, since you were putting in a day’s work helping your son harvest the hay, do you pay him for your dinner?” And the father said, “I am helping my son, but it is my responsibility to feed myself; therefore, I pay.”

And once I saw a young man in a car driving past an old man toward a certain town. I recognized the young man in the car, and I hastened myself and caught up with the old man. And I asked the old man, “Your son is going to town in a car. It is 10 miles distance, and you are walking. Now, why didn’t your son stop to pick you up and give you a ride to town?” And the father said, “He is a good son. Stopping a car uses extra gas; starting up again uses extra gas, and that is not good. You do not waste things.” (Smiles.)

And then, one morning I stayed with people from that group, and I ate breakfast with the family. After eating a good-sized breakfast, the man of the house went to the back porch. I curiously went with him. I saw the chickens come running. The man vomited up his breakfast, and the chickens ate it. So I inquired why, and the man explained to me, as many others did, “Now when you get married your life changes and a married man always vomits his breakfast”

And I knew there was a wedding coming up. It was going to take place at 10:30 in the morning, so I arranged my trip down the highway to arrive at that place where the wedding took place at 11:00 o’clock. I found the bride in the barn wearing some old shoes and an old dress. She was cleaning the barn, and her husband was in the back 40 acres cultivating corn. They were married on Wednesday, and you don’t take

time off frivolously. (Smiles.)

And once, at the induction board, I had one of my residents in psychiatry and medical students watch me do psychiatric examinations on the selectees for the Army. And my resident came to me and said, “Am I crazy? I’ve just rejected 12 young farmers. They are healthy. They all complained of a severe backache once a week. They stay in bed all day and six different neighbors come to assist them in the day’s work because the man of the house is confined to bed with a severe backache.” I said, “You are not crazy, you just ran into an ethnic culture, a specific one.” Now, men do vomit their breakfast every morning as he found out. And they spent one day in bed and six neighbors helped with the work. I did inquire enough to know that that young man helps all six of those neighbors one day a week, because each of them has a certain day of the week when he has a backache.

And the resident looked at me, and I explained that in that ethnic group, when you get married, you call on six of your neighbors and they have a very thoughtful, earnest discussion. Since the young man is getting married, that means after having intercourse with his wife he will be confined to bed with a severe backache the next day, as will each of his neighbors. So they each decide on which day of the week they each have intercourse (laughs), because it disables them. (Erickson shakes his head and laughs.)

I found that very amusing and it certainly caused that young resident who was very much in love with his wife to have the strangest kind of wild thinking. (Erickson laughs.)

Everything was done by routine. As his grandfather did, so did grandson do. I learned a lot of anthropology that summer from that group. I had always been interested in anthropology, and I think anthropology should be something all psychotherapists should read and know about, because different

ethnic groups have different ways of thinking about things.

Now, for example, in Erie, Pennsylvania, the State engaged me to teach the state psychiatrists−give them a course in psychiatry. I arrived on Sunday, stayed at the Erie State Hospital in Pennsylvania. And when we went in to dinner, I liked the entire staff. I enjoyed meeting them and all the others that were there.

We went to the staff dining room and one of them who worked there at the hospital said to another colleague on the staff, “Is it Friday, today?” That colleague groaned and said, “Take it” (Erickson holds out his hand) and handed over his steak to his colleague and told the waitress, “Bring me a can of salmon. If you said, “Is it Friday?” any day of the week, he couldn’t eat meat. He was a good Catholic and he was so conditioned that he couldn’t eat meat if you raised the question, “Is it Friday?” So his colleague wanted to demonstrate that to me. And people are so very, very rigid. And each ethnic group has its does and don’ts.

When I went to Venezuela, South America, to lecture, I was curious about what would happen to me. So at the airport, through my interpreter, I explained that my wife and I were North Americans who had not had the advantages of the niceties of Venezuelan culture, that we would make many mistakes, and we hoped that they would forgive us because we were North Americans and not really trained in the niceties of their social behavior.

One of the first things I learned was you don’t talk face-to-face with a Venezuelan. Because his idea of talking face-to-face is talking with his chest pressing against yours. As Groucho Marx said, “If you get any closer to me, you will be behind me.” (Laughter.) So, I carefully held my cane here (Erickson gestures as if

holding a cane in front of him), because I never learned to walk backwards after I had polio. And I knew that if they pushed my chest I would go over, so I held my cane where they couldn’t get close to me.

Then I told my host through the interpreter that my wife and I would make very many errors in social adjustments. I would tell them what my wife and I would like to experience. So I told them that my wife and I would like to attend a party where we would meet men and women in a home with their children.

Later, I found out that in Venezuela, when a party is given, only men attend; when women give a party, only women attend; and when the children give a party, only one chaperone attends. And here was a mixed group being very sociable with us, with children, wives and husbands present.

Then Mrs. Erickson did an awful thing. She knew enough Spanish so she listened to the high school students discussing the genetic chain−how many chromosomes in each cell−45, 46, or 47? And she joined in the conversation in Spanish with the children, and she told them the correct number. And a lot of the doctors there didn’t know the correct number, and the male population is supposed to be much better informed than the children things that their mothers and fathers didn’t even know about. And that was a horrible thing for her to do.

A rigidity. But all of your patients have their own rigidities. (Pause. A new woman comes into the room with Sally. They are about 20 minutes late.) And you are a newcomer are you not? And you will fill out a sheet for my records. (There are now eleven people attending today’s session.)

Now I am going to give you a case record and it shows you the importance of the knowledge of anthropology. (Erickson asks Stu to draw out a folder. Stu hands it to Erickson.)

Woman: Sarah. E: Sarah Lee?

Sarah: No. (Laughs.)

E: (To Siegfried.) All right, my German friend, I just asked her if her middle name was Lee. Sarah Lee. Do you know why?

Siegfried: No. It must be a play with the language. I didn’t get it.

E: And would you explain to him? (Erickson asks Christine to give the explanation.)

And my son calls his dog Sarah Lee (laughs), because nobody doesn’t like her. (General laughter. To Sarah.) And that has been your experience, hasn’t it?

Sarah: Maybe. (Erickson laughs.)

E: All right. Some years ago I got a long distance call from Worcester, Mass. A psychologist said, “I have a 16-year-old boy in my office. He is a very intelligent boy and he gets excellent grades in school. He has just graduated from the third year of high school, but he has stuttered since he first began to speak. His father is very wealthy, and his father has hired psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, speech therapists, psychologists, and tutors for 15 years to teach the boy how to talk. And he stutters worse now than ever. Would you take the boy as a patient I said, “I haven’t got the energy to take on that kind of job.”

A year later he called me up again and said, “Rick is now 17 years old, his stuttering is worse than ever, and won’t you please take him as a patient I said, “That sounds like too much work, I haven’t got the strength.”

A few days later he called me again and said, “I’ve talked it over with his parents and they are willing to send Rick out to you if you will see Rick for just one hour.” I asked, “Do they understand that a consultation of one hour does not place me under any obligation to see him another minute.” He said, “I explained to the parents that one hour is one hour and they have no claim on you.” I said, “If they want to go to the expense of bringing Rick out here from Massachusetts and paying my consultation fee of one hour, that’s their problem, not mine. I’ll see the boy for exactly one hour only.”

A few days later the boy, Rick, and his mother walked in. I took one look at the mother and Rick and I recognized the ethnic group. And Rick, in trying to talk, made a mish-mash of noises and I couldn’t understand anything he said. So I turned to the mother, who I recognized as a Lebanese woman, and I asked her to give me the family history.

She told me that she and her husband had grown up in a certain community in Lebanon. I inquired about the Lebanese culture of that small community, and she told me about it. They had grown up there and then emigrated to Massachusetts, decided to get married in Massachusetts, and then decided to become naturalized citizens. Now, in that culture, man is a lot higher than God, and woman is a lot lower than low. Now, a man’s children live with him, and as long as they live with him, he is an absolute dictator. And girls are a nuisance. You try to get them married and off your hands, because girls and women are fit for only two things — hard work and breeding.

And the first child of the marriage should be a boy. If it isn’t a boy, the man says, “I divorce you,” three times, and even if his bride brought a million dollars in dowry, her husband confiscates it. She is allowed to take the clothes she is wearing and her female infant, and she has to go out on the street and make her

own living any way she can. Because the first child should be a boy. But being a naturalized citizen of Massachusetts, he couldn’t tell his wife, “I divorce you,” and so he had to put up with that horrible insult, that unbearable insult, of his first child being a girl. The second child was also a girl. Now that was carrying the insult far too far. There was nothing that he could do about it — he was a naturalized American citizen.

Rick was the third child. Now the very least that Rick could have done was to look like his father and grow up to be a tall, slender, willowy man, closely resembling the father. Instead, Rick was broad shouldered, sturdy, about 5’ 10”. His father was a slender 6’. So Rick was an insult also, not only because he was the third child, but because he didn’t resemble his father.

And father’s word is law. And the children, as they grow up, work in the home or in the store, and father will now and then give them a penny, sometimes a dime. His children work for literally nothing, and they do things in a good, old Lebanese way of that particular area in Lebanon.

And Rick began stuttering when he first began to talk. He stuttered in spite of those 16 years of attendance with psychoanalysts, psychologists, speech therapists, tutors and any other kind of aid that the father, who was very wealthy, could buy. And so I got that information from mother.

I told mother, “I am willing to see Rick for a few more hours on two conditions: You may rent a car and drive it around Phoenix, Arizona, and see all the sights you want to see. Now remember, I am a man.” And when I told her she “might do that,” she was under absolute orders to do that. (Erickson points to Christine with his left hand and changes his inflection slightly.) “But in driving around, you must never, under any circumstances, talk to another Lebanese person because there is a Lebanese colony in Phoenix.”

So they agreed... to that.

And I said, “Now I have another condition. I have a friend who owns a florist shop and a nursery. I am going to call my friend up and I want you to listen to my conversation over the phone with her.” That way, they knew the friend was a woman.

So I called my friend, Minnie, and I said, “Minnie, I have a 17-year-old boy in my office. He is my patient. Every day, at any time you wish, this boy is to come into your florist shop or your nursery. And,