Like everyone else, Milton Erickson had his own criteria about what kinds of lessons are important for people to learn so that they can enjoy happy and productive lives. The three that seem to permeate his work most often are learning to be flexible, to have a sense of humor about oneself and the world, and to look to the future. These highly valued criteria are rarely the explicit goal of his therapeutic interventions. Nevertheless, Erickson almost always weaves into his work with clients experiences which at least peripherally include new learnings about personal flexibility, humor, and orientating towards the future, and, in any case, these generalizations characterize all of Erickson's communi- cations and interactions. Erickson's efforts towards reorientating his clients in regards to these abilities make it possible for whatever changes he effects to have a continuing impact on his clients. Again, as we pointed out in a previous section, one of Erickson's goals within the therapeutic relationship is to tap and make available those generative resources his clients need in order to become self-sufficient individuals. This frequently means not only correcting the presenting problem but providing those learnings needed for successful future coping as well.
Flexibility
I can remember walking to the lake in the 1930's accom- panied by another psychiatrist who had always lived in the city. There were a lot of trees around the lake. I walked through very comfortably, and he disgustedly, again and again, angrily commented on the branches of the trees,
striking him unexpectedly, knocking his glasses off. So I
had to tell him, "You learn how to walk through under- brush and trees, it's different than walking on bare land and bare sidewalks. You balance your BODY differently .. . and you automatically respond to a branch out of the corner of your eye without noticing it and you alter your body movements so that the branch will not impede your movements."
One way of describing your client's problems is in terms of flexibility vs. lack of flexibility. By "flexibility" we are referring to an individual's ability to regard a situation from different points of view and/or the ability to respond to various situations in different and appropriate
ways. A client who tells you, "Every time I ask a girl out on a date
I get so nervous that I can't talk!" is telling you that he is inflexible in his behavior within the context of "dating". That is, each time he is faced with a "dating" situation he invariably (inflexibly) responds by becoming nervous and mute. Since there are some occasions for which being mute is appropriate (during a sermon, for example) what this person needs is the flexibility of behavior to be able to be quiet in church, walk out of church, up to a prospective date and then be able to converse freely. It is Erickson's contention that the more choices (flexibility, variety) you have available in your own behavior the more likely it is that you will be able to successfully accommodate yourself to the vagaries of daily life. As a therapist this is, perhaps, even more important since what is demanded of you daily is that you somehow adjust yourself to understanding and working with one unique individual after another. We particularly want you to keep in mind the notion of flexibility as you read the case histories contained in this volume, for in all of them (as throughout all his work) Erickson demonstrates what is perhaps the most immediately striking character-
istic of his work—his unprecedented ability to adjust his own behavior and communications to achieve whatever rapport and whatever end he feels appropriate and useful for the individual before him. And, often the "end" that his efforts are directed towards is that of nurtur- ing in his client the ability to be flexible.
And we ALL have our own rigidities without knowing it. I recall eating breakfast in a hotel in Chicago with a col- league who watched me eat my toast in ABSOLUTE hor-
ror. I could see the horror in his face. I didn't know what
it meant.. . the TOAST was good! Finally he said, "What is the matter with you, haven't you got any table man-
ners of ANY sort?" I said, " W h y do you ask?" "You
buttered that toast, broke it in two, and now you are eating half of it." I said, "That's right . . . it tastes very good." He said, "The PROPER way is you CUT your slice of toast in four parts and you pick each up separately and eat it." I asked him why and he said, "because that's the
only WAY to eat toast!" So the next morning I ate my
toast by the WHOLE toast without breaking it in half. He finally learned to eat toast comfortably.
Humor
You need to teach patients to LAUGH off their griefs and to enjoy their pleasures. I had an alcoholic woman who came to me for therapy . . . and she was telling me the troubles she was having with her college-aged daughter. She said, "I've had trouble with her ever since she went riding in our . . ." what do you call that car that doesn't have a top? . . . a convertible. She was riding along . . . " w e were having a happy time and a bird flying overhead happened to make a deposit just when she was
yawning. And she's been SO ashamed with herself ever
since. She just can't seem to face life at all. And my alcoholism doesn't help her." I said, "Well, tell me a few
MORE things about your daughter." "She's really a very nice girl, but she's awfully neurotic on that one subject." "Does she ever have a sense of humor?" The mother said, "Yes, but not since then." She had developed a lot of food avoidances that made her life very miserable. I asked the mother, "You said she has a good sense of humor but she hasn't USED it for a few years. Well you must have a lot of humor dammed up behind that capa- ble person. So do you mind if I do a little therapy long distance?" The mother said, " N o , I don't mind." So I mailed the girl a postcard from Philadelphia advising her about the perils of yawning while riding in a convertible. The girl got that card and said, " W h o is that man and how did he EVER find out about it? I know / never told him. Did YOU tell him?!!" She said, "What's his name?" The girl said, "It's signed M. H. Erickson." And mother said, "I've never BEEN to Philadelphia. I don't know of any- body who lives in Philadelphia by THAT name. Isn't it rather a funny thing?" The girl burst into laughter and said, "It certainly is." And she laughed, oh, uproariously for quite some time. And resumed normal living. It was just friendly advice.
Although many of the things that happen to people and that people themselves do are not obviously or inherently humorous, humor can be found in almost anything. Professional comedians know this and are able to make us laugh about divorce, unemployment, phobias, poverty, insecurity, and even death. Well-placed humor is somehow capable of taking the sting out of a pain, of making new or frightening topics more acceptable, and of taking the gravity out of a situation so that it no longer excessively weighs one down. Erickson understands the usefulness of humor in coping with setbacks and unpleasant sur- prises, and he not only uses his own infectious sense of humor effec- tively but he is able by example and experiences to instill in his clients a similarily lighthearted perspective on the comings and goings of human beings.
The fundamental thing that people should learn is that there should be NO place in their lives for hurt feelings. When you get hurt feelings run, don't walk but run, to the nearest garbage can and get rid of them and you'll live much more happily. Anyone that wants to INSULT you . . . it's all right. I'm thinking of the story of the Irishman and the Jewish rabbi. The Irishman hated Jews. He met the rabbi one morning . . . proceeded to vilify the rabbi, calling him every insulting name he could. When Pat ran out of insults the rabbi said gently, "Pat, when someone gives you a present and you don't want it, what do you do? Do you take it?" Pat said, "I sure don't!" The rabbi said, "You've offered me a present of insults, I don't want it, so keep it for yourself."
The Future
Then there was John. John met everybody who came on the ward. He pestered the nurses explaining, " I ' m locked up here for no reason at all. I don't belong here." So I instructed the entire ward personnel every- time he says "I don't belong here," I said, "reply to him simply 'But you are here'." After about six months of always getting that same reply John said, "I KNOW I'M HERE!!" The ward personnel reported this to me and I went to him and he said, "I don't belong here", and I said, "But you are here." He said, "I know I'm here." I said, "That's right you are here. Now that you are here what do you want to do about LEAVING here?" Within nine months he was discharged, got a job as a manual laborer and started putting his sister through college and contributing to the support of the family. Having no psychotherapy other than, "You ARE here." Forcing a patient to recognize where they are at and meeting them there and then bridging the gap to the future is a very important thing.
Freud's most enduring legacy is the notion that the key to present problems lies buried in one's past. That the antecedents of one's problems are to be found in one's past is undeniably true. That the antecedents of a problem and the key to its solution are one and the same thing is much less tenable. As we discussed in a previous section, knowing "why" someone does what he does is not a prerequisite for assisting him in changing. Furthermore, regardless of when or where the key comes from, if and when it finally gets turned it will be turned
now or in the future—not in the past. Clients usually enter a coun-
selor's office lugging behind them a history of examination and reex- amination of the nature and origins of their problems. This, Eriekson feels, is a waste of valuable time and much of his therapeutic work is either implicitly or explicitly directed at reorientating his clients to- wards looking ahead rather than behind.
In 1933 a fellow psychiatrist and I were sitting talking. He
was an excellent psychiatrist. He handled his patients in
a very objective fashion, a very competent man profes- sionally but PERSONALLY he was extremely neurotic. And in 1933 he said he was going to resign, and go into psychoanalysis. I told him, "Bob, why are you going into psychoanalysis?" He said, "Well, I want to get over my fear of women. I want to marry, have a home and chil- dren." I said, "Bob, if you're not over your fear of women by 1940, forget therapy." In 1965 his mother died, and he was still in psychoanalysis. Several of his analysts had died, and he was STILL in therapy. His mother died in her 90's, and the mother had lived with an elderly woman as a companion. Now after the mother's death there was no place for that elderly woman to go, so Bob MARRIED her. She was fifteen years older than he. They bought a home, a very much in disrepair summer cottage in Ver- mont. They spent TWO summers working hard to get that summer cabin suitable for occupancy during the summer months and lived in a small apartment in Boston . . . Recently Bob died. Now he had been left independently wealthy by his father. His life long ambition was to go to
Scotland. He got as far as Massachusetts and Windsor, Canada—that was as close as he got to Scotland. All that psychoanalysis, from '33 to past 1965 'til he died. And he married a woman fifteen years his SENIOR. She was 80 when he was 67—that couldn't really be called a marriage. He didn't really have a wife. She certainly was not fit to have children and he didn't have a home—he only had a small apartment in Boston. And yet, when he worked for the hospital he was a very competent psychi- atrist so far as his PATIENTS were concerned. And so ^many psychoanalyzed patients I see have spent years in the futile examination of their past and I say, let's forget the past and look forward to the future . . . and above all put humor in whatever you do!
Footnotes
1. Remember that Erickson's "unconscious mind" (that is, his non-conscious computa- tions) is already organized with respect to the patterns we and others have modeled. In order for you or anyone else to be able to "unconsciously" produce Ericksonian therapeu- tic interactions and interventions you must first train yourself to reproduce his computa- tional patterns. Once those patterns have been learned (that is, they are appropriately contextualized and you are systematic in using them), you will be free to depend upon your mind to make those computations even when you are "unconscious" of the process.