Quotes by Milton H. Erickson, MD

“Trance is a natural everyday experience.”

 

“In hypnosis you are seeking to alter their body awareness, their body understandings, their body experiences, their body responses.”

 

“Discover their patterns of happiness.”

 

“He wanted to make a father out of me. I made a colleague out of him.”

 

“Develop your own techniques. Be your own natural self. I tried to do it the way someone else did and it was a MESS.”

 

“You can pretend anything and master it.”

 

“There are so many things in human living that we should regard not as traumatic learning but as incomplete learning, unfinished learning.”

 

“You use hypnosis not as a cure but as a means of establishing a favorable climate in which to learn.”

 

“Milton listened with his eyes.” – Bertha Erickson Gallun (Erickson’s sister)

 

“What is easiest to see is often overlooked.”

 

“Allow yourself to see what you don’t allow yourself to see.”

 

“Teach them to be comfortable in their bodies.”

 

“You can teach a child the importance of pain by your behavior. You can also teach a child the importance of no pain by your behavior.”

 

“Sometimes – in fact more times than is realized – therapy can be firmly established on a sound basis only by the utilization of silly, absurd, irrational and contradictory statements.”