Forty-one international academics and practitioners contribute to this collection of papers honoring the work and legacy of Milton H. Erickson. Thirty-six contributions are organized into a section on principles and one on practices. A sampling of topics: social influence, expectancy theory, and Eri

A friendly and brief guide to the essentials of hypnosis. Popular author Bill O’Hanlon offers an inviting and reassuring guide to the essentials of hypnosis, alleviating the newcomer’s anxieties about how to make the most of this clinical tool. This brief book illustrates the benefits of solution-oriented hypnosis, which draws on the work of the pioneering therapist Milton Erickson (with whom O’Hanlon studied) and emphasizes doing what is needed to get results—which, more often than not, means trusting that the client holds within him- or herself answers or knowledge that need only be tapped or released by the therapist. O’Hanlon covers the key aspects of hypnosis, including: using possibility words and phrases; using passive language; and inducing trance. O’Hanlon offers practical tips and friendly encouragement for the novice hypnotherapist—in his characteristic warm, reassuring, and humorous style.

Despite their clinical utility, hypnotic phenomena are vastly underutilized by therapists in their work with patients. Whether this is due to uncertainty about how to use specific techniques constructively or how to elicit particular phenomena, or anxiety about not being able to obtain a desired result, this volume will guide hypnotherapists toward higher levels of clinical expertise. By describing varied hypnotic phenomena and how they can be used as vehicles of intervention, The Phenomenon of Ericksonian Hypnosis takes the therapist beyond these fundamental applications toward a broader, more sophisticated scope of practice. This immensely readable book addresses the selection, eliciting, and therapeutic use of hypnotic phenomena that are natural outgrowths of trance. It offers step?by?step instruction on eliciting age progression, hypnotic dreaming, hypnotic deafness, anethesia, negative and positive hallucination, hypermnesia, catalepsy, and other hypnotic phenomena. The book includes specific instruction on how to use the phenomena manifested in trance to provide more effective treatment. Numerous case examples vividly illustrate intervention with anxiety disorders, trauma and abuse, dissociative disorders, depression, marital and family problems, sports and creative performance, pain, hypersensitivity to sound, psychotic symptomatology, and other conditions. The Phenomenon of Ericksonian Hypnosis will be used by therapists as a valuable clinical tool to expand their conceptualizations of hypnosis, and thus enable them to offer a wider repertoire of skills with which they can confidently treat clients.

"This is an essential primer of Ericksonian hypnotherapy and strategic psychotherapy. [...] O'Hanlon provides threads that crystallize practical patterns useful to clinicians at all levels of expertise." -- Jeffrey K. Zeig, Ph.D., Director, The Milton H. Erickson Foundation

Milton H. Erickson, M.D. is generally acknowledged to have been the world's leading practitioner of medical hypnosis. His "strategic therapy," using hypnotic techniques with or without actually inducing trance, allows him to get directly to the core of a problem and prescribe a course of action that can lead to rapid recovery.This book provides a comprehensive look at Dr. Erickson's theories in practice, through a series of case studies covering the kinds of problems that are likely to occur at various stages of the human life cycle. The results Dr. Erickson achieves sometimes seem to border on the miraculous, but they are brought about by a finely honed technique used by a wise, intuitive, highly trained psychiatrist-hypnotist whose work is recognized as a major contribution to the field.

This outstanding manual on Ericksonian hypnotherapy has been thoroughly revised and updated. There are two new chapters - one on Metaphor Therapy and Guided Metaphor and the other on Ernest Rossi`s work on the psychobiology of gene expression. The latter chapter also contains a section on the brain and hypnosis. Thomas South has extended his chapter on utilization with another section on pain control and the chapter on ethics and the law has also been signigicantly updated. Finally there is a new foreword by Roxanna Erickson Klein and Betty Alice Erickson. `This work is the stately tree, supporting individuality, cooperation and diversity. It is filled with common sense and uncommon sense, with atmosphere and sunhsine, with metaphors for more individual growth, with practice exercises for the present and with thoughts for the future. It gives us all lessons in becoming better therapists, better people,.a and better members of our world.` Roxanna Erickson Klein and Betty Alice Erickson - from the new foreword.