Zeig (1995) demonstrates the Ericksonian approach to psychotherapy while working with Carol, a woman whose nail-biting habit is rooted in anxiety. After gathering information on her personal history, Zeig helps Carol utilize her values and history to affect change. The process is both humorous and dramatic. After working to change associations linked to the problem behavior, Zeig offers Carol an ordeal that will produce a "guaranteed cure." Hypnosis is offered as the "dessert", rather than the main course. Ericksonian approach to psychotherapy.
During this seminar, Dr. Erickson describes essential skills for working with resistant patients, the use of permissive language, ordeal therapy, geometric progression, and therapeutic double binds. Erickson conducts a demonstration, answers questions from the audience, and elaborates on his thinking with case illustrations that include: sexual dysfunction, stuttering, bed wetting, childhood eating disorders, compulsive habits, phobias and self-defeating behavior.
In this set, Erickson communicates the timeless principles of hypnosis that he observed, discovered and utilized. He emphasizes the paramount importance of protecting the patient and establishing trust as the very foundation of the cooperative relationship characteristic of hypnosis. He stresses the importance of understanding the meaningful need of the patient and reviews, with many examples, the techniques of rehearsal, uncovering, dissociation, regression, time-distortion, revivification, visualization, orientation to the past and to the future, trusting the unconscious mind, and post-hypnotic suggestion.