ABSTRACT
The work of Milton Erickson (1901–1980) spanned 50 years, and he hypnotized 30,000 diverse subjects. Erickson did not create theories to explain people. He favored the idea of learning in an open-minded way what each client had to teach. He then responded in novel, creative, flexible, and uncommon ways in an effort to intervene most effectively, solve the problem, and promote developmental creativity. Within this atmosphere—in which novel responses to clients prevail as the ideal in an approach with no theory—we examine several characteristics that pertain to how problems and people are viewed. These include the availability of experiential resources (characteristics and psychological abilities); the importance of action for clients; the utilization of client behavior; indirect interventions; and techniques such as hypnosis, paradoxical prescription, and unusual assignments.
