goodness

As Rosanna Anna Danna used to say, "you gotta lot a' questions for someone from new jersey"! <just a joke>

About Erickson’s difference:
Do realize that Erickson's hypnosis is the same as anyone else’s hypnosis (Orne, Kroger, Barber, Lynn, Shor, Kirsch, Rhue, Hilgard, Hull, Bowers, etc., etc.). Trance is trance. There is nothing special or different about those Erickson induced. The term Ericksonian Hypnosis is sort of a misnomer...the thing Erickson did differently was his approach to change, how and when and why he induced trance and how he interacted with the client who was in trance of any depth.

About Confusion:
Actually, the word confusion has, of course, been in literature of psychology and hypnosis for decades and has basically meant something of a pause due to perplexity of the mind...thus it initiates search for meaning. And its use in this context has never previously been brought to my attention as a concern to anyone (not even clients). You are right to understand the 'softer' meaning of phrases like confusion, general reality orientation, etc. Remember that the loss of a general reality orientation is what you do when you day dream, when most traveler on a plane or bus do if they travel for several hours, what children do playing in a 'fort', when you get very relaxed, whenever an experience is out of the ordinary under ordinary circumstances, etc. There is another term for the events you are suggesting...psychotic break. These are not the same event.

Case illustration:
So when this confusion + search is happening the person can surrender the continual foreground of meaning and perception that they have limited themselves with and find of be helped to find experiences that they have kept in the background. Let's say that a man comes with severe headaches and we find too that he recently lost his father and mother but being a good Italian construction worker of 62 he thinks it is his duty to be strong for the family and his emotions are an annoyance anyway (secretly too, maybe is very frightened to sense tat he might have a whole lake of tears 'inside' and go crazy if he cries). By itself, grief welling up can create this process of shifting his reality orientation temporarily, and if it rushes tears forward to the foreground without the ability to channel them they bump right into his view of reality and fear. The bad news is, with no other frame around than his old one, he may go to a hospital or end up in a psychiatrist's office...and one way of another (depending on the folks he seeks) he may be given drugs to help him suppress this grief.

[[ Not long ago I saw a woman who lost her son on new years day by murder (some say accident) and her doctor sent her to a psychiatrist who prescribed drugs...and luckily, sent her to me. I assessed her quickly as not borderline or pre-psychotic and I was not afraid of her tears of terrible grief and let her cry instead. (Although, the reaction of the last 2 professionals did add to her fears about crying or falling apart. I was moved to tears at times too, of course. But my point is it is quite common to see such things happen to people in anxiety or grief. ]]

So, were we instead to ask our male Italian client to try to understand, say, a more detailed story of this woman above, he would wonder how I intended him to 'take' this story (is it news, suggestion, requirement, or what). In any event it puts grieving in a different frame. At the same time also, the topic area would focus him somewhat more on his own feelings. In this frame of mind, he has less conviction of his limiting reality. Include talk of how it is healthy to do what the human was made to do instead of to hold up a temporary historical social model of a 'man' or a 'good son' and so on, and you have also helped him question his avoidance of tears, and doubt, just a little his old rationalization defense. As his own feeling compel him to cry he is doing so in a context that offers a framework that he is going to be more health and not crazy, more mature and not 'a bad son or bad family leader', etc. And, shortly, the headaches cease. I don't mean to shorten the work that must be done with such a loss by such a man....but just give you a slice of the action so you can get a better meaning of the terms.

About disruption: I do think this word can become way too over emphasized and misunderstood out of the total context of change. For example, I have gone to teach at universities and centers wherein one-way glass allows viewing of family therapy (and other) sessions. On many occasion, the student-therapist trainee has joint the observing group and instructor and me and stated that he or she seemed to destabilize the family 'very good', but they did not know what to do next. AS IF, this destabilizing was a GOAL. It is too easy to miss the forest for the trees when you are not well trained or experienced yet. The goal is not to destabilize...the objective is to let the client overuse/overextend until, say, they don't quite know which direction is correct (they may already be there when the come in the office, btw). Then you aid them in accelerating that if their momentum seems insufficient to lead to change. And the goal of all that is to have them temporarily and briefly shift/share their balance with someone (the therapist, say) who helps them build an acceptable alternative which includes room for the missing resources that gave rise to and continued the problem. They then have their own balance again and make other resonant changes as they live their lives without the therapist once again.

Aikido:
As for Aikido, btw...you mentioned that grabbing an arm from say a punch directed at you is difficult. Yes, it is. But Aikido does not grab anything. It just lightly touches or lightly drapes over and arm (or whatever, neck, shoulder, etc.). To grab would be to offer a point of resistance. You would not be doing Aikido then.

You may not know, it is similar to JiuJitsu (jujitsu, for other readers), only in that it may also employ very very similar wrist pins and arm locks (4 to be exact).

In principle, movement, softness, intent, and not using muscles but rather relaxation, it differs greatly and other techniques of jujitsu, karate, judo, taekwondo, kempo, etc., by reliance on relaxation, (to avoid the Japanese names it becomes hard to refer to them) such as type of pivoting, turning, spiraling, etc., and throws (that are not like Judo except for some hip throws and these again are done without the use of muscle...just the opponents momentum and force).

So, in this you also see that the opponent is not seen as resisting you...you are sort of not there. (Both due to your movement which is counter intuitive and by your relaxation and lack of force or conflict....nothing to push against...nothing to calibrate the Aikidoka's balance or center...at least not while the opponent controls his or her own center). I'm leaving out the 'techniques' that may follow and how the encounter ends for brevity.

But notice a couple of things you might get from that and which are similar to Erickson's approach to hypnosis:

You don't consider the attacker resistant if you fail.
You don't expect any particular part of the encounter to change the outcome you just do what is reasonable to let the attacker guide himself to a harmless outcome.
You move only at the attacker’s speed.
You offer guidance and no real point of resistance upon contacting the attacker.
You influence over how much ambiguity/disorientation/confusion/disruption you add depends on the attack and circumstances: if it is a drunk in a bar…slow and gentle; if it is mugger moving fast with a knife…rapid and ‘hard’; if it is a group…varying speed and ‘hardness’ with each different person.
You don't have to do any 'destablizing' for someone who is already about to fall due to their own sloppiness.
You don’t have to do much of anything if the attacker wants to change sufficiently before reaching you.

Conclusion:
Okay, I tried to answer a couple others. If you are a mental health professional, you would do well to attend a clinical training workshop and by doing so, I think the gravity of some of the wording in the professional writing will become much better understood.

If you are not a mental health professional, (and therefore are restricted from such seminars, I don't quite know if you can clarify avalanche of answers to questions which could follow from a previous answer. And I don’t what to rewrite all of my books on the forum but, really I suggest, in that case, that you get into grad school and pursue your strong interest in psychology and therapy and hypnosis.

Replies:

Re:goodness, by thanks.., 06/22/01

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