Only connect the prose and the passion… and both will be exalted;
and human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer… Only connect!
In addition to the professional role she performed, Elizabeth Erickson collaborated with her husband and esteemed colleagues over the decades. She was also the "chief executive officer" of a busy household, raising her lively family of eight children, including the three he brought into the marriage and the five they had together. Their 1936 marriage was synergistic and happily successful. Together they found creative solutions to the everyday family issues that emerged along the way, and together they faced the difficult challenges of a professional life compounded by times of severe physical illnesses suffered by Dr. Erickson.
The Erickson children: Bert, Lance, Carol, Betty Alice, Allan, Robert, Roxanna, and Kristina are engaged in a variety of professions – academics, farming, medical arts, and mathematics. The progeny is immense: the Ericksons have had 34 grandchildren (one is deceased), 49 great-grandchildren, and, to date, 3 great-great-grandchildren. Mrs. Erickson does her best to keep track of them all!
For many years now, I have had a strong professional curiosity about Dr. Erickson’s work, particularly about the one developed in the second half of his life. Recently, I had the opportunity to learn about his early years in Arizona through the direct testimony of lifetime companion, his wife Elizabeth Moore Erickson. This opportunity has been immensely enriching to me as a person and as a clinician.
One of the reasons that led me to this project was the firm belief that I could be a better Ericksonian psychotherapist by closely understanding the role carried out by Elizabeth Erickson, side by side with her famous husband. My wish has been to be a better professional – capable of creating, inventing, putting together, and applying my own naturalistic interventions. And, in the process, to learn about my own self, while reflecting more deeply about my own life and about all that surrounds me by always observing, observing, observing. This is also what I always teach my students: to observe and to appraise, to assess, to see, to become aware and very carefully pay attention to all the smallest details, the ‘minimal’ cues surrounding their client’s field, as a condition sine qua non to creating and developing good interventions.
As a multi-cultural, multi-lingual hypnotherapist living and working with multi-cultural communities in these United States, I attempt to be always aware and vigilant to the cultural nuances of each community. Accurate observation is a helpful skill. Therefore, the hypnotic language I utilize will be appropriate, and adequate to each of these cultures. In other words, in addition to tailoring the therapy to the uniqueness of each client, always alert to his or hers emotional language, I also tailor the therapy according to the uniqueness of the client’s culture of origin (e.g. Anglo-Saxon, Mexican-American, Latin-American, Brazilian or Portuguese).
Milton H. Erickson had a fundamentally naturalistic orientation. He believed therapeutic work begun in the consulting office must continue "out there" in everyday life. His techniques included the utilization of common, everyday trance phenomena, and the use of directives to elicit people’s unique resources. Elizabeth Erickson shared these views. Her intellectual curiosity, professional acumen, indefatigable dedication, and devotion to a modern genius, in an everyday married life of almost 44 years – about 16,000 days – gives her an inextricable genius of her own.
From the Introduction, A Tribute to Elizabeth Moore Erickson.
Photos Courtesy of the Erickson Family
The Milton H. Erickson
Foundation Press
email:
Tel. 602.956-6196
Fax: 602-956-0519
www.erickson-foundation.org
ISBN 968-6513-22-1
Price: US$ 18.00