Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M. D. 1. [antikvár]

Preface An attack of anterior poliomyelitis in 1919, shortly after my graduation from high school, rendered me almost totally paralyzed for several months, but with my vision, hearing and thinking unimpaired. Since I was quarantined at home on the farm, there was little diversion available. Fortunately, I had always been interested in human behavior, and there was that of my parents and eight siblings, and also that of the practical nurse who was taking care of me, available for observation. My inability to move tended to restrict me to the intercommunications of those about me. Although I already knew a little about body language and other forms of non-verbal communication, I was amazed to discover the frequent, and, to me, often startling contradictions between the verbal and the non-verbal communications within a single interchange. This aroused so much of my interest that I intensified my observations at every opportunity. The discovery that "double takes" were perceptions at two different levels of understanding, often based upon totally different experiential associations, opened a new field of observation. Then, when I discovered that a "triple take" could occur, I began mentally rehearsing the phrasing of a single communication to cause differing perceptions, even contradictory in character, at differing levels of understanding. These efforts led to the recognition of many other factors governing communication such as tonalities, time values, sequences of presentation, near and remote associations, inherent contradictions, omissions, distortions,