COVERT CONVERSATIONAL HYPNOSIS

     Erickson founded a new school of hypnosis during his career as a rogue psychologist. He developed an unconventional approach to psychotherapy with an extensive use of metaphor and story telling along with hypnosis and created the term brief therapy for his new approach, making rapid therapeutic changes in relatively few sessions.

      Milton was known for his ability to use anything about a patient to help them change. These included their basic beliefs, cultural background, favorite words, personal history, or even their personal habits. He was able to find out details of a persons life and see what kinds of things they would respond to.  This made the use of his voice to guide them into trance very easy.

      His change ability was based on the knowledge that the unconscious mind is separate entity from the conscious mind. The unconscious mind has its own awareness, interests, values, responses, and knowledge base.  He taught that the unconscious mind was creative, and driven to be solution-generating. His work was the foundation of the newer science of NLP (neuro linguistic programming).

      Erickson’s belief that the unconscious mind was always listening, and whether or not the clients were in trance, suggestions would have a hypnotic influence, as long as those suggestions found some resonance at the unconscious level. You can be aware of this happening, or it can be that you are completely unconscious that something is happening. Erickson noticed that patients responded to one kind or another of indirect suggestion. This response was the unconscious mind actively participating in the process of change. What seemed like a normal conversation could induce a hypnotic trance, or a therapeutic change in the subject.

     Erickson knew that going into a trance is a common, everyday occurrence. For example, when driving your car you leave work pull out of the driveway immediately begin thinking of something  else and suddenly you are arriving home safely without remembering how you even got there.  This is the unconscious or subconscious mind taking over to protect you. What has happened is you have actually gone into a trance state where the conscious mind is off doing something else and the protective part of your mind, your subconscious has to take over and get you home safe. If you have ever put your keys on a table knowing exactly where you left them, then looked on the table to recover the keys and could not find them?  Then you looked around the house still unable to find them and returned to the table, and sure enough they were right there where you left them.  What happened is you were in a trance state and had a negative hallucination which kept you from seeing them. These states are so common and familiar that most people do not consciously recognize them as hypnotic phenomena.

    Erickson expected trance states to occur naturally and frequently. He discovered many techniques to increase the likelihood that a trance state would occur developing both verbal and non-verbal techniques, to lead people into trance. He used the experiences of wonderment, engrossment and confusion to put people into trance.

    Erickson's approach was permissive using indirect techniques. Saying things like you feel "as if" or "imagine that" instead of being like the Classical hypnotists who might use thecommanding phrase "You are going into a trance",  instead of the permisive "you can comfortably learn how to go into a trance" or "it is as if your body just relaxed". This an opportunity for the subject to accept the suggestions they are most comfortable with, at their own pace, with or without an awareness of the benefits.  Because the hypnotic trance takes place during the course of a normal conversation, Ericksonian hypnosis is often known as Covert or Conversational Hypnosis and was the start of Conversational or street hypnosis.

    The subconscious mind responds to openings, opportunities, metaphors, symbols and contradictions. Hypnotic suggestions should be vague but leading, leaving the subject to fill in the missing reasons with their own unconscious understandings. They likely will not consciously grasp what is happening to them. The skilled conversational hypnotist uses simply guides them in a way which is most likely to produce the desired change.

    Using Confusion to accomplish covert trance

     A person who is confused has their conscious mind busy and occupied. A confused person has the conscious mind occupied - and goes readily into trance without resistance. Confusion can be created using ambiguous words, complex or endless sentences, pattern interruption or many of other techniques.

    It has long been known that frequent use of the confusion technique causes exceedingly rapid hypnotic inductions even under poor conditions like the acute pain of terminal disease, burns or other painful times where the old relaxation type hypnosis would not work.

    If you use the confusion technique with some one simply ask questions and while the other person is trying to answer the first ask another question. Before they are done as each question is asked the confusion increases, having to ask themselves do I continue answering the first go on to the next what do I do so the confusion grows, from this point deep hypnotic trance is easy to obtain or covert suggestions can be given.  Confusion was the beginning of one of the forms of conversational hypnosis.