Article
Ericksonian hypnosis: an interview
This is a text by another author, published as a personal opinion. It is not medical or psychological advice and does not represent the approach of this practice. Participants’ personal details have been omitted.
Alexander studied with M. R. Ginzburg.
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: Each of us has an enormous number of resources. We are all capable of winning, succeeding, building, and creating. All of this is within us, but we cannot always use what we already have.
From this perspective, when a person encounters a situation they cannot resolve, it means that they have no access to an inner resource or, for some reason, cannot use it.
Ericksonian hypnosis, named after Milton Erickson, a genius of our time, uses a special state called trance to give a person access to their ‘inner computer’, their resources.
We all know that a person has what they are consciously aware of, and also an unconscious. The unconscious is an inner computer with a vast number of useful programmes. But to use a computer, as we know, you need to enter a password. Trance is that password, the magic ‘Open Sesame’ that opens the treasure cave. We enter this state and can use the resources.
It is important to understand that trance is not a loss of consciousness or something imposed from outside. Trance draws on the person’s own experience and possibilities, which previously seemed to lie dormant.
PN: Sometimes it seems that people are afraid of this method. Why?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: People have strange ideas about hypnosis, although it is clear where they come from: the tabloid press and sensational literature. The popular picture is: you fall over, wake up, find yourself in a cast, remember nothing, and have been turned into a zombie.
So when someone has a hypnosis session and does not switch off, they are surprised afterwards and say that it was not hypnosis at all. It is important to understand that even in the deepest hypnosis, consciousness does not switch off: the person hears and understands everything, retains control, and can decline to do something they do not want to do.
Ericksonian hypnosis is based on cooperation with the person, and the hypnotherapist cannot impose anything.
PN: What does this cooperation mean?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: First, the person themselves must want to resolve their concerns, rather than the therapist wanting it for them. Everything should happen at the client’s own wish.
Second, the work rests on the person’s own abilities. You cannot solve someone else’s problem. You can solve only your own problem, but in a new way, using abilities that had not previously found expression.
PN: Why do people often fail to solve their own problems?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: We often try to solve problems by analysing them with the conscious mind. We were taught this at school and university, and throughout life: use this one tool. But, as I have said, we have an unconscious as well as consciousness. We are not very skilled at using that tool. This is what we learn in our classes and psychotherapy sessions.
PN: Can someone learn this and then practise it independently?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: Of course. Learning self-hypnosis is an essential part of Ericksonian psychotherapy. Everything we do together can later be done independently. Some authors even say that there is no hypnosis, only self-hypnosis. The person does everything themselves anyway; the psychotherapist is simply an instructor who has travelled a little further along the path and understands how to do it competently to obtain the desired result.
PN: Could someone enter trance and then not come out?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: That would earn an immediate Nobel Prize. No such case has been recorded in human history. But I want to repeat that trance was not invented by hypnotists. It is a psychologically and physiologically normal state. There is what is called ‘everyday trance’. Everyone enters trance forty to fifty times a day.
PN: How can you tell whether someone is in trance?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: When we wake up, we pass through trance. When we fall asleep, we pass through trance. When we read a book and realise our eyes are moving along the lines but we no longer know what they say because our thoughts have wandered, that is trance. When we sit in a meeting, look attentive, and think about what to plant in the garden, that is trance. Everything we do automatically, without thinking, we do in trance: washing dishes, vacuuming the floor, when the head is free and empty while the hands and body follow their usual routine.
We also now know that mental activity is not a straight line but a wave. Every hour and a half, we tend to enter trance.
PN: So trance means being free of thoughts?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: Broadly, yes. When you just want to sit and do nothing, that is when accumulated information is organised and the body’s inner healing powers come into play.
What does the modern person do on entering this state? They knock themselves out of it…
PN: Why? Is the state unpleasant?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: There is work to do. How can you just sit and do nothing? A cup of coffee, a cigarette, and off you go. So a deficit of everyday trance develops. Then you have to see a psychotherapist and pay them to arrange what should, in principle, happen naturally by itself.
PN: Does trance mean complete rest?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: Not only that. There is active trance too. In trance, you can relax and regain your strength, or you can act. You can react instantly and appropriately only in trance. In fact, people who have driven well for a long time drive in trance. Martial artists fight in combat trance. Athletes practise active trance because they need to act and get results in that state. It is a very productive state.
PN: What is it like? An inner concentration, with thoughts focused on carrying out an action?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: It is like what is happening with you now: concentration, attention fixed on something. In active trance, though, it is fixed on something outside you, and in passive trance on something inside: mental images, memories, experiences.
If you need to rest or address a psychological concern, passive trance is more suitable. If you need to perform an athletic feat, active trance is better.
PN: Does a person learn to use active or passive trance according to the needs of the moment?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: Yes, of course. If an athlete needs to improve results, the psychotherapist will teach active trance. With an ordinary client who comes with personal concerns, it is passive client trance: the person sits, rests, and seems to do nothing.
PN: Can a person learn to move between these trance states in ordinary life?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: Yes, but it is better to have someone teach you, as with any skill. Kostya Tszyu does not call it trance, but judging by his interviews, the state he enters before a fight is certainly trance. In preparing for a fight, he also creates a corresponding image of himself: ‘When I am in the ring, I am a machine for destruction.’
PN: Can you see a hypnotherapist in any life situation?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: In practically any situation. When you look from this perspective at the biographies of people who have achieved something in any field, you see that they use it, just under different names. Some call it inspiration; others say ‘the muse came’. They are describing a state of connecting with inner resources.
PN: Is a hypnotherapist someone who helps connect with them more effectively?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: They help you connect with them and start using them according to the task. In trance, you can do nothing and simply rest, or use the state productively to achieve something or address a problem or task.
PN: Is this long-term therapy?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: Ericksonian hypnosis belongs to the so-called brief therapies. In the West, brief therapy means up to twenty sessions. Here, it is around ten.
PN: Are there cases in which this therapy is not indicated?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: Psychosis. It is possible to work with people experiencing psychosis, but this must be done by a psychiatrist who may use it as one method. The basic safety rule is that everyone must stay within their profession. A doctor remains a doctor, and a psychologist remains a psychologist.
PN: Apart from opening access to inner resources, what else can Ericksonian hypnosis help with?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: Learning effective communication. Through Ericksonian hypnosis, a person can reach a different level of interaction with other people.
PN: So a person comes to address a concern, perhaps a family crisis, and alongside resolving the main concern there can be other positive effects, such as improved communication…
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: It is well known that positive changes in one area affect others. If a person learns this method and uses it, they will soon discover that it can be used in all kinds of life situations.
PN: If a psychologist wants to learn this method, how long does the training take?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: My course consists of six three-day modules. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, from ten to six, form one module. This does not mean that people learn everything about hypnosis. But they gain a foundation on which to build their practice.
PN: Could you describe a typical case in which Ericksonian hypnosis was used?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: A very anxious […] person came to me. When I asked him to rate his anxiety on a hundred-point scale, where one hundred meant ‘the most a person can bear’, he rated it at […]. We used a technique aimed at reducing anxiety and reaching inner calm; after the session, he rated his anxiety at […] on the same scale. I explained how to use the technique in self-hypnosis, […].
PN: Is there such a thing as a ‘good client’?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: A cooperative client. There is also the ‘resistant client’, who comes wanting something to change but resists those changes.
PN: That seems illogical.
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: Do you think a human being is logical?
PN: Why does a person resist?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: Because they want the problem or situation resolved, but that requires inner changes. Every change can bring surprises. You change, and you do not know what will happen.
PN: Are people afraid of change?
Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg: Yes. It is as though they are saying to the therapist, ‘Help me change, but make sure nothing changes.’ We call the side asking for change ‘cooperation’, and the side asking that nothing change ‘resistance’. The person is not resisting me or hypnosis, but changes within themselves. Unfortunately, people who do not want to change condemn themselves to difficulties. Life changes all the time, and to remain able to meet life, we must keep changing too. Of course, this does not mean changing your apartment, spouse, or job. It means inner changes that let us adapt to a constantly changing world. This matters greatly and is, in fact, what all psychotherapy is for.