Marital Hypnotherapy: A Session with Milton Erickson with Commentary.

Hypnosis has primarily been used to treat individual problems. Occasionally, it has been applied to couples' problems such as infertility. We present a transcript of a treatment session of Dr. Milton Erickson in which he works with a married couple and interpret his techniques. We emphasize the following principles. Dr. Erickson's assessment was brief, just long enough to determine a general target. He used hypnotic induction to build responsiveness. He used evocative communication. He seeded ideas that, when presented later, had a powerful impact. He moved in small, strategic steps. The main intervention was designed to elicit dormant resources and adaptive states. He followed through, providing suggestions on how to use these resources. In presenting this case and our analysis of it, we highlight some of Dr. Erickson's methods and conceptualization of several intervention techniques.