Chapter 7, Marriage and Family Dilemmas Summary and Analysis

This chapter opens with a continuation of the brief review of what has been shown about the psychiatrist Milton Erickson's methodology begun in the previous chapter. Erickson would combine acceptance of the patient's condition upon entering treatment with hypnosis and non-hypnotic modes of intervention. His preference was for brief therapy treatments, often not more than a few weeks of sessions. There were cases where he worked long term with the same individual. When he did, there would be rather short periods when the patient would have more frequent appointments and then they might go for quite a while without having a meeting of any kind. Erickson also allowed previous patients to visit him of their own accord, on a social level, as part of informal follow ups. This shows that Erickson did make...