Milton H. Erickson, M.D., was born in 1915 in Kansas City, Missouri. After graduating from the University of Kansas Medical School in 1943, he took a position at the U.S. Army's San Francisco General Hospital
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Since Dr. Erickson had already become interested in the work of psychiatrist Walter Freeman, who was developing his new behavioral psychology, he decided to attend some of Dr. Freeman's seminars on psychoanalysis.
After hearing Dr. Freeman lecture on the therapeutic uses of hypnosis, Erickson was so impressed that he decided to study hypnosis himself and become a practicing hypnotist. Eventually Dr.
Erickson left clinical practice to pursue his new passion full time. He became an internationally known expert on hypnosis and provided highly effective consultations to many Fortune 500 companies, including Bell Telephone Laboratories, the Ford Motor Company, the U.S. Military, and NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
In addition to being a consultant to numerous Hollywood stars and producers of film and television shows, he led seminars for physicians throughout America at major medical centers such as Harvard University's teaching hospitals at Boston Children's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston; the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; UCLA Medical School in Los Angeles; New York University Medical Center in New York City; Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis; and the University of Texas Medical School at Houston. Dr. Erickson traced many cases of successful psychotherapy back to sessions conducted under hypnosis with clients who had undergone no other form of therapy.
He also discovered that for certain patients hypnosis could be used as a diagnostic tool without reference to Freudian theory or any other concept about human motivation or unconscious processes underlying conscious behavior patterns which might interfere with an effective therapeutic result following one-on-one psychotherapy sessions conducted by trained psychotherapists using the psychodynamic approach to treatment.
