Editing Milton H. Erickson (section)

=== Ericksonian approaches ===
Following Erickson's death in 1980, The Erickson Foundation held a conference which at the time was the largest professional hypnosis conference ever held.<ref name=":3" /> Afterward, many participants began to teach Erickson's ideas in their own way. It was not until after Erickson's death that the word Ericksonian was used to describe his methodology. Over the decades that followed, there were various attempts to identify the key components that bring together the individual styles of an Ericksonian. In an attempt to identify the key elements of Erickson's work, Stephen Lankton contributed an extensive overview of Erickson's ideas and techniques which he referred to as the "Ericksonian Footprint".<ref name=":9">{{Cite book|last=Nash|first=M.|title=The Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2008|isbn=978-0-19-857009-7|location=New York|pages=Chapter 1 & Chapter 18}}</ref> More recently, the development of Ericksonian Core Competencies spearheaded by Dan Short and Scott Miller defines Ericksonian approaches in a manner that makes it amenable to evidence-based studies.<ref name=":10">{{Cite book|last=Short|first=D.|title=Principles and Core Competencies of Ericksonian Therapy|publisher=The Milton H. Erickson Foundation Press|others=Sponsored by: Milton H. Erickson Foundation & The Erickson Institute of Phoenix|year=2017|isbn=978-0-9986186-2-3|location=Arizona}}</ref>

Lankton and Matthews state that perhaps Erickson's greatest contribution to psychotherapy was not his innovative techniques, but his ability to de-pathologize people and consider a patient's problematic behavior as indicative of a best choice available to the individual. His approach was to facilitate the patient's access to inner resources to solve the problems.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Lynn|first=S.|title=Handbook of Clinical Hypnosis|publisher=American Psychological Association|year=2010|isbn=978-1-4338-0568-4|location=Washington, D.C.|pages=232}}</ref>

A 1954 article by Erickson describes his technique of utilizing a patient's own personality and ideas, "Doing it His Own Way", in which a patient requested hypnosis for the explicit purpose of ceasing his reckless driving, and the patient did not want psychotherapy for any other purpose. Erickson worked with him and provided a summary of the case, after carefully assessing the patient's potential for safe practices, as well as his motivation for change. The discussion of working with the patient while allowing him to guide his own healing is a clear example of the concept of utilization for which Erickson has become known.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Rossi|first=E.|title=The Collected Works of Milton H. Erickson, Vol 3|publisher=The Milton H. Erickson Foundation Press|year=2008|isbn=978-1-932248-31-9|location=Arizona|pages=83–84}}</ref> Another key principle that is associated with Erickson's techniques is described in his 1964 paper entitled the "Burden of Effective Psychotherapy" whereby he describes the essential nature of the investment of the subject in the experiential process of healing.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Rossi|first=E.|title=The Collected Works of Milton H. Erickson|publisher=The Milton H. Erickson Foundation Press|year=2008|isbn=978-1-932248-31-9|location=Arizona|pages=69–271}}</ref>

An entry in the American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology<ref>{{Cite book|last=Erickson|first=M. H.|title=Dictionary of Psychology|publisher=American Psychological Association|year=2007|isbn=9781591473800|pages=340}}</ref> defines Ericksonian psychotherapy as a "form of psychotherapy in which the therapist works with the client to create, through hypnosis and specifically through indirect suggestion and suggestive metaphors and real life experiences, intended to activate previously dormant intra-psychic resources".