Milton H. Erickson - Influence On Others

Influence On Others

Erickson's friend, and sometime collaborator, Andre Weitzenhoffer, a well-known hypnosis researcher himself, has repeatedly raised concerns over the nature of Erickson's legacy.

The majority of today's Ericksonians consist of individuals who have never known Erickson, even less been directly trained by him. Today, and for some time now, much of the teaching of the Ericksonian approach is and has been done by individuals who have acquired their knowledge second and third hand. Some of those who did spend time with Erickson, like Jeffrey Zeig, Ernest Rossi, and William O'Hanlon have tried, I believe, to present and preserve as much as they could what they believed and have understood Erickson's thought and methods to be. They have succeeded to do so to a fair degree. Others, like Richard Bandler and John Grinder have on the other hand, offered a much adulterated, and at times fanciful, version of what they perceived Erickson as saying and doing guided by their personal theorizing. Further distortions have resulted outside of the United States due to translation problems as well as for other reasons. More and more the Ericksonians have become a heterogeneous group of practitioners.

One of his first students and developers of his work was Jay Haley. Other important followers include Stephen Gilligan, Jeffrey K. Zeig, Stephen R. Lankton and Stephen Brooks.

It has been claimed that Erickson was modeled (see Milton model) by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the co-founders of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

In the sphere of business coaching and training, he influenced the methods that behaviour training companies, such as Erickson College International, Krauthammer, Gustav Käser Training International or Dynargie used in communicating with coachees and training participants.