Dr Erickson’s Benign Unconscious Mind and Therapeutic Storytelling by Eric Greenleaf, PhD.

For a very long time now, while teaching Ericksonian approaches, I’ve emphasized the metaphor of the benign unconscious mind as an explanatory concept, and the utilization of the unconscious mind as a therapeutic means toward healing. I’ve had many people in workshops and in my practice “look at your unconscious mind, and tell me what it looks like”. People see marvelous things, from a hacienda to the cosmos, with colors, shapes, forces, sounds, textures, movement, and distinct emotions too.

When I ask people to see their insoluble problems as though in a dream, they see unique visions there too. And when I ask them to put the image of their problem into that of their unconscious mind, they see and feel things change for the better.

In a conceptual sense, I think of the unconscious as composed of three processes: the whole neurophysiology of the body; new learning; and, the interpersonal emotions of three or more interrelated people taken together.  In trance, we relate to our unconscious mind, and so invite betterment of our bodies and our relational emotions in a context of novelty and new learning.

The small, extended family group is our evolutionary heirloom from earliest times, and the emotional atmosphere within that small group often determines our unique sense of self. And, the atmosphere itself, which includes generations past, stories known and stories never spoken, and secrets, remains largely unconscious. The selves that that interpersonal atmosphere gives rise to, remain unself-conscious and feel, though cloudy, individual, decisive and self-determined.

Dr Erickson provided us with many examples from his own life in which he entered the unconscious in order to invite resolution of insoluble dilemmas. He said this:

“You go to a doctor and he says, ‘I just don’t know what to do for this. But it does need some care.’ You’ve got a lot more confidence in that doctor than the one that tries to pawn something off on you that obviously won’t work. He says, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you but it obviously needs care. Now let’s see what we can do about it.’ And you see yourself in the hands of somebody who will make a penetrating research into an insoluble problem.”     —- Seminars of MHE #1 1962, pp. 47-8. [my emphasis]

How to best conduct this sort of research? Dr Erickson would write letters to children about animals, real and invented, to help them, through stories, to learn, grow and resolve troubles in life. He would write of fanciful many-eyed monsters who could guide children as they developed a healthy conscience. Stories, as dreams and daydreams, populate the conscious mind with fanciful, experimental intuitions of the unconscious mind – in striking visual and emotion-filled form. The body is still in sleep, as in most hypnosis, while the mind wonders