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The seminars, workshops and lectures of Milton H Erickson – edited by Ernest Rossi and Margaret O Ryan

The Case of the Blocked Artist

A friend of mind came to me and said, "For three years now I haven't had an artistic idea of any kind. I work eight hours a day and I haven't created a single piece of art. I blank out every time I start to think about artistic creation. I want to learn autohypnosis. I don't want anybody to hypnotize me. I want to learn autohypnosis."

He flatly refused to be hypnotized, so the technique I gave him was to sit down for twenty minutes or so in his chair after his day's work and relax; just slump in the chair with his head down and enjoy the relaxation, and let his unconscious do as it pleased.

That visit took place in the last part of November. In January, the man came to see me and said: "You know, I have been doing what you instructed me to do very regularly. I haven't missed a night. I get twenty minutes of relaxation, and sometimes even a half hour or an hour. I often wonder if I go into physiological sleep during that time, so I thought I'd come over and let you see how I relax."

 "What about your art?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "I figured out a few things consciously. I've got a new piece of sculpturing that I am doing, but I'll talk to you about that later - but nothing has come out of my unconscious."

And he slumped down in his chair ……After about twenty minutes he roused up and said, "You see, I just relax. I keep my head down and I don't move. I just let my mind go blank, and I don't think I have learned anything about autohypnosis." ………..

When he got home he finished up that particular piece of sculpture he had fully formed, like Minerva's spring, in his unconscious mind. 

Now it seemed that he had just one tremendous space of ideas coming up in the matter of painting and sculpturing . He has developed several new techniques, and he has every artistic idea. And his final statement to me was, "I guess I must have gone into an autohypnotic trance." That's right, he did.

I watched him [and]  everything … about him - the loss of reflexes, the mobility of his face, his unresponsiveness to the fact that I could rattle things on the desk, I could get up and cross the room, I could do anything and he remained oblivious to it – indicated that he was in a trance. In autohypnosis, you merely give yourself the opportunity of doing things with your unconscious