Self-relations and Ericksonian hypnosis:

A workshop in generative psychotherapy

with
Stephen Gilligan, Ph.D.

Milton Erickson created a powerful legacy in the field of psychotherapy. He

pioneered remarkable therapeutic approaches for accepting and utilizing the person’s
reality, using resistance creatively, seeing and developing the symptom as a solution,
seeing how the attempted solution was the problem, developing healing trances from
a person’s presenting reality, and accessing a person’ creative capacities. As one of
Erickson’s most important students, Stephen Gilligan has furthered this work in
many creative ways. Over the past 5 years he has developed Self-relations
psychotherapy, a post-Ericksonian approach that expands Erickson’s legacy with
clinical methods that (1) access the creative unconscious without formal trance, (2)
connect the creative unconscious to somatic centering processes, and (3) integrate
the “Erickson function” of effectively utilizing any process into the client’s
cognitive competencies. Self-relations psychotherapy is a remarkably powerful
approach that can be applied across many clinical situations.
This powerful workshop examines the relationship between these two
approaches. The first day will provide an overview model of how problems and
solutions develop within a person’s life cycle, and suggest 6 generative principles
for translating problems into solutions. Techniques for implementing these skills
will be presented, including: accessing the creative centers of both therapist and
client; keeping a person’s cognitive self present while accessing problem states;
developing therapeutic trances without trance phenomena; therapeutic methods for
translating symptoms into solutions; and love as a mature skill.
The second day will show how these various skills can be implemented into a
specific method of psychotherapy. Participants will learn how to:
--hook up with the creative unconscious before receiving the “symptom as
solution”;
--translate the symptom description into a “solution in progress”;
--create a safe “sanctuary” for the “symptom as solution”;
--access and connect competent ego states to the symptom;
--identify and disconnect “alienating” negative influences from the symptom;
--transform the symptom into a solution;
--test the effectiveness of the solution;
--and incorporate the client’s competent cognitive skills into a an ongoing
relationship with their creative unconscious.
 Lecture, demonstration, guided process, and practice will allow participants to
experience and learn how to apply the powerful effectiveness of the self-relations
model.

About the workshop presenter. Stephen Gilligan, Ph.D., is a licensed

Psychologist practicing in Encinitas, CA. A student of Milton Erickson and
Gregory Bateson, Dr. Gilligan is a highly regarded teacher and trainer in the field of
Ericksonian psychotherapy. In addition to his many scholarly articles and chapters
on hypnosis and psychotherapy, he is the author of numerous books, including
Therapeutic trances, Brief therapy (Ed. with J. Zeig), Therapeutic conversations
(Ed. with R Price), The courage to love: Principles and practices of self-relations
psychotherapy, and The legacy of Erickson. His workshops are especially well-
known for promoting both the professional and personal development of therapists.