Feature Interview, The Milton H. Erickson Newsletter Vol. 22, No. 2 Eric Greenleaf, Ph.D. Interviewed by Richard E. Landis, February 20, 2015

The Milton H. Erickson Newsletter Vol. 22, No. 2 Eric Greenleaf, Ph.D. Interviewed by Richard E. Landis, Ph.D. Eric Greenleaf, Ph.D. has practiced, taught and written about hypnotherapy since 1968 and was the first recipient of the Milton H. Erickson Award of Scientific Excellence for Writing in Hypnosis from the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis. Eric Greenleaf, Ph.D. has practiced, taught and written about hypnotherapy since 1968 and was the first recipient of the Milton H. Erickson Award of Scientific Excellence for Writing in Hypnosis from the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis. He presents internationally on dreams, hypnosis, Balinese trance and imagery. In much the way that Robin Williams is the master of improvisation, Eric Greenleaf is the master of Ericksonian utilization. At the time of this interview, it had only been three months since the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. During that time, reported attendance in houses of worship had greatly increased and I had noticed a growing prevalence of spiritual and religious issues being presented by my patients. In that context, Dr. Greenleaf and I were discussing the nature of therapy and the utilization of the spiritual material that patients present, including their preoccupation with evil.

Landis: Eric, what do you see as the single largest obstacle in developing a utilization mindset regarding clinical themes of spirituality and the like?

Greenleaf: Probably the tendency to pathologize. In my book, The Problem of Evil, published by Zeig Tucker and Thiesen, I view the matter of evil, spiritual practices, and other things that predate psychotherapy as a source of very important human dilemmas or questions, questions like, “What do you make of a spiritual life, felt presences, spirits, voices?” These and other spiritual experiences are so easy to pathologize. I have an Ericksonian curiosity about how those human events can be utilized.

Landis: Therefore, anything seen as different is often perceived by others as being unusual or pathological, rather than just alien to their region.

Greenleaf: Yes, exactly — the standard of practice is local. I have spent time with nuns, priests, Zen devotees and so on. Their ordinary experience is different from the experience of psychiatrists and psychologists. It’s spiritual. It has its own vocabulary. People discuss the presence of God in their lives as a felt experience. They discuss temptation and love differently from the way therapists do or the way lovers do.

Landis: What do you do when you have patients who feel helpless in the face of such pervasive evil in the world?

Greenleaf: In some situations, I try to enlarge other important parts of life for that person, like how grand love can be. Thereby evil becomes smaller by contrast. Like Erickson’s famous story where he had his son try on his jacket, and told him “Someday I’ll be the one swimming in the sleeves, not you.” And, sure enough, the boy grew very big and came back and Erickson was like a child in his son’s jacket. Another way is when we are talking about a person feeling the evil within him. I like to talk about the nature of hypnotizing the evil aspects.

Landis: Tell me more about that one.

Greenleaf: You know there’s a folk belief that snakes can hypnotize birds, and the poor, innocent bird gets hypnotized by the swaying snake, which then gobbles it up and enjoys its vicious feast. And I thought, if snakes can hypnotize birds, what would it be like if birds hypnotized snakes? After all, the snake is moving regularly. The snake’s attention is on the bird, just as the bird’s is on the snake, and all you need to hypnotize somebody is that fixation of attention. So I started fooling with the notion of having the bird hypnotize the snake, and I would say to people, “You know that snakes can hypnotize birds, but were you aware that birds can hypnotize snakes?” And then to have the person who is experiencing that oppressive feeling imagine it bearing down on them, and see what it would be like to hypnotize that feeling; for the bird, the victim, to hypnotize the snake, the persecutor. It is conceived as an internal matter, because you carry around the bullies of childhood, the bogeyman, the bad person, and they’re active in you. People will say, “The Devil made me do it; I had this urge to do wrong.” But what if that urge were hypnotized? Hypnosis is something that immobilizes without injury, and lets them recover in sleep from their agitation, their malice, their difficulties. So you utilize hypnosis on the evil part of the patient. That would be one way of trying to work with “evil” aspects.

Landis: I like that. Do you have any ideas or perspectives on the person who sees evil as the spiritual personification of the Devil? The evil is out there, and is created by a secondary supreme being. Therefore their own behaviors and pressures are not owned.

Greenleaf: They would say, “It’s not me, it’s the Devil,” or, “It’s not me, it’s God.”

Landis: They present being helpless in the throes of their feelings and behaviors because it’s not them initiating it, It’s a series of things that the Devil is influencing them to do.

Greenleaf: Yes. One thing that occurs to me is to say is, “Well, you know, that’s certainly a dilemma, and the Devil can only lead one to do certain things, isn’t that true? Like, the Devil can’t lead someone to be charitable in the service of good. Or to be loving. So one way to balance the power of the Devil is to increase the power of charity. Because the Devil can not make people do good, can he?”

Landis: That’s very definitely joining them in their world through their eyes. Then you point out things that their model assumes, but about which they had not paid attention. You utilize their underlying assumptions to carry them in another direction.

Greenleaf: Again, if you’re lucky in this and they say, “That’s an interesting direction,” you have enlarged the field of discussion and with it the possibility of different feelings and a different relatedness.

Landis: And the presupposition that He can’t force or lead one to charity is that inroad that says that the Devil is not all-powerful. Once it1s acknowledged that he1s not all-powerful, then it gives an avenue for one’s own personal strength and direction.

Greenleaf: There is a similar model of utilization that I use with people who have been mistreated or abused, where they can “cheat” the “Devil.” In this case it is based on the common axiom that the best revenge is to live well. I once saw a patient who was furious with her parents for not supporting her. They didn’t understand her; they didn’t provide her with sufficient money and lodging; they forced her out on her own and so on. So I had her send postcards to her parents, photographs of herself with interesting people at dinner, pictures of the new paint job in her apartment, her salary stub from work when she got a raise, that sort of stuff. She was to get revenge by doing well, to sort of rub her parents’ nose in it. She originally was furious, vengeful, really nasty in her feelings. It was useless to tell her, “Well, your parents are old, they’re getting sick, why don’t you forgive them?” Discharging her anger by finding enjoyment and satisfaction life made it easier to see her parents as humans, rather than as evil imposters.

These ideas of utilization came to me through reading or seeing on video Erickson working with that kind of problem where he had to, time and time again, accept certain of the premises of his patient. He would never contradict, but he would add in things. And the more he added in, the more confusing the person’s position became. They couldn’t hold their position any longer, and they shifted a little. Once you shift, you can be tumbled over.

Landis: You’re taking the rigid crystallized assumptions and making them fluid. And once they are fluid, you can go splash in it, and it’s amazing where the drops land. What kind of fluidity do you find in yourself that helps you utilize what they present?

Greenleaf: I think that generally I listen for how the person is talking about things, and then I talk along with that. I like to be able to speak different languages in the English language family so that if I see if somebody is a baseball fan, I’ll talk about baseball. With somebody who is a nun, I’ll talk about prayer. So, I wouldn’t bring up spiritual issues on my own, but I might say, if they are talking about it, “If you were to pray about this, what would your prayer be?” I then get them to develop a resolution to the problem in a spiritual sense.

Landis: That is an important utilization concept.

Greenleaf: Yes.

Landis: To be able to effectively utilize what a patient presents, I find I need to be both a part of and apart from the process at the same time. What is your experience when you are working with a patient that has a very definite, pronounced spiritual identity. How do you experience yourself with them as you join them in their world?

Greenleaf: Well, I start to see how it would be to have a life of prayer, or how it would be to be a meditative person.

Landis: Does that resonate inside of you while you’re doing it?

Greenleaf: Yes, absolutely. And in that sense, I suppose I have a spiritual life. In other words, I feel with great surprise and pleasure what it would be like to pray, and then, as I speak about it with the person, it becomes realized for me. I think, “Well, yeah, and suppose you prayed about this,” or “This must be something you prayed for,” or “If I were to pray, I would say such and such.” I’ve had very interesting theological and spiritual discussions that to me are like having discussions with a mathematician or an athlete or a rock climber. Their worlds are so different from mine, that I’m really intrigued and I’m surprised by how I would feel if I were to live the way that they do.

Landis: The implication of what you’re saying is that as you open yourself to their experience, it resonates with aspects of yourself that have the same elements to them, even though they might be in different combinations.

Greenleaf: Yes. I feel like actors do. They describe being surprised by what the character brings from them. They are forced for that time to act a certain role, which is to realize themselves differently. They have to walk differently, to feel different emotions toward different people. My experience of being a therapist is similar. I am transposed into this world of mathematics or prayer or patients who are suffering racial oppression, or the struggles of women, which is the other side of the moon from me, but I can feel what that would be like to be there. I feel it through their language and emotion because I can feel the corollaries of the language and of the emotion that people feel.

Landis: Through it all you maintain your fluidity, so that when you are with patients, you can join them in their world, and you can still remain yourself.

Greenleaf: Yes. I also want them to join me in my world while allowing them to remain themselves. Expanding their options is the goal of therapy, not changing who they are.