Continuing education and training

Abstract

For over three quarters of a century Milton H. Erickson made an astonishing impact on all who met him and on all who were his patients. Unlike with many innovators, his recognition by colleagues did not wait for his death in 1980. For decades before people crowded to meet him, to be treated by him, and to learn from him. He was superbly fitted to be a clinician and a healer, thus it was his human and therapeutic qualities that were honored at a recent symposium at the Canterbury Group Family Institute in Great Neck, New York. The proceedings of that occasion are reported here by Laurie Klein Evans, Executive Director of the Institute.

I have already mentioned Erickson's unique position as a master healer. Also, during his lifetime and since his death, his work has inspired a prolific outpouring of theoretical contributions from colleagues and students. Haley has acknowledged his great debt to Erickson; the work of Bandler and Grinder, and of Selvini-Palazzoli, and the recent book by Keeney, Aesthetics of Change, all draw heavily on his practical applications and his natural wisdom in their fashioning of theoretical understandings, which range from paradox to field and system theory and cybernetics. It is small wonder, then, that as these theoretical advances continue, anecdotal and story-telling tributes also appear to bring further substantiation from the source of these exciting hypotheses.

—I.A.