Margaret Mead observed that one of Erickson s distinguishing characteristics was his ability to invent a new therapy for each person. 3 Of the many revolutionary ideas that Milton Erickson offered, perhaps his most pervasive was that the experience of trance or hypnosis is a natural, everyday experience, what one might call a symptom of being human. Most of us would recall the experience of driving a car and discovering at some point that we were further progressed on our journey than we may have realized. We may have actually gone through a town that we had not noticed at the time, or missed the street that we intended turning into, perhaps on occasion even missed our own street. Sometimes the trip back home can seem to take less or more time than it took to get there, even though we traversed the same geography and the clock showed little or no difference in real time taken.
Effects associated with time distortion and even amnesia are common in our everyday lives.
In our house, a family get-together will often involve looking through a photo album and sharing the memory of long past events. Frequently, conversation around a memory of an event can seem to evoke more of the mood and detail of that occurrence in a way like an experience of regressing in time or age. Our concept of pain is another interesting phenomenon. In Western cultures particularly, we appear to experience some confusion or ambivalence around the concept of pain. In one respect we seem to treat pain as something to be avoided at all costs , often culminating in the demand for a cut it off or blot it out treatment approach.