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Stories That Free Us From Limiting Thoughts
Turning the best of what might be into the reality of what is.
The psychologist Milton Erickson was a transformative figure in therapy, using stories as ways to motivate, change, or de-hypnotize us from hurtful and limiting patterns of behavior. When I was teaching, I used his and other stories to make a point and engage students when their attention drifted, or when they needed something real but approachable to appear in the classroom.
His account begins gently but blossoms into a gripping reflections on early tragedy, his conversion to Sufism, and a first marriage whose dramas were played out on stage. He is not the first to describe the progression from skiffle and folk music to rudimentary beat groups made up of schoolfriends and onwards to rockânâroll â and, in his case, to a particularly significant variant of the basic form. But he does so with a fond and precise recall of such details as witnessing âthe arrival of a new cultureâ at the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream at Alexandra Palace, where he sees John Lennon âwandering around, looking every inch an impersonation of himself, with his moustache, NHS spectacles and Afghan jacketâ.