Ericksonian Hypnosis 

Hypnotherapy Using Storytelling

Rev. Bannister first studied the Ericksonian methods of hypnotherapy as the apprentice for Kenneth Whitener, Clinical Hypnotherapist in Kingwood, Texas. 

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Milton H. Erickson was an American psychiatrist and psychologist whose lifelong fascination with hypnosis has led him to be called the “father of modern hypnotherapy”. Milton Erickson was active and in practice for more than forty years, during which his techniques came to be known as Ericksonian Hypnotherapy. Erickson departed from the views of his predecessor Sigmund Freud, in that he viewed the subconscious as a collection of experiences. Erickson believed that this bank of memories included everything that you have learned or experienced during your lifetime, remembered or unremembered and all of it was stored in the unconscious mind.

Unlike Freud, Erickson did not see this accumulation of experience as being primarily made up of negative experiences or complex linkages to authority figures or sexuality. Andre Weitzenhoffer, one of the most prolific researchers in the field of hypnosis in the latter half of the 20th century observed: “The Ericksonian ‘unconscious’ lacks in particular the hostile and aggressive aspects so characteristic of Freud’s system”.

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