Make it brief

• - In common with most brief therapy practitioners, Erickson was entirely uninterested in analysing the patient's early psychological development. Occasionally in his case histories, he will briefly discuss the patient's background, but only as much as it pertains to the resources available to the patient in the present.

INTERVIEWER: You don't feel that exploring the past is particularly relevant? I'm always trying to get clear in my mind how much of the past I need to consider when doing brief therapy.

ERICKSON: You know, I had one patient this last July who had four or five years of psychoanalysis and got nowhere with it. And someone who knows her said, "How much attention did you give to the past?" I said, "You know, I completely forgot about that." That patient is, I think, a reasonably cured person. It was a severe washing compulsion, as much as twenty hours a day. I didn't go in to the cause or the etiology; the only searching question I asked was "When you get in the shower to scrub yourself for hours, tell me, do you start at the top of your head, or the soles of your feet, or in the middle? Do you wash from the neck down, or do you start with your feet and wash up? Or do you start with your head and wash down?"

INTERVIEWER: Why did you ask that?

ERICKSON: So that she knew I was really interested.

INTERVIEWER: So that you could join her in this?

ERICKSON: No, so that she knew I was really interested.

-Interview with Erickson quoted in Uncommon Therapy by Jay Haley.