Response is feeback and you adjust interventions

• Examples of Failure? by Ben Bock, 9/29/97
  
  

If I might jump in to the question you asked of failures. There were some cases in which Erickson expressed dismay as having failed to "speak the client's language" correctly to his satisfaction. That is, he felt he became too argumentative and have not engaged a family trying to control the adoption of a pregnant daughter, etc. But even that case turned out well. Why? The view that you provide an intervention and the client is fix or not fixed is not applicable the Ericksonian therapy. The result of an intervention is behavior that helps you calibrate your next intervention. This continues until you help the client fufil their desire for coming. So, as I see it, the only possible failure would be if the therapist's conduct caused an premature termination in the return of the client. Fortunately, Erickson's manner of communicating reduced resistance and increase the possibility that a client would return. His failures were therefore very rare.

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