Doug:         Do you try to step into their shoes?

David:         I try to step into their shoes, into their world. As I'm asking them questions about who they are, where they live, what's the world they live in, what's important to them in their problem situation, what are they thinking, what's going on in their feelings...as I'm gathering all that information, I am actually trying it on in my own experience. I'm building it in my own experience. I try and become that little kid, you know, that eight-year-old kid who's still wetting his bed.

Doug:         In a sense, just to interrupt you for a moment, like we said in the previous conversation, in a sense, it's the same idea as modeling.

David:         Yes, it is the same for me.

Doug:         It's the same as if you want to model an ability of someone. You would be trying it on as you go along to see if you can get, you know, this golf swing correct. And the same way, you apply the same process to a person with a problem, per se, to see how you can recreate that in you: What's the structure of that?

David:         They have got a structure of experience that works perfectly well to produce this problem.

Doug:         Exactly.

David:         So in that sense, putting it that way, it's no different than any ability that a human being has. It's just one that doesn't serve them.

Doug:         Right.

David:         So I want to understand the structure but I want to understand how it works for them, how it works to be them. And so, what I'm doing is gathering information until I can reproduce in my own experience, to the extent that I believe I can do that, until I can reproduce in my own experience their problem so that I can be jealous in the way that they're jealous, or scared in the way that they're scared, or grieving in the way that they're grieving. Once I can do that, then I step into what they want, you know, what's the desired outcome here?

And I ask myself, "Okay, how did I get from there?" there being in the present problem: "How did I get from there to being here in this desired outcome?" That is, what needed to change in my thinking, in my perception and the kinds of experiences I had. Or perhaps even in my environment, you know, it could be something situational or environmental. What needed to be changed so that I could be here, here being that desired future?

Doug:         Right.

David:         And whatever the answer is to that is for me what I will then go for in working with that person.

Doug:         So you want to then create an experience or something that will help them to go from point A to point B.

David:         I have no idea what Erickson did in that regard. You know, one of the things that happens is that, like everybody, I have intuitions about what's going on with people, based on my life experiences. And, you know, from going through the process I just described, I learned a lot about what goes into people's experiences. And so, it often is the case that I can sit down and be talking and somebody tells me what their problem is, and after very little information, I already have a very good idea about what they need in terms of a change. I haven't really gone through that whole process completely and diligently because I've already been there many times with this kind of situation, this kind of person.

So I suspect Erickson had a phenomenal grasp and source of those patterns of understanding regarding how human beings work.

Doug:         Yeah. Yeah, he did his homework.

David:         He did.

Doug:         And had a lot of life experience obviously.

David:         He did and he started young.

Doug:         Yes. If you were to, at that point in this intervention, this interaction with this person that we're imaging, decide that what you would want to do is tell him a story, tell him a therapeutic metaphor, where would that come from? Would you say, "Hold on a minute, I've got to go write something?" and, you know...

David:         Well, in fact, in the early days, that's exactly what I did. In fact, it was more than that. When I first started doing it, I would gather information like crazy and take all kinds of notes and then send them away for the week, you know.

Doug:         See you next week.

David:         They'd come back for their appointment next week and then...

Doug:         Same time, same place. Same time next week.

David:         Exactly, and then in the intervening week, I would very carefully work out this metaphorical story to tell them. I'd bring them back, you know, put them in a trance and tell the story. I was pretty diligent about that. And then, of course, it got easier and I actually did go through a period where I would gather lots of information, put my client in a trance, and then go out of the room and sit down outside the room and furiously figure out the metaphor I was going to tell them and come back and tell it.

Doug:         Did you just leave them sitting there in trance?

David:         Yep.

Doug:         A little time distortion. I really wasn't gone for 15 minutes.

David:         No, no, no, I would give them something to do in the trance and tell them, you know, when they next heard my voice, they would go even deeper in trance or something like that. I used to also sit there in front of them while they were in trance and figure out the story on a piece of paper. And then it would get easier and easier. Like most muscles you exercise, the more I did it, the stronger I got at it and the easier it got. You know, I was going through the world looking at everything in terms of metaphors and so I found them and got used to thinking of things in that way. So it got easier. Now, usually as I first start talking to somebody, I start to formulate a story.

Doug:         You start to formulate a story. Is it always a fresh story or do you recycle some of the old stories?

David:         Both, both. You know, I think there is no problem with using a story I've used before, as long as it's tailored to this person. I personally am very much not in favor of canned stories, but that's just me. There are some that work very well for people and I think that's terrific. But, as you've, I'm sure, gathered from things I've said, I've just got a thing about responding to people individually. So that's one of my hang-ups.

Doug:         You know, I think it's interesting that when I was a musician back in the day, I learned jazz in a couple of different ways, jazz and various other forms of improvisation. One was to copy other people's improvisations, which, of course, isn't improvisation. But I would sit and listen and write out the actual notes that, you know, B. B. King was playing or whatever. I tried to emulate, even though I was playing piano, I'd try to follow that lead line on the keyboard that he was playing on the guitar. And then I'd try to play it exactly the way I heard it from him.

David:         Yep.

Doug:         And then, there were other times when I would just, you know, try to forget all of that and have it come from within me and whatever I was sort of singing in my head, trying to play that and it was sort of a different approach towards the same end that were ultimately, I'd like to think, I integrated the learnings from these other masters that I was studying.

David:         I think you described it beautifully, I mean, that is certainly my experience. Not only learning to tell metaphors but to do NLP and work with people, I emulated, mimicked, copied, tried to reproduce as closely as I could people who I wanted to learn from and I wanted to be able to do what they did and I think that's...

Doug:         But you never told Erickson's stories, you never stole his stories, did you?

David:         No, oh, no! Oh, no. I wouldn't.

Doug:         I did.

David:         Oh, great!

Doug:         Not exactly, not word for word or anything but, you know.

David:         Let me think. No, no, I didn't. No, I didn't.

Doug:         OK.

David:         In fact, actually that's an interesting question. I'm just kind of thinking back on those days. So maybe I'll confess something here. I'm remembering, I think what happened is that there was this period where I was almost in secret kind of becoming the expert on therapeutic metaphor. You know, I was really working on it. And somehow, I kind of got introduced into the seminar and therapeutic world of NLP by Richard and John and others as Mr. Metaphor. So suddenly I was thrust into having some notoriety about this that was completely unearned.

So I think, you know, as I kind of remember back, my feeling is that I felt that I had to justify this position that I was suddenly thrust into and so, I think I felt I had to come up with my own stories, in order to prove that I deserved the position that I was being put in.

Doug:         Right, you couldn't very well just be...

David:         Right, I couldn't kind of just be a student along with other people at that point. That's interesting; I'll have to think about that.

Doug:         That is interesting.

David:         No, I think its fine to use other people's stories. People ask me if they can use my stories. I say, "That's fine. Sure, Just make sure that you tell it in a way that takes into consideration the person you're telling it to, rather than it being about the story." Because I don't think there's magic in the stories, I don't think there's magic in techniques. I think there is magic in the interaction between you and this other person as you're telling them the story.

Doug:         Yeah, yeah. And certainly, you know, I've noticed one of the things that sets apart Erickson and Ericksonian people, whomever they may be, a good therapist from a bad therapist, that I think is crucial in working with a person is, in a sense, observing that person all the time. I remember Steven Gilligan saying the three secrets to effective therapy, number one is to observe, number two is to observe, and number three is to observe. And yet, I have sometimes seen, when people are working from a script or that sort of thing, that they've essentially got their nose buried in the book or in the script or whatever and they're basically ignoring the human being that's sitting three feet away from them.

David:         Yeah, I've seen that an awful lot. And I do understand, as a stage in learning, having a script and following it. I completely understand that. I know what it is to do that. I've done that and I completely understand that and I think that's okay as long as the goal is to throw away the script.

Doug:         After you wrote your stories, went out in the waiting room and kept the person in trance and came back in 15 minutes later with a story... how would you deliver it? Would you read it?

David:         Well, initially, you bet your life I did, because, of course, I wanted it to be good and just right.