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.His involvement in the problem became evidentwhen his wife improved and he began to be depressed, cheering up only whenshe relapsed again.The helpful function of problems, apparent throughout familylife, is equally important when a couple have only each other through theirdeclining years.In time, of course, one of the partners dies, leaving the other to live alone and find away to be involved with their families.Sometimes an older person can find a usefulfunction; sometimes he is merely superfluous as times change and old peopleare seen as irrelevant to the action in the younger generation.At this stage thefamily has to face the difficult problem of caring for the older person or extrudinghim into a home where others will care for him.This, too, is a crisis point, which isoften not easily managed.Yet how the young take care of the old becomes themodel for how they will be taken care of as they too grow old, as the family cyclecontinues without end.III THECOURTSHIPPERIOD:CHANGINGTHEYOUNGADULTWhen young people graduate from the juvenile to the adult status, they enter acomplex social network that requires a variety of kinds of behavior.A primary taskat this time is to engage successfully in courtship behavior.Success in thisadventure involves many factors: the young people must overcome personalinadequacies, they must be able to associate with people their own age, they mustachieve adequate status in their social network, they must have becomedisengaged from their family of origin, and they require a society stable enough toallow the steps of courtship to go to their completion.Many problems that handicapa young person at this time of life can arise, and therapy can resolve some ofthem.The difficulties take many forms - an overconcern with physical inadequacies,unfortunate social behavior, failures in mental processes, fears that handicap theperson's mobility, fears of the opposite sex, and so on - and they can have differentfunctions.If a young person is needed within his or her family of origin, problemsthat force him to fail in work and courtship and collapse back within his family mayarise.This aspect of the problem will be discussed in Chapter VIII.Sometimes thedifficulties are not in relation to the family of origin but in relation to peers.Whateverthe function of the problem, the goal of therapy can be seen as helping the youngperson past the courtship stage into marriage.This does not mean that everyoneshould marry or that it is abnormal not to, but many young people who seektherapy at this time have that end in mind.A series of Milton Erickson's cases will be offered here to illustrate ways ofresolving some of the problems of the young at this stage.Generally, there are twotypes of problem young people: those who are beginning to drop out of the normalstream of living and those who have already become peripheral and are clearlysocial deviants.With both types, Erickson puts a primary emphasis upon shiftingthem toward success in work and love.He does not usually review their past withthem, nor does be help them to understand why they have problems.His generalapproach is to accept the young person's way of behaving while simultaneouslyintroducing ideas and acts that lead to change.What he does with a particularpatient will vary, and therefore he approaches each new young person with anopen mind as to possible interventions.In one case he might work with hypnosisto provide an elaborate shifting of ideas, in another he might focus on reducing aproblem to absurdity, and in another he might require quite specific acts.Forexample, a young man came to him who was suffering from asthma and wascompletely dependent upon his mother."He was Mama's little asthmatic boy," saidErickson, "and she was a sweet mother who would bring him a glass of water, asandwich, a napkin.I persuaded the young man to take a job in a bank - he wastotally uninterested in banking.Then I saw him once a week, once in two weeks,once in three weeks.Each time I asked a question about some little detail aboutbanking that he could answer.He took great pleasure in telling me about them.Even time he made a mistake in his work, I showed an interest in the procedure bywhich it was corrected, never the details of how he made the mistake.How was itcorrected, and what was the attitude of so-and-so who helped correct the error?Later he became quite enthusiastic and looked upon banking as a delightfultemporary job to earn money for college.Previously he hadn't planned to go tocollege.Now his view of his asthma attacks is that they are a nuisance, and hisenthusiasm is in his college plans."It is typical of Erickson in his work with young people not to point out, or interpret,that they have a fear of this or that.His focus is upon bringing about change andexpanding the person's world, not upon educating him about his inadequacies.His approach involves action to bring about change.One essential requirement for a young person to succeed in courtship or in work isthe ability to be geographically mobile.If someone cannot travel from place toplace or enter certain buildings, he or she is socially incapacitated in this age ofmobility.It appears unique to the human species that an individual can definepublic space as off limits.Sometimes a fear of certain areas is called a phobia, butErickson is reluctant to describe a problem in this way.For example, in talkingabout a young man who worked at a minor job beneath his ability and who traveledby back streets and alleys and was unable to enter many public buildings,Erickson said, "Why treat this as a fear of streets and buildings? In this particularease the young man was elaborately avoiding women, and with a mother like his,he had a reason to he fed up with them.I didn't talk to him about his fear of women.I showed an interest in his physique and worked with him on what sort ofapartment a man with his musculature and strength and brains should have.Hemoved into an apartment of his own away from his mother.We discussed hisbiceps and his quadriceps, and it wasn't possible for him to take pride in thosewithout being proud of what was in between.As his body image improved, hechanged his ways.Why should I ever tell him he was afraid of women? He isn't anymore.He's married."An example of a mobility, problem, and Erickson's way of intervening to make achange, is the case of a young man who could not cross certain streets or cutercertain buildings without falling down in a faint.There was one restaurant inparticular - we will call it the Loud Rooster - he was unable to enter.He also had avariety of other forms of avoidance, including an avoidance of women, As Dr.Erickson reports:I decided that I could get this young man over his problem of entering this particularrestaurant, and in that way I could help him over other fears, particularly his fears ofwomen.I asked him how he felt about going to dinner at the Loud Rooster, and he said hewould inevitably faint.Then I described various types of women to him; there is the youngnaïve woman, the divorcée, the widow, and the old lady.They could be attractive orunattractive.I asked him which was the most undesirable of those four.He said there wasno question about it - he was quite afraid of girls, and the idea of associating with anattractive divorcée was the most undesirable thing he could think of.I told him that he was going to take my wife and me out to dinner at the Loud Roosterand there would be someone else going along with us [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]