Milton Erickson’s Hypnotic Story – The Girl And The Penis
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No, it is not an erotic story, and before you even think about it – it’s not a ’seduction’ way to induce a girl to sleep with you and adore your penis.
It’s much less attractive but THAT much important, at least for the therapists among us.
I used that specific story only once in my private practice, thanks god, since it is truly a very emotionally exhausting experience, to help a molestation victim to get over the past and walk proudly through her past to a better future. It does sound to many therapists like the ultimate feeling of being helpful, but I tell you – I had to clear my day after that session, I just couldn’t emotionally be available to listen to the next client.
This is another one of the hundreds of Milton Erickson’s precious and most useful hypnotic stories. He used that story not only with molestation cases, but also with couples who had a hard (?!) time enjoying sex together. I only used it once, and it was most appropriately with a very tough case of a young girl who couldn’t remember how it was like before her father started molesting her. It did help her, as it did for the woman in Erickson’s story.
In that session, I just told the whole story, exactly as it is written here, after inducing trance – and asked the client to keep her eyes OPEN, simply because I did want to be able to note eye accessing cues, and stop my story when she accessed memories (which she did 6 times). When she did drift away from listening, I raised my right hand (her left side) and with two fingers guided her tunnel vision back to me, once she blinked I continued the story. It is important, since if she is accessing memories (and probably not the kind we want while she’s in hypnosis), I need her attention back – since she has to conceptualize and internalize and generalize that story to her own life.
Just one last note before you read the hypnotic story – it wasn’t the only tool I used in that specific case. However, the foundation that this story has helped to built opened a huge door to further changes in her mind.
Here’s the story…
A woman in her thirties arrived and said to me, “I don’t suppose you want to see me,” I replied, “That is YOUR supposition, would you like to hear mine?”
“Well,” she said, “I am not deserving of your attention. When I was six years old my father molested me sexually and from the age of six until seventeen he used me as a sexual object, regularly, several times a week. And every time he did it I was in a state of fear. I was frozen with terror. I felt dirty, inferior, inadequate and ashamed.
“I thought, at seventeen, that I had enough strength to break away from him and I worked my way through the rest of high school, hoping that that would give me a feeling of self-respect, and it didn’t. Then I thought maybe a bachelor-of-arts degree would give me a feeling of self-respect. I worked my way through college.
“I felt ashamed, inferior, indecent. It was a terrible feeling of disappointment. I thought maybe a master’s degree would give me self-respect, but it didn’t. And all through college and graduate school I was propositioned. And that proved I didn’t deserve self-respect. And I thought I would enroll for a doctorate degree, and men kept propositioning me. I just gave up and became a common prostitute. But that’s not very nice. And some man offered to let me live with him. Well, a girl needs to have food and shelter so I agreed to it.
“Sex was a horrible experience. A penis is so hard and looks so threatening, I just became fear stricken and passive. And it was a painful, horrible experience. This man got tired of me and I began living with another man. The same thing over and over, and now I come to you. 1 feel like filth. An erect penis just terrifies me and I just get helpless, and weak, and passive. I am so glad when a man finishes.
“But I still have to live. I have to have clothes, I have to have shelter; and essentially I am not worth anything else.”
I said, “That’s an unhappy story; and the really unhappy part is—you’re stupid! You tell me that you are afraid of a bold, erect, hard penis—and that’s stupid! You know you have a vagina; I know it. A vagina can take the biggest, boldest, most assertive penis and turn it into a dangling, helpless object.
“And your vagina can take a vicious pleasure in reducing it to a helpless dangling object ”
The change on her face was wonderful. She said, “I am going to go back to Los Angeles, and can I see you in a month’s time?” And I said, “Certainly.” She came back in a month’s time and said, “You’re right! I went to bed with a man and I took a vicious pleasure in reducing him to helplessness. It didn’t take long, and I enjoyed it. And I tried another man. The same thing. And another man. And it’s pleasurable! Now I am going to get my Ph.D. and go into counseling, and I am going to wait until I see a man I want to live with.”
I called her stupid. I really got her attention. And then I said, “Vicious pleasure.” And she did resent men. I also said “pleasure”.
I’d be horrified at the use of a script that convinces a patient that sex is about hurting people and draining them, rather than about learning how to use sex properly, to achieve a peak experience and to help a partner to do the same.
So much of the psychology of sexual abuse seems to point to the concept of the “vicious cycle,” where the abused grows up to become an abuser, without once experiencing the communication and communion of healthy, loving sexual union.
That’s a script that seems designed to turn a patient into some sort of Black Widow succubus. And that thought terrifies me, because I know of at least one woman who does think like that – total sociopaths, one and all. We have enough monsters in the world. Who’d want to make /more/ sociopaths already?
I’d rather find a competent Dakini and teach the patient Tantra instead. Far less likely to turn the patient into another man hating, serial killing Aileen Wuornos.
This is an excellent illustration of the power of reframing, empowerment and ultimately, transformation. Is the idea to “hate men”? Of course not. It is to empower a woman who had been a victim for many years, and mostly the victim of powerlessness. Perhaps, Fiat, you have had few opportunities to interact with those victimized by sexual predators. The learned powerlessness and helplessness is almost always there.
As we understand the transition from victim to empowerment there is a time where the oppressed and abused must sieze power, their own power. The hope is that once the power is attained it will be used positively. When someone has seen the hard erect penis as a source of terror, there is delight in disempowering the hard erect penis. Did the young woman become a misantrope? Of course not. She came to be empowered to choose the men with whom she would be sexual. She became empowered to choose when not to be sexual.
Any script, technique or idea must be used with appropriate care. This is not an approach to use with every victim of sexual abuse or predatory behavior. Used with discretion this is a powerful and effective script. I am confident that Erickson followed up with this girl and helped her to find wholeness.
I can understand how you came to this conclusion. However, I believe you may have missed the “point” of this metaphor story.
I love this story, not so much to the content, since what people go through in their lives is what they go through; rather the way the Erickson matches the client’s experience by doing something other than arguing about the whether a penis is scary or not.
He matches the client’s experience and gives her a different perspective. So by re-focusing her on her personal power, on her body parts and abilities rather than some external part of other person. It’s brilliant.
I’ve read and used this story before and I think it would also be useful to note the Erickson’s subtle time shift. As you may be aware a penis is hard before sex and after it’s pretty much the reverse of that.
By having the client shift to a different time perspective it also gave her the ability to go through the act of sex, which previously had terrified her, to get to part she was looking for, which was the end. This time and perspective shift gave her “the control” during the entire process.
My two cents
Michael Harris, PhD
Do we know what sort of relationship this woman ended up with?
Did she become a “seducer” to get “revenge” on male “father figures?”
this is about western culture of understanding of sex. and the concept of power. power and sex ? of course the woman did not come to have her view of the world changed, she only needed-wanted 1 small aspect of her life to be changed, still keeping her own (well westernized) model of the world. In true sex there is no power
and there is also no time change with penis – hard before and limp after.
Tantra needs to be compulsory curiculuum in school system in western countries, otherwise, this culture will never move ahead.
Not only that – the immediate result of the script was to turn the girl from someone who was attempting to focus on her career into someone whose primary focus was on predating upon and sleeping with a whole lot of men.
That attempt at therapy immediately placed her at risk of AIDS, other STIs and pregnancy – not to mention the probability of her peers suddenly labelling her a slut because of her apparently radically altered behaviour.
The aim of the therapy should have been to separate what she had heretofore thought of as sex from real, intimate relations where the partners approach each other as equals. In a way, the patient had never really known what sex was: only what it was to be raped.
And it looks as if the script she heard did not actually correct her; it only told her to go out and rape men, as if that could somehow magically get back at her father for what he’d done to her, or undo the harm he’d done – a harm she still had to correct herself.
I have never handled a female rape patient, because if one approached me I would direct her to the nearest competent Tantric dakini, in the same way that a practicing GP would refer any patient worried about cancer to a specialist in oncology.
Fiat has it all wrong Milton did not make her a prostitute she was one when she came to him He merely made her enjoying it 2B1
When she was 17 she was old enough 2 decide what she wanna do with her life experience and she decided 2 study and then 2 B a prostitute like you decided 2 b a therepist The rape was an experience and she was taught that that experience was bad and the profession of a prostitute was “bad” but she prefered 2b just that. Now i do not think that is a “bad” profession at all I take my hat of 2 them Pros and I want 2 congratulate them on making millions of men happy while the more expensive prostitutes they were married 2 took them through hel with controlling their natural sexual desires in wedLOCK. lets face the facts – man is paying for his sex, either through prostitution or marriage (with the larger all inclusive comprehension of marrige) Milton did not do nothing wrong, he merely adviced a subservant woman who naturally went to a superior man for advice, 2 fulfill her God-given, task to please man and when she understood that she enjoyed it
So why can you not understand that?
Fiat , did you know:
1There is sufficient proof that Prostitution does not increase the rate of aids, stds or pregnancy as much as marriage
2Sex partners r never equal – the one on top is on top, physicaly or psycologically
3 there R many more women raping men than vice versa. The definitions of rape, seduction and prostitution R merely confusing 2 most people and leads 2 a mispresentation of the statistics
4 U will also never in yr life handle a male rape as no real man wil never complaint 2 forcefully and unwillingly sex as he enjoys just that
5 U can refer many more of yr women with sexual tantrums 2 yr tantric dakini with the advice of Milton and the penis