By: Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht

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 create has 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”.

We’re going to talk about this story and the methods of hypnotic language used inside it in our forum - go ahead, sign in and let’s talk (it’s free to talk, it pays to listen).