The Transformative Psychotherapy of Milton Erickson with Paul J. Leslie

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Nov 12, 2025 Psychology and Psychotherapy Paul J. Leslie, EdD, is a psychotherapist in private practice in Aiken, South Carolina. He is professor of psychology at Aiken College. He is author of The Art of Creating a Magical Session: Key Elements for Transformative Psychotherapy, Low Country Shamanism: An Exploration of the Magical and Healing Practices of the Coastal Carolinas and Georgia, Potential Not Pathology: Helping Your Clients Transform Using Ericksonian Psychotherapy, and Shadows in the Session: The Presence of the Anomalous in Psychotherapy. He discusses the significant, yet somewhat forgotten, influence of the late Milton Erickson upon the field of psychotherapy. Erickson had a unique gift of finding ways to profoundly influence positive change in his clients within a brief time period. Paul Leslie illustrates this intuitive process with several stories. Erickson’s methods were such that, sometimes, his colleagues wondered if he was going a bit crazy. Nevertheless, it has been possible to systematize his approach to some extent. Today there is a school of Ericksonian therapy. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director (with Callum Cooper) of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on December 17, 2019)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *