Jay Haley brought a case to Erickson for supervision. A man who had retired was driving his wife crazy by following her round every Saturday when she vacuumed the house. She has done everything she knew to stop him without success. Haley also had no success. Erickson told Haley that next Saturday the wife should vacuum the house as usual, and then remove the dust bag and deposit a small pile of dust in the middle of each room, then say to the husband “That’s the vacuuming done for this week”. Haley passed this on to the wife who followed the instructions and the husband stopped following the wife around! Erickson explained that vacuuming then leaving the pile of dust in the middle of each room was absurd, and since humans can’;t stand absurdity, the husband left the scene.

Erickson told me that his favourite approach to helping someone to lose weight was to have them visualise themself at their desired weight and then imagine stuffing their face with food. I’ve tried this with excellent results.

I also adapted this to help a man who was besotted with his newborn baby to stop smoking by asking him to imagine blowing cigarette smoke into the baby’s face, and then breathing his cigarette breath into the baby’s lungs. The experience was so repugnant that he was no longer able to smoke.