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.
(Recorded on December 17, 2019)
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Published on November 13, 2025