Erickson treated a couple of patients with an affective (wholly psychological) writing disorder. Neither could write but could do any number of other complex hand tasks like using tools or knitting. He was unable to treat one of the patients, but with the other, he used hypnosis to “transfer” the handicap to the other non writing hand. This finally enabled this patient to resume writing successfully, but with the effect that the other hand would go numb, every time they went to write something. So while this is difficult to label a “healing,” it is a creative workaround to the problem and was a great help to the patient. What was really happening here, why was Erickson successful with one, but not the other patient, and what is truly needed to heal such disorders?

What you see demonstrated in this example is that hypnotism is a tool for accessing a deeper part of the mind, and bringing about many interesting phenomena through the ability of the mind to cooperate with suggestions given by a hypnotist to prompt them with instructions or requests for recall of information, and so on. But that is not the same as healing, it is gathering information but information alone, and demonstrating capability that can be done under the conditions of the hypnotic trance, but not necessarily during the waking state, so to speak, when a person is acting on their own initiative. Both of these patients had an inner block to carry out writing because of prior trauma, and the mind was balking at the insistence of other people that they learn this task, so the subconscious mind was digging in its heels and preventing the hand from carrying out the task. Erickson was probing the phenomena during hypnotic trance but without healing anything—that is why one patient was completely refractory to his mere suggestions of performing the task of writing. With the other patient, he was able to shift the site of the trauma memory from one hemisphere of the brain to the other as the trauma was residing in cellular consciousness and, as a consequence, began to restrict the movement of the opposite hand and freed up the dominant hand to begin carrying out writing successfully. This phenomenon of "symptom displacement" has been observed over and over as a result of so-called "hypnotherapy," which is more an exploration than a therapeutic maneuver, in most instances. This was discovered very early along by hypnotists assuming they could cure things through the power of suggestion. There is a famous case recounted in medical schools about the limits of hypnotherapy, in the example of a patient who was deaf, who was hypnotized and convinced he could hear and, indeed, his hearing was restored, but then he subsequently went blind. What was taking place was an inner conflict from past trauma creating such inner torment the person was desperate to disconnect from the outer world, fearing the worst would happen at any moment, and was trying to shut down the senses, literally, so he could hear no evil. When this was manipulated to take away his safety maneuver of deafness, his body then resorted to a see no evil strategy, to continue with its agenda of separating from outer awareness. So what is needed for resolving trauma is involvement with the mind using guided imagery to invite the mind itself to substitute what would be a successful strategy, and then have the mind apply the strategy in retrospect, to the memory of the event, and rework the scene to bring about a neutral or positive result instead of the prior trauma, and to use an energetic representation of that healing as a signal to be sent throughout the body so it reaches cellular consciousness everywhere within the person, and then beyond to the repositories of consciousness, primarily the akashic records, so that the energetic signature of the trauma is repaired. That is full and complete healing, so there will be no future karmic consequences of what happened, but only the memory of the event alone will remain and not the pain and suffering that was caused, that can be recreated within the person, not only in the current life but in all future lives until healing in this way is accomplished. That is why reaching the deepest levels of the mind, including cellular consciousness, is the key to healing most physical illness, because it has an origin within the negative karma of past experience, and that can never be cured with a pill or with surgery—the energy of the past negativity will go somewhere else, if need be, to get a hearing and be acted on through the body.