Milton Erickson, Abused Children, and the "Always-a-Robin" Syndrome (Part Three)

If you'd like to strengthen your skills in handling detail, where do you start?

Milton Erickson, as most students of psychology recognize, was a unique figure in the field of psychotherapy. Overcoming a life of hardship himself, he dedicated his career to finding direct, short-term solutions to people's problems, in an era when the prevailing notion was that therapy demanded an extended period of intense work.

(As a sidebar, if you're looking for inspiration for an offbeat, iconoclastic medical professional, you could do worse than to study this man's life. I guarantee you'll get ideas for a memorable character. Erickson was House before House was House.)

Part of what set Erickson apart were his legendary powers of observation. Stories abound, but one of my favorites involves the day he walked across campus and encountered the wife of a colleague. "You're pregnant," he said as soon as they met. The woman was stunned, and asked how Erickson could possibly know that, since she had just that moment come from her doctor's, where she had learned the news.

"The color of your forehead has changed," he explained.

This, despite the fact that Erickson was born color-blind.

(Tone deaf, as well--and he suffered two bouts of Polio, lived much of his life in significant pain, etc. It's a fascinating story.)

Erickson insisted that his students practice the discipline of intense observation, because he considered it essential to the helping professions.

Abused and neglected children, for different reasons, often develop hyper-sensitive powers of observation.

Having spent my entire career in the helping professions--(Ok, I also took a two-month excursion into the world of Plastic Bottle manufacturing. Did you know there was such a thing as a Continuous-Extrusion Blow Molder? Me, neither.)--I've seen first hand how young people with abusive backgrounds and severe emotional disturbance enlist the power of observation to stay alive. Hyper-vigilant, we call them, and these are kids who needed to know, the instant Mom's boyfriend walked in the door, whether it was safe to hang around, or whether it was time to hide (or crawl out the back window and sleep in an overturned garbage bin).

They are alive today, because of their acute powers of observation.

The point of application?

I'd like to convince you that every single writer--every single person--has the capacity to improve his/her skills at observation.

You just have to want to...

Most of us mortal-types, because we lack the motivation, wander through our days, seeing without really seeing. It's not a matter of life and death to us.

By typing this out, I'm hoping to inspire myself to see more than ever. Every day. And then, to incorporate some of that into my fiction.

I have a related idea, which I'll share in my next post.

Before I close for today, a word about robins. In his fantastic book Revision, David Michael Kaplan warns against the "Always-a-Robin" approach to details--commonplace details, in other words, where every spring morning brings robins hopping across the lawn, their sweet songs filling the air as fresh breezes drift in through gauze curtains.

Couldn't it be a blue jay squawking? Or a pair of squabbling starlings? Or--if you're really set on a peaceful mood--how about finches? Doves? Pigeons?

You know why we get so many fictional robins? Because we're not motivated to go out and search for fresh, unique details.

In A Scandal in Bohemia, Sherlock Holmes upbraided his faithful Watson, "You see, but you do not observe."

Steps to try:

1) Observe more of life around you.
2) Write it down, or you will forget.
3) Select carefully and thoughtfully, based on your audience & genre.

Next post, I'll flesh these out a bit, and talk about an experiment I'd like to try with your cooperation. Don't worry, it won't hurt... :)