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He obviously had no trouble dominating the patients in the cases reported by Haley. Says one fellow therapist disapprovingly: "I had an ex-patient of his come to me; he had reduced her ego to nothing. He's a strong, powerful, charismatic man. The older he's got, the more authoritarian he's become." Psychiatrist Ira Glick of the school of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco says, moreover, that Erickson does not have a high standing among many therapists because "he has only described a few cases, and he never, never describes any failures."
Even though Erickson's practices and claims are sometimes called into question, many doctors give him credit for sticking with hypnosis at a time when it was considered merely a showman's trick. "Some types of disorders need a certain kind of therapist. Hypnosis is fine for those it helps," says Psychiatrist Jack Ewalt of the Harvard Medical School. In today's more open-minded approach to therapy, hypnosis—and its sister principle of strong suggestion—is again finding a place.