Many techniques exist to induce hypnosis. Commonly, they make use of the well-known method in which you are asked to fix your attention on an object--a coin, a stone, a pendant--while the hypnotherapist speaks softly in a monotone, suggesting that you are relaxing ever more deeply, that your eyes are getting heavy, and so on. Milton H. Erickson (1901-1980) has been one of the leading American contributors to recent developments in clinical hypnosis. His ideas have been among the most creative, imaginative, and subtle in the field. He is well known for his _indirect_ induction techniques, which, because of the complex and unusual perspective they reflect, we cannot deal with at any length here. They are techniques that frequently induce a trance state _without_ the client's being in the slightest way aware that this is happening. Dr. Erickson is often able to induce hypnosis only by means of a _handshake_. An example may give some general idea of his approach. Dr. Erickson describes this technique: When I begin shaking hands, I do so normally. The "hypnotic touch" then begins when I let loose. The letting loose becomes transformed from a firm grip into a gentle touch by the thumb, a lingering drawing away of the little finger, the faint brushing of the subject's hand with the middle finger--just enough vague sensation to attract the attention. As the subject gives attention to the touch with your thumb, you shift to a touch with your little finger. As your subject's attention follows that, you shift to a touch with your middle finger and then again to the thumb.... {220} The subject's withdrawal from the handshake is arrested by his attention arousal, which establishes ... an expectancy. Then almost, but not quite simultaneously (to ensure separate neural recognition), you touch the undersurface of the hand (wrist) so gently that it barely suggests an upward push. This is followed by a similar utterly slight downward touch, and then I sever contact so gently that the subject does not know exactly when--and the subject's hand is left going neither up nor down, but cataleptic. Sometimes I give a lateral and medial touch so that the hand is even more rigidly cataleptic.... There are several colleagues who won't shake hands with me, unless I assure them first, because they developed a profound glove anaesthesia when I used this procedure on them. I shook hands with them, looked them in the eyes, ... rapidly immobilized my facial expression, and then focused my eyes on a spot far behind them. I then slowly and imperceptibly removed my hand from theirs and slowly moved to one side out of their direct line of vision.[7] Here is a characteristic reaction of one of Erickson's colleagues to his procedure: