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LA SÉMANTIQUE GÉNÉRALE
Vers un nouveau système général d'évaluation et de prédictibilité pour la résolution de problèmes humains
PORTRAIT GRAND FORMAT
La sémantique générale.
Le terme Sémantique générale est forgé par Alfred Korzybski en 1933 pour désigner sa théorie générale de l'évaluation qui, mise en application, accède au statut de science empirique, par des méthodes favorisant l'ajustement humain en général, dans les sphères personnelle, publique et professionnelle. Plus largement, ses travaux le conduisent à formuler un nouveau système dont la Sémantique générale est le modus operandi. Cette théorie est présentée pour la première fois dans son ouvrage Science and Sanity : An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics [Science et sanité : une introduction aux systèmes non-aristotéliciens et à la Sémantique générale].
Qu'est-ce qui fait que les humains sont humains ?
Après la première guerre mondiale, Korzybski et quelques autres entreprennent d'analyser les facteurs qui ont contribué à précipiter un tel désastre humain, se rendant compte que certaines révisions conceptuelles fondamentales sont devenues indispensables. En étudiant les questions relatives à la 'nature humaine', Korzybski découvre qu'il faut impérativement réviser les vieilles notions concernant les humains, notions héritées des primitifs et codifiées par les anciens Grecs; il formule une nouvelle définition fonctionnelle de l''homme' sous l'angle des sciences de l'ingénieur, de l'histoire et de l'épistémologie, définition riche d'implications d'une très grande portée. [Cf. infra, l'explication de l'usage des guillemets simples au chapitre "Procédés Extensionnels".] Il devient nécessaire d'étudier pour la première fois les potentialités des humains, sans se fier aveuglément à des données statiques tirées de statistiques de réalisations humaines passées, approche reconnue aujourd'hui comme peu sûre, voire fallacieuse. Telle est la thèse du premier ouvrage de Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity: The Science and Art of Human Engineering [L'Âge d'homme de l'humanité : la science et l'art de l'ingénierie humaine] (1921).
Délaissant les dogmes mythologiques, il s'interroge : "Quelle est la caractéristique spécifique des humains qui en fait des humains?" Il observe qu'à la différence des animaux, chaque génération humaine a la capacité potentielle de repartir du point où la génération précédente s'est arrêtée. Il analyse les processus neurologiques et socio-culturels qui permettent aux hommes de créer, de conserver et de transmettre ce qu'ils ont appris individuellement au profit des générations futures. Il nomme cette capacité neurologique spécifique le time-binding.
L'ingénierie humaine
Korzybski observe que la structure de nos formes de représentation (langages, etc.) joue un rôle déterminant dans l'histoire des cultures humaines et, avec son point de vue pratique d'ingénieur, il s'interroge: "Comment se fait-il qu'en règle générale des structures bâties par des ingénieurs ne s'effondrent pas ou que lorsqu'elles s'effondrent, on décelle facilement les erreurs d'ordre physico-mathématique ou d'autres erreurs d'évaluation, alors que sporadiquement des systèmes politiques, économiques, sociaux, etc., eux aussi produits par des humains, s'effondrent sous l'impulsion de guerres, de révolutions, de dépressions financières, de chômage, etc.?" Et cette question en entraîne une autre: "Comment, d'un point de vue neurologique, les ingénieurs s'y prennent-ils lorsqu'ils construisent des ponts, etc.?" Sa réponse: "Ils utilisent un langage spécial, restreint mais 'parfait', appelé mathématiques, langage dont la structure est similaire à celle des faits dont il rend compte, et qui par conséquent produit des résultats empiriques prédictibles." Il examine alors comment s'y prennent, d'un point de vue neurologique, les bâtisseurs des structures sociales, économiques, politiques, et d'autres structures humaines instables, et découvre qu'ils emploient des langages (c'est-à-dire des formes de représentation) dont la structure n'est pas similaire aux faits de la science et de l'existence tels que nous les connaissons aujourd'hui. Par conséquent, leurs résultats ne peuvent pas être prévus, ce qui entraîne un certain nombre de catastrophes. Bien que les principaux faits historiques soient connus, des solutions aux problèmes humains sont bloquées par des dogmes pré-scientifiques, mythologiques, métaphysiques qui ont fait et font encore obstacle à la possibilité de retrouver les erreurs fondamentales.
L'origine de la Sémantique générale
La résolution d'un tel problème impose de manière évidente que soit formulé un système général, fondé sur des méthodes physico-mathématiques d'ordre, de relation, etc., rendant possibles des évaluations appropriées et donc une prédictibilité. La première étape consiste à réviser la perspective primitive considérant les humains comme des organismes simplement biologiques, au même niveau que les animaux, et non comme des organismes psycho-biologiques plus complexes produisant leurs propres environnements socio-culturels, leurs sciences, leurs civilisations, etc. Même le plus 'intelligent' des singes n'en a jamais fait autant. L'étape suivante consiste à intégrer méthodologiquement ce qui est déjà connu, et à élaborer des formulations générales, pouvant être enseignées, pour traiter les facteurs de plus en plus nombreux et complexes des inter-relations psycho-biologiques humaines contemporaines. Pour venir à bout de tels problèmes, il faut examiner les environnements neuro-linguistiques et neuro-sémantiques en tant qu'environnements. Le terme sémantique fut introduit dans la littérature linguistique par le français Michel Bréal, en 1897. Il est dérivé du grec semainein («vouloir dire, signifier»), mais Bréal mit l'accent sur la signification au niveau verbal. Lady Welby, sa contemporaine, introduisit une théorie appelée Signifique, évaluation de la "signification" de Bréal qui tient toutefois davantage compte de l'organisme. En 1933, Korzybski appelle sa théorie "Sémantique générale", parce qu'elle traite des réactions nerveuses de l'organisme humain considéré comme-un-tout-dans-des-environnements, qu'elle est beaucoup plus générale et tient plus fondamentalement compte de l'organisme que les "significations" des mots en tant que telles, ou que la Signifique. Cette théorie est dite "non-aristotélicienne", parce que tout en englobant le système aristotélicien, encore prédominant, comme un cas particulier, sa formulation est plus vaste et plus générale pour pouvoir correspondre au monde et à la 'nature humaine' tels que nous les connaissons aujourd'hui, et non tels qu'Aristote les connaissait aux environs de 350 av. J.-C. Les postulats aristotéliciens ont influencé le système euclidien, et tous deux sous-tendent le système newtonien qui leur est postérieur. Le premier système non-aristotélicien tient compte des données complexes récemment découvertes dans tous les domaines, et trouve un parallèle méthodologique interdépendant dans les derniers développements non-euclidiens et non-newtoniens en mathématiques et en physique mathématique, qui ont aussi permis le recours à l'énergie nucléaire, comme, par exemple, pour la bombe atomique.
Cette perspective générale, révisée et élargie, impose de réformer en profondeur les méthodes pédagogiques, oblige au décloisonnement de l'enseignement, etc., ce qui ne devient possible qu'après que les sciences exactes et les orientations humaines générales ont été unifiées au travers d'une synthèse méthodologique satisfaisante. Reposant sur des méthodes (physico-mathématiques) scientifiques modernes et sur les fondements des mathématiques, cette unification incorpore des techniques simples, pratiques et élémentaires, qui peuvent être appliquées à n'importe quelle entreprise humaine, y compris à l'éducation des jeunes enfants.
mécanismes psycho-logiques du comportement humain
Tout en formulant cette synthèse, il devient évident que pour comprendre le fonctionnement du système nerveux humain comme-un-tout, il faut dégager la méthode de ce fonctionnement nerveux d'exemples (1) de ce que le comportement humain produit de meilleur (les mathématiques, etc.) et (2) de pire (les désordres psychiatriques). Il s'avère qu'aux deux extrêmes, les mécanismes psycho- logiques sont similaires, différant non point en nature mais en degré, et que les réactions de la plupart des personnes se situent quelque part entre les deux.
Désorientation espace-temps dans les désordres psychiatriques
L'observation générale des réactions humaines quotidiennes montre que nombre de personnes 'normales' sont plus ou moins désorientées dans l'espace-temps. Les patients des hôpitaux psychiatriques présentent souvent des désorientations aiguës relatives au "qui", au "où", et au "quand". En fait, dans le monde entier, ce sont les premières questions que l'on pose aux patients qui entrent dans ces hôpitaux, et leurs réactions fournissent de nombreuses indications sur la gravité de leur maladie. Même des individus 'normaux' moyens réagissent souvent comme si certaines situations, événements, etc., ici (par exemple à Chicago) et maintenant (par exemple en 1947), avaient une valeur identique à certains autres incidents, événements, situations, etc. qui se sont produits ailleurs (par exemple à Seattle) quelques années plus tôt (par exemple en 1926). Ces personnes restent inconscientes de ces différences fondamentales dans l'espace-temps, et sont donc incapables de se comporter en conséquence, leurs réactions se maintenant au niveau infantile ; elles sont donc nécessairement mal-ajustées à leur situation actuelle (de 1947).
Les médecins familiarisés avec la Sémantique générale traitent souvent de tels cas avec succès, appliquant ces nouvelles méthodes extensionnelles en psycho-thérapie pour éliminer l'identification du passé avec le présent, etc., réorientant ainsi l'individu dans l'espace-temps. De nombreuses observations indiquent que les techniques d'orientation générale fondées sur un ordonnancement espace-temps physico-mathématique, etc., facilitent la compréhension des problèmes humains les plus complexes. En même temps, elles ouvrent la voie à des mesures éducatives neuro-préventives destinées à lutter contre les mal-ajustements socio-culturels graves et indiquent qu'il est possible d'élaborer une nouvelle anthropologie appliquée, ainsi qu'une nouvelle écologie humaine qui prenne en considération nos environnements neuro-sémantiques et neuro-linguistiques en tant qu'environnements.
Orientation espace-temps en mathématiques
L'étude des mathématiques en tant que forme de réactions neuro-linguistiques conduit à une nouvelle définition du nombre en termes de comportement humain et de relations, définition qui s'applique aussi bien aux niveaux verbaux qu'aux niveaux non-verbaux. Cette nouvelle définition résout les problèmes d'infini mathématique, révèle le caractère fictif des nombres transfinis, etc.
Jusqu'en 1933, aucune définition du nombre n'avait été formulée, qui permît d'expliquer sa nature, celle de la mesure, etc., et qui rendît compte de l'exceptionnelle justesse et du haut degré de prédictibilité des résultats obtenus par des méthodes mathématiques. L'ancienne définition du nombre en termes de "classe de classes" produisait des résultats formulés dans les mêmes termes, ce qui n'expliquait rien. La nouvelle définition du nombre comme relations asymétriques, spécifiques et uniques produit des solutions en termes de ces mêmes relations, ce qui révèle une structure. La structure étant, comme on le sait, le seul contenu de la connaissance humaine, et la science non-aristotélicienne des mathématiques traitant uniquement de relation et donc de structure, le vieux mystère, "pourquoi les mathématiques et la mesure", est résolu ; l'exceptionnelle validité des méthodes mathématiques est expliquée, qu'elles soient appliquées aux mathématiques elles-mêmes, à d'autres sciences ou aux problèmes humains de l'existence.
prémisses de la sémantique générale
Les prémisses du système non-aristotélicien peuvent être exprimées par la simple analogie de la relation d'une carte avec le territoire :
1) Une carte n'est pas le territoire.
2) Une carte ne représente pas tout le territoire.
3) Une carte est auto-réflexive, en ce sens qu'une carte 'idéale' devrait inclure une carte de la carte, etc., indéfiniment.
Appliquées à la vie courante et au langage, les prémisses s'expriment ainsi :
1) Un mot n'est pas ce qu'il représente.
2) Un mot ne représente pas tous les 'faits', etc.
3) Le langage est auto-réflexif, en ce sens que nous pouvons, dans le langage, parler à propos du langage.
Aujourd'hui cependant, nos réactions habituelles sont encore fondées sur des postulats inconscients, pré-scientifiques et primitifs qui, mis en pratique, violent le plus souvent les deux premières prémisses et méconnaissent la troisième. Les mathématiques et la Sémantique générale sont les seules exceptions.
L'auto-réflexivité
La troisième prémisse naît de l'application à la vie courante des travaux extrêmement importants de Bertrand Russell, qui donna ses lettres de noblesse à l'auto-réflexivité, quand il tenta de résoudre des contradictions mathématiques par sa théorie des types mathématiques. Nous pouvons parler (verbaliser) à propos d'une «proposition à propos de toutes les propositions», mais en pratique nous ne pouvons pas produire une proposition à propos de toutes les propositions, puisque, ce faisant, nous donnons effectivement naissance à une nouvelle proposition, et nous tombons alors dans des contradictions sans fin. Russell a très justement qualifié de «totalités illégitimes» les produits de ces performances verbales pathologiques. Nous autres humains, nous avons longtemps vécu avec ces sur-généralisations inconscientes, sans grands résultats.
Appliquée par Korzybski à notre vie courante, l'auto-réflexivité introduit des facteurs neuro-linguistiques importants pour l'ajustement et la maturité humaines, à savoir les principes des différents ordres d'abstractions, la multiordinalité, la circularité de la connaissance humaine, les réactions d'ordre second, les réactions différées ordonnées dans l'espace-temps, l'intégration thalamo-corticale, etc.
La conscience d'abstraire
À leur tour ces principes aboutissent à une conscience d'abstraire générale comme fondement nécessaire pour parvenir à la maturité socio-culturelle. Ceci produit, entre autres, un moyen pour éliminer une fausse connaissance active, dont on sait qu'elle est génératrice de mal-ajustements. On découvre dans le même temps qu'une simple ignorance passive est souvent impossible chez les humains, et qu'elle devient une connaissance inférentielle active, susceptible d'attribuer dogmatiquement une certaine 'cause' fictive à des 'effets' observés - c'est le mécanisme des mythologies primitives. Cependant, lorsqu'elle est consciemment reconnue comme telle, la connaissance inférentielle forme la connaissance hypothétique de la science moderne et cesse d'être un dogme.
procédés extensionnels
Pour acquérir cette conscience d'abstraire convoitée, des évaluations plus appropriées, etc., certaines techniques sont directement empruntées aux méthodes physico-mathématiques modernes, techniques dont l'usage s'avère empiriquement efficace et d'une valeur préventive appréciable, en particulier sur le plan de l'éducation des enfants. Korzybski nomme procédés extensionnels les moyens suivants :
Les indices, pour nous entraîner à une conscience des différences dans les similarités, et des similarités dans les différences, comme dans Dupontl, Dupont2, etc.
Les indices-en-chaîne, pour indiquer les interconnexions des événements dans l'espace-temps, où une 'cause' peut avoir une multitude d''effets' qui, à leur tour, deviennent des 'causes' et introduisent aussi des facteurs d'environnement, etc. Exemples : Chaise1-1 dans un grenier sec diffère de Chaise1-2 dans une cave humide ; un simple événement survenu dans l'enfance d'un individu peut colorer ses réactions (réactions-en-chaîne) pour le reste de ses jours, etc. Les indices-en-chaîne traduisent aussi les mécanismes des réactions-en-chaîne qui opèrent de façon très courante en ce monde, y compris dans l'existence et dans l'environnement socio-culturel extrêmement complexe des humains.
Les dates, pour donner une orientation physico- mathématique dans un monde espace-temps de processus.
Et caetera (etc., qui peut être abrégé en une double ponctuation comme ., ou .; ou .:), pour nous rappeler en permanence la deuxième prémisse: "pas tout" - pour nous entraîner à une conscience des caractéristiques laissées de côté, et pour nous rappeler indirectement la première prémisse: "n'est pas" - pour développer une flexibilité et un plus grand degré de conditionnalité dans nos réactions sémantiques.
Les guillemets simples, pour nous avertir que nous ne pouvons pas nous fier à des termes métaphysiques ou élémentalistes et que des spéculations fondées sur ces termes sont fallacieuses.
Les traits d'union, pour nous rappeler la complexité de l'interrelation en ce monde.
Les nouvelles implications structurelles du trait d'union
Le trait d'union représente de nouvelles implications structurelles :
(1) dans espace-temps, il révolutionne la physique, transforme toute notre vision du monde et fonde les systèmes non-newtoniens ;
(2) dans psycho-biologique, il marque nettement la différence entre les animaux et les humains, fondement de l'actuel système non-aristotélicien ;
(3) dans psycho-somatique, il transforme lentement l'appréhension et la pratique de la médecine, etc. ;
(4) dans socio-culturel, il témoigne du besoin d'une nouvelle anthropologie appliquée, d'une écologie humaine, etc. ;
(5) dans neuro-linguistique et neuro-sémantique, il souligne que nous n'avons pas affaire à du simple verbalisme, mais à des réactions humaines vivantes. Etc., etc.
Oublieux des implications structurelles, certains spécialistes cloisonnés continuent à s'isoler d'un côté ou de l'autre du trait d'union, comme si leurs spécialités étaient réellement des entités séparées. En éliminant le trait d'union structurel de termes tels que "psycho-biologique" (i.e. "psychobiologique") et "psycho-somatique", etc., on fait croire au public qu'il s'agit de questions simples, alors que leur complexité s'est aujourd'hui accrue jusqu'à dépasser l'entendement des professionnels eux-mêmes. Dans certaines sciences, des solutions ont déjà été trouvées (conduisant aux orientations méthodologiques que la révision non-aristotélicienne généralise), et sont souvent représentées par le trait d'union, tandis que dans d'autres, le laborieux processus de réexamen est toujours en cours. Ainsi la physique est-elle passée des formulations élémentalistes scindées d''espace absolu' et de 'temps absolu', héritées d'Aristote, d'Euclide et de Newton, à l'espace-temps intégré non-élémentaliste d'Einstein-Minkowski, ce qui a permis des progrès considérables. En médecine, par contre, on commence tout juste à s'intéresser aux problèmes psycho-biologiques et psycho-somatiques, ce qui appelle une réévaluation complète des disciplines existantes.
applications des formulations
Les formulations du premier système non-aristotélicien cristallisent les tendances épistémologiques, scientifiques et historiques s'accumulant depuis plus de deux mille ans; elles fournissent des méthodes destinées à être enseignées et mises en pratique de façon générale, favorisant ainsi avec une meilleure efficacité le plein développement des potentialités humaines et donc la maturité de l'humanité. La méthode scientifique (1947) doit être générale et s'appliquer à n'importe quelle tranche de l'existence ou de la science. On ne peut mentionner ici qu'un nombre restreint d'exemples des domaines nombreux et variés où la Sémantique générale a déjà prouvé son utilité :
(1) Les fondements des mathématiques, et donc leurs méthodes d'enseignement, ont été révisés.
(2) Au Sénat américain, la Commission des Affaires Navales a discuté des nouvelles méthodes à propos (a) du problème de la recherche scientifique nationale ; (b) d'une évaluation scientifique de la fusion de l'Armée de Terre et de la Marine ; (c) de l'entraînement des officiers de la marine, au sujet duquel le Capitaine J. A. Saunders a recommandé que tous les officiers de l'Armée de Marine soient formés aux nouvelles méthodes.
D'autres applications ont été entreprises :
(3) pour introduire les causes et les débats dans les tribunaux;
(4) pour soulager l'épuisement des combattants sur le théâtre des opérations en Europe, par le Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas M. Kelley, M. C., sur plus de 7.000 cas ;
(5) pour le diagnostic en médecine psycho-somatique, et comme une aide dans le conseil et la psycho-thérapie individuelle ou de groupe ;
(6) pour traiter le bégaiement ;
(7) pour aider à surmonter des difficultés de lecture ;
(8) pour éliminer le trac.
Etc., etc.
Et surtout peut-être, des applications ont porté sur les méthodes et le contenu de l'éducation à tous les niveaux, de la maternelle au collège et à l'université. Si cette liste partielle semble impressionnante, il faut se rappeler qu'une méthodologie scientifique doit nécessairement être de portée universelle pour avoir une utilité optimale.
Cet article a paru dans l'American People's Encyclopedia, vol. 9, Spencer Press, Chicago, 1949, pp. 357-362. Il date de 1947. Une précédente traduction française, par J. Bulla de Villaret, a fait l'objet d'une diffusion confidentielle en 1964.
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Less is More ... The Art of Clean Language
by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley
(Version 2)
"A gentle genie has escaped from the lamp. His name is David Grove and his magic is 'clean language'."
Ernest L. Rossi
After reading our interview with therapist David Grove (Rapport 33) many people have asked us about David's questioning technique called Clean Language. This article is an introduction to Clean Language which forms the the basis of his fascinating approach to psychotherapy.
The linguistic base of the art and craft of NLP consists of the Meta Model and Milton Model. Students of NLP may be forgiven for thinking these two wonderfully useful tools are all that is needed for the "study of subjective experience."
In our two-year modelling project of David Grove we have discovered there is another way of representing our internal and external worlds. We call this The Metaphor Model, and its 'modus operandi' is Clean Language.
Clean Language is to David Grove what the Milton Model is to Erickson - only David came up with his own model and was far too modest to name it after himself!
Celebrated Therapists
In the early 1980's David Grove studied transcripts of celebrated therapists like Virginia Satir and Carl Rogers and noticed they continually shifted their client's frames of reference. He realised they were introducing their own model of the world by subtly rewording what the client was saying.
David wondered what it would be like to fully preserve and honour a client's experience with minimal interference by the therapist. He achieved this by identifying a number of very simple questions with a particular syntax and a unique delivery method. These questions contained a minimum of presupposition and were therefore called 'Clean Language.'
What he discovered was the more he used Clean Language, the more clients naturally used metaphor to describe their symptoms. When Clean Language questions were then directed to the metaphors and symbols, unexpected information became available to the client, often with profound results.
He found that the less he attempted to change the client's model of the world, the more they experienced their own core patterns, and organic, lasting changes naturally emerged from 'the system'.
Less is More
The 'less is more' philosophy of Clean Language is a different approach to the traditional philosophy of NLP. The Meta Model and Milton Model patterns of language are designed to have maximum influence, often through the covert use of suggestion. And very effective they are too. However, they are not the only way to facilitate clients through the change process.
By interfering with a client's description of their symptoms, David Grove asserts that well-meaning therapists can rob clients of the very experience needed to resolve their unwanted behaviours.
In parallel to Grove, Ernest Rossi, co-author of many of Milton Erickson's books, has been developing an approach to hypnotherapy which could be called 'minimalist'. He describes it as a:
"naturalistic approach [which] can be used to help patients enhance their sensitivity and awareness of their personal patterns on mind-body coding and signalling to access and resolve their problems." (page 313)
The title of Rossi's new book, "The Symptom Path to Enlightenment" points to where this type of approach could lead!
Symbolic Meaning
NLP has made great contributions to our understanding of subjective experience: representational systems, sub-modalities, timelines etc. "Work with structure not content" could be an NLP slogan. Perhaps because of this, NLP has mostly ignored the symbolic meaning of the content of subjective experience. Working with symbol and metaphor is David Grove's forte.
Clean Language both validates the client's experience and facilitates the 'bringing into form' or 'giving life to' symbolic information normally out of everyday awareness. By doing so it catalyses the processes of self-healing
Information-Centred Therapy
The aim of Grovian Metaphor Therapy is for the client to gather information about their own subjective experience, not necessarily for the therapist to understand it. Attempting to understand the client's experience is replaced with tracking the inherent symbolic process and structure within their 'Metaphoric Psychescape'.
The therapist asks questions on behalf of the information sources, staying strictly within the metaphor. Thus this process is not client-centred, it is information-centred.
Common by-products of being asked Clean Language questions are: a state of self-absorption (often an eyes-open trance develops); a sense of connecting with some deep, rarely explored aspects of ourselves; and a sense of wonder, curiosity and awe at the marvellous ingenuity of our unconscious.
Clean Language questions enable the client to experience their own patterns in 'real time.' As a result, naturalistic, organic transformations occur.
Processing Language
NLP has clearly shown we process everything that is said to us. We seem to be biologically programmed to attempt to make sense of whatever another person communicates. For example, when we are asked a question we have to "mentally do" whatever is asked before we can answer. To do this we have to presuppose or infer much more information than is given in the 'surface structure' of the question.
We have discovered that when a therapist makes even minute changes to a client's words the implications can be significant. Clients often have to go through additional translation processes and mental gymnastics to reorientate to the therapist's presuppositions. Thus the therapy subtly goes in a direction determined by the therapist's map of the world.
In Clean Language, the therapist aims to ask the question the client's information wants to be asked. Each response is then utilised by the therapist in the next question. Thus the therapist follows the natural direction of the process rather than leads it.
Unclean Language
To illustrate how easy it is to unwittingly interfere in a client's process, let's explore an example. A therapist could respond in a number of ways to the following statement:
Client: I'm stuck with no way out.
Therapist 1: Have you got the determination to walk away?
This intervention uses very unclean language as it:
implies the solution for the client is to get away from their current condition
imposes determination as the resource required
assumes the client will 'walk away' (rather than leaping, soaring, melting, evaporating, etc.)
Also the client might well presuppose they have insufficient of the determination required, because if they had enough, they would have already applied it, wouldn't they?!
Therapist 2: What would happen if you could find a way out?
This is cleaner language as it mostly uses the client's words. However, you may have noticed the embedded command, 'find a way out'. The therapist has assumed the solution of 'finding' on behalf of the client. While this may produce a useful outcome, does the therapist recognise they have just imposed their model of the world on the client?
You may also notice in both of the above examples the client's perception has been subtly ignored. The client has said there is no way out of stuck. Our experience indicates it is highly therapeutic to begin by fully validating the client's 'current reality' through the use of Clean Language (See example below).
Perhaps the deepest presupposition in both of the above interventions is that "getting out" is good for the client, and many therapist's outcome would be to facilitate this.
David Grove assumes that if a client is 'stuck,' then there is valuable information in the stuckness. If 'stuck' is not honoured and explored, the client may well need to return to 'stuck' at a future date. This may explain why some apparently successful therapeutic interventions can have a short-lived effect.
Clean Language Questions
The aim of Clean Language early in the process is to allow information to emerge into the client's awareness by exploring their coding of their metaphor.
Let's revisit the above example, this time using Clean Language questions:
Client: I'm stuck with no way out.
CLQ: And what kind of stuck with no way out is that stuck with no way out?
Client A: My whole body feels as if its sinking into the ground.
Client B: I can't see the way forward. It's all foggy.
Client C: Every door that was opened to me is closed.
This gives the client maximum opportunity to describe the experience of 'stuck,' and therefore to gather more information about their representation of the Present State.
Another Clean Language question you could ask would be:
CLQ: And when you are stuck with no way out, where are you stuck when you are stuck with no way out?
Client D: It's as if my feet are frozen to the ground.
Client E: I'm in a long tunnel and there's no light at either end.
Client F: I see myself wrapped up like a mummy.
This question works with the client's metaphor of stuck, and only assumes that for something to be stuck it has to be stuck somewhere.
When the therapist is in rapport with the metaphoric information, questions like the above make perfect sense, and client's responses have a quality of deep introspection and self-discovery. New awareness of their own process 'updates the system' and the original neural coding will automatically begin to transform; albeit in minute ways at first.
Clean Language questions are then asked of each subsequent response and each symbolic representation is explored. Thus the client is continually expanding their awareness of their Metaphoric Psychescape. The process ultimately accesses conflicts, paradoxes, double-binds and other 'holding patterns' which have kept the symptoms repeating over and over.
As the process moves beyond this point, symbolic resources naturally emerge which resolve, at a symbolic level, that which the client has been unable to resolve at an everyday level. When the metaphor evolves, behaviour changes in the client's 'real world'. There is a correlation between the two.
Clean Language has three components: The vocal characteristics when delivering the language patterns, the syntactical structure of the language and the questions themselves. Each aspect is explained below.
Voice Qualities
David Grove deliberately 'marks out' his use of Clean Language through changes to his normal way of speaking:
The speed of his delivery is slower than half normal pace
He uses a slightly deeper tonality than normal speaking
He often uses a distinctive sing-song rhythm
There is an implied sense of curiosity and wonder in his voice
The client's idiosyncratic pronunciation, emphasis, sighs etc. are matched
Syntax
The syntax of Clean Language is peculiar and would sound very strange if used in normal conversation! It uses Pacing and Leading in a particular way. For example, all the questions begin with "and" and are orientated to the clients 'perceptual present'. The generalised syntax, in its full form, comprises 4 components:
"And [pacing clients words]
+ And as/when
+ [question]
+ [refer to this particular experience]"
For example:
C: I've gone blank.
T: And you've gone blank. And when you've gone blank, what kind of blank is that blank?
or
C I'm getting confused.
T: And you're getting confused. And as you're getting confused is there anything else about getting confused like that ?
The Basic Questions
There are 9 basic Clean Language questions. Two questions request locational information and two ask for information about attributes. There are two questions which reference the past and two which reference the future (from the client's perceptual present). This leaves the odd-one-out which offers the client the opportunity to make a lateral and therefore metaphorical shift in perception . The 9 basic Clean Language questions are:
And is there anything else about ...?
And what kind of ... is that ...?
And where is ...?
And whereabouts?
And what happens next?
And then what happens?
And what happens just before ...?
And where did ... come from?
And that's ... like what?
Where '...' are the exact words of the client.
To help navigate around the client's Metaphorical Landscape we have devised a 3 dimensional compass:
In Grovian Metaphor Therapy the 80:20 rule of Pareto applies. The 9 basic questions form the bedrock of the approach and get asked at least 80% of the time.
There are a further 25 or so questions which supplement the basic 9. These are used only in response to the client presenting or presupposing information which warrants such a question.
Benefits of Using Clean Language
The results of using Clean Language can be quite astounding. Clients often report that we seem to understand their predicament at a very deep level, and that this in itself is valuable. (Actually this is only true at the symbolic level -- at an everyday content/cognitive level we know much less about their issue than most traditional counsellors.)
Perhaps the most noticeable benefit of this type of therapy is that the client gets to increase their awareness of their own process. They become observers of their own repeating patterns. They make connections between the symbolic pattern and their everyday life. This separates them from their 'stuff' and allows new perspectives and insights.
At certain stages the process "takes over" and both you and the client are led by the information. When this occurs profound shifts take place. The client is taken by surprise at the turn of perceptual events as long-standing patterns transform themselves into more useful ways of being and doing.
From the therapist's point of view this can verge on the miraculous. When the most unwanted and fearful symbols transform organically into resources and the client experiences deep physiological changes -- these are sacred moments.
Example Transcript
You may notice in the following transcript, once the opening question was asked the whole process required just two Clean Language questions...a clear example of "less is more!"
James walks up to a participant [called A in the transcript below] who has just been doing an NLP exercise, Circles of Excellence, for the first time.
J: How did it go?
A: It didn't work because the circles won't stand still.
J: And the circles won't stand still. And when circles won't stand still, what kind of circles are circles that won't stand still?
A: Well, the light keeps moving (gestures high up with right hand).
J: And, the light keeps moving ... And, what kind of light is a light that keeps moving like that? (repeats gesture).
A: (Talking increasingly fast) It shines down and I can't catch up with it. Every time I attempt to step into the light it's not there - it's moved. I'm trying to catch up with it and ...I want to stand in peace and I can't.
J: And you can't stand in peace and you want to stand in peace ... And when you want to stand in peace what kind of stand in peace is that stand in peace?
A: I relax.
J: And what kind of relax is relax like that, when you stand in peace?
A: Deep.
J: And when you stand in peace ... and you relax ... and deep ... and then what happens ?
A: I stop.
J: And you stop. And, when you stand in peace and you relax ... and deep ... and you stop ... then what happens ?
A: The light ... shines on me. (pause) It's not that I couldn't step into the light ... it's that the light couldn't catch up with me.
J: And now the light has caught up with you ... and the light shines on you ... and you relax ... and a deep relax ... and you stand in peace ... and the light shines on you ... then what happens?
A: (Shakes head, eyes fill with tears, looks down)
J: And what just happened?
A: It's amazing. I'm standing on a stage and a spot light is shining on me and I'm perfectly still ... and I'm not saying anything ... And there are people (gestures towards 'audience') who have come to see me. (long pause)
J: And take all the time you need, to get to know what it is like, now that you're standing on a stage ... and a spot light is shining on you ... and you're perfectly still ... and not saying anything ... and people (gestures) have come to see you ... and take all the time you need.
In the pause James walks away. For the remaining two days of the workshop the participant repeatedly said that she couldn't remember feeling so relaxed in years.
And finally ...
Clean Language questioning is at the heart of David Grove's therapeutic approach and appears very simple. However, to gain a degree of elegance as therapists, we have had to learn a whole new set of skills and a radically different approach to therapy.
In essence, we have learned a new way of thinking. We have learned to think symbolically. And symbolic thinking is as different to process thinking, as process thinking is to content thinking.
What continues to amaze and delight us, as a by-product of learning symbolic thinking, is how our understanding of, and our ability to use the fundamentals of NLP is dramatically improving!
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Clean Language Without Words
by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley
"We know more than we can tell." M Polanyi"
Clean Language is a method developed by David Grove to dialogue with a client's symbolic representations and metaphoric expressions. One of the most fascinating aspects of David's therapeutic wizardry is his use of Clean Language to communicate directly with client's non-verbal expressions. Our model of what David does, called Symbolic Modelling, attempts to capture the essence of his approach. This article briefly describes how you can use Clean Language to enhance your non-verbal communication with clients.
While we communicate through what we say and how we say it, we also communicate through what we do with our bodies and non-verbal sounds (such as sighs, coughs, clicks). Non-verbal communication is a natural, universal and mostly out-of-awareness process in which we 'cannot not' engage. As Edward Hall realised:
It isn't just that people 'talk' to each other without the use of words, but that there is an entire universe of behaviour that is unexplored, unexamined, and very much taken for granted. It functions outside conscious awareness and in juxtaposition to words. (ref 2)
David Grove goes further:
In every gesture, and particularly in obsessional gestures and tics and those funny idiosyncratic movements, is encoded the entire history of that behaviour. It contains your whole psychological history in exactly the same way that every cell in your body contains your whole biological history. (ref 3)
Just as every word or phrase used by a client has a purpose, contains meaning and has an array of associations, so all non-verbal behaviours are connected to a vast well-spring of knowledge. When Symbolic Modelling we consider repetitive non-verbal communication a pointer to, or a source of, a client's recurring (mostly unconscious) patterns.
What types of information do we encode non-verbally? As well as the more obvious kinesthetic experiences (touch, feelings and emotions) and proprioceptive processes (bodily position, movement and balance), we also use the non-verbal to encode: perceptual space; pre-verbal, pre-conceptual and idiosyncratic knowledge; traumatic incidences and amnesic memories; meta-comments (responses to our words and actions); family lore, genealogical traits and cultural codes; spiritual connections and life purpose -- to name but a few examples. Perhaps Isadora Duncan knew more than she could tell when she said "If I could say it, I wouldn't need to dance it!"
Non-Verbal Aspects of Clean Language
In Rapport (Issue 35) we explored aspects of Clean Language which relate to verbal communication. This article describes how you can use your voice and body to honour and utilise the way clients communicate non-verbally through their (1) Perceptual space; (2) Body as metaphor; and (3) Non-verbal sounds.
1. Perceptual Space
In other articles (Rapport, Issues 36, 38,39) we have illustrated how metaphors of space are pervasive in language and are a universal and fundamental component of experience (ref. 4). We have a "mind-space" which acts as a "theatre" where we 'see,' 'hear,' 'feel' and 'act out' our perceptions. The configuration of this mind-space is revealed by our use of spatial metaphors (ref. 5). In addition, how our body has learned to orientate in space is essential to how we make sense of the world and understand our place in it. Said another way, cognition is an embodied experience (ref. 6). When our mindbody-space contains symbolic content we call it a Metaphoric Landscape.
You can think of the client having a perceptual space around and within themselves. Their body will indicate where symbols are, in what direction they are moving, and how these symbols interact. It is the relationship between the client and their Metaphoric Landscape that prompts their body to dance within its perceptual theatre.
Given the chance, clients unconsciously orientate themselves to their physical surroundings in such a way that windows, doors, mirrors, shadows, etc. correspond to symbols in their Metaphoric Landscape. By asking clients to choose where they want to sit in a room and where they want you to sit, they will align their perceptual and physical space and place themselves where they feel most comfortable and safe. As David Grove says "space will become your co-therapist if you pay it due regard."
Aligning to Client's Perceptual Space
Since you want to keep the client mindful of their Metaphoric Landscape, it is vital that your marking of space aligns with their perceptual space and not yours. Therefore, it is important to notice how clients consistently use their body to indicate the location of a symbol so you can refer to it as if it existed in that place. When the client follows your hand gesture, glance or head point they should be led to the precise location of their symbol. This is making your movements congruent with their perceptual space. For example:
Client: It's scary.
Therapist: And it's scary. And when it's scary, where is it scary?
C: [points down to his right.]
T: And when scary [point down to client's right], whereabouts [point down to client's right]?
C: Down there [points with right foot].
T: And down there [looks where right foot pointed]. And when down there, whereabouts down there?
C: About 6 inches away.
T: And about 6 inches away. And when scary is about 6 inches away, that's scary like what?
C: Like standing at the edge of a sheer drop.
To keep your language 'clean' it is preferable to reference a client's behaviour non-verbally until they have converted it into words. This encourages symbols to lay claim to their own patch of "perceptual real estate," as David sometimes refers to it, and in this way the client's space becomes "psychoactive".
Lines of Sight
David Grove's clinical research suggests that the direction, angle and focus of our eyes are often correlated with the perceptual viewpoint experienced in a memory or symbolic representation.
By noticing where clients look and the focal point of their gaze you can gather information about the location of symbols inhabiting their Metaphoric Landscape. How does this work? Imagine a child who, having just been beaten, looks up in vain to search a father's face for a sign of love. This incident may remain "imprinted" as part of a "state-dependent memory." (ref. 7) From then on similar feelings of being unloved may invoke the same posture and upward gaze. Alternatively, looking up at the same angle and focal length may access similar feelings or the memory. Over time the 'line of sight' becomes evident as an habitual part of the client's symptomatic behaviour. (ref. 8)
Lines of sight are most easily observed when the client fixes their eyes in one particular direction (such as staring out of a window), or at one particular object (eg. a mirror, book, door handle), or is transfixed by a pattern or shape (eg. a spot on the carpet, wallpaper motif, shadow) or gazes de-focused into space. Even a momentary glance into a corner or over the shoulder is unlikely to be a random or meaningless act, but rather a response to the configuration of their symbolic world.
As well as lines of sight indicating the location of a symbol, a client may orientate their body and view to avoid looking at a particular space. For example, a client entered our consulting room and sat at the right-most end of a sofa. He crossed his legs and angled them to his right. His shoulders inclined right as well. For most of the session, he had his left hand beside his left eye, like a horse's blinker. When his hand momentarily dropped away and he glanced to his left he was asked "And where are you going when you go there?" [looking along the client's line of sight]" He looked to his left for a few seconds and a massive sob emerged from deep within. When he had recovered his breath he said "Oh God, there's something there (glance to left) and I don't know what it is. I haven't seen there in a very long time. If I look there I will be trapped and it will be compulsive viewing." Later the client realised that wherever possible, in meetings, walking down the street and at home, he would arrange to have people he was with on his right.
Given the choice, where a client sits will likely be determined by their dominant lines of sight. Investigating these can reveal information that would otherwise be unavailable to the conscious mind.
Physicalising Metaphoric Space
Some clients' relationship with their Metaphoric Landscape is such that they prefer to explore it by moving around, rather than by sitting and describing it. They may need to walk around the room, occupy the location of symbols, or enact elements from a scene. By 'physicalising the space' the client can access information, gain further insights and derive a better understanding of the structure of their perceptual space.
In addition to utilising the space of the consulting room, David Grove also encourages clients to find physical surroundings that have symbolic significance for them. As a consequence he has conducted sessions on hill tops, on lakes and at every time of the day or night in order to synchronise the client's symbolic and physical terrains. Clean Language is used at all times, even in the most obscure of environments.
2. Body as Metaphor
As well as delineating and interacting with their perceptual space, client's bodies communicate all sorts of other symbolic messages. Sometimes information may only be available to them when they adopt a particular position, or move part of their body in a specific way. Alternatively, it may be that certain words can only be expressed hand-in-hand with certain actions. Any part of a client's body, or their whole body, can be a living non-verbal metaphor:
Facial expressions
(grimacing, pouting, grinning, frowning, blushing, mouthing, yawning, etc.)
Body expressions and idiosyncratic movements
(ticks, twitches, shudders, shrugs, tremors, unusual breathing, etc.)
Interactions with own body
(holding, rubbing, nail biting, thumb sucking, brow wiping, hair curling, etc.)
Interactions with physical objects
(rearranging clothing, pillow hugging, pen chewing, twiddling with jewellery, etc.)
We recommend you see clients' behaviour as an expression of symbolic patterning, rather than as 'body language' to be read (ref. 9). By making the body expression the focus of a Clean Language question (usually resulting in a metaphorically equivalent verbal description) this patterning can be explored.
For example, at his first session a client delivered an unbroken hour-long description of his predicament. He ended with "So that's how it is" and looked expectantly at us. Penny replied "And so that's how it is. And when that's how it is, that's how it is like what?" He looked away, his head turned to the left, chin pointed up high. While he was considering the question his mouth started to open and close in a rhythmical fashion without sound. He was still deep in thought when James asked, "And [matched angle of head and mouth movement]. And when [repeated non-verbal] that's [repeated non-verbal] like what?" The client returned to the mouthing movement a few times and said, "I feel like a goldfish coming up for air in a de-oxygenated pond." He had captured his predicament in a single paradoxical metaphor. And his body had acted it out before he knew what to say. Now he could work with the metaphor rather than swimming round and round, suffocating in the detail of his description.
Sometimes clients cannot describe their experience in words because it was encoded pre-verbally, or related to an unspeakable traumatic event or connected with a mystical experience. In such cases, Clean Language is an effective means for direct communication with non-verbal behaviours without the client ever needing to express themselves in words.
3. Non-verbal Sounds
We make a distinction between the vocal qualities used to convey words and the expression of other sounds. Whenever a word is spoken, both the word and the way it is pronounced carry information. The word is the point of reference, because the vocal qualities used to produce the word cannot easily be addressed separately. In contrast, non-verbal sounds (such as sighs, in-breaths, throat clears, coughs, blows, clicks, groans, grunts, gurgles, laughs and non-verbal expressions or exclamations such as oh-oh, ah, uhm-m-m, etc.) act as both the point of reference and the carrier of information.
David Grove has recognised that these sounds are as much a source of symbolic information as words or pictures. Furthermore, non-verbal sounds usually encode knowledge which is out of the client's awareness. The sound can be regarded either as a symbol itself, or as an 'entry point' to unexplored areas of the client's Metaphoric Landscape.
Matching sounds
In NLP matching a client's words and pronunciation is a way of acknowledging their experience, encouraging them to remain focussed on their perceptions and gathering information about the structure of their experience. The same applies when matching non-verbal sounds. However, if you wish to enquire about a particular sound, make that sound a 'noun-phrase' within a clean question. Thus a client who precedes a statement with a big sigh might be asked:
C: [big sigh] I give up.
T: And [replicate big sigh] you give up. And when [big sigh] what kind of [big sigh] is that [big sigh]?
C: [sigh] I don't know.
T: And [sigh] you don't know. And when you don't know [big sigh], is there anything else about [big sigh]?
C: I can't find the words.
T: And you can't find the words. And when you can't find the words about [big sigh] is there anything else about words you can't find?
C: They're locked away.
You may have noticed that the therapist acknowledged both the non-verbal and the verbal responses and in so doing validated them as equally appropriate and useful. Through developing what she knew about the metaphor "locked away" the client found a way to unlock the words so that she did not have to "give up" anymore.
Making Use of Time
Another way to utilise a non-verbal sound is to regard it as a temporal marker. You can ask questions which 'move time forward' or 'move time back' by using a non-verbal sound as the point of reference. An example of moving time forward is "And [replicate sound]. And when [sound], then what happens?". And an example of moving time back is shown below. The client periodically took in a breath through her teeth. This made a suction-like sound which in and of itself was not particularly noticeable, however, over a period of time the sound directed our attention to ask:
T: And [replicate sound]. And when [sound], where could [sound] come from?
C: [Long pause] My God, that's the sound my grandfather used to make when he was angry and his teeth became loose.
T: And that's the sound your grandfather used to make when he was angry and his teeth became loose. And is there anything else about that sound?
C: It was terrifying. I used to stand behind my mother.
Although this habit of making a sucking sound had been pointed out by others, she had never made the connection to her grandfather or realised its significance. Clean Language then enabled her to explore and transform her 'hiding from confrontation' pattern that was symbolised in a grandfather's long-forgotten false teeth.
Summary
Symbolically speaking, everything a client says or does is information about the structure of their experience and therefore who they are. Modelling a client's non-verbal behaviour with Clean Language acknowledges their way of being, provides them with information about how they make sense of their perceptual world, and enables them to establish a Metaphoric Landscape within which appropriate change can take place. Once this has happened, their Metaphoric Landscape will go on working for them long after they walk out of your consulting room.
Clean Language is remarkable in that it can work just as effectively without words as it can with words. It provides a method for using non-verbal expressions directly, or indirectly by eliciting a metaphor for the non-verbal behaviour. Either way, Clean Language is invaluable for entering the "universe of behaviour that is unexplored and unexamined" (ref. 1).
CLEAN LANGUAGE GUIDELINES
for Utilising Non-verbal Expression
Refer to non-verbal symbols by:
Selectively matching non-verbal sounds and body expressions as long as doing so supports the client to remain in their process and attending to their perceptions.
Using your physiology to denote location in perceptual space in ways that are congruent with the configuration of the client's Metaphoric Landscape.
Asking clean questions of particular non-verbal sounds and body expressions by using them as noun-phrases in the standard syntax of Clean Language:
"And [repeat client's expression]. And when/as [repeat client's expression], (ask clean question)"
Use the following Clean Language questions to:
Ask for a metaphor
And ... that's 'X' like what?
Ask for attributes/qualities
And ... is there anything else about 'X'?
And ... what kind of 'X' is that 'X'?
Ask for location
And ... where is 'X'?
And ... whereabouts?
Move time forward
And ... then what happens?
And ... what happens next?
Move time back
And ... what happens just before 'X'?
And ... where could 'X' come form?
Use the specialist clean question to 'entrer' via a Line of Sight
And where are you going when you go there [look or gesture along line of sight]
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Ten Years of NLP
Bobby G. Bodenhamer, D.Min.
For the past ten years I have poured my life into learning NLP and applying it in the therapeutic, teaching and writing world. Over the past ten years I have had the honor of working with approximately 600 therapy clients involving approximately 3000 hours of therapy. I have also had the unique privilege of teaching NLP at Gaston College for the past seven and one-half years. In addition I have taught seven Practitioner Certification Courses and four Master Practitioner Courses. The numbers of one-session seminars I have led are too numerous to count.
Needless to say, the past ten years have been quite eventful. What a joy and privilege life has afforded me with all the above experiences. Well, so what? That is a question I have been asking myself. So what? If I were to take all the above and summarize it down to its essence (according to Bob of course), how would I summarize what I have learned into one article?
Now, since the major thrust of the work I do involves assisting therapy clients and class participants toward positive change, I will direct the following remarks to what I believe is the essence of personal change from the structural viewpoint of NLP and Meta-States as developed my L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. We call the merged fields of NLP and Meta States, Neuro-Semantics. What were the key elements in the lives of those countless hundreds whom it has been my privilege to work with that brought about positive changes in their lives?
Seven Key Structural Elements Involved in Personal Change:
In this article I will provide the groundwork by defining some basic beliefs we have in Neuro-Semantics about just" how" your brain works. Note the word "how" That word is important. In Neuro-Semantics we place prime importance on the mental processes that determine behavior. What do you do inside your head in order to have a problem and what do you have to do inside your head in order to "fix" your problem? What kind of pictures, feelings, sounds and word meanings do you need inside your head in order to do the problem? What kind of pictures, feelings, sounds and word meanings do you need to activate in your head in order to not to have the problem? By the way, we believe that brains aren't broken; they just run sick thought patterns really well. Indeed, the brain doesn't care whether or not you think yourself sick or whether you think yourself well. Your brain just does what you tell it to do. This is what this article is about. Those who change their thinking understand and accept these beliefs:
1. The brain primarily processes information from the outside world through the five senses. You experience your world through what you see, hear, feel, smell and taste. Now, importantly to Neuro-Semantics, we believe that when you re-present your world on the screen of your consciousness, you utilize the same programs involved in the event of recall. When you recall something you have seen before, you will recall it with a picture (Visual). When you recall something you have heard before, you will recall it with remembered sounds (Auditory). The same is true for feelings (Kinesthetic), smells (Olfactory) and tastes (Gustatory). We call these the Representational Systems or VAK for short.
Your brain not only does this with remembered experiences, it does the same with constructed experiences. I can ask you to imagine seeing yourself where you want to be one year from now. Your brain knows how to construct a picture of the desired you one year from now.
Now, these experiences we re-present on the screen of our minds (images) often contain more than just one system. We can recall a picture and also have sounds with it as well as feelings. Furthermore, these images have finer qualities. Usually images that we hold as very important to us will be very close to our eyes visually. They will often be very bright and colorful to let us know this image is important.
2. The brain gives meaning to these images with words. So, I have pictures, feelings, sounds, smells and tastes in my mind, so what? Your brain doesn't stop there, as a thinking class of life; the human brain has the marvelous ability of giving meaning to these images with words. These words are "about" the images composed of pictures, sounds, feelings, smells and/or taste.
3. The brain doesn't stop at just the first level of word meaning you gave to the image. Your brain keeps having thoughts (primarily with words) about thoughts. The brain does not stop at one thought, it continues having thoughts about thoughts and there is where the "magic" lies. In Neuro-Semantics we realize that as important as Representation is, there is yet something more powerful and more magical¾ Reference. That's how the brain works. It starts with a referent experience, the event. Something happens. Then we re-present it on the screen of our mind with the Representational System (VAKOG). But by reflexive awareness, we develop a thought and a feeling ABOUT it, now we have our first frame of reference.
4. Repeating thoughts will create unconscious frames-of-mind that will direct our consciousness to the five to nine items we can focus on. These frames of mind operate inside our head totally outside of consciousness. Our brains do not stop at just one thought. It will keep on thinking thoughts about thoughts. These thoughts about thoughts when habituated (drop into the unconscious) become our Frames of Mind¾our perceptual filters through which we view our world. These frames become like eyeglasses through which we view and experience our world. And that doesn't end it. We develop frames-within-frames, each frame embedded in another frame.
These higher frames determine our neuro-semantic states that governs the way we think, feel, our health, skills, everything. All the while we are having thoughts about thoughts, these thoughts are interaction with our physiology through our central nervous system and out of that interaction comes what we call "states" of being. And, out of our "states" of being comes our behavior. Thus, "as a man thinketh, so is he" (Proverbs 23:7).
These "repeated" unconscious frames of mind become our blessing or our curse. In problem framing, we can have frames of mind that say, "I am worthless." I can't ever do anything right. In order for me to have personal worth, I have to do for other people; I am not an OK person in myself. Etc. Such frames inevitably come from our earlier years and for that reason become quite unconscious and difficult to change on our own. However, they are changeable and they do change for they are just thoughts no matter how much they operate outside of consciousness. In "fixing" ourselves, metaphorically we delete those old frames of mind and install new frames of mind that serve us. This is what Neuro-Semantics is all about.
The individuals who make personal changes accept that they have constructed these frames themselves with their internal representations and with the levels, however many, of the meanings that they have given these internal representations. In therapy, I constantly discover old memories of the person hearing dad or mom tell them that they are worthless or that dad or mom was absent in their lives and from that they developed a word meaning frame that "I must be worthless because dad and/or mom was not here for me." Etc. Important to personal change is to accept the reality that these frames are constructed and therefore can be de-constructed.
5. People that change believe and are aware that "The Map Is Not The Territory" or "The Menu Is Not The Meal" and they believe it is their map and their map alone that they operate out of. This is another way of saying that our perception is not reality. It is only our perception of it. However, because it is our perception (our Internal Representation and conceptual meanings) it is what we operate from. It doesn't matter how accurately it maps (perceive) our present reality. We will operate from our perceptions as governed by our higher-level frames of mind. This means:
a. Those who change recognize the value of creating a map (perception) that accurately, as far as symbolically possible, maps the present moment. We are a "symbolic class of life." We do that with the VAKOG and Word meanings acting as "symbols" from our experience of our world through our five senses. But, these are just symbols about our world. They are not the world. We get into trouble when we confuse the two and label our "symbols" as being "real" in the sense that they accurately map out our world. When we consciously or unconsciously operate from frames of mind that we learned in childhood, we certainly are not operating from a map that even comes close to accurately mapping out the adult world we now live in. This is the root of most problems if not all of them.
b. Those who change their thinking by recognizing that their map is not the territory will eliminate the problem of cause-effect in their lives. What do I mean? I mean that the individual who understands and accepts that our internal map/perception is not and cannot be the territory (the external world) will stop the foolishness of believing other people control his or her mind without his or her permission. No one can make you believe or feel anything you choose not to believe or feel.
Just because we may have grown up in a dysfunctional family does not mean that we are or have to remain a dysfunctional person even if we learned some poor ways to think and behave. We can "own" our own brain, take control of it and learn new ways of thinking. Brains are very flexible. As an example, think of something unpleasant. Now think of something pleasant. Note how rapidly you can change your thinking. Old unwanted patterns of thinking are just habituated thought patterns that "seem real" because they have become unconscious and "feel" real. But, guess what? They can change.
Now, many have an "invested" interest in getting you to believe that these thought patterns are "real" and that you can do nothing about them. DON'T BUY THAT LIMITING FRAME. You can change these thought patterns. You can "renew your mind." You can think on things that are pure, just, right, lovely, etc. Indeed, you can think on anything you choose to think on. Just give yourself permission.
c. They recognize that the words and images inside our heads are not "real" in the sense that they are set in concrete - they are changeable. They are just "symbols" of the external world. We have instruments that will detect the nerve cells and the neuro-transmitters that allow one nerve cell to communicate with another nerve cell. However, can neuro-scientist go inside the brain and find/measure a picture, a sound, a feeling or a word? No, they are "abstractions" of the mind hence our conceptual states that are generated at the moment of thought and then they disappear until we think the thought again. Because the images and word meanings inside our head are not "real" in the sense that they are set in concrete, they only have the reality we give them.
Consider this, think of a mildly unpleasant memory and note what pops into your mind and how you feel. Now, think of a pleasant memory and notice what pops into your mind and how you feel. Which type thinking best serves you? Why would you want to "create" an image and a thought inside your head that makes you feel bad? Have you ever thought about just not doing that anymore? After all, these thoughts aren't real unless you generate them.
How can we use this knowledge? Simple. Since the thoughts including the decisions inside our heads are just thoughts, we can change them as we will. In other words, if you don't like a decision you have made, say "no" to it. Apply "no" to the unwanted decision. When you do this you are meta-stating (applying one thought to another. See #7 below.) the unwanted decision with a higher level "no." What happens when you say "no" to that unwanted decision? Now, create a decision that will serve you and say "yes" to it. Again, you are meta-stating your desired decision with a "yes."
Have you ever thought of this¾ the only difference between a thought and a belief is that a belief is a thought to which you have said, "yes." A belief is a thought that you have affirmed by saying, "I believe this. This thought is for me." Now, utilize the same processes of the mind in changing original thoughts by thinking other thoughts about them by saying "no" to the decision/thought you don"t want and "yes" to the decision or thought you do want.
How many times do I need to do this? Good question. The brain learns through repetition. Remember how you learned to ride a bicycle or to drive a car? You rehearsed until the knowledge dropped into your unconscious and it became habitual. Do the same thing with saying "no" to what you don't want and "yes" to what you do want. Every time the decision/thought pops up you don't want, say "no" to it and then immediately say, ""yes" to the one you do want. By doing this you are "breaking" the old unwanted habitual pattern and installing a new direction for your mind to go towards¾ a direction that will best serve you. After all, they are just thoughts so think thoughts that serve you.
6. The awesome power of knowing the difference between associating and dissociating. Before I explain this difference, consider this simple exercise. Imagine yourself walking up to your refrigerator. You open the refrigerator door. Once inside the refrigerator you open the vegetable drawer. Inside the vegetable drawer you see a lemon. You take out the lemon, close the vegetable drawer and then the refrigerator door. Lemon in hand, you walk over to your kitchen cabinet; take out a cutting board and a knife. You proceed to slice the lemon in half then you take one of the halves and slice the half in half and you have two-quarter slices of lemon. You then pick up one of the quarter slices of lemon and put it in your mouth and squeeze the lemon as you feel the lemon juice pouring into your mouth. Is your mouth watering "as if" you actually had a slice of lemon in your mouth? Most people's mouth will water. This little exercise illustrates that the brain doesn't know the difference between what you imagine and what you are actually experiencing in the present.
Similarly, suppose we consciously or unconsciously imagine ourselves as a little boy or little girl back in our dysfunctional family. Suppose we recall hearing and seeing a parent screaming at us. We hear them telling us how stupid they believe we are. How do you think you would feel even though you are now a grown adult and not a child? You would feel bad, wouldn't you? That is what I mean by associating. Almost universally, I discover clients are having problems in adulthood due to their imagining themselves still children. They continue using their childhood experiences as their present frame of reference.
We call this "associating." You know if you are associating into a memory if when you recall it you do not see yourself in the picture. Let's experiment. Recall a mildly painful memory. Get a picture of it. Now, in the picture note whether or not you see yourself or you just see the other people and environment in that picture. If you do not see yourself, mentally, you have associated back into that memory and you will tend to experience the same negative feelings you had when you experienced it.
Now, because the brain does not know the difference between what you represent by imagination or by current input, when you mentally place yourself back into some painful memory, you will have negative feelings very similar to what you experienced during that event. If you see yourself in that picture as the younger you, we call that dissociating. When people say something like, "That doesn"t bother me anymore, I have distanced myself from it. They have in fact dissociated from the memory by seeing themselves in the picture and by pushing the picture away from their eyes so it is at a distance. This diminishes the feelings whereas associating into a memory tends to increase the feelings.
When we consciously or unconsciously associate back into our past hurtful memories and operate from the mental frames (conceptual meanings) that we gave them, we are confusing the map with the territory. When we do this we are living our adult lives inside the painful experiences of childhood. The thinking we developed then served us then but it doesn't serve us in adulthood. If you find yourself:
(Jumping to Conclusions) generalization
(Being Narrow Minded) centration
(Playing the "blame game") transductive reasoning
(Personalizing) egocentrism
(Making mountains out of molehills.) inductive logic or castraphizing
(Black and white thinking) thinking in absolutes and
(Blocking out past positive examples.) irreversability
then you are operating from childhood frames. John Burton, Ed.D. has an article on the Neuro-Semantics' web site that defines the thinking styles of children. The title of the article is "Hypnotic Language: Solutions in a Word." If I were to list one common element of the problems that I have confronted during these ten years as a therapist, I would list associating into past painful memories. The problem of unconsciously associating into childhood problem states and bringing that forward into the adult world lies at the root of many problems that I see therapeutically.
Note: You may have tried through years of reading and/or attending trainings to "fix" your thinking without it working. Experience has taught me that often times a person will need assistance in activating these associated frames in order to bring them to conscious level. From there it becomes fairly easy to meta-state and reframe them. But know this, you can change your thinking no matter how unconscious the problem state. If you do not know whether or not you are associating into some past memory, you can bet you are doing just that unconsciously if you are having problems with unwanted behaviors and thoughts.
7. People who change know how to apply higher meta-level states to lower level problems. As we have learned, our brains do not stop at just one thought. It will keep on thinking thoughts about thoughts.
When we have a "thought about a thought" the second thought will change the first thought and that is where the magic lies. In thinking and behaving the ability of the brain to have thoughts about thoughts is crucial. Here is the secret. When you have one thought (thoughts are composed of images and conceptual meanings) and then entertain another thought "about" the original thought the original thought will change.
What in the world does that mean? It is simple. If you have an experience that scares you and from that experience you become afraid of your fear, what will happen? In this case the fear will intensify. Indeed, applying fear to fear leads to paranoia. What if instead of becoming fearful of your fear, you welcomed your fear? You applied the thought that this fear has value to me and I will welcome it? What will happen to the fear? It will modulate the fear where you can step outside of it and learn from it. Then, once you learn what you need to learn from the fear, you apply the thought of faith to your fear, what would happen? What happens to fear when faith is applied to it? Fear disappears in the face of strong faith.
Play with your brain. Get a thought of anger. Now, apply to your anger the thought of forgiveness. Take the same anger and apply the thought of love. What about taking your anger and applying the thought of calmness to it, what happens? Would you have ever guessed how easy you could change your states of mind by applying one thought to another thought?
Every time we take a thought and apply another thought to it, the original thought will modulate or change in some way. We call this Meta-Stating¾ applying one thought to another thought. And, herein lies the magic. Herein lies your ability to re-format and re-program your thinking. Those whom I have seen who have changed their thinking, inevitably have meta-stated their problem state with higher-level resource states. Instead of meta-stating themselves sick, they learned to meta-state themselves well. They left re-building a new set of higher-level mental frames that served them.
I encourage the reader to "process" the materials found in this article. Access some personal problem and take that problem through all seven of the steps explained in this article. You may experience utter amazement at how that "problem" becomes a lesser problem.
References:
Bateson, Gregory. Steps to An Ecology of Mind. (1972). New York: Ballantine.
Bodenhamer, Bobby G., and Hall, L. Michael. (1999). The User's Manual for the Brain: The Complete Manual for Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner Certification. Wales, UK: Crown House Publishing.
Burton, John, Ed.D. and Bodenhamer, Bobby G., D. Min. (2000) Hypnotic Language: Its Structure and Use. Wales, UK: Crown House Publishing.
Hall, L. Michael. Secrets of Personal Mastery: Advanced Techniques for Accessing Your Higher Levels of Consciousness. (2000). Wales, UK: Crown House Publishing.
Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (1933/1994). (5th. Ed.), Lakeville, CN: International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co.
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And ... What Kind of a Man is David Grove?"
An interview by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley
Picture the scene: A peerless November night in the Lake District. A backdrop of mountains dark against a sky so clear it is obvious why our part of the universe is called the 'milky' way. Three heads protrude above the surface of a steaming hot tub. Not a sound can be heard save the occasional lapping of water as each slides and settles into an even more relaxing position.
One of the heads, David Grove, is a New Zealander currently living in the USA and making one of his regular pilgrimages to England to conduct healing retreats and workshops for therapists. He has developed a unique way of working with the metaphoric and symbolic nature of our inner worlds. He is continually expanding and refining his approach as he discovers more about the structure and processes of the magical faculty of humans to represent their deepest experiences as metaphor. Penny Tompkins and James Lawley are about to conduct an interview. Let's listen in on what they've got to say.
James: What might be useful is for people to know a bit about your background and how you became interested in NLP. Where would you like to start?
David: My first association with NLP was back in 1978. At first I wasn't interested in the therapy side, I really wanted it for business. One time I went along for an NLP business workshop and they said "Oh I'm sorry, not enough people have showed up, you'll have to join the other group." So that's how I first became interested in phobias and trauma.
Penny: What were Richard Bandler, John Grinder and the others doing at that time that attracted you?
David: The whole notion that you could take an experience, find its structure and if you changed its structure it changed the experience was revolutionary. That to me was the significant contribution from the mid 70's; just the notion that experience had a structure and that structure could be categorised and that you could make changes to experience without it coming through insight and feelings. That was the major paradigm shift 'the boys' made at the time, which really started the NLP bandwagon rolling.
Penny: So you went along for business and got interested in the structure of experience. Then what happened?
David: Then I got very involved in Ericksonian hypnosis. And I think one of the key things I did was set up a little study group. There were six of us. We'd meet every couple of weeks and we'd go over some of this stuff. Each of us would do a presentation. That was when I found out they were sitting there listening but they couldn't understand a word I was saying. I thought, "We've all been to the same workshops, why couldn't they understand me?" And then I realised I was moving in a different direction. It was hard to distinguish at that time but I was interested in a different structure of experience.
After that I pretty much just started out on my own with a friend who's been my office manager ever since. I was based here in England to start with. And it was pretty unsuccessful. That was the beginning of my working with traumatic memories and phobias. And when I went back to the States, the whole Viet Nam war Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome was really picking up. There was nothing in the literature that I could find about people trying to resolve memories.
James: Was there a particular time or incident that alerted you to the power of the use of metaphor?
David: No, not really. I mean David Gordon wrote his book but there was nothing else out at that time.
James: Your work with metaphor is radically different from Erickson's or David Gordon's use of metaphor. How did that evolve?
David: I found out not everybody had memories. However, even though they couldn't remember a certain event they still had feelings about it. So if you can't get a clear memory, what else can you get? So I started observing very carefully what was happening. I noticed, if I didn't force people when they were talking they would naturally start using metaphor to describe their experience. And that's when I discovered this work is very amenable to metaphor.
So I realised here was another way to structure experience. I decided that metaphor was a whole language worthy of study. It took me a few years just to study the different types of metaphorical language. So that eventually became a book Resolving Traumatic Memories. Gee, that thing is still selling today.
James: You're talking about naturally occurring client-generated metaphors. About symbolic representations that occur within a person's body or inner perceptual world. So what do you see is the function of metaphor in your work?
David: Essentially what metaphors do is carry information. Metaphors take information from one source and introduce it to another. So, imagine someone has a symptom of 'a knot in the stomach' and through the use of 'clean language' they have a corresponding memory that someone is about to hit them. Maybe they can take the knot out of the stomach and put it in the memory and the knot ties the perpetrator's hand's and prevents them from being hit. Thus the client has successfully resolved the situation by picking up the metaphor and carrying it across into a memory in which it can do the business. The information contained in the metaphor transforms that memory.
Penny: So metaphors related to the client's symptoms contain information which lead to the resolution of their traumatic memories. The metaphor is not only symbolic of the problem it also contains pointers, clues, to the solution.
David: Working with metaphors leads to a natural regression and hanging around the metaphor is always an owner who is the client at a younger age 'frozen in time'. That's how the notion of a 'child within' was born.
Penny: What was your relationship with the others who were using ideas of the 'inner child' at that time?
David: Charles Whitfield pioneered it in the States. I've done stuff with him and we're still friends. Claudia Black did the ACOA stuff (Adult Children of Alcoholics) and then Alice Small did books on incest. I probably pioneered the clinical side of it in America. I just started from nothing and was getting huge audiences at that time in the late 80's. And then I got very intrigued with dissociation.
It seemed a lot of metaphor and the child within were fragments which were dissociated. So I decided to take a vow of silence for 2 years. I stopped teaching just to study dissociation and fragmentation. And that's when I started to do retreats in my home. I thought my research would take 2 years but its taken me a lot longer and out of that came even more new material.
Penny: Such as?
David: I discovered, if you put people into trance, they regress and go back into childhood. If they leave their eyes open and you follow where they are focussing then they get to worlds that appear from thin air, in their perceptual space. And because people can choose to go in and out of positive hallucination when they've got their eyes open, they have more control.
So this was a rude awakening because it was the opposite tenant of working with the client to get the metaphors generated from within. With their eyes closed clients don't make contact with the outside. But when they keep their eyes open you can observe how their 'line of sight' gives clues to their internal perceptual space. It's like the NLP stuff except now there's a context, an inner landscape, to make more sense of eye movements and other minimal cues.
Penny: It's ironic, you have to open your eyes to see your 'internal world'! Is this when you realised people's perceptual space, their inner landscape, could be mapped? I know in my own work with you, drawing metaphors and mapping their location has been a real navigational aid. It has helped me keep track of my own process and encouraged new insights.
David: I call this 'cognitive mapping'. The map is the interface between the client's internal and external worlds. The map mediates both realities. There is a big difference between metaphors that give a microscopic view of one experience and a map which gives a picture of all experiences. That realisation took me by surprise.
James: Earlier you mentioned the use of 'clean language' by the therapist. This seems to be central to your work. What put you on to the idea that clean language was so important, and perhaps you might like to say what defines clean language.
David: I used to watch other therapists work. I wondered, why did they ask that question? I started analysing the questions major therapists used; people like Virginia Satir and Carl Rogers. To begin with I thought it was because they had this huge vast experience. After a while I twigged that, jeepers, they were coming out of their hallucinations, their model of the world. Take Carl Rogers, who I thought would be really 'Rogerian'! I found his language wasn't clean in the sense that he kept shifting people. He would use past tense in the present, and then use the future tense and move them back to the present. So he was often redefining verbally whatever anybody said. He would amplify or redefine the words the client used. Well, when you do that it robs the client of some of their experience. I wanted to know the questions you can ask that don't have any presuppositions.
Erickson didn't use clean language but at least he was aware of the presuppositions of his language. So I came up with a set of six basic questions which were neutral and did not interfere with a client's process. And they all start with the conjunction 'and'... and what that does is facilitates a trance. So the use of clean language is very trance inducing without an induction. It's a natural induction because the questions don't pull the client out of their experience. The questions are aimed at the metaphoric part of their experience so they don't go through normal cognitive processes.
Penny: Can you give us an example?
David: If you ask "And that's like what?" it's clean language as it directly addresses the client's experience and it goes straight to the metaphor. Whereas, if you ask "What's that like to you?" the client immediately goes to cognitive process and looses their direct relationship with the particular metaphor.
So clean language is the language of facilitation. It doesn't bring the client out of their natural trance and there is no resistance to the questions because they can be answered easily. The acoustical parameters in clean language, the rhythm and tonality, are such that a person can reject the question very easily without much ego affect. I want the client to chuck out any question that doesn't feel right.
So clean language is language that stays in the experience and in the body of the client. The locus of the information is out here between two people. Its not a shared language as in normal discourse.
In normal counselling I ask the question to you, you get the information and then you give it to me so it's a whole shared experience. The locus of attention moves backwards and forwards between us. But once I ask you a clean language question, the locus shifts from you to where the information is sourced without it having to be triangulated between your head and your body. That is why you don't have to think about answers to clean language questions, because the answers come from the source of the information.
So any question that drags you out of the experience is not clean language. For example, when a client repeats your question it is a good indication the question wasn't the right one. So clean language is about a delivery system that delivers a question without any resistance. It's about a question that's just the right question a client wants to be asked. As soon as the question is asked, the client already knows. The ability to get the question that feels right to the client and that they can easily reject if its not, is the art of clean language.
In clean language, you're only as good as your last question. And it doesn't matter what else you were going to do, if you didn't get the last question right. The use of conjunctions of language and the use of the indefinite article make it a funny, unusual language, but it's very simple. It's a natural language of trance.
James: One of the by-products of using clean language, it seems to me, is that there is a natural separation between the metaphor and the person observing the metaphor. They get a chance to look at whatever it is in a way they probably never have, from an angle they've never been aware of before.
David: Yes. There is a separation in that you separate out the ego state of the person and then you objectify the experience so it becomes the client interrogating this other entity in metaphor. I ask the metaphor directly for information and it can answer. And the client is often amazed, amused and somewhat bemused about it. In that sense the client has a discourse with the metaphor. The client becomes a dispassionate observer of what's going on. So in order to get that type of information you need to split it from the client's current experience and then it takes on a life of its own. And the reason why that stuff's there is because it has information in it. The metaphor is a carrier of information.
Penny: You work with people who have had disturbing symptoms, memories and so forth, for a long time. How does working with metaphor allow a process that's been a source of pain for decades to be healed? Clients will often say they've had this problem for as long as they can remember.
David: That's a very intriguing question because some symptoms seem to be very intractable. What makes them intractable? I had this notion: What if you didn't stop at childhood? What if there were conditions contained in your family of origin that were passed on ancestrally? What if the anger that you have is simply a continuation of your father's anger? What if the depression that you experience is an endemic depression and is carried down your family line, and is simply not an expression of situational depression? So that led to a sortie into the world of genealogy.
When I pursued the origins of a particular symptom I found there are some experiences which are not arrived at as a child; they are not born in childhood. You may be a carrier of information passed on for generations and it expresses itself in you. It might have missed your siblings. It might have missed your parents. The depression is not from you. So then your ordinary resources, those resources within your own experience, aren't sufficient to heal the situation. So sometimes you don't have everything you need to heal yourself.
Penny: Because you didn't create it in the first place.
David: The stuff has been passed on. The symptoms are trying their best to heal the situation, but can't. The metaphor is a container which not only contains information about your symptoms but also your history. Ancestral history gets devolved. You have to treat the historical information and treat the symptoms separately. When those two are meshed together you can't do anything with them.
So this began this whole fascinating journey into the use of ancestry to heal up an experience that occurred in childhood. The beating, the abuse you got may have been a punishment which did not fit the crime. If the crime didn't deserve that punishment, where did the motivation to punish come from?
James: During today's workshop we saw how a participant's traumatic memory of school was still influencing their life today. I was amazed how the process unfolded. You explored the ancestral history of the teacher in order to discover a redemptive metaphor which was used to heal the child at school. Then you brought the healed metaphor into the present.
David: You've got to 'pull back' a teacher's history, or the country's history employing teachers. There will be something in that teacher's history or something in the system that will heal. So the client gets the opportunity to go back and heal up their ancestry. Then they can pick up all of their ancestry and re-import it back into their body. And then they don't have the past interrupting their present.
One of the nice things in relation to inter-generational healing is that you can by-pass your parents and access some of your lineage directly, without having to go through the negative stuff they passed on. Instead of having your lineage cut off because of your parents, you can go back and re-own your history. That gives you access to all of the bright stuff that was there without it having to be filtered through your parents' negative aspects. To go back and heal up your ancestry can be a very stunning thing to experience.
Penny: This explains how you can go from a minimal cue, like a hand movement or a look, and go straight into a really important experience for the person in a few questions.
David: Clean language does that. Because in every gesture, and particularly in obsessional gestures and tics and those funny idiosyncratic movements, is encoded the entire history of that behaviour. It contains your whole psychological history in exactly the same way that every cell in your body contains your whole biological history.
Penny: And it is the same for words and phrases?
David: That's why we can't go around changing client's dialogue, because then you change the experience and you can't unfold their history out of your words.
James: So sometimes when symptoms are intractable, clients have had too much of their experience changed, many times by-well meaning therapists. As Paul Watzlawick says, the attempted solutions become the problem. Fortunately, the metaphor preserves the information in an uncontaminated form. And are you saying the resolution of the symptom is in the history?
David: Yes. There will always be good things in the history as well as bad. Three sisters could be exposed to the same stimulus but their reactions might be very different. One might carry the experience in a positive way, one might carry it in a negative way and one doesn't carry it at all. The question is: How can that happen? Now when you 'pull back' sentences from each of those sisters you'll find they probably go down different ancestral lines. So when you have your first virginal anxiety experience why did you respond that way and not a thousand other ways? I think we are predisposed. There is a susceptibility in that particular person.
James: How come the sisters don't have the same predisposition if they have the same ancestry?
David: That's the question. Because their lineage is traced back in different ways. And it would depend on what you pulled back. If you pull back on the pain in the chest it goes down one line, if you pull the breathing back it goes down another. And then there is one sister who doesn't have any affect so it's no big deal and there is nothing to pull back.
James: So what's your idea about how that predisposition and that information is transmitted down the line?
David: I have no idea. I mean it's the same question about sisters with different hair type and eye colour. Where do we get our initial psychological characteristics from? I mean what genes carry our psychology?
Penny: Hey, we're asking the questions here! How far do you carry the biological model into the psychological model?
David: I think it's the same deal. I think feelings are like antibodies. Feelings are unsuccessful attempts by your body to heal a situation when it first happens. If that doesn't work, any other situation resembling the original will keep manufacturing the symptoms. It's like cell division ... over and over again.
As I see it, psychology is going to have to follow medical science, and we're way behind. At first, all medical science had was gross description of pathology and that's where psychology is now. Medical science has moved on to the greater level of detail of molecular biology and the replication of systems and diseases. I think that's the way we're going to have to go in changing experiences. It's about replication, not the end product.
James: How do we influence a system that replicates pathologically? I am intrigued by how to interrupt a system's ability to replicate.
David: The way you do that is the same way nature does it. Most cell division is mitotic; the cell clones or produces an exact replicate of itself. The psychological equivalent is when a set of symptoms from an earlier experience reproduce themselves in the adult, over and over again. A different mechanism is involved in sex cell division. The process is called meiosis where there is a crossing over in which genes are exchanged from one set of chromosomes to another. Unlike cloning, the resultant genetic structure is different from the original.
That's how the inter-generational healing works. We're going back and picking up information in metaphors from your ancestry and then we're bringing them into your lifetime. This exchange of information changes the outcome of your current experience. Then the old experience will not replicate itself.
So for example, if a mother is too busy and you were left alone with a person who became the perpetrator of a traumatic event, then you might have to go down the ancestral line of the mother to find the source; to find the redemptive metaphor. Where was your mother? How come she was too busy? This is where the client might need to go to find the information which can interrupt the replicating mechanism.
Metaphors are like the genes of cells or the DNA -- genetic codes that replicate. So If we want to change a repetitive or habitual experience, it's the replicating mechanism that matters.
James: The structure of those mechanisms is the same whether we're talking about physical structures or metaphorical structures. They're the same.
David: Yes. Find those structures so we can intervene at this level. It's different from trying to change the content. It doesn't matter about content. And why I think this intergenerational stuff is so powerful is because you're using transformative information from the source. When you find the 'line of sight' of that source information, it's not just any angle of the eyes. That information is not sourced with you, its sourced in your ancestry, and that shifts the responsibility.
Penny: Empowerment is a word that's bandied about a lot...now this is empowerment.
David: Well it ends up that way. It's a funny thing to start off with that premise when initially there is an unempowering situation. You don't get empowered until later, until you find the source.
Penny: The neat thing is you can take a behaviour or a line of sight or a symptom and with clean language discover a metaphor and trace that back to its ancestral source. There you find a redemptive metaphor--a metaphor which contains the information needed to heal, not only the initial conditions, but the whole lineage in between. And that makes a big difference. I know -- I've experienced it and it has had a significant effect in my life!
David: That'll do.
Penny: Thank you and please pass me a towel!
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What is NLP?
NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a name that encompasses the three most influential components involved in producing human experience: neurology, language and programming. The neurological system regulates how our bodies function, language determines how we interface and communicate with other people and our programming determines the kinds of models of the world we create. Neuro-Linguistic Programming describes the fundamental dynamics between mind (neuro) and language (linguistic) and how their interplay effects our body and behavior (programming).
NLP is a pragmatic school of thought - an 'epistemology' - that addresses the many levels involved in being human. NLP is a multi-dimensional process that involves the development of behavioral competence and flexibility, but also involves strategic thinking and an understanding of the mental and cognitive processes behind behavior. NLP provides tools and skills for the development of states of individual excellence, but it also establishes a system of empowering beliefs and presuppositions about what human beings are, what communication is and what the process of change is all about. At another level, NLP is about self-discovery, exploring identity and mission. It also provides a framework for understanding and relating to the 'spiritual' part of human experience that reaches beyond us as individuals to our family, community and global systems. NLP is not only about competence and excellence, it is about wisdom and vision.
In essence, all of NLP is founded on two fundamental presuppositions:
1. The Map is Not the Territory. As human beings, we can never know reality. We can only know our perceptions of reality. We experience and respond to the world around us primarily through our sensory representational systems. It is our 'neuro-linguistic' maps of reality that determine how we behave and that give those behaviors meaning, not reality itself. It is generally not reality that limits us or empowers us, but rather our map of reality.
2. Life and 'Mind' are Systemic Processes. The processes that take place within a human being and between human beings and their environment are systemic. Our bodies, our societies, and our universe form an ecology of complex systems and sub-systems all of which interact with and mutually influence each other. It is not possible to completely isolate any part of the system from the rest of the system. Such systems are based on certain 'self-organizing' principles and naturally seek optimal states of balance or homeostasis.
All of the models and techniques of NLP are based on the combination of these two principles. In the belief system of NLP it is not possible for human beings to know objective reality. Wisdom, ethics and ecology do not derive from having the one 'right' or 'correct' map of the world, because human beings would not be capable of making one. Rather, the goal is to create the richest map possible that respects the systemic nature and ecology of ourselves and the world we live in. The people who are most effective are the ones who have a map of the world that allows them to perceive the greatest number of available choices and perspectives. NLP is a way of enriching the choices that you have and perceive as available in the world around you. Excellence comes from having many choices. Wisdom comes from having multiple perspectives.
NLP was originated by John Grinder (whose background was in linguistics) and Richard Bandler (whose background was in mathematics and gestalt therapy) for the purpose of making explicit models of human excellence. Their first work The Structure of Magic Vol. I & II (1975, 1976) identified the verbal and behavioral patterns of therapists Fritz Perls (the creator of gestalt therapy) and Virginia Satir (internationally renowned family therapist). Their next work Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M.D. Vol. I & II (1975, 1976) examined the verbal and behavioral patterns of Milton Erickson, founder of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and one of the most widely acknowledged and clinically successful psychiatrists of our times. As a result of this earlier work, Grinder and Bandler formalized their modeling techniques and their own individual contributions under the name "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" to symbolize the relationship between the brain, language and the body. The basics of this model has been described in a series of books including Frogs Into Princes (Bandler & Grinder, 1979 ) , Neuro-Linguistic Programming Vol. I (Dilts, Grinder, Bandler, DeLozier, 1980), Reframing (Bandler & Grinder, 1982) and Using Your Brain (Bandler, 1985). Through the years, NLP has developed some very powerful tools and skills for communication and change in a wide range of professional areas including: counseling, psychotherapy, education, health, creativity, law, management, sales, leadership and parenting.
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