WILLIAM JAMES – COULD HE HAVE INVENTED NLP?

An Almost Inventor of NLP
Parts I, II, and III
Published in Anchor Point, 1997

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Just how close did William James come to inventing NLP? When you read his classic work (1892/1961), Psychology: The Briefer Course, he seemed to come very close to many of the formulations that we now recognize as part of the NLP model of human functioning and consciousness.

After all, he described the sensory systems in great detail, de-nominalized vague terms in order to make them more precise and operational, offered narrative descriptions about “states of consiousness,” explored the subjective structure of various experiences, recognized submodalities, played around with reflexivity, made distinctions in the identity realm between “I” and “me,” wrote about memory, language, “programs” (habits), anchoring, “time,” etc.

Actually, James’s The Briefer Course condensed his original two volumes. In it he emphasized the human senses and the representational systems as the essence of consciousness. Upon identifying several nominalizations (including the word “emotions” as well as several specific emotions), James de-nominalize them to bring more clarity of thinking into the process. He provided interesting refinements about the kind of learners–visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc. that I think you will find most fascinating. James further modelled a most engaging writing style in his presentations.

Neuro-linguistic “Habits” (NLH?)

You don’t have to read into James far to realize that he wrote a lot about “habits”– his term for the neuro-linguistic “programs.” A statement frequently quoted from him goes, “Habits are not merely second nature; they are ‘ten times nature.’” (p.9). And as such, they therefore comprise the structural unit of mental life. Here he speaks of the interface of habits and neurology.

“Habits are due to pathways through the nerve-centres. Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue. If practice did not make perfect, nor habit economize the expense of nervous and muscular energy, he would be in a sorry plight.”

“Without habit a man might be occupied all day in dressing and undressing himself; the attitude of his body would absorb all his attention and energy; the washing of his hands or the fastening of a button would be as difficult to him on each occasion as to the child on its first trial; and he would furthermore, be completely exhausted by his exertions. Think of the pains necessary to teach a child to stand.” (p. 5)

“Habit diminishes the conscious attention with which our acts are performed. We all have routine manner of performing daily offices… our higher thought centres know hardly anything about these matters!” (p. 7)

James proposed that the great thing in all education involves making our nervous system our ally rather than our enemy. To capitalize on the acquisitions of skills, we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, and regarding as many useful actions as we can. James recommended that we also “guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us” (11). Sounds like the “Ecology Question and Check” that we use in NLP!

As we work to acquire new habits we should “launch ourselves assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way and make engagements incompatible with the old.” Doing this gives new beginnings the kind of momentum so that we won’t feel tempted to break down so soon as we otherwise might. Reading that reminds me of the emphasis Robbins (1991) puts on attaching “massive pain” or “massive pleasure” to the beginning of a new program. In setting such anchors or programs, James wrote:

“Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right. (p. 12)

“Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspiration communicate the new ’set’ to the brain. (p. 14)

James warned that without programming ourselves for effectiveness, we might end up as “the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed.” (p. 15). To remedy that–we should never suffer ourselves to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing it afterward in some active way. “Let the expression be the least thing in the world–speaking genially to one’s grandmother, or giving up one’s seat in a horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers–but let it not fail to take place.” (p. 15)

Why? Because if we let our emotions evaporate, then they will get into the habit of evaporating. Then, that becomes our “program.” Conversely, we should keep the faculty of effort alive in us by a little gratuitous exercise every day.

“Be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.” (p. 16)

States of Consciousness

James invented, or at least introduced and popularized, the term “the stream of consciousness.” Within each personal consciousness, we experience thinking as “sensibly continuous.” Consciousness does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. It flows. So we use the metaphors of it flowing like a river or a stream (p. 26). He noted (1892) that states of mind succeed each other and that every state operates as part of a personal consciousness. (As an aside, most writers and thinkers in NLP generally utilize this definition of a state of consciousness, not as a static and non-moving “thing,” but as a ongoing flow of consciousness.)

“Each of these minds keeps its own thoughts to itself. There is no giving or bartering between them. No thought ever comes into direct sight of a thought in another personal consciousness than its own. Absolute insulation, irreducible pluralism, is the law. It seems as if the elementary psychic fact were not thought or this thought or that thought, but my thought, every thought being owned.” (p. 20)

In his de-nominalizing of “thoughts” and feelings, James both put the pseudo-noun (“emotions” and “thoughts”) back in verb form (thinking, feeling) and added the Lost Performative (the person thinking-emoting) when he highlighted the fact that feelings and thoughts do not exist… they do not exist apart from a person. He noted that each person exists as a thinker-feeler. Hence, “‘I think’ and ‘I feel’” exists, but not detached “thoughts” and “feelings.” And true to Korzybski’s basic tenet of non-identity, James noted the constant change of consciousness and that “No state once gone can recur and be identical with what it was before.” (p. 21).

“Our state of mind is never precisely the same. Every thought we have of a given fact, is strictly speaking, unique and only bears a resemblance of kind with our other thoughts of the same fact. When the identical fact recurs, we must think of it in a fresh manner. Often we are ourselves struck at the strange differences in our successive views of the same thing.” (p. 23)

“It is logically impossible that the same thing should be known as the same by two successive copies of the same thought. The thoughts by which we know what we mean the same thing are apt to be very different indeed from each other. We think the thought now substantively, now transitively; now in a direct image, now in one symbol, now in another symbol.” (p. 110)

James also noted the speed of consciousness as Bandler and Grinder did when they created several of the initial NLP patterns that depended upon doing a piece quickly.

“When we take a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is the different pace of its parts. Let us call the resting-places the ’substantive parts,’ and the places of flight the ‘transitive parts,’ of the stream of thought. It then appears that our thinking tends at all times toward some other substantive part than the one from which it has just been dislodged. The rush of the thought is so headlong that it almost always brings us up at the conclusion before we can rest it.” (p. 27, emphasis added)

Today in NLP we recognize “the different pace” of parts of our pictures and sounds when we do contrastive analysis between “fast time” and “slow time.” Different parts of our represnetations will move at different speeds. You can detect this by thinking about some time when you zoomed along an interstate and then came off on an off-ramp and creeped along. The distortion of your sense of “time” almost inevitably involves some facets of your visual representations moving at a different pace than other parts.

James intuitively recognized these things— although he didn’t know what to do about them or how to use them. As with the “rush of thought” as representations swish off to other places— he didn’t know how to use that very mechanism to continue the swishing!

In his writing James frequently commented on one state namely, the one he designated as the tip-of-the-tongue state. This state arises when you see someone you know but can’t recall his or her name, or when you have a word on the tip of your tongue, but can’t quite get to it. At such times, we experience “a gap” in our mind,

“…but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term.” (p. 30)

How close to Bandler’s comment that “the tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon involves a kinesthetic feel! As James explored the phenomenology of this experience, he noted that it involves the intention of saying a thing before saying it. We have an entirely definite intention that comes to our mind, we feel an anticipatory intention, but then can’t quite access it.

“Try to symbolize what goes on in a man who is racking his brains to remember a thought which occurred to him last week. The associates of the thought are there, many of them at least, but they refuse to awaken the thought itself. We cannot suppose that they do not irradiate at all into its brain-tract, because his mind quivers on the very edge of its recovery. Its actual rhythm sounds in his ears; the words seem on the imminent point of following, but fail. Now the only difference between the effort to recall things forgotten and the search after the means to a given end is that the latter have not, whilst the former have, already formed a part of our experience.” (p. 138)

At a meta-level, he noted that knowledge about a thing involves knowledge of its relations. Because mind naturally wonders, it bounces about between referents— it goes places.

“The natural tendency of attention when left to itself is to wander to ever new things [it swishes to new referents!]; and so soon as the interest of its object is over, so soon as nothing new is to be noticed there, it passes, in spite of our will, to something else. If we wish to keep it upon one and the same object, we must seek constantly to find out something new about the latter, especially if other powerful impressions are attracting us away.” (p. 94, emphasis added)

“The manner in which trains of imagery and consideration follow each other through our thinking the restless flight of one idea before the next, the transitions our minds make between things wide as the poles asunder, transitions which at first startle us by their abruptness, but which, when scrutinized closely, often reveal intermediating links of perfect naturalness and propriety— all this magical, imponderable streaming has from time immemorial excited the admiration of all whose attention happened to be caught by its omnipresent mystery.” (p. 120)

“The train of imagery wanders at its own sweet will, now trudging in sober grooves of habit, now with a hop, skip, and jump, darting across the whole field of time and space. This is revery, or musing; but great segments of the flux of our ideas consist of something very different from this. They are guided by a distinct purpose or conscious interest; and the course of our ideas is then called voluntary.” (p. 138)

I like to think of these “hops, skips, and jumps” of consciousness as thought-balls that bounce around in consciousness. Regarding states of consciousness, James also noted the effect that a state can have upon a person’s thinking, emoting, behaving. He noted what we today call “state dependency.”

“The difficulty is mental; it is that of getting the idea of the wise action to stay before our mind at all. When any strong emotional state whatever is upon us, the tendency is for no images but such as are congruous with it to come up.” (p. 318)

Conclusion

Yes, he almost stumbled onto the model of neuro-linguistic habits— but not quite. In the next parts, I’ll reference facets in James’ writings where he spoke about the sensory representational systems, submodalities, meta-programs, “time,” and much more.

Part II
WILLIAM JAMES
Almost NLP Inventor (Part II)

In the first article on William James as an almost inventor of NLP, I highlighted his descriptions of human “programs”— which he called habits and his description of states of consciousness— and how “mind” flows as a stream, every jumping, hopping, and skipping about between referents. He knew that the brain goes places, and noted many of the places that brains typically go— he just didn’t know how to tap into these mental-emotional mechanisms as NLP has taught us. Now look at his almost discovery of sensory systems, submodalities, self-reflexivity, and identity.

The Sensory Representational Systems

James described the senses as organs of selection and noted that each sense-organ picks out those which fall within certain limits of velocity, and ignores the rest. He noted that each of our senses generalizes, deletes, and distorts to create its representations.

“We do far more than emphasize things [distortion], and unite some [generalization], and keep others apart. We actually ignore [deletion] most of the things before us.” (p. 37)

“Out of what is in itself an undistinguishable, swarming continuum, devoid of distinction or emphasis [the Territory], our senses make for us, by attending to this motion and ignoring that, a world full of contrasts, of sharp accents, of abrupt changes, of picturesque light and shade. It chooses certain of the sensations to represent the thing most truly.” (p. 38)

So via our senses, we create our represented map of the territory! Then, as we continue to create our internal representation or “experience,” we do so using our “habits of attention” or what in NLP we call Meta-Programs.

“In a world of objects thus individualized by our mind’s selective industry, what is called our ‘experience,’ is almost entirely determined by our habits of attention.” (p 39)

In the area of memory, James noted that all improvement of memory consists in the improvement of one’s habitual methods of recording facts (p. 165). He became highly impressed by the fourfold channel of eye, ear, voice, and hand (VAA_tK) as an improved method of memorizing! Notice just how close he came here to the NLP sense modalities! He also noted the effect of the sense modalities on the nervous system.

“Sensations, once experienced, modify the nervous organisms, so that copies of them arise again in the mind after the original outward stimulus is gone.”

Noting how people differed in visual imagination, he quoted the statistical inquiry that Mr. Galton (1880) collected from one of the first recorded psychological experiments.

“He addressed a circular to large numbers of persons asking them to describe the image in their mind’s eye of their breakfast-table on a given morning. The variations were found to be enormous; and, strange to say, it appeared that eminent scientific men on the average had less visualizing power than younger and more insignificant persons.” (p. 170, from “Inquiries into Human Faculty, by Galton, p. 83-114)

James noted some differences between good and poor visualizer. He said that

“…some people undoubtedly have no visual images at all worthy of the name, and instead of seeing their breakfast-table, they tell you that they remember it or know what was on it. The ‘mind-stuff’ of which this ‘knowing’ is made seems to be verbal images exclusively.” (p. 172)

Regarding the modality of words and language, James noted that “The scheme of relationship and the conclusion” function as the essential things in that kind of thinking.

“Now words, uttered or unexpressed, are the handiest mental elements we have.”

They provide us a rapidly revivable anchor to the referents, “coffee,” “bacon,” “muffins,” “eggs,” etc. But both James and Galton drew (what to us in NLP seems like) a very strange conclusion. They believed that —

“The older men are and the more effective as thinkers [use language], the more, as a rule, they have lost their visualizing power.” (p. 173)

Regarding those who favor the modality of auditory-tonal (A_t), James described those who think by preference in auditory images as audiles (after Galton). This type “appears to be rarer than the visual.”

“Persons of this type imagine what they think of in the language of sound.” (p. 173)

“It is clear that the pure audile, seeking to develop only a single one of his faculties, may, like the pure visualizer, perform astounding feats of memory— Mozart, for example, noting from memory the Miserere of the Sistine Chapel after two hearings; the deaf Beethoven, composing and inwardly repeating his enormous symphonies.”

For kinesthetic, James talked about people using “images of muscular sensations, a ‘motile’ form of imagination.”

“The movements of articulate speech play a predominant pat of his mental life. Most peoples on being asked in what sort of terms they imagine words, will say, ‘In terms of hearing.’ It is not until their attention is expressly drawn to the point that they find it difficult to say whether auditory images or motor images connected with the organs of articulation predominate.” (174)

Sub-Modalities

James even anticipated sub-modalities as he talked about the distinguishing differences between things. In describing the conditions which favor discrimination, he treated several different kinds.

“First… the things to be discriminated must be different either in time, place, or quality. In other words, and physiologically speaking, they must awaken neural processes which are distinct. The sensations excited by the differing objects must not fall simultaneously but must fall in immediate succession upon the same organ.

It is one of those transitive feelings or feelings of relation. When once arouses, its object lingers in the memory along with the substantive terms which precede and follow, and enables our judgments of comparison to be made.” (pp. 112-113)

He also noted that the longer the interval of time between the sensations, the more uncertain would become our discrimination of them. Regarding differences inferred he said that we must not confound those entirely unlike cases [from direct perceptions of differences] in which we infer that two things must differ because we know enough about each to warrant our classing them under distinct heads. We constantly compare feelings with those qualities our imagination has no sort of acquaintance at the time–pleasures/ pains for example.

Self-Reflexive Consciousness

With Bateson’s bequeathal of “going meta” and Korzybski’s distinction about abstracting to second and third, etc. levels, we have in NLP the concept of self-reflexive consciousness (Hall, 1995, 1996). James spoke about such in the following words.

“Whatever I may be thinking of, I am always the same time more or less aware of myself, of my personal existence. At the same time it is I who am aware; so that the total self of me, being as it were duplex, partly known and partly knower, partly object and partly subject, must have two aspects discriminated in it … Me and… I. … The self as known, or the me, the empirical ego… [a primary state], and the self as knower or I, the pure ego [a meta-level state of consciousness].” (p. 43)

With his separating these levels into a “Me” and “I,” James specified that “a man’s Me is the sum total of all that he can call his” –body, psychic powers, clothes, house, wife, children, ancestors, friends, reputation, work, lands, horses, yacht, and bank-account. He divided the constituents of “the Me” into the material me, the social me, and the spiritual me (p. 44). He spoke of our social me as arising from the recognition that we get from our mates and that we have as many social selves as we have individuals who recognize us. The spiritual me arises when we think of ourselves as thinkers. For James, self as knower (a meta-state) raises many ontological questions.

“The pure ego is a very much more difficult subject of inquiry than the Me. (62). What is the thinker? Is it the passing state of consciousness itself or something deeper and less mutable? The passing state is the very embodiment of change. Yet each of us spontaneously considers that by “I,” he means something always the same. This has led most philosophers to postulate behind the passing state of consciousness a permanent Substance or Agent whose modification or act it is.” (pp. 62-63)

In speaking about states of consciousness, James talked about the process of ’singling out’ the elements in a compound much the way we pull apart a strategy and identify its component parts in terms of representational systems.

“It is safe to lay it down as a fundamental principle that any total impression made on the mind must be unanalyzable so long as its elements have never been experienced apart or in other combinations elsewhere.” (p. 115)

“Analysis of a thing means separate attention to each of its parts.” (117)

James recognized that we use consciousness to both discriminate between things in order to pull associations apart (find and specifying the strategies of experiences) and then we associate things to create new constructions (inductively move up the scale of abstraction to generalize new constructions). Thus he speaks about deductive and inductive thinking to deal with large chunks and small chunks.

“All advance in knowledge must consist of both operations; objects at first appearing as wholes are analyzed into parts, and objects appearing separately are brought together and appear as new compound wholes to the mind.” (p. 120)

James also distinguished between levels of thought. At the primary level of thinking about something beyond the nervous system, he noted that such a thought may induce various thoughts, but then when we later think about that thought (a thought-about a thought, a feeling about a feeling) we may experience even more of a state.

“One may even get angrier in thinking over one’s insult than one was in receiving it; and melt more over a mother who is dead than one ever did when she was living.” (p. 240)

Ah, re-induction of a state— and then an amplification of the state recalled! James noted the innumerable varieties of emotion at various levels. He designated the primary level as where we experience “the coarser emotions,” in distinction from meta-levels where we experience “the subtler emotions.”

“Anger, fear, love, hate, joy, grief, shame, pride, and their varieties, may be called the coarser emotions, being coupled as they are with relatively strong bodily reverberations. The subtler emotions are the moral, intellectual, and aesthetic feelings, mere description of the objects, circumstances, and varieties of the different species of emotion may go to any length. Their internal shadings merge endless into each other, and have been partly commemorated in language, as, for example, by such synonyms as hatred, antipathy, animosity, resentment, dislike, aversion, malice, spite, revenge, abhorrence, etc.” (p. 241)

The Identity Level

James wrote that the problem with a man “… is less what act he shall now resolve to do than what being he shall now become.” As he made this distinction in logical levels (Dilt’s Identity over Behavior), he suggested that we keep a selected ideal uppermost in mind and that to do so operates as a “greater importance than the performance of a specific act.” (p. xv).

From his construct of “Me” and “I” James suggested that as we seek out our truest, strongest, deepest self we review our list of traits and values and pick out the one/s on which we “stake our salvation.” “All other selves thereupon become unreal, but the fortunes of this self are real.” (p. 53). From this he developed his strategy for “self-esteem.”

Figure 1


Self-esteem =	Success
	Pretensions

“Everything added to the Self is a burden as well as a pride. Neither threats nor pleading can move a man unless they touch some one of his potential or actual selves. Find out a person’s strong principle of self-regard. If a man has given up those things which are subject to foreign fate, and ceased to regard them as parts of himself at all, we are well-nigh powerless over him. The Stoic receipt for contentment was to dispossess yourself in advance of all that was out of your own power —then fortune’s shocks might rain down unfelt.”

Epictetus exhorts us, by thus narrowing and at the same time solidifying our Self to make it invulnerable: ‘I must die; well, but must I die groaning too? I will speak what appears to be right, and if the despot says, ‘Then I will put you to death,’ I will reply, ‘When did I ever tell you that I was immortal? You will do your part, and I mine; it is yours to kill, and mine to die intrepid; yours to banish, mine to depart untroubled.’

How do we act in a voyage? We choose the pilot, the sailors, the hour. Afterwards comes a storm. What have I to care for? My part is performed. This matter belongs to the pilot. But the ship is sinking; what then have it to do? That which alone I can do–submit to being drowned without fear, without clamor or accusing of God, but as one who knows that what is born must likewise die.” (p. 55)

In this presentation on James, let me end with what I find a humorous note. James spoke about the marvel of how we always wake up in our own body with our thoughts intact!

“The I appropriates the Me. Just such objects are the past experiences which I now call mine. Other men’s experiences never bear this vivid, this peculiar brand. This is why Peter, awakening in the same bed with Paul, and recalling what both had in mind before they went to sleep, reidentifies and appropriates the ‘warm’ ideas as his, and is never tempted to confuse them with those cold and pale-appearing ones which he ascribes to Paul. Each of us when he awakens says, Here’s the same old Me again, just as he says, Here’s the same old bed, the same old room, the same old world. (71)

So thank God that when you woke up this morning, you easily found your own warm thoughts— those that belong to you, to your consciousness! Imagine the confusion, strangeness, and difficulties that would arise if the thoughts that you found rushing into your mind when you “come to consciousness” as you awaken depended on the proximity of someone who slept close by!

Part III
WILLIAM JAMES
Almost Inventor of NLP — Part III

He almost did it— William James almost formulated many of the distinctions that we today find in NLP: sensory-based representational systems, submodalities, meta-programs, states of consciousness, levels (primary and meta) of consciousness, etc. In this article, I want to continue this exploration of James’ formulations and relate them to NLP today. Here we will look at his emphasis on will or choice, the plasticity of memory and representation, language, anchoring, “time” and time-lines, learning, and the physiology of thought.

An Empowering Decision

If you read the story of William James and the struggle that he had early in life with depression, then you will remember that classic Jamesian empowerment decision. This goes back to the moment that he decided to subscribe to the doctrine of freedom. To that decision, he dated his recover from a depression with which he had struggled. In other words, he swished himself from a limiting belief to an empowering one. In this case, he decided to run his own brain!

“I think yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier’s second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will–”the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts” –need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume… that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.” (p. xix). From, The thought and Character of William James, Ralph Barton Perry, diary, April, 1870.

Yet because James put so much emphasis upon will, choice, decision, etc., he failed to recognize the technology that we have today in NLP, like swishing consciousness to referents so that we don’t have to constantly use “will” power in keeping ourselves oriented according to our values and desired outcomes.

“Volitional effort is effort of attention. We thus find that we reach the heart of our inquiry into volition when we ask by what process it is that the thought of any given actions comes to prevail stably in the mind. We see that attention with effort is all that any case of volition implies. The essential achievement of the will, in short, when it is most ‘voluntary,’ is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast before the mind. Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will.” (p. 317)

“To sum it all up in a word, the terminus of the psychological process in volition, the point to which the will is directly applied, is always an idea. (p. 322)

The question of fact in the free-will controversy is thus extremely simple. It relates solely to the amount of effort of attention which we can at any time put forth.

The heroic mind does differently. To it, too, the objects are sinister and dreadful, unwelcome, incompatible with wished-for things. But it can face them if necessary, without for that losing its hold upon the rest of life. The world thus find sin the heroic man its worthy match and mate.” (p. 326)

“‘Will you or won’t you have it so?‘ is the most probing question we are every asked; we are asked it every hour of the day and about the largest as well as the smallest, the most theoretical as well as the most practical, things.” (p. 327)

This comprised, for James, his decision destroyer process. He simply ran the meta-level question about his decisions, beliefs, thoughts— “Will you or won’t you have it so?”

Memory as Constructs that Inevitably Change and Grow

James frequently spoke about the very nature of memories and, in fact, made his exploration into memory one of his central themes in his search for understanding consciousness. In the following quotation, James speaks about the plasticity of memory, of the inherent constructive nature of our representations. Before Constructivism as a psychological paradigm became known, James assumed it.

“False memories are by no means rare occurrences, and whenever they occur they distort our consciousness of our Me. The most frequent source of a false memory is the accounts we give to others of our experiences. We quote what we should have said or done… and in the first telling we may be fully aware of the distinction. But ere long the fiction expels the reality from memory and reigns in its stead alone. This is one great source of the fallibility of testimony mean to be quite honest.” (p. 73)

Language

James viewed language as part of our conceptual system. He noted that the letters of words do not typically enter our consciousness separately, as they do when we apprehended them alone. But rather a sentence flashed at once upon the eye functions as a system relative to its words. A conceptual system works to elicit in us sensible objects. In other words, a gestalt arises via words and language system so that while it begins by anchoring sensory-based representations, we then generate higher level concepts about such, and then higher concepts about that, etc.

Thus we bring conceptual understandings to lower level information and when we have disconnected data “with no conception which embraces them together, it is much harder to apprehend several of them at once, and the mind tends to let go of one whilst it attends to another.” (p. 86). In other words, “mind” naturally operates and seeks to operate a meta-mind levels.

Anchoring

Noting the patterns that “mind” takes in its “movements,” James talked about the principles of connection (or association), namely, coexistence, suggestion, resemblance, contrast, contradiction, cause-and-effect, means and end, genus and species, part and whole, substance and property, early and late, large and small, landlord and tenant, master and servant, etc. (p. 121).

“When two elementary brain-processes have been active together or in immediate succession, one of them, on re-occurring, tends to propagate its excitement into the other.” (p. 123, emphasis added)

He also recognized the importance of vividness in an original experience in terms of re-anchoring it later, although James talked in terms of “tracing the course of reproduction between an idea and our mood.” Here he speaks about one-time learnings that get strongly anchored.

“If we have once witnessed an execution, any subsequent conversation or reading about capital punishment will almost certainly suggest images of that particular scene. Thus it is that events lived through only once, and in youth, may come in after-years, by reason of their exciting quality or emotional intensity, to serve as types or instances used by our mind to illustrate any and every occurring topic whose interest is most remotely pertinent to theirs.” (p. 133)

James knew that our anchored referents not only create the categories for our thinking, he knew that they also control our states. Today in NLP we recognize that importance of “state” and state dependent learning, memory, communication, perception and behavior. In the following, we see James noting such, using the old term “temperament” for state.

“The same objects do not recall the same associates when we are cheerful as when we are melancholy. Nothing is more striking than our ability to keep up trains of joyous imagery when we are depressed in spirits. Storm, darkness, war, images of disease, poverty, perishing, and dread afflict unremittingly the imaginations of melancholiacs. And those of sanguine temperament, when their spirits are high, find it impossible to give any permanence to evil forebodings or to gloomy thoughts. In an instant the train of association dances off to flowers and sunshine and images of spring and hope.” (p. 133)

“Time” and Time-Lines

As James explored “time” he noted that it did not exist as an external referent, but an internal one–as a concept. In the following quotations, he labors to identify the submodality qualify of duration in “time.”

“The sensible present has duration. Notice, attend to, the present moment of time. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming. An ideal abstraction, not only never realized in sense. The only fact of our immediate experience is what has been called ‘the specious’ present, a sort of saddle-back of time with a certain length of its own, on which we sit perched, and from which we look in two directions into time.” (p. 147)

“The moment we pass beyond a very few seconds our consciousness of duration ceases to be an immediate perception and becomes a construction more or less symbolic. To realize even an hour, we must count ‘now! now! now! now!’ indefinitely. Each ‘now’ is the feeling of a separate bit of time, and the exact sum of the bits never makes a clear impression on our mind. The longest bit of duration which we can apprehend at once so as to discriminate it from longer or shorter bits of time would seem to be about 12 seconds.” (p. 148)

“Thus we can no more actually perceive a duration than we can perceive an extension, devoid of all sensible content. We are inwardly immersed in what Wundt has somewhere called the twilight of our general consciousness. Our heart-beats, our breathing, the pulses of our attention, fragments of words, or sentences that pass through our imagination, are what people this dim habitat.” (p. 149)

James, in this next quote, writes about the kinesthetic aspect of our “time” representation.

“Empty our minds as we may, some form of changing process remains for us to feel, and cannot be expelled. Awareness of change is thus the condition on which our perception of time’s flow depends; but there exists no reason to suppose that empty time’s own changes are sufficient for the awareness of change to be aroused.”

Next, James reflects on the kinesthetic “feel” of time and relates it to our “time” constructs of past, present, and future. From this he even talks about a time-line–”a horizontal line” to represent the “time” concept.

“The feeling of past time is a present feeling. In reflecting on the modus operandi of our consciousness of time, we are at first tempted to suppose it the easiest thing in the world to understand. Our inner states succeed each other. They know themselves as they are. But this philosophy is too crude, for between the minds’ own changes being successive, and knowing their own succession, lies as broad a chasm as between the object and subject of any case of cognition in the world.”

“A succession of feelings, in and of itself, it not a feeling of succession. And since, to our successive feelings, a feeling of time succession is added, this must be treated as an additional fact requiring its own special elucidation. If we represent the actual time-stream or of any segment of its length by a horizontal line, the thought of the stream or of any segment of its length, past, present, or to come, might be figured in a perpendicular raised upon the horizontal at a certain point.” (p. 152)

“Our intuition or immediate consciousness of pastness hardly carries us more than a few second backward of the present instant of time. Remoter dates are conceived, not perceived; known symbolically by names, such as ‘last week,’ 1850, or thought of by events when happened in them.”

James recognized and wrote about the hypnotic phenomenon that in NLP we describe as “fast” and “slow” time.

“A time filled with varied and interesting experiences seems short in passing, but long as we look back. On the other hand, a tract of time empty of experiences seems long in passing, but in retrospect short.” (p. 150)

“The length in retrospect depends obviously on the multitudinousness of the memories which the time affords. Many objects, events, changes, many subdivisions, immediately widen the view as we look back. Emptiness, monotony, familiarity, make it shrivel up.” (p. 151)

“The same space of time seems shorter as we grow older. The earlier events get forgotten, the result being that no greater multitude of distinct objects remains in the memory. A day full of excitement, with no pause, is said to pass ‘ere we know it.’ A day full of waiting, of unsatisfied desire for change, will seem a small eternity [the structure of boredom]. It comes about whenever, from the relative emptiness of content of a tract of time, we grow attentive to the passage of the time itself. Close your eyes and simply wait to hear someone tell you that a minute has elapsed, and the full length of your leisure with it seems incredible.” (p. 151)

Learning and Memory

For James, a good learning strategy involved utilizing all of the resources from all of the sense modalities, as well as setting up associations for linking things together.

“The ’secret of a good memory’ is thus the secret of forming diverse and multiple associations with every fact we care to retain. …The one who thinks over his experiences most, or weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.” (p. 161).

Why? Because he constantly goes over those items in his mind, compares them, and make a series of them. They will form for him, not so many odd facts, but a concept-system. This explains why the memory items “stick.” James then applied this to effective studying versus “cramming.”

“Let a man early in life set himself the ask of verifying such a theory… and facts will soon cluster and cling to him like grapes on their stem. In a system, every fact is connected with every other by some thought-relation. The reason why cramming is such a bad mode of study is now made clear. Things learned in a few hours, on one occasion, for one purpose, cannot possibly have formed many associations with other things in the mind. Speedy oblivion is the most inevitable fate of all that’s committed to memory in this way.”

“Whereas the same materials taken in gradually, day after day, recurring in different contexts, considered in various relations, associated with other external incidents, and repeatedly reflected on, grow into such a system, form such connections with the rest of the mind’s fabric, lie open to many pathways of approach, that they remain permanent possessions. This is the intellectual reason why habits of continuous application should be enforced in educational establishments.” (p. 163)

The Physiology of “Thought”

Among one of those who first recognized the role of physiology and neurology in “thought,” James posited that all consciousness involves motor factors.

“The whole neural organism, it will be remembered, is, physiologically considered, but a machine for converting stimuli in reactions; and the intellectual part of our life is knit up with but the middle or ‘central’ part of the machine’s operations. Every impression which impinges on the incoming nerves produces some discharge down the outgoing ones, whether we be aware of it or not.” (p. 237)

“We may then lay it down for certain that every representation of a movement awakens in some degree the actual movement which is its object; and awakens it in a maximum degree whenever it is not kept from so doing by an antagonistic representation present simultaneously to the mind. … We do not first have a sensation or thought, and then have to add something dynamic to it to get a movement. Every pulse of feeling which we have is the correlate of some neural activity that is already on its way to instigate a moment.” (p. 293)

Conclusion

As the “father of American Psychology,” William James tremendously impacted the study of psychology. Into psychology he brought both pragmatism and phenomenology. His own pragmatic spirit caused him to ask questions of relevance and usefulness (ecology); his phenomenology of subjective experience enabled him to write in a most engaging narrative style. And, as evident in his writings, he came very close— amazingly close— to creating many of the distinctions and facets of the NLP model.

Bibliography

James, William (1892/ 1961). Psychology: The briefer Course. (Ed. by Gordon Allport). NY: Harper & Row.

Robbins, Anthony (1991). Awaken the Giant Within. NY: A Fireside Book, Simon & Schuster.

WOULD ALFRED ALDER HAVE LIKED NLP?

Published in NLP WORLD, 1997
An Almost Inventor of NLP

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Suppose we made a correlation between Adlerian Psychology (theory and methods) with the model and technology of NLP. Suppose further that we explore the psychological jargon of “Individual Psychology” of the 1920s and translate it into the NLP jargon of the 1990s. Would we find few or many correlations? Would we find the systems compatible or conflictual? Would Alfred Adler have liked NLP? Would he have become a practitioner? After you think about the following correlations, see what you think.

Though packaged in different language, Adlerian psychology and the Neuro-Linguistic Programming model consist of an impressive number of similarities. Many of the factors, presuppositions, and orientations within each system highly correlate. Obviously, the Adlerian model represents a much older theory of personality (1920) and traces its roots to Freudian psychoanalysis. NLP (1975) traces its immediate roots to Gestalt psychology, Information Processing theories, and Family Systems. It expresses an outgrowth of Phenomenology, Constructivism, and Humanistic Psychology.

ADLERIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Gilliland, James and Bowman (1989) present the following overview of the general personality theory to whicih Adlerian psychology gave birth. The following features and characteristics provide some broad strokes about this theory.

Humanistic —it values the well-being of individual and society over that of organizations.
Holistic—it views the person as an indivisible entity.
Phenomenological—it sees each person’s world from his or her viewpoint.
Teleological—it views the person as pulled by the subjective future rather than pushed by the objective past, as creatively striving for goal attainment rather than reacting automatically to external events.
Field-theoretical—it considers the individual’s feelings, thoughts, and actions as transactions with the social and physical environment.
Socially oriented— it views the person as actively responding to and contributing to society.
Operational— in its methodology (p. 40).

Adlerian psychology became a major “school” of psychology during the 1920s after Alfred Alder left Sigmund Freud. Adlerian psychology, in fact, represented a major shift from psychoanalysis. Over the years it has continued to manifest a flexible adaptability which has allowed it to become quite eclectic.

Adlerian psychology has also directly and indirectly influenced other “schools” of psychological thought. It has informed the Existential approach, the person-centered approach, Gestalt, Transactional analysis, Behaviorist, Reality theory, and Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) (Corey, 1991) as well as the whole field of Cognitive Psychology. Albert Ellis specifically detailed the relationship between Adler and RET (Ellis, 1971).

NLP TRANSLATIONS OF ADLERIAN PSYCHOLOGY

The Adlerian views personhood, as does NLP, from the phenomenological perspective. Both begin with an understanding of the importance of a person’s unique perspective. In this sense, both systems accept the philosophical point-of-view of constructionism— the people construct their own private version of reality for their own weal or woe.

Consequently, this leads practitioners in both fields to recognize and deal with each person by respecting their unique perceptions. Adlerians call this, the person’s “private logic,” NLP practitioners describe it as that person’s unique “model of the world.”

For Adlerians, clients develop their own “style of life,” with both fictional and realistic goals. NLP says that people have their unique strategies and programs for functioning. Adlerians focus on people “striving for superiority” as they fulfill their “social interest.” NLP takes a broader perspective, believing that any given person’s drives and values depends on the maps they have constructed about what matters most.

Style of Life

Adler concluded that the most central formative factors to understand in someone concerned their individual “style of life.” In fact, Adler invented the now-commonplace term “lifestyle.” This facet of lifestyle consisted of two sub-pieces, each that dealt with the person’s early history. First, their place in the family constellation and second, the nature and quality of the family atmosphere (rejecting, suppressing, over-protecting, disparaging, affirming, etc.).

NLP practitioners talk about “lifestyle” in terms of those component pieces that make up one’s style of life, namely, his or her strategies, states, orientations, beliefs, etc. Adler’s identification of the contexts out of which a person develops and learns his or her lifestyle describes a facet that NLP has played down and gives less attention. NLP does not deny that family constellation place and nature/quality of family context plays a crucial role in the formation of personality. NLP simply focuses on what mental maps a person draws about such.

Adlerians understand the importance of the family constellation and early recollections and so use these system-oriented factors in understanding early decisions, goals, understandings, and life-style. NLP puts even less stress on the facts of early childhood and more on the client’s decisions and beliefs about those facts. Using Time-Line therapy, a hypnotic process for age-regression, NLP provides techniques for re-processing those facts and creating more useful “models of the world.”

Private Logic

Adler invented a special phrase for the way children and adults think. He called it the person’s “private logic.” By “private logic” he meant the individual’s hidden reasons (agendas) in life (their fictional goals), their fictional conceptualizations about how to reach those goals (their life-style), and their understandings about their own identity, and the identity of the world. In speaking about “private logic” Adler spoke about the irrational ideas, beliefs, goals, life-styles, etc. that arise from it and which cause maladjustment.

Such finds correspondence in NLP as the person’s unique “model of the world.” This contains limiting and enhancing beliefs, strategies, states, resources, etc. This refers to a person’s individual “model or map of the world” which then creates his or her “frame” (as in, frame-of-reference).

Major Life Tasks

It might surprise some to know that “Individual Psychotherapy” (Adlerian) put a significant emphasis on the social role. Yet beyond the irony of the name “Individual Psychotherapy,” Alder believed that the goals of belonging, connecting, relating, etc. played centrally to the formation and expression of personality. Accordingly, he spoke about the importance of the major life tasks of friendship, occupation, loving relations with family, sex and intimacy, self-acceptance, and making a contribution. How one does in these areas of competence determines one’s adjustment or maladjustment to life.

Adler spoke about the life tasks of work, vocation, friends, family, self, and love. In NLP we speak about how each person generates a mental map that resourcefully fits one’s station in life in order to function productively. NLP speaks about modeling excellence in those who already can accomplish behaviors and can generate experiences worth repeating.

Similarly, NLP assumes that we learn our models of the world from our social contexts. As a communication model, in fact, NLP recognizes that meaning itself critically depends on context. Accordingly, the first applications that people sought for NLP concerned relationships, communications, business relations, therapy, etc.

Adler considered the life task of friendship as probably the best indicator of a person’s “social interest.” Relationships with significant friends expresses one’s general attitude toward society. Because people can freely enter into friendships, how they enter, to what extent they take that risk, how they adapt themselves to others and create cooperative relationships, whether they put more value on solitude and detachment or alliances and connection–all of these factors provide psychological insight about the person’s “style of life.”

Work provides another important road of insight. This makes sense when you consider that work consumes the greatest portion of our waking hours. In like manner, our attitude toward work, how we work, the way we adapt to the work environment and to people in the work environment, etc. again underscores our style of life, level of happiness and adjustment. NLP speaks to these concerns not by making similar statements, but by addressing specific strategies, states, and resources for more effectively achieving, producing, becoming creative, etc.

Adler defined the life task of loving relationships as concerning family relations and opposite sex relations. The ability to enter and maintain significant connection powerfully impacts our capacity for intimacy and happiness.

Adler looked upon these life tasks as a meta-communication about a person. He viewed them as describing the person’s basic adaptation to “reality.” For him, successful adaptation depends upon striving toward appropriate goals with others, with cooperating, adapting, etc. rather than inappropriate goals, conquering, win over, defeating, being superior, etc. NLP talks about such things in terms of “the ecology check/question” about whether any particular set of behaviors work and enhance life or not. Our adaptation to life depends upon the accuracy and usefulness of the maps that we bring to life.

Fictional Goals

Adlerian psychology talks a lot about “fictional goals.” For him this referred to those fictional ideas, beliefs, and understandings that people inappropriately adopt as children and which have no reference in the objective world. In NLP, we speak about the same as limiting and unproductive maps/models. Dinkmeyer, Dinkmeyer, and Speery (1987) write,

“Fictions start early in life. A newborn child enters an environment that is by no means neutral. That environment is represented by the family constellation. Through observation, exploration, trial and error, and feedback from this primary environment, the child quickly learns what will and will not work.” (p. 34)

This shows the cognitive nature of both Adlerian psychology and NLP. Because children strive to “make sense” of their world, they operate in their early home environment as active and passionate “learners.” They do so by creating mental understandings and perspectives in order to navigate through life. Yet because their rational skills do not express the best logic or reasoning skills and because their ego-strength has not become well developed, they make many illogical and sometimes stupid judgments about themselves, the world, how to cope, etc. This leads to illogical thinking and erroneous judgments–ill-formed belief statements (NLP).

Both systems see change, transformation, healing in terms of a psycho-educational model. Both reject the notion that people exist as broken or sick in nature. Both assume people have become mis-in-formed (how inwardly “formed” by information based on error and mistakes in logic. Both primarily focus on providing individuals with more accurate or useful information for adjusting themselves to the realities outside their skins. Adlerians ferret out mistaken goals, fictional objectives, erroneous ideas; NLP meta-models linguistic statements that we evaluate as structurally and semantically ill-formed.

Teleological Orientation

Adlerians speaks about behavior as purposeful and goal oriented. One’s teleological orientation arises from the existential concerns of “where are we going?” and “what are we striving for?” Adler called the imagined central goal that guides a person’s behavior “fictional finalism.” The philosopher Hans Veihinger influenced Adler that people live by fictions (views of how the world should function). “Only when I am perfect can I be secure.” “Only when I am important can I be accepted.”

NLP speaks about desired outcomes and have developed a criteria for well-formedness in desired outcomes that enable a person to generate realistic, achievable, measurable, and empowering outcomes. The well-formedness criteria enable one to update ill-formed and maladaptive goals.

Striving for Significance

Adler further said that the central fictional goal for people involved becoming a “somebody” by striving for significance in the eyes of others. Ironically, such striving for significance and superiority first arises from a realistic recognition in the child–his or her inferiority as a child. Adler used the term “superiority” not to mean being superior to others, but rather attaining a greater degree of one’s own potential. For him, striving for superiority involved a striving from a lower to a higher state.

For moving from some unresourceful present state to some more empowering state (NLP). Human beings cope with feelings of helplessness by striving for competence and mastery according to Adler.

If striving for superiority, in the sense of attaining a greater degree of one’s own potential and overcoming feelings of inferiority and helplessness, summarizes the Adlerian approach, then NLP speaks about moving from unresourceful present states to more enhancing resourceful and empowering states.

Adlerians address a client’s assets and strengths to encourage them to take risks and develop social interest. NLPers speak about accessing one’s resources to find the internal empowerment that allows them to experience more excellence in life. Modeling provides a great source of encouragement in NLP inasmuch as the key to human subjectivity involves the strategy that a person has for achieving various experiences and responses.

Only when a person seeks to become a somebody exclusively “in the eyes of others” does this become the heart of maladjustment. Dinkmeyer (1987):

“Neurotics vacillate between inferiority and superiority. They are highly ambitious but lack courage. Avoidance, displacement, projection, retreat, helplessness, and detouring all describe how they save face when confronted with the ultimate threat— being seen as a failure.” (Ibid. 41)

Here the “other-referent” meta-program of NLP describes someone over-doing a resource.

The Therapeutic Relationship

Adlerians consider a good client/therapist relationship as one between equals based upon cooperation, mutual trust, respect, confidence, and alignment of goals. NLP speaks about the same in terms of pacing or matching the client’s model of the world. NLP teaches pacing as a hypnotic process on both the verbal (linguistic) and non-verbal (neurological) levels. This enables them to “enter into the client’s world.”

Adlerians “explore the individual’s dynamics by seeking to understand their lifestyle, see how it affects their current functioning in all the tasks of life.”

“They operate on the assumption that it is the interpretation that people develop about themselves, others, the world, and life that governs what they do. Lifestyle assessment aims at uncovering the private interpretations and private logical of the individual.” (Corey, p.148)

NLP practitioners meta-model and pace clients in order to understand their particular model of the world. By listening for their language patterns, watching eye-accessing cues, noticing non-verbal analogue responses, etc. they identify the client’s strategies for generating whatever experiences and behaviors that they do. This then enables them to specify what and how the person can make changes to enrich their lives.

Adler said that to engage in therapeutic interventions, the therapist must first make the client feel comfortable (pace their reality, NLP) since they will undoubtedly use their current inferiority/superiority perceptions to interpret the counseling process itself. Here Adlerians talk most about “encouragement” as a therapeutic technique to enable the client to face themselves, their goals, their life-style, etc. NLP speaks about facilitating the client’s resourcefulness.

Because Adler saw discouragement as the basic condition that prevents people from functioning at their best, he recommended the antidote of encouragement. To “induce a state of encouragement” (NLP) can take many forms: highlighting the client’s strengths and assets, providing more appropriate and useful goals, taking courage to act on one’s dreams, etc. Again, the process of facilitating resourcefulness!

Coming to understand and identify the client’s beliefs, perceptions, and feelings and the movement and pattern of his/her life then describes task one of therapy. The counselor “reads” the client by noticing and observing every expression, word, thought, feeling, verbal and non-verbal presented. (Sounds like noticing various Meta-Programs, NLP). The counselor uses early memories, birth order, family constellation, family atmosphere, dreams, current life-tasks, priorities, behaviors, style of approach/avoidance, etc. to determine the client’s overall life-pattern.

At the point of therapeutic communication, the Adlerian begins with basic listening and supportive skills (pacing), then moves on to restatements, empathetic listening, reflections, and interpretations. From there the Adlerian will make meta-comments on non-verbal behaviors, here-and-now experiences, discrepancies between what the clients says and does, confrontation of mistaken beliefs, perspectives, private logic, and destructive behavior. In their repertoire also reside paradoxical recommendations (prescribing the symptom, NLP), creating images to assist clients in seeing the absurdity their goals or styles (submodality exaggerations! NLP).

Psychopathology

Adler identified several factors that contributed to maladjustment. He specified the “parenting errors” like abuse and spoiling, mistaken opinions about oneself and the world, over-coping with distorted response styles, etc. For Adler, the obsessive-compulsive person stands as the prototype of all neurosis. The obsessive-compulsive person’s indecisiveness and doubt, deprecation of others, godlike strivings, and focus on minutiae represent routine safeguards that exclude him or her from the social mainstream.

Adlerian psychology has little use of personality, aptitude, achievement, interest, or intelligence tests per se. The most important diagnostic issue involves the client’s life-style (one’s overall pattern that influences and controls thinking, feeling, and behaving). This lifestyle arises from the person’s private logic and expresses their life-plan of realistic and fictional goals.

Cognitive

Adler (1956) fully accepted what has become the basic tenet of the cognitive psychologies, namely, “Behavior is clearly a function of perception. We tend to behave according to how things appear to us, and when our perception changes, our behavior changes accordingly. Thus, perception (“frame” or “map” NLP) of the situation often determines behavior and belief more than the reality of the situation.

“Individual psychology, then, draws its conclusions not from a person’s possessions but from his or her use of those possessions. These applications and, more important, the manner in which the individual ‘experiences’ them are the bricks and mortar with which an attitude toward life is builtl.” (pp. 250-256)

In writing that, one expects Adler to quote Korzybski’s “map/territory” distinction at any minute and then to suggest the reframing principle that when one changes the frame-of-reference within which an idea, thought, or belief lies, one changes its meanings which then leads to a transformation in our thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Therapy and therapeutic inventions, for Adlerians, focus on ferreting out the client’s goals and fault beliefs about life tasks and providing re-education about the reality of social life, self-concept and definition, life-style goals and methods, etc. Sounds like NLP, does it not? First the information gathering about the person’s psychological world, some map-adjustment information, and some shifting of maps to those that allow one to reach their desired outcomes.

Therapeutic Interventions

The therapeutic interventions which seem fairly unique to Adlerian psychology include the following.

1) Asking “The Question,” i.e. “If I can a pill that would make this symptom go away, how would things be different in your life?” The “as if” frame in NLP.

2) Catching oneself. This involves catching oneself in some irrational behavior and designating it a “mental stop sign” that thereafter will signal the person to “Stop!” Ah, a Pattern Interrupt!

3) Acting “as if.” The therapist provides instructions for a client to act out the role that they want to learn. By trying out the role they discover new things and become a different person in the process.

4) Spitting in the Soup. This involves identifying a self-defeating behavior and then spoiling it by making it extremely unpalatable (“spitting in the soup”). This changes the behavior so that it takes the relish out of it. Another Pattern Interrupt.

5) Pushing the Button. This involves “having the client alternatively picture pleasant and unpleasant experiences and noting the feelings that accompany the experiences. By alternating experiences and feelings the clients become aware that they control their emotions, and not vice-versa” (Ibid. p. 53).

6) Encouragement. The primary technique based upon the assumption that clients do not exist as sick individuals, but suffer from feeling discouragement.

7) Midas Technique. This involves exaggerating a client’s neurotic demands based on the King Midas story of giving someone precisely what they wanted and helping them see how it can become a curse!

Pleasing Someone. Getting a client to re-enter the social environment by going out and doing something nice for someone.

9) Avoiding the Tar Baby. The “Tar Baby” refers to the perceptions on life which the client carries into counseling and attempts to fit onto the counselor. By responding in ways contrary to the expectations, it upsets the system.

10) Early Recollections. Adler used this as a means for assessing the person’s life-style.

Overall, Adlerian psychology focuses on educating clients about themselves, their style of life, their fictional goals versus their realistic ones, social interest, perceptions, etc. It operates from the underlying belief is that people can learn better and adopt more healthy and appropriate coping styles. It does not see people as sick, as victims, or as fated for dysfunction.

Summary

What do you think? Alfred Adler— a NLPer? Would he have appreciated the NLP model? I think so. My own studies in Adlerian psychology certainly prepared me for, and made me received to, the NLP model.

References:

Adler, Alfred. (1927/ 1954). Understanding human nature. (Trans. by W. Beran Wolfe). NY: Fawcett.

Adler, Aflred. (1931/ 1958). What life should mean to you. NY: Capricorn Books. Ed. by Alan Porter.

Dinkmeyer, D.D., Dinkmeyer D.C. Jr., & Speery, L. (1987). Adlerian counseling and psychotherapy (2nd ed.). Columbus, OH: Chas. E. Merrill.

Dreikurs, Rudolf, R. (1953). Fundamentals of Adlerian psychology. Chicago: Alfred Adler Institute.

Ellis, Albert. (1971). The Journal of Individual Psychology. (May, 1971).

Gilliland, Burl E., James, Richard K., and Bowman, James T. (1998). Theories and strategies in counseling and psychotherapy. (second ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Orgler, Hertha (1963). Alfred Adler: The man and his work. New York: New American Library.

Porter, Alan (1958) (Ed.). Alfred Adler: What life should mean to you. New York: Capricorn.

Veihinger, Hans. (1924). The philosophy of ‘as if.’ London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul. Ltd.

Author:

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Psychologist, researcher, modeler, prolific author.

Introducing Neuro-Semantics

Not Quite Everything About Everything
You Want to Know About the New Field of —2004

INTRODUCING NEURO-SEMANTICS^®

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

We first introduced the new cutting-edge field of Neuro-Semantics in our book Mind-Lines: Lines that Change Minds (1997). Since then we have also published other works in this field of Neuro-Semantics. These include Figuring Out People: Design Engineering Using Meta-Programs (1998), Time-Lining: Patterns for Adventuring in Time (1998), and The Secrets of Magic (1998).

In this calendar year (1999), we plan to bring out more pieces to highlight and distinguish Neuro-Semantics from NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and GS (General Semantics). The most radical and revolutionary of these will be the work regarding the so-called “submodality” model. We’ve entitled it, Meta-Stating Genius: Distinctions of Excellence. It is scheduled for publication in August, 1999.

Since we have had many questions about this new field, this paper will utilize the following questions that we most frequently hear people ask to navigate our way through the process of setting off the distinctive features of Neuro-Semantics.

∙ What is Neuro-Semantics and where did it come from?

∙ How does Neuro-Semantics differ from Neuro-Linguistic Programming?

∙ How does Neuro-Semantics differ from General Semantics?

∙ What uniquely distinguishes this new field?

∙ What central principles govern this domain?

∙ What is The Institute of Neuro-Semantics^®?

∙ Who are the principal players in the Institutes of Neuro-Semantics?

∙ What is their agenda, motivation, and intentions?

What is Neuro-Semantics and Where did it Come From?

Neuro-Semantics began in 1996 as the brain-child of Michael Hall and Bobby Bodenhamer as we engaged in various conversations about Meta-States, NLP, and General Semantics. Out of those conversations we wrote several articles regarding the current state of affairs in NLP. The first one we entitled, “The Downside of NLP.” This article, as well as some follow up articles about the state of disarray, bad P.R., the Bandler lawsuit, the over-emphasis and vague emphasis on “installing learnings unconsciously,” etc. were published in Anchor Point. Nelson Penaylillo (NLP Trainer in Australia), Peter Kean (NLP Trainer, Washington DC), and Robert Olic (NLP Trainer, Philadelphia, PA) were the first to thereafter joined in the conversation.

In extending, expanding, and enriching both NLP and GS, we (Hall and Bodenhamer) first sought simply to unite and synthesize the best pieces from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and General Semantics. Our passion was to get more credibility and validity for the field that seemed so disorganized and torn by competition in the USA. Simultaneously, we were developing numerous new patterns using the Meta-States Model. This was beginning to revolutionize things and it was Dr. Bodenhamer who first saw this vision in the Meta-States model. Consequently we choose the term Neuro-Semantics to designate the new enriched field.

Now the term Neuro-Semantics goes back to Alfred Korzybski. The father of General Semantics introduced both phrases, “neuro-linguistic” and “neuro-semantic,” in 1936 in some of his papers. Later, they showed up in his 1941 Preface to his classic work, Science and Sanity. In Korzybski’s writings, you will find both terms used pretty much synonymously. Here, however, following the Meta-States Model^®, we have arbitrary chosen to use Neuro-Linguistics to refer to the Modeling, Methodology, and Technology that has grown out of the field of NLP and Neuro-Semantics to refer to the newer and more extensive Modeling, Patterning, Methodology, and Technology that has resulted from the Meta-States Model. In the next section you will find a fuller discrimination between NLP and Neuro-Semantics.

How does Neuro-Semantics differ from Neuro-Linguistic Programming?

NLP emerged as a happen-chance from a modeling project of Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir. This happened as the young college student, Richard Bandler, discovered his genius of imitation of their language patterns. Linguistics Professor, John Grinder, began working with Richard to model the structure of the therapeutic wizards. This brought them into relationship with Dr. Robert Spitzer, who became their first publisher (Science and Behavior Books). And that, in turn, led to their association with the genius of Gregory Bateson (anthropologist, linguist, cybernetician) when Spitzer moved them onto his property. They became neighbors of Bateson. And that connection, in turn, then led them to Milton Erickson and hypnosis.

Using the new formulations of the then-emerging Cognitive Psychology Models, Bandler and Grinder tapped into the elegance of the TOTE Model of Miller, Galanter, and Pribram. This gave them a linear way to track the processes within “the black box” that Behaviorism had always avoided. Out of this came the NLP Strategy Model— a Model for Modeling Excellence. This model primarily operates like a flow chart of consciousness, tracking “mind” linearly. In Neuro-Semantics, we add the vertical dimension and so tease out the hidden meta-levels within the structure of subjectivity.

In the beginning, NLP sought to avoid all theory, explanatory models, and “the why” question by presenting itself as strictly focused on how do you do that? Accordingly, NLP arose first and foremost as a Communication Model. It explored how the body (Neuro, e.g. the nervous system, physiology, neurology, etc.) gets Programmed by the use of various Languages (linguistics).

By way of contrast, Neuro-Semantics goes beyond the linear “flow chart” analysis of the Structure of Subjective Experience by focusing more fully on the Meta-Levels that support and drive the movement of consciousness along its TOTEs. By tracking the vertical dimensions of human processing, it moves into higher level Meanings much more fully. Accordingly, it tracks and models the neuro-semantic structures of meanings at higher (and typically, unconscious) levels.

Both Neuro-Semantics and NLP operate as interdisciplinary approaches, utilizing models from many psychologies. This includes cybernetics, computer science, neuro-biology, family systems, anthropology, etc.

Neuro-Semantics highlights much more fully and extensively the existence of multiple meta-levels and logical levels than does NLP. Korzybski (1933/1994) labeled the higher level abstractions as “second order” and “third order” abstractions. He suggested that much study and exploration needs to be done in this area of reflexivity about how we evaluate and then evaluate our evaluations and by that create higher levels of “mind.”

Bateson (1972) picked up on this in how he used meta-levels and logical types in his theories of schizophrenia, play, humor, aesthetics, etc. He and the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto laid so much of the foundation for NLP (especially in the 1974 book, Change by Watzlawick, Weakland, & Fisch).

NLP, as a meta-discipline itself, certainly has meta-levels (the Meta-Model, Meta-Programs). And co-developer, Robert Dilts has contributed numerous meta-level models. But nowhere in NLP had a fully descriptive and comprehensive model about Meta-Levels emerged until the development of the Meta-States^® Model (Hall 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998). This was recognized by the International NLP Trainer’s Association in 1995 in their award for Meta-States as “the most significant contribution to NLP in 1994—1995.”

In many ways, the Meta-States Model has turned NLP upside down. And it has done so in such a simple way. By merely changing the operational metaphor of “depth” inherited from Transformational Grammar, and adopting the “height” metaphor, Meta-States reformulated NLP. Dr. Graham Dawes noted this in his early reviews of Meta-States and Dragon Slaying commenting that Meta-States will be the model that “ate NLP.” Others have commented that Meta-States outframes NLP as it sets up higher frames for the processes of NLP. If this sounds like we think Neuro-Semantics will replace NLP, we would like to add that we see it in a different function, namely, as extending, continuing, and evolving the development that began with Korzybski, Bateson, Bandler, Grinder, Dilts, etc.

In the Meta-States Model, the nature of self-reflexivity has finally been given its full due. In this way, the model provides a way to track thoughts-about-thoughts, feelings-about-feelings, as our inevitable and inescapable meta-thinking, meta-feeling, and meta-responding generates layers upon layers of cognition. This flexible model provides a way to identify the ever-changing hierarchy of human consciousness, without becoming a rigid way. The levels themselves shift and change. And true enough, while this makes for seeming complexity in human “mind” and experience, the ordering of the Meta-Level Principles formats and structures that complexity. This means that the plastic and flexible nature of meta-levels whereby any thought can reflect back onto itself or onto another thought at any level does not have to create confusion or chaos. We can track it. We can model it as a system.

While the recursive nature of thought-feeling does create complexity, it does not create chaos. Systemic complexity contains structure. So even though it may at first appear as the complexity of chaos, with a meta-level model like Meta-States we can easily discover an ordering at a higher level. And as this distinguishes different levels of “thought”— this provides a new and profound understanding in NLP. We have designated this as the beginning of Neuro-Semantics. This Meta-Level Model thus provides a way of distinguishing such mental phenomena as:

∙ Beliefs — Validated Thoughts-about-Thoughts

∙ Values — Valued Thoughts-about-Thoughts

∙ Understandings— Extensive systems of Thoughts-about-Thoughts

∙ Decisions — Choiced Thoughts-about-Thoughts

∙ Identity — Beliefs about Thoughts-about-”Self” Concepts

∙ Concepts — Extensive (simple or complex) Understandings about Domains of Understandings

∙ Categories — conceptual sorting of Concepts

∙ Reasons —higher level structures used as explanatory constructs

∙ Etc.

As an aside, I should here mention the extreme limitation of the term “thought.” By itself, the term reflects a very limited, Aristotelian, and primitive term—an Elementalism. Using the principles of General Semantics, we know that “thought” includes “emotion,” hence the awkward yet more sane mapping of “thought-feeling.” So to use “thought” sanely we have to do so from a non-elementalistic perspective. For people in NLP, this provides a new piece straight from GS that was not in the original Meta-Model. You will find it in the expanded Meta-Model in The Secrets of Magic.

With the systemic nature of self-reflexive thought-feeling looping recursively back onto itself creating layers of consciousness and the higher level structures (the “mental” phenomena), we have states-about-states or Meta-States. This sets up systemic processing. It generates logical levels in our “thinking-emoting.” It sets up attractors in a self-organizing system. And these run by certain higher level principles— all articulated as the Meta-Stating Principles.

Now we can begin to sort out different kinds of meanings. We can sort out linkage “meaning,” previously known as Pavlovian conditioning or Associative Meanings. It goes further. It introduces Contextual Meanings— the meanings that arise from higher mental contexts. These higher level abstractions of “meanings” into which we categorize and attribute significance to things thereby generates our Semantic or Conceptual States. And with this, we introduce yet another new distinction in NLP.

I trust that by now you can recognize that in these ways, Neuro-Semantics incorporates higher level “meanings” into the structure of subjectivity. Our “states” involve the primary level neuro-linguistic thoughts-and-feelings in response to something out there in the world. That defines a Primary State. A Meta-State involves more. It involves our thoughts-feeling about our thoughts, emotions, states, memories, imaginations, concepts, etc. It involves our meta-responses to previous responses.

There is a lot more to Neuro-Semantics than this (and more being developed every week), but this does begin to offer a set of distinctions. In summary, notice the following chart.

NLP

Neuro-Semantics

Linear Processing of the Structure of Experience
TOTE Strategy Analysis
Linear Flow Chart Tracking Consciousness
Separate Models for various meta-phenomena (i.e. Values, Beliefs, etc.)
Confusion of All “States” as the Same
Lack of how Meta-Model & Meta-Programs Relate & Interface
“Sleight of Mouth” Patterns
Confusion of Orientational Metaphor— up and down: depth (core) and height
“Submodalities” — Patterns, Technologies, etc.

Meta-Level Processing
Vertical Logical Levels Analysis
Recursiveness/ Reflexivity
Systemic & Holistic Model embracing all of the Meta-Phenomena
Distinction between Primary States, Meta-States, Gestalt States
Clarification about the three Meta-Domains as
Interactive & Redundant — The Systemic 3 Model.
Mind-Lines— Conversational Reframing ordered in a logical level format that includes deframing, reframing, outframing, etc.
Clarity about the Orientational Metaphors— Recognition of the representational distinctions as actually Meta-Modalities
Introduction of Meta-Detailing as the heart of genius
Meta-Programs revitalized as early formations of Meta-States
Canopies of Consciousness and Attractors of Self-Organizing Systems

How does Neuro-Semantics differ from General Semantics?

General Semantics began with Alfred Korzybski (1933) and continues today as a viable discipline and field in its own right. As an engineer, Korzybski sought to redesign the old Aristotelian language as our primary way of mapping the territory. He wanted to do this to increase our ability at effective adjustment to increase humanity’s sanity. The old mapping involved several unsane factors: identification, elementalism, confusion of levels, etc.

NLP brought over many of the features of General Semantics into its Meta-Model of language. More recently, we have identified many of the Korzybskian linguistic distinctions not brought over and have added them to the Meta-Model (Hall, Secrets of Magic, 1998).

Neuro-Semantics differs from General Semantics by its NLP emphasis on modeling excellence and designing patterns, technologies, and new methodologies for human design engineering (a phrase, by the way, originated by Korzybski, 1921). In Neuro-Semantics we have begun to create a Merging of the Models (NLP and GS). What we began in November 1998 in London as a three-day training program under the title, The Merging of the Models, will eventually result in a second modeling — or Engineering Training using other as-of-yet unmined treasures of Korzybski.

What Uniquely Distinguishes this new field?

Neuro-Semantics stands out as both “enriched” NLP and “enriched” General Semantics. Returning to the sources of NLP, General Semantics, Bateson’s works in anthropology, schizophrenia, Levels of Learning, and cybernetics, MRI Institute, Cognitive Psychology (Miller, Galanter, Pribram), etc., we have sought to establish Neuro-Semantics on solid, scientific, and highly researched studies.

NLP, for a variety of reasons, has seemed to have received lots of negative and harmful Public Relations and General Semantics has seemed to locate itself in a small and isolated community. For these (and other reasons), we have sought to step aside just enough from NLP and GS so that we can both continue the adventure of modeling and engineering human excellence but not tied down to the limitations of the two source disciplines.

I should mention here that we in the Institute of Neuro-Semantics are not the only ones who have been moving in this direction. Canadian Dennis Chong, M.D. and Roye Fraser of Blue Dell Systems, both NLP trainers, have in recent years written about Neuro-Semantic Programming (NSP). As noted on our web site (www.neurosemantics.com), Dr. Chong has written several books mentioned NSP, Don’t Ask Why, Language Elegance, and Knife Without Pain. While we have some differences with these gentlemen, the basic thrust and emphasis corresponds to an amazing degree.

Neuro-Semantics has also found new life and excitement in Chaos theory, Self-Organization Theory, the newer developments in Cognitive Psychology, Performance Coaching, Brief Psychotherapy, REBT, Glasser’s Reality Therapy/ Control Theory, and many other fields.

What Central Principles govern this domain?

First and foremost of the principles that govern Neuro-Semantics is the Bateson principle that “The higher levels govern (modulate, drive, organize) the lower levels.” Meta-levels serve as the frame-of-reference for the activity (thinking, feeling, responding) that occurs at the levels lower to the frame. The meta-level thus operates as an attractor in a self-organizing system. From this we have identified numerous other principles.

Someone (or something) will always set the frame of reference. The question becomes, “Who set the frame?” Count on your Meta-State becoming your unconscious frames— your “way of being in the world,” your attitude

Whoever sets the frame will govern the experience (run the game!). Since higher frames govern—and since somebody also sets it, the person who sets the frame thereby takes charge of the subsequent experiences. The resulting thoughts, ideas, concepts, beliefs, emotions, behaviors, language, problems, solutions, and experiences derive their existence from the frame. Frames govern.

The whole determines the parts and from the parts, the whole emerges. This speaks about the systemic nature of the mind-body system. It speaks about the gestalt nature of our neuro-linguistics processes. The system that emerges from the meta-levels that govern the lower levels brings about an overall gestalt (or configuration of interactive parts) which in turn, define the character of the whole.

In outframing, we set up a higher level frame-of-reference that will take over. The power to identify a frame enables us to step aside from a frame and to set a whole new frame. Doing this transforms everything. It performs meta-level “magic” in that it installs a new self-organizing attractor at the top of the semantic system.

What we call “experience” differs radically and significantly at each level. Korzbyski described these in his “levels of abstraction” model regarding how the nervous system abstracts at different levels. We can use the same word/s at the different levels as multiordinal terms —terms that have no specific meaning until we specify at which level we refer.

Reflexivity endows consciousness with systemic processes and characteristics. Reflexivity describes the mechanism that drives these levels of abstraction and these meta-level experience. This refers to the fact that our consciousness can reflect back onto itself or its products (thoughts, emotions, beliefs, values, decisions, specific concepts, etc.). As it does, it sets up feed-back and feed-forward processes and thereby creates a circular system.

Meta-level disorientation and conflict can create living hells. Generally speaking (numerous exceptions do exist), whenever we bring negative thoughts-and-feelings (states) against ourselves or any facet of ourselves, we put ourselves at odds with ourselves. And when our self-relationships (relation to ourselves) become disturbed, we begin to loop around in vicious downward self-reinforcing cycles. And when self-disturbed (self-condemning, self-contempting, self-repressing, self-hating, etc.), this then creates a disturbance for all of our relationships with others. This creates neurosis, psychosis, personality disorders, character disorders, etc.

Paradox frequently governs meta-level solutions for health, integration, balance, and empowerment. The only way to rid ourselves of unwanted thoughts, emotions, behaviors, habits, etc. involves, paradoxically, welcoming, accepting, appreciating, and celebrating that very thought, emotion, behavior, etc. By welcoming it into consciousness we can take counsel of it, reality check it, learn from it, etc. To not reckon with it leads to unuseful suppression, repression, self-rejection, etc.

Setting a frame necessitates neuro-linguistic energy & repetition. How do we actually set a frame or establish a meta-level State? Merely “thinking” or even “feeling” will not do it. We can think, know, feel, and have awarenesses that do not establish a higher level frame-of-reference. Here we need to utilize the natural processes of how our brains operate—we need to use drama, energy, repetition, etc.

Altering higher level frames alters Identity and Destiny. You can’t change what you do (so that it lasts in a pervasive and generative way), without also changing who you are. Does your higher frame of self-definition support the change? Your behavior is like a printout of your Operating Programs.

What are some of the New Techniques & Patterns that have already emerged from Neuro-Semantics?

At this point in time we have not made a full account of the scores of pattens and technologies that have arisen. Every month in Meta-States Journal we have published at least one new or adapted pattern. There you will find more than twenty fully described patterns. (We also have most of those in outline form in Secrets of Meta-States, the Training Manual). You can locate 16 new Time-Lining Patterns in the book by that title, and technologies in the remaking of Meta-Programs (Figuring Out People).

∙ Conceptual Positions (the Perceptual Positions reformatted as a Logical Level System and incorporating Semantics.

∙ Meta-Yesing: A Ten-Minute Belief Change Pattern.

∙ Inserting Resources Pattern

∙ Meta-Detailing: The heart of Genius (see Meta-Stating Genius)

∙ Modeling with Meta-Levels (see NLP: Going Meta)

What is The Institute of Neuro-Semantics^®?

Who are the Principal Players in the Institutes of Neuro-Semantics?

It began when Michael Hall and Bob Bodenhamer filled for trademarks for Neuro-Semantics and Meta-States in 1997. The Registration of the Trademarks were finally obtained in 1998 (Registration numbers: 2,210,336 and 2,199,913). During this time, Dr. Bodenhamer established The First Institute of Neuro-Semantics in Gastonia NC. Later, Robert Olic (Olic Performance Seminars) began sponsoring Neuro-Semantic Trainings by Michael Hall on the east coast.

We established Meta-States Journal in 1997 as a monthly publication for Neuro-Semantics. It promotes and markets much of the current research and discoveries, training schedules, responses from around the world, and much more. We have also created a website at www.neurosemantics.com.

What is the Agenda, Motivation, and Intentions of those Associated with Neuro-Semantics?

The purpose (agenda and motivation) of The Institute of Neuro-Semantics is to continue the exciting research and modeling into the adventure of human design engineering using the tools of General Semantics, NLP, and Meta-States.

The design of this? To engineer human excellence by modeling the best, by identifying the structure of Excellence, and by designing afresh new forms of human excellence in all fields.

And the meta-outcome of that? To enable people to find, discover, and actualize their best — to consciously enter into more experiences of Flow (Czikszentmihalyi), Positive Addiction (Glasser), Genius (Bandler, Grinder, Dilts, etc.), to empower people to run their own brains and to manage their meta-minds, and to achieve high performance whether it be in career, relationships, personal development, spirituality, health, or whatever.

Historical Development of the Meta-States Model

(Compiled by Denis Bridoux, NLP Trainer with Post-Graduate Professional Education, Harragate, England)

1933: Alfred Korzybski coined the phrase neuro-linguistic training, postulated his theory of the levels of abstraction, constructed his theory of second-order abstractions, third-order, etc. in his classic word Science and Sanity.

1972: Gregory Bateson’s classic work Steps to an Ecology of Mind that brought together all his revolutionary studies on double-bind theory, applications of Logical Theory of Types, going meta to meta-levels, the levels of Learning Model, etc.

1975-1983: John Grinder & Richard Bandler utilizing the idea of going meta in their NLP model beginning with the Meta-model—an explicit model about how language and VAK representations work in human experience. They distinguish sensory-based level from the evaluative level, the importance of meta-parts, and the strategy model for modeling “the structure of subjective experience.”

1994: Michael Hall specifies how meta-levels of mind-body neuro-linguistic states factor into the structure of subjective experience and bring over Korzybski and Bateson ideas into the strategy model. This arose from modeling resilience and discovering that within it people have embedded numerous layers and levels of consciousness and states. Awareness by the International Trainers Association of NLP (1995) for the most significant contribution to NLPduring 1994-1995.

ISNS The International Society of Neuro-Semantics

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

(970) 523-7877

NLP A Model of Communication that empowers people to run their own brains by using the “languages” of the mind, namely, the sensory representational systems — the Visual, Auditory, & Kinesthetics (body sensations). We think in these see, hear, and feel dimensions or modes. As we so represent things to ourselves on the inner screen of consciousness which we call “thinking,” so we signal our bodies. This then puts us in state— that is, in a Mind-Body State of Consciousness.

Developed by two guys fascinated by human excellence. NLP provides a model, insights, and specific step-by-step techniques for running your own brain, managing your own states, communicating more effectively and elegantly with yourself and others, and replicating human expertise in every field.

META-STATES®

A Model of Reflexive Consciousness that details precisely how we reflect back on our thoughts and feelings to create higher levels of thoughts-and-feelings. In so using our thoughts-and-feelings thoughts-about-our-thoughts, feelings-about-feelings, we thereby create mind-body states-about-states or Meta-States.

This differs from a Primary State like fear, anger, joy, relaxed, tense, pleasure, pain, etc. in that a Meta-State has a layering of higher level concepts such as fear of my fear, anger at my fear, shame about being embarrassed, joy of learning, esteem of my self, etc.

NEURO-SEMANTICS®

A Model of Meaning or Evaluation that utilizes the Meta-States Model for articulating and working with higher levels of states and the Neuro-Linguistic Programming Model for detailing human processing and experiencing. Neuro-Semantics presents a fuller and richer model that offers a way of thinking about and working with the way our nervous system (neurology) and mind (linguistics) create meaning, evaluate events and experiences, and assigns significances (semantics).

Roots Of Neuro-Semantics

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

∙ Where does Neuro-Semantics come from?

∙ What are the theoretical foundations of Neuro-Semantics?

∙ What contributing forces influence the development of Neuro-Semantics as a model and field?

∙ How does Neuro-Semantics differ from NLP as a model?

∙ What is Neuro-Semantics not?

What is it?

Do you to know what it is? Neuro-Semantics is a model that describes how we humans get meaning (semantics) so incorporated into our body (neurology) that we feel meanings and do so in terms of our emotions and states. Neuro-Semantics is an inter-disciplinary field that explores the structure of meaning and how those meanings become embodied within us. In Neuro-Semantics we approach the mind-body-emotion system in several ways. From the mental dimension, we explore how language works inside of us, how we attribute meaning, create meaning by words, associations, framing, metaphors, etc. From the neurological dimension, we explore how our body works with ideas to “realize” or “actualize” them and how what we do influences what we believe.

Neuro-Semantics, as a field of study and as a model, arises from many sources. Much of it comes from psychology, linguistics, semantics, anthropology, systems, etc. In this article, I will sketch out a brief history of the key sources that have come together to create the foundation of this inter-disciplinary study.

Why do this? First I want to locate and position Neuro-Semantics as a field and to distinguish it from those disciplines that gave it birth. And why is this important? I want to do that to set the boundaries and parameters of the field. As a new emergent field, this is important (especially here at the beginning) in order to make clear what Neuro-Semantics is and its focus of attention. And why do that? Mostly because there are many who are entering this field as trainers, coaches, and researches who keep asking me about this! And so for those enter the field as well as those already in this field, and for those who are just now discovering this field and examining it to see if it fits with their interests, I want to provide a clear sense of what Neuro-Semantics is and what is not.

From General Semantics to NLP

To give credit where credit is due, it was an engineer, Alfred Korzybski, who first gave voice to the terminology of neuro-linguistics and neuro-semantics as he founded the field of General Semantics with his classic work, Science and Sanity (1933/ 1994). By these terms he referred to the human mind-body system as a holistic system of many interactive parts. It was his way of re-uniting the fragmented elements of “mind,” “body,” “emotion,” “beliefs,” etc.

In thinking structurally about a living human mind-body system in interaction with the world “out there” beyond the human nervous system, he looked at it in terms of information coming into the protoplasm of the human nervous system and how the nerve impulses from sense receptors to the internal processing structures of the brain and how we abstract from one level to another level to create our inner “sense” of the world. We map the world into ourselves and we feel that map (or layers of mappings) as feelings, emotions, and intuitions.

To understand this dynamic communication process, Korzybski used a metaphor, that of mapping a territory. What we humans do in and with our neurons, nerves, nervous energy, and nervous systems is create a map, so to speak, about what we are encountering and interacting with. Out there in the world there are energies —energies that we recognize as the electromagnetic spectrum. We translate and interpret these energies as light, sound, sensation, smell, taste, and balance. We do that by the protoplasm of our body which we experience as our sense receptors. At the end of our nervous system we have eyes, ears, skin, olfactory and taste buds, and inner ear hairs and structures that enable us to “sense” the world. We then use these senses (the sensory modalities) to “make sense” of the world.

Our first maps about what is “out there” are strictly neurological and occur a long time prior to awareness or consciousness. The energy “out there” impacts and stimulates our sense receptors and we “sense” things in terms of the sense receptors. We see objects, hear sounds, feel textures, pressures, moisture, temperature (sensations), we smell smells and taste tastes and have a sense of balance or dizziness. These sensory systems interpret the energies in these terms.

But close your eyes and press on your eyelids and you will see colors and shapes. Pressure on the end- receptors of eyes is translated and interpreted as light. Each end-receptor funnels, channels, and interprets “energy manifestations” out there according to what it is designed to pick up and interpret. Each sense maps the world according to its own design. Even at that level, it’s just a perception.

From this Richard Bandler and John Grinder created the components of NLP in the 1970s. They specified the “languages” of thought in terms of the sensory systems— the Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, etc. systems. We re-present to ourselves in our mind what we have seen, heard, and felt. This gave rise to the VAK. We think in terms of pictures, sounds, and sensations. We make a movie in our mind. We also say words about our movie, and so the meta-representation system is language. This was the genius of NLP.

NLP began with the presupposition that Korzybski specified, “The map is not the territory.” This means we do not deal with reality directly, but indirectly. We deal with it through our maps. If our world seems impoverished and we feel unresourceful, the problem lies in our maps. Do we have a rich enough map to go places, do things, understand things, etc.? If not, the problem isn’t ourselves or th world, it’s in enriching our map. Successful and effective people have rich and empowering maps in their heads.

What does this mean? It means that NLP is primarily a Communication Model. It’s a model about how we use the languages of the mind to construct our maps and how to enrich those maps. It’s also about identify and modeling the maps of experts to streamline the learning process. NLP modeled three world-class therapists from three different fields to create a model of how language works (the Meta-Model) and how to use language for more precision or for more artful mapping (the Milton Model). From Family Systems they modeled Virginia Satir; from Gestalt Therapy they modeled Fritz Perls; and from Ericksonian Hypnosis they modeled Milton H. Erickson.

NLP provides powerful models and technology for “running one’s own brain” and thereby changing our states and experiences. As a model, NLP is not about any particular field, but is a meta-discipline. It’s a model about the structure of experience and so has practical applications for business, negotiating, selling, parenting, therapy, education, training, influence, marketing, writing— in a word, for anything that involves communication, relationship, and people skills. That some people have taken the model and misused it speaks about the power of this cutting-edge communication model.

Neuro-Semantics began here. What NLP did not have was a model about self-reflexive consciousness and how to model, take into account, or use reflexivity in communication, relationship, or modeling. With the Meta-States model I provided those structures and so created another meta-domain of NLP— Meta-States.

From “General” Semantics to “Neuro” Semantics

Where did Meta-States come from? From two key sources—Korzybski and Gregory Bateson. It was in Korzybski’s “levels of abstraction” (his Structural Differential) and his theory of multi-ordinality that I found much of the structure of Meta-States. Having immersed myself in Korzybski’s work for many years, when I “stumbled” upon Meta-States while modeling the structure of resilience, I found myself referring mostly to many of the features in General Semantics.

So after I first introduced Meta-States in England under the sponsorship of Denis Bridoux and Dr. Philip Nolan (Post Graduate Professional Education), for three years we followed that up with a series of workshop on GS and NLP. These trainings in England were first entitled “The Merging of the Models: General Semantics and NLP” and later Advanced Flexibility. It was during that time that I was able to more fully develop and articulate the structures, processes, guidelines, and patterns in Neuro-Semantics.

We were able to translate abstract ideas and concepts in Science and Sanity that informed General Semantics into practical Neuro-Semantic tools—extending the Meta-Model, developing the first meta-level questions to deal with human psycho-logics (“logical levels”), use mathematics for modeling (finding variables in an experience and identifying those variables as functions of some multi-ordinal concept). What has and remains abstract and obtuse in General Semantics became dynamic processes in Neuro-Semantics.

For more on this, see Chapter 8 in NLP: Going Meta: Advanced Modeling Using Meta-Levels (2001). It is entitled, “Levels of Abstraction: Alfred Korzybski’s Neurological Meta-Levels.” Also, Communication Magic (2001).

From Bateson’s Frames and Meta-Function to Neuro-Semantics

Another crucial source in the Roots of Neuro-Semantics is anthropologist Gregory Bateson. It was his fabulous work, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and his treatise Mind and Nature (1979) that completely captured my attention on several accounts.

First there was his use of the meta-function (his phrase) regarding the structure of complex experiences from schizophrenia to national personality traits (cultural phenomena), to wisdom, art, change, learning, and so on that enabled me to see the systemic nature of meta-states. Once I had constructed the first tentative Meta-States model, I began testing it with numerous experiences that had layers of thoughts and feelings like proactivity, forgiveness, self-esteem, etc. With each of these, I kept revisiting Bateson’s way of thinking to borrow more and more of his formulations about frames and making a move to a meta-position.

In Neuro-Semantics Bateson led us to move beyond modeling the individual to working on cultural models, cultural modeling, anthropology, and cybernetics. It was from Bateson that I build systems thinking and systems dynamics into the feedback and feed forward loops of the Matrix.

To see how much Bateson’s thinking, terminology, and conceptions inform Neuro-Semantics, see Chatper 7 in NLP: Going Meta: Advanced Modeling Using Meta-Levels (2001). That chapter is entitled, “Bateson’s Logical Levels of Learning.” Also, see The Bateson Report (2003) which contains more than a dozen articles on Bateson and our use of his work in Neuro-Semantics. Also, the training manual, Cultural Modeling using Neuro-Semantics.

Cognitive Psychology’s Contribution to Neuro-Semantics

Even though neither Bandler nor Grinder were psychologists, psychotherapists, or had any extensive training in therapy, they model three therapies (i.e., Family Systems, Gestalt Therapy, and Ericksonian Hypnosis) and so constructed a model that is now recognized as a Cognitive-Behavioral model. In psychology textbooks, NLP is classified in this way and has for more than 15 years. Why is that? How did that come about?

Possibly for two reasons. First, Korzybski’s presupposition is that we operate by the mapping and maps we create in our heads about things—a cognitive premise. Second, Noam Chomsky who created the Transformational Grammar model for linguistics, in which field John Grinder was an expert and contributor, was a key person in the founding of the Cognitive Movement. In fact, it was he more than anyone else who single-handedly defeated Behaviorism in 1956 with his paradigm changing book, Aspects of Grammar. For more about this, see Howard Gardner’s book that documents the history of, The Cognitive Movement.

There’s a third reason, Bandler and Grinder also relied on and quoted George Miller for his classic 1956 paper “The Magic Number Seven Plus or Minus Two” that launched the Cognitive movement as well as relied on him with Gallanter and Pribram for Plans for the Structure of Behavior (1960). From this book came the T.O.T.E. model that NLP turned into the Strategy Model (see NLP: The Structure of Subjective Experience, Volume I, 1980, Dilts, et al.).

In addition to this, my training, first as a psychotherapist and then as a psychologist was in Cognitive Psychology, specifically in Albert Ellis’ RET (later REBT) model, Aaron Beck’s work, and William Glasser’s models of Reality Therapy and Control Theory. These and other cognitive models were the guiding models and principles that guided my thinking and so became intimately incorporated in Neuro-Semantics.

Minor contributions, still within this general area included the field of Meta-Cognition. This field arose in 1977 and focuses mostly on the study of memory and meta-memory devices. Key thinkers, theorists, and researchers in this area work on how feedback loops govern feedback loops at a higher or meta-level. For more on this, see chapters in Meta-States Magic (2003).

Logotherapy, a cognitive psychology/philosophy, also contributed to the early development of Meta-States and hence to Neuro-Semantics. Neuro-Semantics takes from Viktor Frankl’s work on the therapy of meaning (logo-therapy) a focus on meaning and meaningfulness in a philosophical sense. It is, after all, the search for meaning and the use of our powers to create meaning that fill our neurology with the most intense and powerful emotions.

Cognitive Linguistics and Neuro-Semantics

While studying the linguistic distinctions that Korzybski highlighted in General Semantics, I continued reading in the field of linguistics. I did that, in part, as one of my natural interests and, in part, as part of my degree in psycho-linguistics. What I found was fantastic—at least to me. It seems that the linguistic foundations of NLP, Transformational Grammar, was rejected by its founder Noam Chomsky in 1976, one year after the appearance of The Structure of Magic by Bandler and Grinder.

What did this mean? What was the significance of Chomsky throwing out Deep Structure (D-structure) and declaring that the Transformational Grammar approach was untenable and unworkable? How did this relate to all of the information in NLP books about the Surface and Deep Structure? As I began searching I found out that the field of Linguistic had shifted emphasis over the years and that by the 1990s Cognitive Linguistic has taken over. Transformational rules had given way to thinking about grammar in terms of “space” (hence the book, Space Grammar) and the use of our “representational screen” to posit objects (nouns), trajectories of movements (verbs) to objects. See Harris, The Linguistic Wars for more on this as well as works by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

Philosophy of Mind, Neurology, and Neuro-Semantics

There are many thinkers who write on what is called “philosophy of mind.” These writers and theorists offer numerous conceptualizations for how to think about “mind.” These frameworks provide the presuppositions that we begin with. Among them, I continually return to Bateson (Mind and Nature) for insights. Among others who I have found influence and whose influence on my thinking is incorporated in Neuro-Semantics are Daniel Dennett (Kinds of Minds, Consciousness Explained, Intentional Stance), Stephen Kosslyn and Olivier Koenig (Wet Mind), Julian Jaynes (The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind), etc.

Neuro-Semantics is also based in Neurology, the levels of the brain-body structures that make up our neurological structures is detailed in Korzybski who also specified things about the representational systems that I’ve never seen reproduced in NLP.

It is to John Searle (The Construction of Social Reality) as well as other writers in anthropology, cultural studies, social psychology, etc. that Neuro-Semantics owes a debt.

What Neuro-Semantics is Not

With these fields and sources of Neuro-Semantics, I hope it is clear that Neuro-Semantics is a meta-discipline about the structure and form of things, not another psychology or philosophy. Neuro-Semantics is the study of how we translate data into information and then into communication to create our inner worlds of reality, our inner Matrix of frames within frames within frames.

And as Neuro-Semantics is neither a psychology, nor is it a psychotherapy. It is not primarily about the healing of human hurts, although it certainly has powerful applications to therapy. Neuro-Semantics studies the structure of how people get hurt, find healing, and move on to actualize their greatest potentials. In this Neuro-Semantics transcends any particular psychotherapy as it is looking for the structure that makes such therapies effective. Nor is Neuro-Semantics a theology or religion. Undoubtedly people will use Neuro-Semantics to model various spiritual experiences and perhaps to explore various theologies, but that is not what Neuro-Semantics is. It is only an application. Neuro-Semantics holds no allegiance with any particular religion whether Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Buddhist, etc. It is not related to any New Age ideology or to any alternative healing modality.

From Practical Down-to-Earth Pragmatic Applications

Neuro-Semantics also arose from another source. While the original model of Meta-States was the brain-child of L. Michael Hall, very early I looked to others to help me explore what we could use it for and where we could go with the model. It was in this way that Dr. Bob Bodenhamer and I began having conversations. At first we worked on some books together, but it soon became evident that Bob’s skills at the clinical level of working with clients would become a source of credibility for the new patterns and ideas. So it was with Bob’s clients and students that we “tried out” and experimented with many of our new ideas and models.

This moved Neuro-Semantics from the conceptual level to the practical level of everyday life. What we worked through conceptually on paper, we then had Bob put to the test in working with people who had come to him for assistance. It was in this way that the Meta-Yes Belief Change pattern emerged as well as many others. In the development of various patterns we would give it a go, adjust the steps of a pattern to create a more streamlined sequence, add or subtract steps, put in new preframes, etc.

We then began transferring the same to our trainings. I came up with the Mind-to-Muscle pattern while doing a training in Wealth Building because I felt the need to transfer the great ideas that were already in the minds of participants (they knew good and well what to do), they just were not actually doing them. This came about in a training when I just so happened to ask if anyone knew any principle about finances, financial intelligence, building wealth, etc. Hands went up all over the place. I inquired about what they knew. After 30 minutes of that I had discovered something very important. I did not need to share anything else about the content of building wealth. Everybody already knew plenty. If I were to keep adding other “great ideas” they would just be even more overwhelmed and have more to feel bad about since they were not doing the most simple of things like the principle “Spend less than you make.”

For me that was an “Ah ha!” moment. The problem wasn’t knowing, it was doing. The problem wasn’t lacking great concepts, wonderful principles, or inspiring ideas. No. They knew. The gap was between knowing-and-doing, between the head and the legs. It was at this point that I began asking myself many questions, questions that would stimulate the creation of a new pattern:

∙ How can we close this knowing-doing gap and get what they know in their heads into their muscles?

∙ Can ideas or concepts move from “the head” into “the body,” into muscle memory?

∙ What is muscle memory anyway?

∙ How do ideas get into muscle memory? What are the mechanisms involved?

∙ How can we take ideas about wealth building and translate them so that people actually act on what they know and learn?

Everyday practical life and challenges—this is one of the ongoing sources of Neuro-Semantics. Today we have lots of people doing this very thing. That is they have eyes to look for gaps, for problems, for needs. That’s why Neuro-Semantics has gone the way of creating dozens of Gateway Trainings and using the hard questions we find in those fields—the places where other fields and disciplines are stuck to stimulate creativity. Bob Bodenhamer has done this with people who block and/or stutter. I have done this with Defusing Hotheads and other Cranky and Stressed-out People. We have people now doing this in criminal justice departments, with weight management, fitness, stress management, resilience for times of change, leadership, etc. This also is the focus for the Neuro-Semantics Developers group that we are now developing.

Author: L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. was first a psychotherapist, then psychologist, then NLP Trainer, then discover of Meta-States, then co-founder of Neuro-Semantics, now an entrepreneur, prolific writer, researcher, modeler, and explorer of things of the mind-body-emotion system.

HOW TO BE PHOBIA FREE!

The Pattern That Could Change The World!

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

What follows here is a basic NLP pattern that was originally created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. You can find the pattern in its original form in Steve Andreas’ book, Frog to Princes (1979). I first found this pattern in 1986 and it revolutionized my life. Literally.

First it completely changed the way I was doing psychotherapy as it changed my Cognitive-Behavioral approach sending me into an entirely new level of structure —the structure of experience and making that primary to content. Next, as I used the pattern on my own memories and the things that could “push my buttons” to create a lot of negative emotional charge about things, it transformed me as a person.

Then I realized something—every person on this planet should know this pattern! With this pattern, there should not be a single human being walking around or living with a phobia. There’s no need. Not any longer. When you learn this pattern and how to use it, using a simple metaphor like watching a movie, you can take the emotional charge out of any old memory that still pushes your buttons or that throws you into a phobic response state.

In the field of NLP, this pattern is called the Phobia Cure pattern or the V-K (Visual-Kinesthetic) dissociation pattern. When I wrote the book MovieMind (2002) and User’s Manual of the Brain, Volume II (2001 with Bob Bodenhamer), I called it The Movie Rewind Pattern because that is the central process used in the pattern— you run your mental movie backwards. And that’s why you can use it for all kinds of things— phobias, traumatic memories, PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), strong over-emotional reactions to things, “buttons,” depression, anxiety, etc.

The Secret Behind being Phobia Free

It’s all about your “thinking.” There are two ways that you can process information as you think. You can do so analytically and you can do so experientially. When you think or read something experientially, you feel as if you have entered into the story that you are reading or imagining. To do that you represent the information an encode the information in a way that you cue yourself to neuro-linguistically experience it.

Conversely, when you think or read something analytically, you hold the material at “arms length” so to speak. You analyze it, think about it, and you take a spectator’s point of view regarding the information. In the first instance, you step into the content of the story or information and in the second, you step out of it and take a view from outside it as a spectator.

Each of these ways of looking at things (perceptual styles) has its strengths and its weaknesses. To step into your representations empowers you to take the first perceptual position. You see thins from out of your own eyes and ears and feel things as if from out of your own body. Do this and you enter into a story and will come to “know” it from within.

To step outside of the representations allows you to take the second and third perceptual positions—to see it as someone else might or to see it from a third and neutral position. And when you do that, you can analyze it in order to learn from it. Then it will not activate your emotional responses. If you do too much of the stepping in and associating, you can become an emotional cripple, hysterical, unable to “think,” and reactive with all kinds of emotional reactions. If you do gdtoo much of the stepping out and just observing, you may become an intellectual egghead and an emotional incompetent—unable to relate emotionally and personally to yourself or others. So obviously, the balance of choosing when and where to do each is the secret.

With regard to hurts, traumas, and unpleasant realities, many people can’t even think about such things. To think is to be re-traumatized. It activates all sorts of negative emotions—especially fears and phobias. Typically, such individuals eventually lose their willingness to even entertain painful thoughts; those in helping professions frequently burn-out. Others develop PSTD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Because they cannot even “think” about a subject without going into negative painful emotional state, they experience thinking as distressful and unpleasant. This robs them of an important resource: the skill of thinking comfortably about unpleasant events. So “reality” pains them. So they repress, suppress, deny, avoid, etc.

The Phobia Cure Pattern or The Movie-Rewind Pattern offers a marvelous technology for recovering from trauma states and from PTSD. The pattern enables and empowers a person to learn how to “think” about unpleasant things without re-associating and re-experiencing the situation. You can stop signaling your body to respond to “thoughts” as if actually in the trauma again. By stopping the ongoing re-traumatization, you resolve the pain, and can then release the old memories so that you can get on with living your life more abundantly and positively.

The human technology within this pattern works by moving in your mind and understanding (mentally and conceptually) to a different frame-of-reference. It invites you to move to the “second” perceptual position of another person, then to the “third” perceptual position of seeing things from an observer point of view so that you can see whatever the scene or information is from a position of distance. This allows you to feel safe as you “think” about it. It also enables you to stop yourself from stepping back into the memory and associating into the experience because if you did that you would be re-accessing the old negative emotional states. And that does not help. Instead, with the new perspectives, you will be able to apply new and more powerful resources to the old memory and thereby change it.

To recapitulate, The Movie-Rewind Pattern (called the Phobia Cure Pattern in NLP) works by enabling you to move to a different frame-of-reference— to a spectator viewpoint. There you can view the “painful” information from your past comfortably. Doing this interrupts your “trauma thinking” and prevents you from processing the information in a way whereby you could collapse into a negative emotional state.

This understanding of human subjective experiences identifies that the source of your emotional experience goes back to how you code things in your mind-and-body. As you code information—so you experience. It’s that simple. It is also that profound. Your subjective experiences is created by the coding you use. So, when you change that coding, you change your experience at the neurological level. And that leads to a change in your emotions and behaviors.

So with your two categorical ways of “thinking” (by stepping in and stepping out of your representations of an event) you can now develop the flexibility of consciousness to choose which to do when. You can decide how to code and experience the “”information” about various events that you have been through. You can do so analytically (that is objectively) and so un-emotionally or you can do so experientially (that is, subjectively) and hence “emotionally.” You can remember old events as a spectator to those experiences—as if you were a movie goer, just watching it, rather than as an actor in the movie.

When you use this technology, you can effectively managing strong negative “emotions” and then you can learn from your past rather than using your past to feel bad about. You can use it to “switch off” any scene that you don’t need to play anymore in your inner theater. If it was a B-rated movie the first time you experienced it, you do not have to keep replaying it.

A final caveat: If you use this pattern on pleasant experiences, you will thereby neutralize them. This can also work to your detriment. Doing so will rob you of the feel of being alive and vital. It will eliminate good feelings, motivation, emotional understanding, etc.

The Movie-Rewind Pattern

Here is a step by step description of what to do to “run your brain” in this way and to take out the negative emotional charge of some old memory. Try it with yourself, if you have difficulty, then find a well-trained and qualified NLP practitioner or Neuro-Semanticist who can then facilitate the process with you.

1) Identify a mental representation that bothers you.

What thought activates strong negative emotions in you? What memory of some unpleasant experience or even traumatic experience puts you, as it were, back in that event? What idea pushes your buttons? What triggers you to go into a fight-flight stress response by just thinking about it or considering it?

When you know, identify it in terms of what you see, hear, and sense. This means, identify the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic features of the movie that you are playing in your mind. If you are new to this, this will— at first— be strange or challenging.

What are you aware off visually— what do you see? Where? Is it in color or black-and-white?
What are you aware of auditorially— what sounds, words from others, words around you, words that you are saying inside yourself?
What are you aware of kinesthetically— what sensations, what temperature (cold, warm, hot), what pressure, movement, etc. (Kinesthetic refers to internal or external sensations, and are not emotions, just the feelings that make up one aspect of an emotion).

2) Use the Movie Metaphor to create an Internal Representation of this old troublesome Movie.

Now imagine that you have gone to the movies are are setting in a theater, in your mind, and ready to watch this old movie for the last time. As you imagine yourself sitting in a movie theater, which row would you like to be in so that you can observe comfortably? I like the tenth row. You might like row 5 or row 20 or row 200. Find the row that works best for you.

When you are in the seat that you best like, then on the screen of your mind, put a black-and white picture of the younger you in the situation fifteen minutes or so before the traumatic events occurred. Oh yes, get out your bag of popcorn or whatever you best like to eat when you go to the movies.

The movie up on the screen is a snap-shot right now. You have freezed-framed it and it represents something that occurred 15 minutes prior to when something unpleasant happened. Now sit back to watch it, aware that you have taken a spectator’s position to that younger you. Notice that you have stepped out of the picture, and have a position from outside. And in a little bit you will watch this old B-rated movie for the last time.

As you gain this psychological distance from that event, you have begun the process of running your own brain. So you can feel delighted that you have this ability to step aside from your thoughts. You are more than your thoughts, you are more than the experiences you have been through. Those are just the things you have had to deal with and now you can put them behind you. And shortly you can use those memories for learning— perhaps learning what not to do, but never again for feeling bad. That’s not useful.

3) Begin to Become the Editor of your own Movies

As you set back and take a spectator’s point of view to that old movie, notice how you have coded the movie. Doing that will then give you the ability to play around with these codes and to alter them so that they enhance your life and emotions.

Visually. Begin with the visual system and just notice whether you have the picture in color or black-and-white? Is it a movie or snapshot? Is it bright or dim? Close or far? And as you make these distinctions, you can begin to choose which coding would enable you to think comfortably about that memory so that you can stay resourceful and thoughtful in a relaxed and comfortable way. Just notice the effect that it has for you when you dim the picture of your unpleasant memory. Now turn down the brightness, further, further, until it doesn’t bother you anymore. Send the picture off into the distance.
Auditorially. Next check out the auditory system—the sound track of your memory. Do you even have a sound track? What sounds do you hear coming from that movie? What quality of tones do you hear? At what volume, pitch, and melody? Now check out your language system. What words do you hear from that younger you? From where do you hear these words coming? Notice their tone, volume, and location. As you notice how that younger you feels, what sensations does that person have in his or her body up that on the screen? Where and at what intensity, weight, pressure? What shifts in these codes enable you to think comfortably about that old memory? How relaxed do you feel as you make alterations in your coding? How much of a growing sense of distance and control does this gives you?

4) Float back and up to the Control Booth.

Now as you sit there, still getting ready for the movie to begin, one more thing to do—imagine floating out of your body from the row that you are sitting in and floating back to the Projection Booth. Float all the way out of your body and into the Control Room until you can feel your hands on the plexi-glass window so that you can look out and see the back of your head facing the screen.

Take a moment to experience and enjoy this very different point-of-view. It may take just a little bit to fully imagine seeing yourself —today’s you (in whatever row you are sitting in) watching your younger you on the screen before the movie begins to play. As you note The Adult You sitting in the theater (seeing the back of his or her head) let yourself also see beyond that to the still picture on the screen.

Watching this will be strange and weird the first time but you will get used to it very quickly, and if you feel a bit dizzy at any time, you can put your hands on the plexi-glass again and feel safe and secure in this control booth. This is the place to remember that you are in control of the movie and can stop it or fast-forward it at any time that you wish.

5) Playing the old memory for the Last time.

Now when you are ready, from the Project Booth, you can turn on the movie and let it move from the initial snapshot. Let it now play out as a black-and-white movie. And watch it from a double-perspective— from the audience and from the projection booth. Watch it from the beginning to the end.

And if at any time, the movie tempts you to step in— feel your hands on the plexi-glass and stay safe and in control in the Control Room. And if at any time, you need to fast-forward the movie, after all, you know what happened, just fast forward it a bit. Then play it to the end.

When you have let it play out beyond the unpleasant experience, play if a bit further. Play it to a later time, after the bad scene disappears, and see that Younger You in a time and place of safety and even pleasure. . . . Go to a scene of comfort when you were feeling good about yourself and having fun doing something — at a park, on a beach, with a loved one. …. This later time does not have to be even close to the time of the trauma, but just some time later when you were enjoying yourself.

Good. Now when you get to that place of comfort and pleasure, stop the movie and freeze frame the picture again.

6) Step in and Rewind your Movie from the Pleasure backwards.

Now the next step will occur in just a moment— when you are ready— and when it does it will occur very, very quickly. We are doing to move into super-fast movement as we rewind the movie in fast rewind

So wait until you get all of the instructions about how to do this. In a moment, rewind this memory movie in fast rewind mode. As you have seen movies or videos run backwards so you will rewind the movie backwards at a very high speed rewind, so fast that it will only take two seconds—2 seconds! But — and this is a big but— this time you will be inside the movie when you rewind it.

So imagine that! Float inside the scene of comfort and pleasure… be there. See and hear what you would see and hear when there and feel it— feel the comfort and the pleasure. And now from this vantage point, you will be rewind the movie backwards. You know the sound of running a movie backward? Hear that. And you know the rush and confusion of sights as everything goes backwards, a jumbling of sounds as everything zooms back to the moment 15 minutes prior to the unpleasant movie. When you experience this fast rewinding, all the people and their actions go backwards. They walk and talk backwards. You walk and talk in reverse. Everything happens in reverse, like rewinding a movie. So ready?

How much do you feel the comfort and pleasure right now? When it is at a level of 7 or 8 on a scale of 10, then push the rewind button . . . and experience it rewinding . . . zooooooommmmm. All the way back to the beginning. It only takes a second or two to do that fast rewind . . .

And how did that feel . . . rewinding from inside the movie?

7) Repeat this Rewinding Process five times.

When you arrive back to the snapshot at the beginning, clear the screen in your mind. That is, take a break, open your eyes and look around. Good.

Now, immediately go to the scene of comfort and pleasure at the end again, and as soon as you step it, feel, see, and hear it fully . . . rewind the movie even faster. As you do this over and over your brain will become more and more proficient and the rewind will go faster and faster until the rewind takes only a second each time. Zoommmm!

Test the results.

Break state from this exercise. Then after a minute or two, call up the original memory and see if you can get the feelings back. Try as hard as you can to step into the scene and feel the full weight of the emotions.

Other Editing Tools

From the act of stepping back from experientially thinking about a fearful or hurtful event to watching it as a spectator, to imagine watching it from a projection booth in the control room, you can do all kinds of things. You can rewind the movie and take the emotional charge out of the experience. You can also do many other things to change your codings. Here are some other choices.

1) Associate a resourceful memory.

Recall the memory of a time when you felt creative, confident, powerful, etc. from the past. See what you saw at that time and turn up the brightness and color on that memory so that invites you into it to fully associate into it and experience it. Now when you do feel this fully as a resourceful state—bring into it the scene that has been fearful to you. What is the negative stimulus (e.g., dog, spider) that you fear? As you now merge these two memories, do so until they integrate so that you can then experience yourself handling the situation using the resources from the more positive memory.

2) Alter your sound track.

Re-process the way you hear yourself and others talk. How would you want to make your voice different? Or the voice of someone else? What qualities would make the memory less intense? What voice would you like to have heard? Install an internal voice to help you through this situation.

3) Add tonal qualities to the sound track to make it better.

Take the unpleasant memory and put some nice loud circus music behind it. Now watch the movie again. How do you feel when you see the old movie and hear the circus music?

4) Apply your spiritual faith.

Use your spiritual belief system to bring in a Guardian Angel, a loving heavenly Father, or some strong resource. Now split your screen and see through the eye of your faith, the Guardian Angel hovering over the earthly scene of your memory. See and hear your Angel caring and loving you. Perhaps you hear, “I am with you.” “I will help you.” See Jesus touch you with his healing hand.

5) Symbolically code the memory.

You could make all the people transparent in your memory so you see through them. Or you could color code them according to how you think and feel about them. You could draw a line around the three-dimensional persons in your memory, make them two dimensional and color them according your evaluation of them.

6) Humorize your memory.

Because laughter provides a great distancing skill, use your humor so that you can laugh the emotional pain off. How far in the future do you need to transport yourself before you can look back on a memory and laugh at it? What difference lies between a memory you can laugh at and one that you can’t? Do you see yourself in one, but not in the other? Do you have one coded as a snap-shot and the other as a movie? What difference lies in color, size, brightness? Imagine the hurtful person talking like Donald Duck? Turn your opponent into a caricature cartoon character with exaggerated lips, eyes, head, hands, etc.

End Notes:

1. A caveat about the terminology. I only use the term dissociation here because it is used in the literature of NLP. Personally, I do not use the term and do not like it. In psychology, it is used to speak about various personality disorderings. Further, we humans do not, and cannot, literally step out of our body to avoid experiencing emotions. So even in “dissociation” a person is using his or her body and all that’s occurring is occurring in the body and that’s generating various somatic sensations and feelings. More accurately, what’s actually happening is that a person is conceptually stepping aside from his or her emotions and thinking about them from a meta position. As embodied neuro-linguistic beings, we cannot literally dissociate from our bodies.

META-REFLECTIONS ON THE HISTORY OF NLP

In 2010 I began writing a series of Meta Reflections on the History of NLP — and that is what you will find in the following articles. These appeared on the international egroup of Neuro-Semantics — Neurons (www.neurosemantics.com).

Here are the first ten of the Meta Reflections. More will appear later as they appear on Neurons.

This is not a formal history. They are my reflections about the history — where we have been, what the field of NLP has been through, stories of the origin, and so on. Why? Because if we don’t know our history, we may be doomed to repeat it. I think Henry Ford said that. So the purpose is to learn— to learn from our history and use that information to forge a much better future for this field.

The field of NLP offers so much and yet is in danger of losing the opportunity to make a tremendous difference in the world. To be the change and offer the change that NLP can, we who love the models and want to use them to make a difference in our world need to rise up to a new level of collaboration, professionalism, ethics, and respect. I offer these Meta Reflections in hope that we can live the models that we love.

Reflections on History 1

NLP HISTORY AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION

META-REFLECTIONS ON THE HISTORY OF NLP

Here are the first ten of the Meta Reflections. More will appear later as they appear on Neurons.

From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2010 – #31
July 12, 2010
History of NLP Series #1

NLP HISTORY AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION

As you probably know, I began exploring some of the pre-history of NLP a few years ago and discovered The Secret History of NLP in 2005. And at various conferences I have playfully said, “It is a secret history that Richard Bandler and John Grinder don’t want you to know about.” At other times I teased saying, “And they don’t even know about this secret history.” What I didn’t know was how true that has turned out to be.

Recently I went back to re-read John Grinder’s Whispering in the Wind to look for any indication that he knew or had any awareness of the relationship between Maslow, Rogers, the Human Potential Movement, Esalen, etc. to NLP. And what I found not only confirmed what I’ve been saying, but goes further. Even today John Grinder does not know about this history! Apparently he hasn’t been reading my books!

What is the evidence? From his own words, here is some:

On page 2 of Whispering he makes a list of therapies and he lists “self-actualization” which he keeps separate from what he and Bandler were doing in NLP. He also mentioned Aldous Huxley (p. 26) without indicating that he had any awareness of his role in the Human Potential Movement (HPM). He mentioned that Bateson was at Esalen and refers to “a lecture taped at Esalen Institute just before Bateson’s death, available through Esalen” (p. 115)

Then he distanced himself from Maslow, the HPM, and Self-Actualization Psychology when he wrote the following which like his jabs about myself and Robert Dilts, he here does to Maslow:

“Relax, Maslow, there is no full realization of human potential, only an ascending spiral of differences and change.” (315)

So while Grinder knows about Esalen and Maslow and Self-Actualization, and even that Bateson was at Esalen, and speaks about them in a general wa, he does not, even to this day, demonstrates any awareness of their historical significance to NLP. He does not seem to know that Bateson, Perls, and Satir worked together at Esalen and that it was from the context of the Human Potential Movement that NLP arose. Perhaps he was, and is, too close to things to have that expanded historical perspective.

In fact, here’s my analysis of all of this. I think that at the beginning Bandler and Grinder was so close to the idea of picking up the linguistic distinctions of Perls and Satir (and later Erickson) that they never really stepped back to ask, “What’s this all about? What is the larger frame? What unites Perls and Satir?”

Historically they simply stumbled upon the strange “effectiveness” that resulted when Richard was mimicking Perls in his “Gestalt Class,” which surprisingly led people in the class to change and transform. Richard simply thought it was funny getting people to hallucinate a mom or dad into a chair and yell at them. So they began trying to figure out what was the structure of this “magic.” Their focus was on the details, and since both were reductionists, or as Grinder admits, “minimalists,” they looked down to the tiniest of distinctions like eye-accessing cues and sensory- specific linguistic distinctions. They never looked up.

And without looking up, they didn’t even ask “What is Perls and Satir doing that’s similar?” They only asked for differences, “What are they doing that’s different from everyone else?” This was theiroriginalgenius—mismatchingfordifferences. Andbyfocusingonsuch,theyfoundsome very unique distinctions that now make up the foundations of NLP. Yet without the balance, they also missed something that was right in their face— the Human Potential Movement which could have given them a big why and tie them (and hence NLP) to the HPM.

Yet the result of their mismatching was that they pushed away from everything and everybody else working in the field of psychology and psychotherapy as this sought to create their own unique field. You can see this pushing away from everyone else in all of the original NLP books. And it is still starkly evident in Whispering where John has to mismatch his earlier self, Bandler, and a great many leading NLP trainers in the field today. Several unfortunate things resulted from this— one being the inability to define what NLP is. Of course, it is most fundamentally a Communication Model, yet it is also a form of psychology, and a field of modeling.

Yet because Bandler and Grinder were so driven by mismatching for differences, they could not, and would not, connect with all of the sources that define and position NLP: Gestalt (Perls), Family Systems (Satir), Cognitive (George Miller, Noam Chomsky), General Semantics (Alfred Korzybski), Anthropology (Bateson) or the Human Potential Movement (Maslow, Rogers, Huxley). So that left NLP out in the cold, alone, disconnected, and without a history.

Yet NLP does have a history— a history that goes back many, many years prior to Bandler and Grinder. As with every movement, it grew out of the ideas and passions of the time and “onthe people on whose shoulders they stand” (even if Grinder has expressed dislike for that phrase!). NLP’s history goes back to the very fields and people listed above and most of all, it goes to the movement that Maslow initiated as he pioneered a paradigm shift in psychology from the sick side tothehealthyside. And that’s why we have made Self-Actualization Psychology thefoundation of Neuro-Semantics and to that extent, re-discovered the fuller history of NLP.

[If you were there at the beginning, 1972-5 or in the 1970s or early 1980s and have some NLP history to share, send to me at meta@acsol.net.]

THE HISTORY OF THE BEGINNING

From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2010 – #33
July 19, 2010
History of NLP Series #2

If you have been a long-term reader of Neurons, you know that one of my interests for some time has been the History of NLP. My interest is to understand the sources of this field and model and the giants upon whose shoulders we stand. Understanding our roots also allows us to acknowledge sources as any professional would do as well as to be able to see the strengths and weaknesses of the models that we have inherited.

Two years ago I wrote some of the history of NLP in Self-Actualization Psychology (2008). Prior to that, I published that same content as articles in various publications (i.e., Resource, London) and in an NLP Book published in India (Neuro-Linguistic Programming: Concepts and Applications, edited by Kunal Gaurav, 2008).

To know your history enables to know yourself— the narrative of the stories that define how a group started, why, the antecedents that set up the original direction, and how things evolved in the intervening years. This is also one of the things we do in NSTT as we prepare people to become trainers and leaders in Neuro-Semantics. Our aim is to provide a historical perspective of NLP and Neuro-Semantics. We also do that for a specific purpose— to equip those who are becoming trainers to know our history and understand the forces that have led to the experiences and conditions that they will find in this field. We do that to understand the people, ideas, and influences that have contributed to creating the field as we know it today.

So how did it all get started? By accident. It was all a combination of some strange coincidences. A young student at KresgeCollege at the University of California in Santa Cruz needed some extra money and so worked in the stock room for Science and Behavior Books. And then somewhere after 1970 that led to him being asked to transcribe tapes of Fritz Perls. Now the gift that Richard Bandler had at that time was that of hearing, as a rock-star-wanta-be, he played the guitar and could hear with precision and then he found that he could mimic what he heard.

So later Dr. Robert Spitzer would write that he would go into the room where Richard was transcribing the tapes and Richard would speak in the voice, tone, tempo, etc. of Fritz Perls and Dr. Spitzer would sometimes accidently call him “Fritz.” That got Richard interested in Gestalt. On one occasion Richard said that he was house setting for a professor, found a book on Gestalt in the library and thought that the idea of hallucinating your mom or dad into a chair and yell at them about your disappointments was great stand-up comedian stuff. But then after Fritz died (January 1970) Spitzer asked him to finish transcribing and editing the materials for a book. That became the book, The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy, published in May 1973.

The films and the transcribing gave Richard some experience with Gestalt and so in the spring of 1972, as a fourth year student, he was allowed to create his own curriculum for a class. That’s when he “taught” a “student directed seminar on Gestalt Therapy.” (McClendon, Wild Days, 1989, p. 9). And that had to be under the supervision of a professor, and that’s how John Grinder got involved.

What surprised them both was that by merely repeating the Gestalt language patterns, Richard was able to “do Gestalt” and the participants began to experience some tremendous changes in their lives. How did that happen? And that led to the mythical story of their original collaboration: John would analyze the linguistic patterns that Richard was using to make explicit the “magic” of the transformations and Richard would show John how he was doing what he was doing so he could learn to do it as well.

Somewhere about the same time, Dr. Spitzer wanted audio-tapes made of Virginia Satir and so sent Richard to Canada to record her and then transcribe those tapes. This led to integrating Satir’s language patterns, those of Family Reconstructions with those of the Gestalt awareness, empty-chair, and encounter processes. It began with their use of the “Encounter Group” as they had inherited it from Fritz, but because they were not therapists themselves, and had no training in such, they sought to understand what was happening using the tools (and theories) from other fields— primarily linguistics (transformational grammar) and computer modeling.

And that’s how the adventure began. They happened upon two people who were leaders in the Human Potential Movement (which they either ignored or just didn’t know) who were excellent in facilitating change and development in people using their separate models and understandings about people. So simply replicating those patterns and seeking to understand what was going on within the people due to the re-languaging and the re-patterning, they stumbled on a somewhat theory-free form of therapy (they thought they were modeling without any theory, but they did have a theory. But I’ll leave that for later.)

To this format now add their attitude. That was a key to what happened as well. Both men were absolutely curious and playful and “Richard had a flair for the bizarre.” They both sorted for differences, each had a lust for life, a “go for it” attitude and they were willing to play around so that if something didn’t work, they’d do something different. And it was in that mix that NLP emerged a little bit at a time beginning in 1972 and fully as a model (the Meta-Model) in 1975.

THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2010 – #35
July 26, 2010
History of NLP Series #3

NLP began with the surprising effectiveness of certain linguistic patterns that Richard found in Perls and then Satir. So John got involved when fourth-year student Bandler wanted to teach a class on Gestalt. The surprise that language itself could facilitate pretty incredible therapeutic change by two men with no psychology or psychotherapy background sent them on a wild chase to find out what was going on— so using the tools they had available, they began modeling the language of magic.

That’s what they called it, The Structure of Magic. Why? Mostly because what seemed like “magic,” what seemed “magical” was not really magic, it had a structure and that structure could be identified. So what were the theoretical foundations of NLP at the beginning? Mostly and primarily Transformational Grammar. That was Grinder’s contribution to it all.

In fact, my read on things is that John had been looking for some way to use Transformational Grammar (TG) for some years. After all, that was his speciality. He wrote his dissertation on it. He even wrote a book in the early 1970s with Suzette Haden Elgin, A Guide to Transformational Grammar (1973). And in Whisperings, John wrote,

“We have stated that Transformational Grammar was the single most pervasive influence on NLP.” (p. 92)

So in terms of theory, NLP began with all of the premises and assumptions of the Cognitive Psychology Models— which are inherent in TG. This explodes the myth that Bandler and Grinder propagated in the early NLP books that NLP is a model and has no theory. Well, excuse me, but if “TG was the single most pervasive influence on NLP” and TG was the work of Noam Chomsky who along with George Miller are credited with being the founders of the Cognitive Revolution in Psychology in 1956, then NLP does have a theory. It does come from a discipline (actually several disciplines) and so does have premises and presuppositions.

It was because Grinder and Bandler had their heads down— buried in the specifics of Perls’ and Satir’s language patterns and processes for facilitating growth, they were blind to the larger context— that Perls and Satir were leaders in the Human Potential Movement, that they were carrying out the original vision of Maslow and Rogers.

So yes, NLP has a theory. And that theory involves the premises that any intelligent reader can find in Cognitive Psychology (Chomsky, Miller, etc.), in General Semantics, in Humanistic Psychology (Maslow, Rogers, May, etc.), in Gestalt, Family Systems, Bateson, etc. And as I have noted in numerous articles and books, Bandler and Grinder snuck in the theory and hide it in the form of the “NLP Presuppositions” (User’ s Manual of the Brain, Volume I). In other words, if you want to find the theory, you need to look no further than the list of NLP Presppositions.

The map is not the territory. People operate from their maps of reality, not reality. You cannot not communicate. The meaning of your communication is the response you get. People are not broken, they work perfectly well given their representations and strategies. Behind every behavior is a positive intention. Etc.

And these are the ideas and premises that arose originally from Maslow and Rogers and that you can find scattered throughout the writings of Perls, Satir, and others of the Human Potential Movement as well as in Cognitive Psychology.

Now earlier this year, I’ve been in conversation with some people from the Grinder camp of NLP and several recommended that I go back and re-read what Grinder wrote about the history of NLP—at least as he remembers it or after he’s run the Change History Pattern on himself (!). So I did. And in doing so I now understand why Grinder does not understand or like Meta-States, he no longer likes the original NLP! In fact, in Whispering in the Wind (2001) he rejects a lot of what the rest of us call NLP. I did not fully picked up on this when I originally read the book.

For example, in that book he argues against accepting many of the NLP Presuppositions: “There is no need to subscribe to the so-called presuppositions of NLP in order to benefit from an effectiveapplicationofthepatternstosomeproblemorchallenge. Normallythesepresuppositions includestatementssuchas:havingchoiceisbetterthannothavingchoice. Allresourcesnecessary to make changes are already available at the unconscious level.” (2001, p. 201)

“If the so-called presuppositions are NLP are to be taken seriously this decidedly odd collection of different logical types and levels are badly in need of revision and reorganization. I believe that Robert Dilts played a strong role in their compilation. … Unfortunately, presuppositions, like beliefs, are ultimately filters that reduce the ongoing experiences of their possessors. We personally do not find any value in the enumeration of such rationalizations (the so-called presuppositions of NLP).” (202)

Even some of the presuppositions which Grinder himself introduced, he no longer accepts. For example, he no longer accepts the law of requisite variety.

“I accept responsibility for importing this law of requisite variety — here argued to be inappropriate for NLP practice.” (309)

Rather than base NLP on these premises and make them conscious, Grinder prefers to postulate them upon something much more vague and indescript, “the unconscious mind.” This, for him is the chief flaw with what he calls “the Classic Code:”

“There are important decisions and it is unfortunate in the extreme that the classic code assigns the responsibility for these decisions to the client’s conscious mind— precisely the part of the client least competent to make such decisions. (214)

“This makes the work shallow and unecological as the conscious mind is notoriously weak in its ability to appreciate what the function of a consciously undesired piece of behavior might be in the larger system of the person’s experience. The critique we offer is that such classic code patterns are flawed. They fail to provide for any systematic framing or access to the enormous potential of theunconscious. (215)

“The unconscious is superior in its competency for accessing the long term and global effects of some particular change with respect to consequences. Consciousness with its limitation of 7 -+ 2 chunks of information is ill-equipped to make such evaluations.” (218)

So does that mean that “the unconscious mind” is more competent to make decisions for us? Does that mean the unconscious mind doesn’t make mistakes (like allergies, false memories, auto- immune system diseases, etc.)? And didn’t Grinder, quoting Freud, also postulate that there is no time in the unconscious mind? Then how does the “unconscious” now have such competency for accessing the long term and global effects of the consequences of a change? All of that strikes me as especially convoluted.

Of course, many other problems are also created when we a dichotomy is set up between the parts of the mind that are conscious and that are not. So rather than solving problems, it only creates more problems.

Personally I prefer the original NLP model that equally trusted (and distrusted) both aspects of our mind— what is conscious and what is outside consciousness. I like the original design of NLP— to discover how to “run your own brain” and take charge of your states. I like the original NLP that sought to make explicit its theory and then hid them in the form of the NLP Presuppositions.

WHEN THE MAGICIANS WENT TO WAR

From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2010 – #36
August 2, 2010
History of NLP Series #4

A few years ago, while thinking about writing a History of NLP, I played around with the title, When the Magicians Went to War. Several I spoke to didn’t like it, and then many did. And undoubtedly there was a little bit of mischievousness in me as well to like it. Anyway I thought I’d use it for this post in the history of NLP series.

The “magicians,” of course, are John Grinder and Richard Bandler and first went to war in the late 1970s. I don’t know when the conflict between them began or even why (except for their egos, see below), but they did and the lawsuit between them was settled in 1981. Then a year or two later “The Society of NLP” went bankrupt and that marked the beginning of the end of that first era of NLP. Then in 1981, a lawsuit ended in which Grinder agreed to train in only six American cities for the following ten years, six cities that would be agreed upon by Bandler. Strange? Yes, very strange.

And why couldn’t they get along? Terry McClendon wrote in The Wild Days of NLP: 1972– 1981 that Bandler and Grinder “realized that the stage was not big enough for both of them” and so decided to go their separate ways in 1978 (p. 117). Undoubtedly there’s a lot more of that story, but I don’t know it. Perhaps it was over differences in how they thought about NLP; perhaps it was over differences in style. Perhaps it was that each thought they could do better apart from the other one.

From the court records that came later, Richard began using drugs like cocaine in the late 1970s after NLP exploded onto the national and international scene. And so when “the stage was too big for both of their egos” and they split, various trainer told me that they guessed that Grinder signed that lawsuit because he thought Richard would not be alive a decade later. That’s what I was told. And given that Bandler experienced cocaine drug over-doses in the 1980s several times, it doesn’t seem all that farfetched. The article about Richard’s murder trail (1986-1988) in Mother Jones magazine said that “Bandler bragged about using large amounts of cocaine” (1989, p. 25) and described his life story as one of “a blur of fact and fiction, obscured by cocaine and gin…” (p. 27).

Whatever happened behind the scenes, what we know publically is that Bandler and Grinder went separate ways and stopped talking to each other. And as the 1980s saw a wild growth of NLP training centers everywhere and then various Associations around the world and Conferences, both men seem to avoid such as well as contributing any writings to the journals and magazines that rose. Now there is a quotation that I came across some years ago accredit to Robert Dilts that went something like this: “NLP was given birth by two mad-men who modeled three wild individualists and who they never stayed around to father the community.”

All of this has led, over the years, to the charge that many have made: Bandler and Grinder don’t apply NLP to themselves. They created a world-class communication model, but do not or cannot communicate between themselves and the community that arose from the model. That was one of the comments I heard from the very beginning of my introduction to NLP in 1986. In 1997 at the Visionary Leadership conference that Dilts sponsored with Judith DeLozier at NLP U., there were even some skits that several people put on making fun of this very fact and asking why is this.

But more recently, Grinder (2001) tried really hard to answer this complaint. He wrote the complaint: “Why can the developers of the NLP communication model not communicate between themselves?” Then he not only denied it entirely(!), but turned it around asserting that he and Bandler “communicate perfectly.” Yes, you read that right. Here it is in his own words:

“We are aware during the last decade plus of a number of criticisms voiced with the implication that the ‘two great communicators’, Bandler and Grinder, themselves are not communicating effectively—that they are failing to use the very tools they created. …. From my point of view at any rate, Bandler and I are communicating perfectly. Neither of us has any further interest in pursuing either a professional nor a personal relationship and all the signals between us carry precisely this message— communication complete. … The evidence for this alleged failure to communicate typically cited is that Grinder and Bandler don’t agree. This is absolutely correct— Bandler and I do not agree.” (2001, p. 121)

So let me see. When two people won’t talk to each other any longer, that is “communicating perfectly”!? So rather than accepting responsibility for the division and the lack of communication, Grinder argues that he and Bandler are effectively and perfectly communicating by disagreeing with each other to such an extent that they won’t even talk to each other! Amazing. So in spite of having engaged in two major lawsuits and refusing to have anything to do with each other, somehow this is “effective communication?” It is “communicating perfectly?”

Well, if that’s effective communication, then I hope you and your loved ones never get to the place of communicating perfectly! It’s best that you stay with your current ineffective communicating and at least love each other and stay together!

What ever happened to the idea that communication refers to people communing with each other to create a union together? Yes, when two people say words about how each do not like the other and do not agree and do not want to work with each other that may be a clear message, but it is not using the tools of NLP to create the kind of relationship so that there’ s mutual understanding, respect, and a collaborative spirit. And for two people who once worked together to co-create something to move to an absolute refusal to work together for a greater good even is while disagreeing, why not be agreeable and pleasant and affirmative of the other person? That would be a demonstration of using the very tools that they created to communicate effectively.

Then to make things worse, John wrote in the following paragraphs the following about him and Bandler and how they are similar:

“… the characteristics that I believe we share: arrogant, unimpressed by authority or tradition, strong personal boundaries, willingness to try nearly anything, utterly lacking in self-doubt— egotistical, playful, full capability as players in the Acting As If game, full behavioral appreciation of difference between form and content.” (2001, pp. 121-122)

Perhaps this is the problem that keeps them from being able to demonstrate a respectful attitude toward each other, and toward others in the field with whom they disagree. Perhaps it lies in the characteristics of arrogance and being egotistical. This certainly does not strike me as something to be proud about. That seems like the wrong meta-state in this instance. Anyway, this is part of the story of when the Magicians went to War … and the Cold War that has ensued since— a sad and tragic tale in the discovery of perhaps the most powerful Communication Model on the planet! (And yes, I realize the irony of that last statement.)

THE INVIGORATING 1970s

From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2010 – #38
August 16, 2010
History of NLP Series #5

It all began with the creative collaboration of Bandler and Grinder which apparently occurred in 1973 to 1975. It was in 1974 that they collaborated on the writing of Structure of Magic I and II (published in 1975) and Patterns of the Hypnotic Patterns of Milton H. Erickson (published in 1975 and 1976). “What was within the original mix out of which came “Neuro-Lingiustic Programming?”

1) Gestalt Therapy (Perls) and 2) Family Systems Therapy (Satir) as viewed through the theoretical formulations of 3) Transformational Grammar (Chomsky) and 4) the Cognitive Psychology Movement (Miller, Pribram, Gallanter) and 5) the Anthropological and Systems approach of Bateson.

This is the psychology of NLP as well as the philosophy of NLP. So what became NLP was truly aninter-disciplinaryfieldfromthebeginning. Its theoretical andphilosophical foundations come from Anthropology, Neurology, Psychology, Physiology, Linguistics (Transformational Grammar), Systems, General Semantics, Cybernetics, and Communication Theory. Many “NLP Trainers” either don’t know this or don’t communicate this foundation— to the detriment of those entering this field.

Who were the people who started it? NLP began with a young college student along with an associate professor. When it all began Richard Bandler was only 21 years old (in 1972) and a student at Kresge College. Myths have him as a mathematician and a computer science, but he never received any degree mathematics or computer science and such things were not part of the original models. As a matter of fact, Richard was not a Gestalt therapist, he was not a mathematician, and he was not a computer scientist. He was in his third or fourth year, it wasn’t until 1973 that he got his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and psychology (not in mathematics or computer science). His master’s degree was also in Psychology. And John Grinder was 32 (in 1972), had just completed his doctorate degree (1971) in linguistics, “On Deletion Phenomena in English.”

The Modeling of three experts in therapeutic communication. Each of these experts had a different model and focus. Each also had a very different style and yet somehow each was able to facilitate transformational change that struck people as fascinating and amazing. Perls, Satir, and Erickson were the three original models. Yet what no book on NLP before 2007 ever noted was that Perls, Satir, and Bateson knew each other and worked together at Esalen as part of the Human Potential Movement (Self-Actualization Psychology, 2008). 1972 Fritz Perls was the first person modeled, but not in person. He died in January 1970 in Chicago after spending most of 1969 in Canada attempting to establish a Gestalt community there. There are mythical stories that Bandler has propagated about meeting Perls, but I have not been able to find any evidence of those stories. What apparently happened was that Richard read and studied various books on Gestalt and then learned the language patterns and voice emphasis from the tapes of Perls so that he was able to replicate those patterns. He then taught a Gestalt Class in 1973. Dr. Spitzer later wrote about this:

“Richard spent day after day wearing ear phones watch watching the films —making certain that the transcription was accurate. He came out of it talking and acting like Fritz Perls. I found myself accidently calling him Fritz on several occasions.” (p. 41) [Spitzer, Robert S. (1992). Virginia Satir and the Origins of NLP. Anchor Point. July, 1992, pp. 40-44]

1973 Virginia Satir was doing a Family System’s Reconstruction and Robert Spitzer sent Richard Bandler to record the program. Richard apparently picked up on her patterns and processes while sitting in the small recording room. One story has it that he was listening to Pink Floyd cassettes and Virginia got upset and confronted him. His response was that “Anyone could do this stuff” and so Virginia challenged him to show what he could do. When he was able to replicate the patterns, Virginia was surprised and amazed.

“During the summer of ‘73 Richard was asked to record for transcription a seminar Virginia Satir was doing in Cold Harbor, Canada.” [Interview with J. Grinder by Patrick Merlevede, 1999, NLP World, Volume 5, No. 1, p. 51.]

1974 Gregory Bateson introduced Richard and John to Milton Erickson. Milton Erickson, a medical doctor (MD) and psychiatrist in Phoenix Arizona who had established the credibility of medicalhypnosis,fromwhichEricksonianHypnotherapyevolved. Twobookswereimmediately produced from modeling Erickson, Patterns of the Hypnotic Patterns of Milton H. Erickson. In NLP, this became known as “the Milton Model.” It is about the language patterns and processes that comprise the heart of trance.

About the same time that The Structure of Magic books were published, 1975, Bandler got his master’s degree from Lone Mountain College in San Francisco. If you google “Richard Bandler” there are many websites that provide the following information:

“Born: February 24, 1950) is the co-inventor (with John Grinder) of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Bandler holds a BA (1973) in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and an MA (1975) in Psychology from Lone Mountain College in San Francisco. Bandler has no earned doctorate. There are various (unsubstantiated) reports (on alt.psychology.nlp) that Bandler has been awarded two honorary doctorates though the details of these awards are not specified.”

So 1975 is the date usually given for the beginning of NLP. That was the date of the publication of the original books that brought together the original discoveries of the language patterns of Perls and Satir. Now one story that I heard in the late 1980s was that the University of Southern California at Santa Cruz wanted to grant Bandler recognition for his co-creation of the new model but that he had not finished his thesis, so Grinder wrote it for him. But apparently that’s not accurate, his master’s degree wasn’t granted from that university, but from Lone Mountain College in San Francisco. There must be a story behind that, but I don’t know that one.

What was NLP called before it was called NLP? I don’t know. Rodger C. Bailey (1991) says that Bandler and Grinder “came up with the name [NLP] in 1977.” [Anchor Point, Is It Time to Restructure NLP?, Oct. 1991, p. 20]. I had not noticed that before, but when I flipped through The Structure of Magic volumes, it does not appear to be there. The only terminology used there was “The Meta-Model of Language in Therapy.” Isabelle David, Montreal Canada, tells the story of Richard and John up at the log cabin in the mountains, after many hours and a bottle of California wine asking themselves, “What the hell are we going to call this?” And they decided on Neuro- Linguistic Programming.

I heard a different story from Richard in 1989. He told about being pulled over on the highway by a policeman and being asked, “Who are you? What do you do?” And Richard, looking in the back seat of his car saw a book on Linguistics, one on Neurology, and one on Computer Programming, so he said, “I’m a Neuro-Linguistic Programmer.” Of course, many, many years before all of this, Alfred Korzybski (1933) wrote about “neuro-linguistic” and “neuro-semantic” training and processes and in fact, Korzybski traveled the United States in the 1940s doing “Neuro-Linguistic Training.” So who knows the real story. Given that “the map is not the territory” came from Korzybski who constantly used the term Neuro-Linguistic, I would put my money on him being the original source.

1976 Robert Dilts wrote his first papers on what was later titled, “Roots of Neuro-Linguistic Programming” (later published under that title by Meta Publications, 1983).

1977 NLP Taught for the first time as “NLP.” Richard and Leslie were married that year and then divorced in 1980. This was the year also that Leslie founded “The Society of NLP” over which the lawsuits in 1981 and 1996-2000 were about.

1978: David Gordon, a psychotherapist, took the basic NLP models and wrote the book Therapeutic Metaphors. 1978 also was the year that Bandler and Grinder ended their collaboration. Bateson moved to Esalen as the scholar-in-residence and died in 1980. This year also Richard and John commissioned Robert Dilts to write NLP Volume I. Robert had written a paper, “NLP: A New Psychotherapy.” (McClendon, p. 103). Steve Johns left Gestalt therapy and entered NLP and become Steve Andreas (his mother Barry Stevens, owned Real People Press, a devotee of Fritz Perls).

1979: Daniel Goleman visited Bandler and Grinder and wrote an article in Psychology Today, “The People who Read People.” In this year Leslie Cameron Bandler developed the first curriculum of NLP for the first Practitioner and Master Practitioner courses in 1979 and the first Trainers course was 1980. Rodger Bailey says that within the original curriculum a dilemma was introduced.

“The modeling technologies and the psycho-therapeutic models were mashed together into a single, undifferentiated curriculum. People did not learn that Strategy Elicitation is a modeling technology and that V-K Disassociation is a psycho-therapeutic model.” (P. 21, Anchor Point, Oct. 1991).

During these early years of the 1970s John formed Grinder, DeLozier and Associates and Richard had his company, Not Limited. From The Wild Days of NLP, we learn that Leslie joined with Michael Labeau and David Gordon, Robert Dilts; Terry McClendon joined with Robert Dilts; and Frank Pucelik created a partnership with Byron Lewis.

In an Interview with David Gordon, Patrick Merlevede writes in NLP World about 1978-1979: “First Institute in San Francisco, called DOTAR (Division of Training and Research) … situated in a converted church which they used as a seminar room. Leslie Cameron was the director of the Institute, Robert Dilts the director of research, and David the director of training. They worked together, basically every day, creating the field, including the first practitioner and master practitioner programs, but also working with private clients. Richard and John mainly acted as patriarchs. … The DOTAR period was probably the most productive in the NLP field. It went on until 1982.” (p. 63). [Merlevede, Patrick E. (2000). Volume 7, No. 1. The Story of David [Gordon]. pp. 61-64]

So the 1970s were indeed invigorating years for NLP as it was first launched!

THE 1980s WHEN NLP FRAGMENTED

From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2010 – #38
August 23, 2010
History of NLP Series #6

The 1980s started out pretty well for the field of NLP, but it did not end that way. In fact, almost as soon as the 1980s began, the field began dividing into various divisions as both founders led the way by going their separate ways. By the end of the 80s, each was claiming to do “pure NLP” and essentially “dissing” the other. As the 80s others were creating their versions of NLP and creating separate “kingdoms.” What a sad development for such a dynamic field.

Now the 1980s actually began in a wonderful way with the publication of “Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Volume I” (1980) by Robert Dilts published by Meta Publications. Robert had been commissioned to write that book back in 1978 having written a document on strategies that impressed both Richard and John. And this book, along with Robert’s other original books on NLP, went a long way to establishing the credibility of NLP.

Many years later, Oakley Gordon wrote a two part article in Anchor Point, “What is NLP? A Brief History” (May and July 1995). In those articles, he wrote in part the following:

“‘Volume I’ implies a ‘Volume II’. The second volume was to present the modeling techniques of NLP, the processes by which the NLP developers modeled excellence in human behavior. The project was aborted, however, due to the dissolution of the community of NLP developers.” (p. 14, Anchor Point, July 1995).

And so the vision of a series of volumes on NLP came to an end immediately after the first one. No other volume in that series ever appeared. Many years later when I wrote NLP Going Meta (1997/ 2004) I contacted Meta Publications and asked Fred Tappa for permission to name it “NLP: Volume II.” He said the term was reserved for the next volume and that was 1997— 17 years later! At the time I thought Fred was holding onto hope; but looking back my guess is that it was a joke and I just didn’t get it(!) at that time. The very next year, 1981, the first law suit between Bandler and Grinder occurred and as McClendon noted in The Wild Days of NLP, “Bandler bought John out of the Society” of NLP (p. 117).

About this dissolution of the society (and the community to a great extent) the collaboration between the original developers came to an end. Gordon (1995) noted:

“While there was some degree of tracking each other’s innovations, the overall effect of the breakup of the original group was a diversification in the trajectories of NLP with a resulting blurring of its definition.” (p. 16) So in a way, the 1980s brought so many challenges to the field that in some ways it is really surprising that NLP survived the 80s. Now among the challenges to the field, one of the strangest was Grinder’s attack on the original formulations of NLP. In 1983 Grinder and DeLozier decide the whole field was wrongly oriented and formulated and so created a “New Code” to replace the old code of NLP. Grinder went on to argue against the focus on conscious awareness in NLP claiming the “unconscious mind” as more intelligent and less likely to error. So the idea of “running your own brain,” so central to NLP (as per Bandler’s 1985 book, Running Your Brain for a Change), was called into question.

1986: Bandler provided his own challenges to the field due to actions in his personal life. In the middle of the 1980s he was arrested, charged with an account of murder, and spent 120 days in county jail. That certainly didn’t do the field of NLP any good! Steve Andreas lead a defense fund for Richard and personally provided $60,000 to Richard for the trial. What happened? A young woman, Corine Christensen, was shot by a .357 magnum revolver, the only other persons in the house was Richard Bandler and James Marino, an admitted cocaine dealer and her boyfriend. Though it was Marino’s house and although they had been fighting, the district attorney decided that the evidence pointed to Richard than the drug dealer! Anyway this lasted from 1986 to 1988 and ended in the grand jury unable to decide, so the charge was dropped. But, of course, not without the trial hitting the headlines in many papers and journals— including a scathing review in Mother Jones magazine that you can still find on various websites.

Another Bandler lawsuit occurred sometime later (1988 or 1989) against Tony Robbins. That one was against Robbins because he was not certifying people as NLP Practitioners or Master Practitioners through The Society of NLP. Settled in 1990 out of court with Tony promising to “certify people through the Society and pay his $200 for each one certified in NLP,” he promptly stopped training “NLP” as such and invented a new name, NAC— Neural Associative Conditioning.

And so with that Richard Bandler essentially chased Robbins away from the field with the result that even to this day Anthony Robbins will not say the three letters, NLP, when he is on Larry King or other international television programs. Richard just chased away the greatest salesman he could have ever had!

Another conflict arose during my Master Practitioner training in San Diego, 1989. One of the trainer there was Tad James. He had been participating in the Bandler trainings, but this time was different. Apparently without informing Bandler, Tad had claim ownership of the Time-Lines model that Bandler had created and had filed a trademark for “time-line therapy” (which by the way was never registered). From the stories I heard from trainers who were there, Richard and Tad argued loudly about this and almost came to blows. So that ended their relationship. After that Tad introduced his many versions of New Age religions including Huna into his sect of NLP.

With all of this fragmentation, many new Associations were created throughout the 1980s, but by the end of the 1980s, there was no International Association or body to govern the field of NLP. Again, Oakley Gordon (1995) write in Anchor Point:

“There is no organization with the authority to pass judgment on the quality of the diverse NLP training programs currently being offered, or even to define what is, and what is not, NLP.” (p. 17) … For the field of NLP has no single voice, no universally agreed upon definition, no quality control over what is offered under its name. An outside entering these waters may encounter anything from the sublime to the ridiculous.” (p. 18)

On a very positive note, it was during the 1980s that NLP went global. It was introduced into England 1981 or 2; then to Europe in the early 1980s, NLP came to Hong Kong in 1982, and so it went. Men and women from around the world began showing up in Santa Cruz and other places in America where NLP was being taught and then taking it home to their own countries. When and by whom NLP was taken abroad is much of the story that I don’t know so if you do know specific details, do let me know.

So the decade that began so positively and that began to see the spread of NLP everywhere, a decade that began with so much hope ended in fragmentation, embarrassment, and conflict. It’s the way of many movements, perhaps most movements. And yet for a movement about positive psychology, human excellence, and all based on a cutting-edge communication model— the 1980s were really a challenging time for the field of NLP.

THE HISTORY OF NLP’s IDENTITY CONFUSION 1975– 1980s

From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2010 – #39
August 30, 2010
History of NLP Series #7

From the beginDning NLP has had an identity confusion. After all, what is it? What exactly is this thing that we call Neuro-Linguistic Programming? Now if you ask the people who should know, even NLP trainers, you will actually get all kinds of answers. So the confusion exists even here.

For example, many of them will identify NLP as a form of therapy. “It’s a new form of psychotherapy,”manywillassert. Trueenough,thisfieldbeganfromthefieldoftherapyasit was modeled from therapists and because it has at its heart many therapeutic processes. Yet while it began from there, that’s not what NLP is.

The big confusion that confusing NLP with therapy has created for the field of NLP has been highly problematic from the beginning. And yet, how that confusion came to be makes perfect sense. After all, NLP was modeled from three therapists, three world-class communicators who worked with hurting people who needed healing. So it really isn’t a big surprise that many people, right from the beginning even to this day, confused it with therapy. NLP has a significant background in therapy. Add to this the fact that all of the original books and writings about NLP were written in the context of therapy and the examples and illustrations that were used were almost always from the field of therapy. Nevertheless, this was still a big confusion because NLP is not a therapy, not even a psychology.

Of course it makes sense that it took two men from outside the field of therapy to walk into that field and see things that those on the inside did not. Thomas Kunn (1972) wrote about this in his book, The Scientific Revolution. Those inside a paradigm often become paradigm blind and cannot see what is obvious to those on the outside. So when Bandler and then Grinder happened upon the “magic” of Perls and Satir, for a short while they had a distinct advantage.

Now against that background is another one, and one of far more importance for identifying what NLP is. I have been calling it “The Secret History of NLP.” This is the fact that Perls and Satir and Bateson were part of the Human Potential Movement and that means that the focus was on psychological health (self-actualization) rather than therapy. It was on Maslow’s idea of modeling the best and healthiest in human nature.

Imagine how things might have turned out for the field of NLP if that had been made the focus and the “therapy” context was made more peripheral. But they didn’t. In fact, one of the surprising things that I found from the time I began studying NLP is that throughout the early literature of NLP, both Bandler and Grinder refer to themselves as therapists! Of course, they were not. They might have been working with clients and taking on therapeutic issues, but neither was trained in therapeutic work and neither had any expertise as therapists or psychologists. As a side-note, later in the late 1990s, the name NLP was changed in several countries in Europe to NLPt — which stands for Neuro-Linguistic Psychotherapy.

An interesting comment from Bandler, Grinder, and Andreas comes from Frog into Princes, which was published in 1978. In the following quotation they seemed to have just gotten the idea of moving from traditional therapy to Self-Actualization Psychology although they didn’t have a name for that:

“We are very slowly tapering off teaching and doing therapy because there’s a presupposition common in the field of clinical psychology which we personally disagree with: that change is a remedial phenomenon. You find something that is wrong and you fix it. “There is an entirely different way to look at change, which we call the generative or enrichment approach. Instead of looking for what’s wrong and fixing it, it’s possibly simply to think of ways that your life could be enriched: ‘What would be fun to do, or interesting to be able to do?’ ‘What new capacities or abilities could I invent for myself?’ ‘How can I make things really groovy?’” (190) “The idea of generative change is really hard to sell to psychologists. … We are currently investigating what we call generative personality. We are finding people who are geniuses at things, finding out the sequence of unconscious programming that they use, and installing those sequences in other people to find out if having that unconscious program allows them to be able to do the task.” (191)

What is NLP? Many others confuse it with hypnosis or hypnotherapy. But again, that’s not what it is. That is just one of the sources of the original modeling and one of the applications. The “magic” that Milton Erickson was able to produce with his medical hypnosis led to a second communication model in NLP, the Milton Model. And with that discovery, it seemed that the original founders took a strange turn, one that brought many other confusions.

So what is NLP? It is a Communication Model. That’s what it is— a discovery of how people use words to inform themselves, map reality, and create their behaviors. Modeled from people who were excellent in their use of language, NLP used Transformational Grammar to generate the Meta-ModelfromPerlsandSatir. And as a set of communication tools, the NLP model provides a way for us to model human experiences. So, NLP is a modeling process. That’s how it began, accidently, and that is (and will be) how NLP will grow and develop. The founders called themselves modelers in that early literature of NLP. And if they had really focused on that, they might have turned to focus on business and if they had done that, the field of NLP could have possibly discovered the field of Coaching and would today own it. But they didn’t. It would be many years later before NLP applications for business would develop. That came in the 1980s, not the 70s.

NLP’S “NEW AGE” CONFUSIONS

From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2010 – #40
September 6, 2010
History of NLP Series #8

Not only has NLP long been confused with therapy, it has also for a long time been confused with the New Age movement and many of the way-out ideas involved in that. I don’t know when “The New Age” movement began. In the USA it seemed to have arisen during the 1960s as freedoms of various sorts were sought for and explored— during the Civil rights movement, Women’s Rights, etc.

It also seemed to have also been part and parcel of the Human Potential Movement (1962–1985) and eventually became part of the Trans-Personal Psychology (approximately 1965). Esalen played a big role in it as it served as the New Age Center where the wildest ideas could be explored and where “East and West spirituality” could mix and mingle in new forms.

What specifically is this “New Age” movement? What ideas determine and govern it? Well, that’s where things get pretty messy. It is almost a catch-all-term for anything outside of the mainstream thinking. Sometimes it involves thinking outside-the-box and imagining what could be such imaginative questions as the following:

What if we could send our thoughts through space without speaking, just thinking? What if we could move physical objects by our thoughts? What if we are reincarnated from a previous life? What if this is just one expression and we will be back? What if thinking creates reality without having to invent and innovate products?

Wild and crazy and imaginative ideas, right? And if we keep it as just that— some imaginative thinking for exploring—it keeps us playful and open. But once a person starts to believe in such things—well, then the self-validating and self-reinforcing and self-fulfilling nature of a belief kicks in and then a person will begin to “see” and “perceive” evidence of their belief— even when there is nothing in reality. That’s when all of this becomes a problem. Then imaginations take flight and they never come in for a landing! They continue to hoover in la-la-land.

The challenge here is how to maintain a realistic (and scientific mindset) of testing things, checking things out, demanding rigorous standards for “proof,” and staying open, playful, and imaginative. It is believing-while-being a skeptic until there’s external evidence that even an unbeliever has to acknowledge.

So a New Age Believer is just that— a believer in something, someone fully convinced about something and who also believes that he or she has “proof.” In this, a non-believer does not see or perceive what the believer does. This differentiates true science from pseudo-science. In legitimate science, the evidence stands on its own— there’s a process for testing, and it can be replicated by others, even by those who do not believe that something exists or that something works. In fact, when the non-believer has to agree with the facts and legitimacy of something, then you have proof that isn’t a function of a self-validating belief.

Now you know why double-blind and triple-blind research design projects are so important in science. If the persons conducting the study know what to look for or believe that they will find it, they will mess up the results.

Why is it that this comes so easily into NLP? Well the answer is this: As a cognitive-behavioral psychology based on a constructivist philosophy about reality and a phenomenological philosophy of human nature, we start from the assumption that there’s a difference between our mental maps about the world and the world. We start from this “the map is not the territory” distinction. We know that the way we “bring the world” into ourselves is through the “abstracting of our nervous system with its sense receptors.” This is what Alfred Korzybski described in great detail in Science and Sanity (1933, 1995). This is what NLP began with in saying that “We do not deal with reality (the territory) directly, but through our maps.”

[In Whispering in the Wind Grinder reveals that he has not read Korzybski as he accuses him of a shallow understanding of the “map” that we use to navigate reality and what Grinder calls ‘first access’ Korzybski mapped out in 1933 in much greater detail than Grinder as his Structural Differential and the neurological stages of abstractions.]

So far, so good. In science we know that the electro-magnetic spectrum of “energies”out there in the world are processed and interpreted by our nervous system and sense receptors as light, sound, and sensation. And we know that different nervous-system structures in neurology, as the eyes of owls, the ears of dogs, etc., see and hear and interpret the “energy signals” out there in the world differently from ours. They may see the ultra-violet aspect of the spectrum where for us, we see nothing and sense nothing. Then there are all of the extra-neural devices that we have invented over the years— devices that allow us to register, detect, recognize, interpret, and understand what is “out there” that we cannot pick up naturally with our neurological sense receptors.

And yes, there is a world “out there” beyond our nervous system. There is a reality of objects that impact us independent of whether we know what they are or how they work. You don’t have to believe in cars or car accidents (or disbelieve in them) in order to experience an accident. Reality exists outside of you and your inner “reality” (subjective experience of reality) is co- created by the mixture of your thoughts and beliefs with the stuff outside. So reality is not pure or only subjectivity. We do not merely project the world. We project our models and theories onto the world, our assumptions and then see the world in terms of those assumptions.

So we know that there is more “out there” than we can detect without special help. And this is where our playful imaginations come in as we imagine the what ifs… and play around in our thinking about what other extra-neural devices we could invent and wonder if we could re-program our thinking and feeling in order to expand our capacities. And as long as that’s what we’re doing, I say, go for it.

But I also think we should be very, very, very careful about turning imaginative ideas into beliefs, and then into creeds. I would love to move things only with my mind. But until someone figures out how to do that, demonstrates it to non-believers, and can demonstrate it under laboratory conditions, tele-kinesis is just an imaginary desire and sci-fi plaything, and not reality.

But this is what begins to create the New Age Believer— that person has jumped over the evidence stage and has become a believer, and often times a fanatic, who is absolutely convinced and therefore no longer open-minded and no longer open to feedback that he or she could be wrong. And that, of course, is a big danger sign!

NLP was designed, as a child of the Human Potential Movement, to be creative, playful, imaginative and to stretch forward to play with the various possibilities for developing new human resources. So no wonder so many “New Agers” were (and are) attracted to NLP and many end up as Trainers. And with that another problem begins. They not only teach and train the Cognitive-Behavioral psychology of NLP (if they even know it), but they also mix it with their religious belief system, alias their “New Age Religion.”

And they have the right to whatever religion they want! I have no problem with that. But to confuse NLP and New Age Religion, well, with that I do have a problem. They are fusing together a model of human nature with a set of beliefs. And doing that confuses things. Nor should someone confuse NLP wth Christianity, or NLP and Buddhism, or NLP and Isalm, etc.

We have been very, very careful in Neuro-Semantics about keeping the model of Neuro- Semantic-NLP clean and clear from any and every religion. Within our ranks are people who are believers in these different spiritual disciplines who use the models that govern language, emotion, meaning, performance, mental filters, etc. in their religious expressions. So far, so good. And what we ask is that they keep them separate. One is the model itself, the other are the various applications.

So if you see or read about some NLP or Neuro-Sematnic person into what I personally consider pure non-sense, like the stuff in “The Secret,” or other New Age Beliefs about tele-kinesis, channeling the dead, reincarnation, Huna (Tad James), “quantum” psychology or linguistics, “new humans” emerging with mutated DNA, etc., none of that has anything to do with NLP or Neuro- Semantics.

Now our official position in Neuro-Semantics is that all of this is pre-scientific and much of it is pseudo-scientific and is the idiosyncratic beliefs of certain people and have nothing to do with the models.

ON THE SHOULDER OF GIANTS

From: L. Michael Hall Meta
Reflections 2010 – #40
September 13, 2010
History of NLP Series #9

In spite of all of the hype and myths about NLP, the models and field of NLP did not appear all of a sudden just from the work of Richard Bandler and John Grinder. In many ways, they were just the final catalysts who brought together the thinking, spirit, and focus of many others. And to a great extent they just happened upon what we today call NLP, it was not a thought-out plan or strategy. It was as much coincidence and accident as anything else.

For example, did you know that long, long before Bandler or Grinder were even born, Alfred Korzybski was conducting Neuro-Linguistic Trainings around the United States as a way of making General Semantics known? Yes, that’s right. That occurred during the 1940s. Today we recognize Korzybski as one of the giants upon whose shoulders NLP stands. He set forth the presupposition that “The map is not the territory” as well as the terms “neuro-linguistic,” and “neuro-semantics.” And long before Grinder ever used the words “first access,” Korzbyski mapped out the multiple levels of “abstracting” that occur in our nervous system long before it reaches conscious awareness. He called that the “before words” level of abstracting.

And long, long before the idea of modeling excellence dawned in the midst of either Bandler or Grinder, Abraham Maslow was actually engaged in modeling self-actualizing people. After writing an exhaustive volume on Abnormal Psychology, Maslow turned his energies to the highest and best in human nature, the “Farther Reaches of Human Nature” and began modeling people who showed some of the characteristics of self-actualization. In fact, he began with one of the co-founders of Gestalt Psychology, Max Wertheimer. This was the man who Fritz Perls later followed as he developed Gestalt Therapy. Maslow also modeled Ruth Benedict, the mentor of Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson’s first wife.

Maslow and Rogers, in the 1930s and 1940s, then set out the foundations of Humanistic Psychology, the psychology of the Human Potential Movement of which Perls, Satir, and Bateson were second generation leaders and who worked together at Esalen. These were the giants upon whose shoulders Bandler and Grinder stood and which enabled them to create the synthesis called NLP.

And there were others. NLP was also founded, in part, on the work of the two men who founded the field of Cognitive Psychology. Both Noam Chomsky and George Miller are each credited as the founder of the Cognitive movement beginning in 1956. Chomsky because of his work in founding Transformational Grammar — the first tool that J. Grinder used to create the Meta-Model of Language and that defeated Behaviorism as the dominant model in psychology. Miller for his classic 1956 paper, “The Magic Number 7 plus-or-minus 2″ and for his 1960 book on “Plans and the Structure of Behavior” that introduced the TOTE model which Bandler, Grinder, DeLozier, Dilts and others used to create the Strategy Model in NLP.

And others— of course, the work of Milton Erickson in hypnosis and hypnotic language patterns, Virginia Satir which brought in systems thinking. There was Gregory Bateson the professor at the University at Santa Cruz whose work on meta-levels, double-bind theory, anthropology, systems work, and general creativity powerfully influenced and enriched the NLP model.

The point? NLP was inevitable. The idea of stepping back from structures of excellence and using various tools and models — General Semantics, Transformational Grammar, Human Potentials,Gestalt,Systems,etc. AlreadytheSelf-Actualization Psychology of Maslow had encouraged a new strengths-focus in many areas—education, therapy, training and development, etc. It had encourage people to look for and explore human potentials and to begin to look at and model positive examples.

What NLP added to this spirit of the times in the 1960s and 1970s was that using two sound disciplines—linguistics and neurology— they intentionally sought to understand the structure of an experience apart from the content details (the story). And with that focus, they were able to identify some component pieces of “mind” and “body” and that’s what gave them some control and management in replicating excellence. And with that the modeling of NLP began.

Korzbyski calls this whole process time-binding. This refers to our ability to bind into our very being— our minds and neurology— the learnings, insights, and discoveries of people who went before us so that we don’t have to reinvent everything with every generation. Ideally, we could begin each generation where the previous one left off. Using symbols (language) I can take what Aristotle or Einstein or Maslow or Bateson or anyone else and bind what they learned and make it mine. This is “standing on the shoulders of giants” so that we can see further, so that we can progress to the next level of development and not have to start all over again.

THE LAWSUIT THAT ALMOST KILLED NLP

From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2010 – #41
Sept. 20, 2010 History of NLP Series #10 **

In the 1990s a blow was delivered to the field of NLP that nearly destroyed the field in the United States. Elsewhere in the world NLP kept growing and thriving, but not in the United States and the effect has continued to this day. What happened is a very sad chapter in the history of NLP.

It began in July of 1996 when Richard Bandler filed a $90,000,000 lawsuit as a civil action against John Grinder, Carmen Bostic St. Clair, Christina Hall, Steve and Connirae Andreas, and Lara Ewing and 200 John and Jane Does. In that lawsuit Bandler claimed exclusive ownership of the Society of NLP. Copies of the lawsuit are still available on various websites.

The first effected me in early 1997. Having just completed another NLP Practitioner Course with 20 people, I sent a check for $4,000 ($200 per participant was the arrangement) and the certificates to the “First Institute of NLP” in San Francisco for Richard Bandler to sign. As a NLP trainer, this was the arrangement that I had been following for seven years, but this time Brahm von Huene returned the check and certificates and sent a new contract for me to sign.

In the contract, I crossed out the section that said that anything I developed based on NLP would be considered the intellectual property of Bander and the section that if he decided to sue me, I would assume responsibility for all legal bills. Of course, I would not sign that! I initialed both places, and then sent the money, certificates and the contract back. Shortly thereafter all was returned again with the statement that I was no longer a NLP trainer under the Society of NLP.

By June of 1997 the lawsuit had become big news in the field of NLP, and so when Robert Dilts sponsored the Visionary Leadership conference in Santa Cruz California, word about the lawsuit was the central thing that everybody was talking about. There were over 200 NLP Trainers who had gathered from all around the world for this conference.

A day or two later, Judith DeLozier announced in the conference that John Grinder had showed up—but he would not come into the meeting place where we were all gathered. I think it was Judith DeLozier who announced that John would meet with anyone who wanted to talk to him about the lawsuit “out on the grass” in front of the venue. So many of us met with John and listened to what he told us about the lawsuit. He was there also to raise money for his legal defense. The very next day, Richard Bandler sent his lawyer (!) who also came and meet with anyone who wanted to talk to him “out on the grass.” And again, many of us when out to talk to him. Wyatt Woodsmall and I stood next to each other, and when there was a moment for some questions, I had the contract that had been returned to me, so I held it forth and asked Richard’s lawyer about it. But it was a futile attempt for any reasoning.

The contract that I signed, sent back with the two sections crossed out, began with these words which tells a lot about what all the ruckus was about:

“The Licensor owns throughout the World all rights, title, and interest in and to the intellectual property known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming…”

So there was no question that Bandler’s 1996 lawsuit was an attempt to take over and totally controlthefieldofNLP. And from the perspective of 1996, 1997, etc. it seemed very likely that that might happen. It seemed that he had the trademark. That’s why Dr. Bob Bodenhamer and myself decided that we would trademark and register “Neuro-Semantics.” Our thinking was that if Bandler did win the lawsuit, and forbid us from training NLP, we would still be able to train under the banner of Neuro-Semantics and that also explained why we set forth a vision of being more professional, more collaborative, more “applying to self,” etc.

During this time John Grinder put out a Statement about the lawsuit, Robert Dilts wrote a paper on Trademarks, and NLP Connection, and many other journals kept the field informed about what was going on. Steve Andreas asked me if I would be available and willing to make a deposition about NLP and be disposed by Bandler’s lawyer. I was to provide “some substantial documentation of the many sources that Bandler drew upon in the development of NLP— what he got from Bateson, from Perls, Satir, Chomsky, etc.” I had been writing about the intellectual history of NLP for years, and I readily agreed to provide that. I told Steve that I was highly disappointed in Bandler, that Steve had done more to put Bandler on the map than anyone, and that yes, of course, I would testify on his behalf.

From 1996 to 2000 (when the lawsuit was settled), hundreds of people in the United States, scared of Richard and fearful of being added to the lawsuit as one of the “John Does” began divesting themselves of NLP— they stopped referring to what they did as “NLP” and those running training centers either closed shop or changed their names. By the end, there were but a dozen centers left (if that) and even today, there’s very few Centers left, no journals, no magazines, and no associations of NLP in the US.

What happened? Chris Hall (no relation to me) explained in NLP World (July 2001): “The Court’s rulings have made it clear that Bandler’s claim to exclusive and sole ownership of the Society and the intellectual property rights associated with NLP have been false and unlawful.” (p. 17)

Christina Hall was one of my trainers when I learned NLP. I recorded some of her presentations and referred to her in my first two books on NLP: The Spirit of NLP (1989; 1996) and Becoming More Ferocious as a Presenter (1990). She was in a special internship with Richard when I first met her in 1989 and the president of “The Society of NLP.” And given that she was the representative leader of the “Bandler Group” who owned the trademark, “Society of NLP,” when the trial was all over, she won the judgment over Bandler and was awarded some $600,000. I doubt she will ever receive any of that because Bandler moved to Ireland! It turned out that Richard Bandler did not have the trademark for “NLP”—no one did. And with that NLP was declared in public domain. (A similar thing happened in the UK, as Bandler was convicted of receiving the trademark of NLP by fraud and fined 175,000 pounds.)

“The Bandler Group” was the group who in 1983 purchased the trademark of “The Society of NLP” after Liquidation of NOT Ltd. (Bandler’s original company) went bankrupt. This group was named “the Bandler group” and was comprised of Christina Hall, Max Steinback, M.D., Karen MacDonald, Ed and Maryann Reese, Joseph and Linda Sommers-Yeager, and Richard Morales.

The trial lasted nine days and ended on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2000. Chris Hall tells about the testimony against Bandler and those who testified in the court of Judge Yonts in Feb 2000. This included Dr. Max Steinback, John Grinder, Karen MacDonald (widow of Will MacDonald), and Christina Hall.

THE MIS-NAMING OF MASTER PRAC.

Yes they mis-named it! And what a tragedy that mis-naming has created. Yet as with most things human, they undoubtedly were doing their best and simply didn’t imagine, didn’t think, didn’t project themselves into the future to consider what consequences that name would have.

How could they have known that 35 years later people with just a month of training in this field would use the title, “Master Practitioner,” stress the Master part, and consider that they have arrived, they know-it-all, they don’t need to study anymore, they have arrived at Guru-dom?!

The history of NLP “Practitioner” and “Master Practitioner” is itself an interesting one. Since 1978 when Leslie Cameron Bandler put together the first “Practitioner” that was some 36 days long, the Prac. course of NLP was designed to introduce the basic NLP models and give people the essential competencies to use the models and patterns and to begin to think in terms of these models.

And that means what? That means understanding the basic Communication Model of NLP. That’s why NLP is— a model of how human beings communicate, first to themselves (also called “thinking,” “awareness,” “being conscious”) and then to others (also called “talking”). Modeled from three experts in communication, three “world-class professional communicators” NLP presented itself as being able to identify the essential structure of communication verbally and non-verbally.

The verbal part predominated at first. Using the dominating linguistic model at that time, Transformational Grammar (TG), Grinder introduced the majority of the jargon of NLP by sticking in all of the TG language: transderivational search to your referential index, selective restriction violation, nominalizations, etc. In The Structure of Magic, the language part was recognized as the “meta-representational system.”

None of that was new, nor was the sensory representational systems (seeing, hearing, sensing, smelling, tasting). That had been around for a hundred years in the field of Psychology, from the very beginning of Psychology as a field separate from Philosophy. But there was something new, and radical— Using the sensory representational systems as the languages of the mind. That was new. And Bateson noted this in his Preface to The Structure of Magic commenting that he and his colleagues had been search for that for decades.

So first came the Meta-Model, then the Representational Systems, which includes calibrating to a person for recognizing representational systems (eye accessing cues and the like), then the TOTE model for Strategies, the Milton Model (and reversing the Meta-Model to use it for trance), the Sub-Modality distinctions, and the basic Time-Line model, and with these models, lots of patterns, processes, and exercises. And at first Prac. took a long, long time. But eventually, the process was streamlined to 21 days of 8 hours or so of training each day, and this still remains that in many places. We increase the hours to 12 hour days, require extensive reading and preparation ahead of time and can get through the content in a minimum of 7 days when we really push it. And what accelerates the learning of NLP in Neuro-Semantics is half a day on Meta-States since that’s what explains the “magic” of NLP.

Then there’s Master Prac. It really has nothing to do with mastery, it is mostly more stuff.More of the NLP model: Meta-Programs, Advance Modeling, Extensive Reframing using the old “sleight of mouth” patterns (or Mind-Lines), Meta-States, Advanced Trance, Advanced Time-Lines, and again, lots and lots patterns, processes, and applications to personal development, therapy, business, selling, leadership, etc.

Many years ago I asked Wyatt Woodsmall,

“Why was Meta-Programs put in Master Prac. rather than in Prac.? After all, a person really needs to know about meta-programs from the beginning?”

His answer was simple and succinct: “Because they were not invented when Prac. was invented!” “Oh, so that’s why!” (Of course, the story of their invention is in Figuring Out People, 2007).

When I first began training Master Prac. I tossed some things in about “mastery,” what it is, how long it takes (the “ten year rule”), the attitude required, etc. and we ended Master Prac. With a “pathway to mastery” celebration. Today I think that’s a mistake. While the 15 to 24 days of Master Prac. does take basic NLP further, and provides a more indepth understanding, if we’re honest, it really has nothing to do with mastery and it actually is perpetuating the “get rich quick,” “get smart quick,” “get instant expertise” myth that’s clings to NLP like a leach sucking its blood.

No one is a “master” of NLP after a two or three week intensive course or after a year if you stretch it out to 6 or 8 weekends.

That’s not how mastery works. Even I knew that after my first experience of Master Prac. At my first Master Prac. I wrote the notes that is now the book, The Spirit of NLP (1996). And in that book, the idea of the spirit of NLP is the idea of continuous learning, an unending, ongoing attitude of exploring, discovering, and ferocious curiosity.

In an interview in Moscow recently, I was asked about Master Practitioners/ Trainers who consider that they have arrived, who segregate themselves from everybody else and present themselves as having reached the pinnacle of the field. “What about them? What would you say to them?”

“I’d say that ‘You have missed the whole point! You do not understand the basics of NLP if that’s your attitude! Your license to train ought to be revoked and you ought to go study it afresh and learn to develop the spirit of NLP. Your journey to mastery has hardly begun— there are many new developments in the field and unless you are staying involved, collaborating with those who are doing things in this field, every day you are falling further and further behind!’”

This Week’s Neuro-Semantic News
We are wrapping up the completion of NSTT (Trainers’ Training ) in Hong Kong and the graduation is this Thursday.
Then NSTT Colorado Begins June 19.

HIGHER BUT SO WHAT?

That’s what he said to me. I was in Hong Kong and we were doing a promotional workshop on Meta-Coaching and Mediation. And we had several guys from various NLP Schools, several who had read some of my books and several who were “interested, but unconvinced.” They were unconvinced that Neuro-Semantics had “anything” to offer that was actually different from NLP. At least that’s what they said. So they wanted to know.

“What’s new and what different in Neuro-Semantics? And you can’t say that it is higher because NLP has higher or meta-levels and positions.”

“You’re right!” I immediately acknowledged. “Dilts has introduced four meta-levels in his Neuro-Logical Levels pattern and even Bandler and Grinder had the ‘meta-position’ in their original model as well as they acknowledged that language is a ‘meta-representational system,’ and so developed a ‘Meta-Model of Language in Therapy’ as they called it to address that higher level. So in all of that, you are right on. NLP modeled higher levels.”

“But while NLP has that, there’s one thing that NLP did not have, not until I introduced the Meta-States Model. Only then did NLP obtained a model of the very special and unique kind of mind that man has, well, women also.”

“And what is that?”

I threw in the humor bit and paused, all designed to facilitate some “response potential” as Milton Erickson would have said. “Okay, so do you want to know what it is?” I said that in the tone and tempo that Morpheus uttered the same line to Neo in The Matrix movie, knowing that they would like that. One of them had read my book on The Matrix Model and had spoken about that when we began.

“What NLP does not have, apart from the Meta-States Model, even to this day, is a model of the self-reflexiveness of the human mind, and that’s the most unique feature of human consciousness. NLP began as a modeling of consciousness, of how our brains operate and of how to effectively run your own brain, and yet NLP from 1975 to 1994 completely ignored the self-reflexivity of our minds. And that’s what the Meta-States Model added to the NLP Communication Model that was so revolutionary.”

I paused for a moment … there was an awkward silence, so I added. “Where in NLP is there anything, one comment, one note, one pattern, one anything about the self-reflexivity of the human mind except in the Meta-States Model? Do you know? Have you ever seen it? Has any NLP trainer ever even mention the fact that there is structure to our meta-cognitive skills and that our meta-cognitive abilities, processes, and competencies is what enables us to not only think, but think-about-our-thinking?”

“That’s a good point that you’re making.” one of them said. And when he did, another looked at him as if he had just betrayed their alliance! That’s when he said in a challenging way, “So it’s all about thinking, conscious thinking, and that’s the biggest problem with Meta-States!”

“Well, I hate to disappoint you, but because a meta-state is first and foremost and ultimately a state, yes it is a mental state, yet it is also an emotional state and a somatic state. And that’s why when you meta-state, you not only bring one thought-to-another-thought, you also bring one feeling, one emotion, one physiological state to another. And that’s why meta-stating has nothing to do with the so-called ‘dissociation,’ and everything to do with creating the more complex and riches emotional states possible to human beings.”

“But I heard that a Meta-State is a dissociated, non-feeling state and that that is why you are so academic and non-emotional.”

“And who did you hear that one from?” Well, he couldn’t say. “Do you mean you cannot or that you don’t want to say?” He didn’t want to. “And why would you not acknowledge the source of that rumor? Why hide what someone has obviously communicated to you and probably to others? They made it public, so why protect them against the truth?”

“So tell me, if you love learning, does that make the state of learning more or less emotional? What about joy of learning, passion about the joy of learning? And what about such meta-states as gloriously fallible, uninsultability, robustly resilient? Do those sound like academic and non-emotional states?”

“And do you think that the ‘higher’ states in Dilts’ list— mission, purpose, identity, spirit are less emotional, do you think they are dissociated states?” Well he didn’t.

“So now you know the difference! And knowing this difference, and realizing that to step back in your self-reflexive awareness can enrich your knowing with appreciation or joy or wonder, how do these delightful and playful states now transforms what you use to know and give you that broader and more comprehensive competency to explain to anyone who asks you about the revolutionary difference in Neuro-Semantics, and I’m wondering, just wondering if you were able to track all of the levels in this statement?”

Ah, now he knows about the “so what” of the higher states! I hope you do too.

Schedule of Neuro-Semantic Trainings — go to www.neurosemantics.com
APG Schedule — Meta-State Trainings occurring around the world.
Dr. Hall’s Schedule — Where Michael is or will be.
Neuro-Semantic Trainers Schedule —where other Neuro-Semantic Trainers and Trainings are occurring.

NEEDS AND NEEDINESS

We humans are a needy bunch! We are born needy and we die needy. As a species, our life is conditional and the conditions of life, both to just survive and get by and to thrive and reach the peak of what’s possible– puts within us drives and impulses urging us to move and to act to fulfill our needs. And what are these needs? What are these inherent drives motivating you and me?

They are the basic and meta-needs and it was Abraham Maslow who mapped out these levels of needs during the 1930s and 1940s. Today you know these levels as those of survival, safety, belonging, self, and “growth” (self-actualization) for being needs. Maslow documented this in his classic Motivation and Personality (1954) which contains his hierarchy of needs that he had first presented in 1943. In 2006 I updated Maslow’s hierarchy with the models of Neuro-Semantics. That’s when I introduced the Matrix-Embedded Pyramid of Needs. My first book on self-actualization (Unleashed, 2007) briefly discussed the human Base Needs as did Self-Actualization Psychology (2008).

Then in 2009, while in South Africa presenting one of the Unleashing Self-Actualizing Leaders workshop, Tim Goodenough asked a rivoting question that stopped me in my tracks:

How do we use the Hierarchy of Needs for facilitating the self-actualization of clients? How can we use that to determine where a person is in terms of their need gratification?

That’s when I asked Tim to work with me on answering those questions; and he did. Tim and I immediately began mapping out a process for using the Hierarchy of Needs for precisely that purpose. After several false starts, we eventually came up with the proto-type in January of 2010 while at the Leadership Summit. And after another one or two refinements, we presented The Self-Actualization Assessment Scale.

With that Scale we can now assess where you live your life—that is, at what level? Do you live your life at the base of the hierarchy, mid-way up the hierarchy, or at the peak? Depending on how well you have learned to meet your needs, you can live a low level life in terms of need gratification or a high level life. You can live your life in a self-actualizing society or in the jungle at the survival or safety levels. Do you know where you live your life and the specific needs that drive you?

You can also live in the Red Zone of any need— in the realm of deficiency and lack — not getting your needs met, not gratifying the drives that clamor within you. Or you can live in the Green Zone of growth and development, adequately gratifying the driving needs so that the next level of development keeps emerging.

The Self-Actualization Assessment Scale now gives you a way to evaluate the level that you are living, where you are, what’s your next level, the extent to which you might not be handling your base or meta-needs effectively, where you might be stuck, and how you can get leverage on yourself to more adequately meet your needs. And because you can assess your level and the quality of your need gratification, you can also now zoom in on the very places in your life where your needs may be keeping you stuck.

Now when I say stuck, this stuckness may have nothing to do with any trauma or need for therapy. You and I can get stuck by simply using an old coping style that no longer works. We can get stuck by accidently giving a need some meaning that does not fully and adequately represent the full truth. We can get stuck by semantically over-loading a need or a coping mechanism. And yes, we can also get stuck by giving distorted understandings about the need and ways to gratify it. That’s what usually involves the discipline that we call therapy.

Needs — you and I are needy in our very nature. We are not self-sufficient, we are not invulnerable, we are not omniscient, omnipotent, and we are not infallible. Reading that line, do you feel like throwing a party or checking in at your local psychiatric clinic? If the latter, what expectations have you set about yourself and human life? What non-sense have you inherited about human nature? How long are you going to keep the insanity of thinking you are God? If the former, then congratulations for having fully joined the human race!

Being needy is our heritage, our nature, and our life. It is also the basis for growth, learning, development and self-actualization. After all, if you were omniscient, omnipotent, and infallible you wouldn’t need anything, couldn’t develop, and would not have more potentials to unleash. Being needy at your essence — needing to become fully alive, fully human, fully open, fully developing, fully curious, fully fascinated, fully enjoying life —drives your vitality and energy for the next-level!

Either way—if you are a trying-to-be-God-frustrated-and-deceived human or if you are a fully-alive-and-seeking-to-be-self-actualizing human —there’s hope, there’s solutions, and there’s a self-actualizing future for you. For the first, there’s a Crucible awaiting ready to help you melt now the non-sense of perfectionism and your God-trip so you can be human. For the latter, there’s the adventure of moving to the next-level.

Less than 4 weeks and we begin NSTT in Colorado!

— If you are certified in NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner
— and if you have accessed your personal genius state in the APG Certification
— Then you are welcomed to Apply and then Register for this Exclusive Training.
Contact me at meta@acsol.net
And experience the most systematic, most competency-based, most rigorous NLP Trainers’ Training in the world.

THE VITALITY OF DISCOVERING AND BECOMING YOURSELF

How real are you? Are you your real self? How much do you live your life to express your authentic self with your highest possibilities and actualizing your best potentials? That’s what the self-actualizing life is all about— creating and living the best version of you so that you can contribute and make a difference. You were made for that. And your potentials clamor within for that. And if you try to shut all of that down, you only doom yourself to being unhappy for the rest of your life.

What this means is that your vitality is related to, and dependent upon, you discovering and being your best self— your real self. The wisdom within this actually goes far, far beyond Maslow to the ancient Greeks who made this one of the points of wisdom: “Know thyself.”

And to others who said, “To thy own self be true.” “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

In Self-Actualization Psychology Maslow forged the way beyond the “empty slate” idea to the realization that each of us are born with unique features and possibilities— potentials of our disposition and uniqueness. And just as we are not born human (we become human, we learn how to become human), so we are not born fully ourselves— we become. We don’t arrive on the scene with “instincts.” We don’t come out of the womb and can run and jump. We develop. Hence, Developmental Psychology arose in the twentieth century to map out how we develop physically, socially, sexually, mentally, emotionally, etc. And all of that resulted in Lifespan studies of the developmental stages.

All this relates directly to your sense of vitality in life. If you want to dampen your energies, reduce the quality of your vitality— try to be someone else! Try to conform to a mold that’s established at school, in the media, by your culture, by Hollywood, or by any group. If you succeed, you will fail at being you. You will fail at being authentic and knowing yourself and with that, you won’t know your best gifts and contributions. So you’ll feel like a fraud, you’ll evaluate yourself as up or down depending on local circumstances, you’ll suffer identity crisis, you won’t know what you like, your values, your unique potentials. And in the long run that will undermine your joy of life and basic vitality.

Another way to dampen your energies, reduce your vitality, and diminish yourself as a person— try to be what you are not. Try to be perfect! Ha, that’s a great way to ruin a perfectly good fallible human being! At first you’ll have lots of energy and effort but then you’ll over-prepare and begin to procrastinate and hyper-worry about flaws and fill your mind-body with anxiety and … yes will make life a party!

Or try to be totally positive and never negative! Yes, at first it will seem like a great strategy— you, the positive thinker. But then whenever you have an experience that doesn’t fit that mental box of “positive” you have to distort your experience and so begins the pretend-life. And the more you refuse to welcome (a very un-positive thing) the so-called “negative” emotions and experiences, you begin to defend yourself against reality. And in the long-run that distortion will undermine your ability to accept reality for what it is.

When your life energies seem down, depressed, empty, or diminished, you may be wasting your energies. You could be wasting them fighting some phantom in your mind like the need to be perfect or positive or never fallible, vulnerable, or mortal. The paradox is that your vitality for life comes more alive with more energy when you fully embrace your true nature as a weak, fallible, and mortal person! Look at any young child— weak, fallible, vulnerable and fully alive to the mystery, excitement, and fascination of life!

Vitality emerges from your needs, not in spite of them. So what do you need? What are the requirements of life that activates your full mind-body-emotions? People become experientially empty and out-of-touch with themselves when they don’t know their true needs and try to live in some synthetic life that Wall Street or Hollywood or some Cultural Bureau of Standards impose on their lives. Then they live by external values, by the clock, by brand names, by what others are telling them they should think, feel, and experience.

Because we come without “instinct,” and because we have to learn how to be human— we are so open to information outside of ourselves. This is our glory and our agony. Maslow said that for the human species is it hard to be the species we are (1971: 179). That’s why we have to discover ourselves, to “know ourselves.”

If your tired of being diminished, devitalized, and living like a zombie, then I’d recommend Unleashing Vitality so you can discover who you are in your lower-level needs and drives and find out how to gratify them adequately and accurately for yourself. Achieving that you can then move on to discovering who you are given your higher-level needs— your being needs and, again, how to gratify them so that it brings out your best and fulfills your nature.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

META-REFLECTIONS ON THE HISTORY OF NLP

NLP HISTORY AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION

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