Grinder biography. Complete biography of John Grinder
He received a classical education at a Jesuit school.
John Grinder graduated from the University of San Francisco in psychology in the early 60s and enlisted in the US Army. He served in South America and Africa as a regimental translator and spoke several foreign languages: Italian, German, and the language of the Samoans. Once, during one of the military operations, he ended up in an African village, where he surprisingly quickly learned the Swahili language. John began with learning behavioral language and ended with mastery of verbal language. In fact, then he was engaged in what would later be called “modeling” in NLP. A year later he was transferred to work in Europe (Germany), first in the special forces and then in the intelligence service.
In the late 60s, Grinder retired with the rank of captain and returned to college to study linguistics. He soon received his doctorate from the University of California at San Diego. Grinder then continued his studies at Rockefeller University. There Grinder communicated quite a lot with John Miller, one of the creators of the T.O.T.E model. and the author of the famous work "The Magic of the Number 7+2". While working at college in San Francisco, he became particularly interested in the theoretical developments of the American linguist Nahum Chomsky, who studied various aspects of linguistics and, in particular, syntax.
After graduating from Rockefeller University, he was invited to the position of assistant professor of linguistics at a new branch of the University of California at Santa Cruz. During his academic career, Grinder takes a special interest in Noam Chomsky's theory of transformational grammars and studies the sitaxis of natural languages. His works on linguistics include two books: “An Introduction to Transormational Grammars” (with Suzette Elgin, Halt, Rinehard and Winston 1973) and “On the Deletion Phenomenon in English” (Mounton & Co 1972), as well as numerous articles. While working in Santa Cruz, fate brought Grinder together with his future NLP co-author, Richard Bandler.
Bandler, being a psychology student at the time, spent a lot of time recording consultations with Fritz Perls (the founder of Gestalt therapy) and mastered his working methods on an intuitive level. He approached Grinder with a request to model his (Bandrel's) skills in Gestalt therapy. Starting with Perls, they then met such leading experts as Virginia Satir, the founder of family therapy, Milton Erickson, a powerful hypnotist, psychotherapist and psychiatrist. Grinder and Bandler modeled the various cognitive behavioral patterns of these gurus. The result of this work was the books “The Structure of Magic” volume 1.2 (1975, 1976); “Milton Erickson's Hypnotic Technique Templates” volume 1.2 (1975,1977) and “Changing with Families” (1976). These books and modeling techniques formed the basis of Neurolinguistic Programming.
Bandler and Grinder began conducting seminars and practical classes. These sessions provided an opportunity for Bandler and Grinder to practice newly observed patterns while imparting counseling skills to other participants. Several books are based on transcripts of such seminars. During this period, a creative group of students and psychotherapists formed around Grinder and Bandler, who later made an independent contribution to the development of NLP. This group includes Robert Dilts, Leslie Cameron-Bandler, Judith De Losier, Stephen Gilligan, David Godon.
In 1980, the group of Bandler and Grinder broke up. Many members of this group went their own way and began to develop NLP in different directions. The printing of Bandler and Grinder's books was suspended due to a dispute between them about who should own the authorship. Bandler even tried to get exclusive rights to the term NLP, but it turned out that such a phrase cannot be someone else's property. This dispute was later resolved and the creators of NLP published a joint statement, which can be found in Appendix A to the book Whisper in the Wind by Grinder and Bostic St. Clair.
Influenced by Gregory Bateson's ideas about the lack of ecology and the involvement of the subconscious in classical NLP, Grinder began creating the “new NLP code.” In collaboration with Judith DeLozier, a series of seminars were conducted, including the “Turtles to the Bottom” seminar, the transcripts of which were published in 1986. John Grinder later founded Quantum Leap Inc. with Carmen Bostic St. Clair. They work together as corporate culture consultants in large organizations and sometimes teach joint NLP seminars. In 2001, they published the book “Whisper in the Wind,” in which an attempt was made to correct the shortcomings made in the classical NLP approach. In this book, Grinder and Bostic St. Clair provide a clear description of the context of the discovery, the epistemology of NLP, and the framework for future research. Grinder calls on the NLP community to return to the core of NLP - modeling and points out the general low level of modern NLP training.
John Grinder) About Me.
I was born the first of nine children of Jack and Eileen Grinder in Detroit, Michigan on January 10, 1940. I was raised and educated, up to my bachelor's degree, in a Catholic educational context.
I clearly recall that family life was characterized by a strong acceptance of differences, including the ability to argue rationally but at the same time with passion. The usual framework for this behavior was that the kinship relationships between family members created a context in which differences could be (and generally were) expressed with great passion, but without fear of severing family ties.
Although education was considered the foundation of personal development and the gateway to travel and adventure, we (the children) learned the lesson that intelligence and upbringing are independent variables. My parents made great sacrifices to provide each of us with an excellent upbringing—usually a traditional one. I attended Sacred Heart Grammar School in Detroit until 6th grade, and then, to complete Grammar School, St. Brigid Academy (Pacific Beach, California - suburb of San Diego), St. Augustine High School in San Diego (Augustinian Order), and received a bachelor's degree from the University of San Francisco (Jesuit Order). After receiving my bachelor's degree, I decided to join the United States Army, with the assurance that I would be sent to Europe - I had dreamed of Europe since I was a child.
On the same eventful weekend in June 1962, I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army, married Barbara Maria Diridoni, and graduated from the University of San Francisco. After training at Fort Benning, Georgia, I was assigned to the 24th Infantry Battalion in Augsburg, Germany, from where I was able to transfer to the 10th Special Army Group in Bad Toelz, Germany, where I lived in the beautiful alpine village of Lenggries, doing activities that can best be described as an adventure in the vein of all-American boy dreams.
For a number of reasons, in the fall of 1967, I resigned my position as captain and returned to the United States. In the fall of 1968, I entered the University of California as a graduate student in the linguistics department. I spent one academic year as a visiting researcher in the laboratory of George Miller at the Rockefeller University in New York (1969/70), where I shared workrooms for almost a full year with Paul Postal, arguably the best syntactician of the day. Among the other distinguished persons, besides Postal and Miller, there was Tom Bevers, a very able psycholinguist. In the fall of 1970, I accepted a position as an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where I met Bandler, who was then graduating from Kresge College. Thus began our joint adventure, now called NLP.
——————————————————————————————-
I analyzed the time period of interest to us, keeping in mind the following question:
What kind of experiences, from my current perspective, played a critical role in my preparation for creating NLP in collaboration with Bandler, and in my position in this collaboration?
It seems to me that the following factors played a major role here:
- A hypnotic fascination with competence and superiority.
More specifically, since my first memories, I have spent long periods of time, in what I now understand to be an altered state, watching and listening to people who were superior at what they did. The content of their activities did not matter to me - only the grace, ease and complete competence with which they carried out their work were important to me. Here's an example of this:
One day in May, probably in 1949, I was returning home from Sacred Heart Academy (about a mile and a half away). I can still hear the bees and flies buzzing around me as I crossed, intoxicated by the smell of freshly mown hay, the long playground where I played baseball as a child. While I was slowly walking without any particular desire to return home as soon as possible, where various duties awaited me, I heard some extraneous sound - rhythmic beats, reminiscent of the knocking of iron on iron. This was so unusual that I immediately decided to investigate what was going on. I walked in the direction of the repeating sound for about half a mile and found myself in front of a house that had once been a large warehouse or barn. The huge doors were slightly open, and the sound that interested me came from them. Holding my breath, I peered through the door and saw in the soft, dim light of the forge a man, naked to the waist, sweating profusely as he worked. For some time I watched the movements of this dance alone and listened to the accompanying song of hammer blows and breathing. Each movement followed the previous one as confidently and naturally as night follows day, as gracefully as the flight of a falcon, as accurately as the leap of a cat. Not a single extra movement, no hesitation, no mistake - there was just a choreographically completed sequence of movements by a master of his craft. Rudolf Nureyev would fully understand this.
- A clear distinction in behavior between form and essence, process and content.
This distinction had several sources - style and form took precedence over the content of the arguments that accompanied the normal course of the day in the Grinder household - in particular, my mother Eileen was blessed with a descriptive style of speech that charmed all her children. Her way of expression is so clear that when our statements, for example, did not satisfy her personal requirements for accuracy, she insisted that we repeat them in a more specific form. Certainly my sensitivity to patterns of language, and part of what has come to be called the meta-model, comes from these conversations.
Another source was the Jesuits, famous for their masterful argumentation, and I owe to them something similar to what the students of the sophistic schools of ancient Greece received. The Jesuits taught me not only the correct forms of speaking and thinking, but the especially important assessment of the relationship between a statement and the supposed evidence for that statement. They prepared me well for the future.
My experiences during the so-called Cold War and intelligence work in Europe, in particular the need to pretend to be something I clearly was not (a member of a non-American national and linguistic group in a context where mistakes could be fatal), sharpened my distinction between form and content and taught me to value flexibility in behavior. This experience also greatly developed my ability to “act as if.”
Finally, my concentrated study of syntax in graduate school at the University of California, San Diego, taught me two important things at the same time. First, it improved my ability to distinguish between process and content (which in natural language systems are called syntax and semantics). Secondly, it taught me to dissociate between myself as a person and the language of my self-expression, that is, the direct perception of not necessarily coinciding experiences - what I say about myself, what others say about me, and what I am.
More specifically, I learned to view language as a tool - a sharp one, but still only a tool for exploring the world and my relationship to it. In this sense, NLP seems to me to be a natural extension of transformational grammar into a broader field - leading to what might best be called the syntax of experience.
In fact, this strategy of sharply distinguishing between process and content was already quite clearly expressed in the textbook I wrote with Suzette Hayden Elgin, prepared for publication in 1969 (several years before meeting my future collaborator in the creation of NLP, Richard Bandler) and published in 1973, where I stated:
... the same sets of rules (of language), the same set of categories also structure perceptions. Specifically, these categories, or more precisely, the differences contained within them, act on the information entering the nervous system at a preconscious level, transforming this material, grouping it, summarizing it, omitting parts of it, and generally producing distortions before the nervous system represents the resulting material. an impoverished picture of the “external world” to our consciousness.
Grinder and Elgin
, page 3.
…if our previous discussion is in any sense correct, then the activity called linguistics will play a vital role in liberating our thinking from the structure imposed by our mother tongue. By attempting to construct an explicit set of formal statements that reflects the structure of the language being analyzed, we become aware of the categories and distinctions that are inseparably linked to the fabric of the language system itself. This awareness, that is, the introduction into consciousness of the systematic distortion introduced by our language system, makes it possible to avoid the subconscious or preconscious distortion that was discussed ...
Grinder and Elgin
Introduction to Transformational Grammar , page 8.
- A positive affinity for what others call risk.
Apparently, what most people call risk is the possibility of failure. Here I would immediately insist on the distinction between a risk in which failure precludes further risk (that is, a fatal error), and failure in which further risk is permitted. Although there were a number of episodes in my biography that potentially contained mortal risks, I will not talk about them here; the type of risk that will be discussed belongs to the second class, and it can be illustrated with an example:
Frank Pucelik (the third person in the original modeling and testing of NLP patterns) gave a demonstration at a seminar in San Jose in the mid-70s in the presence of several hundred people - he was probably demonstrating the cure of a phobia; At the end of the seminar, several people approached him with a question:
How can you take such a risk?
Frank asked with genuine surprise what kind of risk they meant. They began to explain that such a demonstration in front of this entire public meant (for them) an unacceptable risk. At the end of their explanation, Frank fell silent and simply walked away. For Frank (with his experience in Vietnam) and for Bandler and I (with our own personal histories of risk), such dangers were simply a desirable and necessary opportunity to learn what we were capable of in different contexts. When Frank came back from work and told me this story, he still couldn't believe the question about the risk.
I somehow came to understand that if my goal was to learn something, then the only risk was to avoid risk. In other words, avoiding risk and taking action was tantamount to failure. When you engage in risky activities, failure is impossible - you are always learning something.
This understanding of risk reminds me a lot of Bateson's explanation of levels of learning (see Stages in the Ecology of Mind). Suppose you let a rat into a maze, giving it an electric shock if it enters and explores some section of the maze. Having received a shock, the rat will learn to avoid this section, but what is important is that the rat has learned this, which constitutes an undoubted success. In the realm of learning there are no failures, only consequences.
- Understanding the value of formalization and explicit representations
The distinction between form and essence, process and content, I believe, naturally accompanied my activity in formal thinking and in the creation of formal representations of everyday experience: language, behavior, etc. The Transformational Grammar model is, especially for the syntacticist, an extensive exercise in mapping intuitive ideas into formal ideas, which can then lead you to discover truly new ways of understanding the subject matter that interests you.
Or one could interpret the story to mean that the experience offered is best left untranslated, in particular not mapped into linguistic structures. Thus, the form of expression (in this case the dance itself) is an essential element in the creation of the experience. Since the form itself - dance - manifests itself at the level of primary experience, its translation into language (that is, the imposition of linguistic categories) misses this essential element and changes the impact - the viewer (and listener) reacts to the verbal description differently than to the dance itself. This brings to mind the NLP saying:
The meaning of a message lies in the reaction it evokes.
If we apply this principle, it is clear how the translation of an artistic expression from a form of primary experience to a secondary (linguistic) representation fundamentally changes its meaning. We believe, therefore, that Mrs. Duncan, as an artist, refused to offer a translation, because she wisely realized that the original content could not be thus expressed without a significant change in its meaning.
Of course, this question is much broader than the question of whether it would be better to leave the professional work of an artist without translation. Look at the most intimate moments of your communication with children - suppose you are talking about a specific incident; when you do this, you may notice that even the most attentive and sympathetic listener (in the second position) reacts to your describing the experience differently how did you react to the most experience.
- Positive response to ambiguity and uncertainty.
Modeling complex behaviors requires a positive response, or at least a tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. Consider, for example, the modeling process that Bandler and I undertook in patterning Ericksonian hypnosis. At first our strategy was a subconscious imitation of the teacher, and only after we had demonstrated that we could replicate Erickson's work with our own clients did we move on to consciously trying to figure out what he was doing and what we were doing. This requires a certain positive attitude (or at least tolerance) towards what others commonly call confusion.
But confusion was not part of my experience during this simulation, and I did not notice anything like confusion in Bandler's behavior. It is clear that for long periods of practice, neither of us had any conscious, coherent sense of what it was that we were doing—we could not even offer any representation of the work.
Note that this competence—the positive acceptance of ambiguity and ambiguity—is essentially at the core of state management.
Can you maintain a state of relaxed, non-anticipatory curiosity and congruence in a context that places significant demands on your ability to convey significant value?
It seems to me, in retrospect, that a positive response to ambiguity and ambiguity, with the accompanying development of the ability to select and maintain the state such as I have described above, constitutes a precondition for effective action during the critical phases of the modeling process.
An interesting consequence follows from this - if you do not have a conscious, explicit model of what you are doing, then you learn to ACT, and to act perfectly, AS IF you knew what you were doing. This is an absolute requirement in many modeling cases, especially in the subconscious assimilation phase when you try to reproduce by imitation the effects produced by the model. Let us note the corollary that follows from this: it is simply impossible to speak instead of act. Talking about something means that you already have some (at least minimal) explanation of the processes in question. But this is exactly what Bandler and I resolutely rejected. Then we were left with only one course of action, which we followed: act perfectly. Acting is a method of provoking the world around us to teach us what works and what does not work in such and such specific contexts. This strategy stimulates the world to offer us corrective responses. This strategy then becomes one of the main research methodologies in the environmental modeling that precedes coding.
For readers applying NLP patterns (or indeed any model) to personal behavior change, we suggest the following question:
Suppose you are offered a description of a client before you actually meet him in a professional context; will you accept and read this description?
Now relate your answer to the topic of the previous discussion.
6. Heightened sensitivity to unusual events.
I can't speak for others, but at least in my case, a positive attitude toward ambiguity and uncertainty entails a heightened sensitivity to the unexpected and extraordinary—to unusual events that can open the way to the formation of new patterns. Indeed, the history of the discovery of patterning in NLP (and more generally in any scientific discipline) is replete with such examples. Let's give one such example:
From the mid to late '70s, Grinder and Bandler led a group of people they affectionately called "the live guys." These were talented, intelligent young people, most of whom were then senior students at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In gathering this group of living guys, these two people pursued a two-fold goal: first, an informal experiment was set up in which the identification of NLP patterns was entrusted to a group of young people who had not yet chosen a profession for themselves (and thus had not chosen some private system of professional beliefs about the possible and impossible); secondly, it was intended to prepare a team of trained practitioners with whom Bandler and I could expand the boundaries of the patterning that had been coded by that time. The problems and experiments performed by this group were sometimes great and sometimes strange. In this context, the following happened.
One evening John was working with a group, guiding them to discover the limits of hypnotic regression. The subject was Meribeth, an excellent hypnotic subject, and a skilled experimental hypnologist in her own right. Meribeth suffered from a lack of vision (myopia) at that time. At the moment the story begins, she was sitting comfortably in a chair in front of a bookcase, about 12 feet away from it. John used classical Ericksonian patterning to induce an altered state and make a series of specific suggestions about regression to a younger age. His current calibration of Meribeth's physiological responses indicated that she was responding quite adequately.
John suggested to Meribeth that when she reached the appropriate young age (note: it was not said which), she would indicate this by allowing her eyes (closed at the time of the suggestion) to open. When her eyes opened, John asked her what she saw (she had already learned to speak without weakening her trance state). While exhibiting the typical regression physiology, movements, and conversational patterns of a young girl, she seemed somewhat distressed and seemed to have difficulty focusing her gaze on what was in front of her. Taking a closer look at her, John realized that she was still wearing contact lenses.
Slightly annoyed at his oversight, John quickly made Meribeth a series of suggestions - to notice where she was at the moment, allow herself to close her eyes and feel comfortable and safe again, moving back to the present. When she returned to something resembling her normal state, John suggested she remove her lenses and began the work again. However, out of an intuitive impulse, before starting the suggestion a second time, he asked her to read, without the help of lenses, the titles of some books in the cabinet in front of her. She tried for several minutes to read any of these titles, but without success. The stage was now set for a proper test of one aspect of hypnotic regression.
When Meribeth had completely returned to the regressive state she had previously achieved, John asked her to open her eyes and say what she saw. She replied, among other observations, that she saw many books in the closet in front of her. Then John began to doubt whether she knew the alphabet. She flirtatiously replied that of course she knew and that she could repeat the entire alphabet by heart, demonstrating her skill. John immediately asked her to choose one of the books in the bookcase and tell her what letters were printed on the spine. Meribeth read the titles of all the books in the closet, reading them letter by letter without apparent difficulty. Then other things were presented to her, at greater distances, to find out whether she still had any visual defects in her regressive state. There weren't any.
Finally, John cautiously proposed a series of suggestions with a twofold purpose: first, to induce amnesia, since he was not sure how Meribeth would consciously respond to the information that in her regressive state she apparently had no trace of myopia, and that she demonstrated approximately 20/20 normal vision. Second, he impressed upon her that in every way except one, she would return to the present, refreshed and satisfied, having done a good job. The only way in which the regressive condition had to continue was that she had to leave her eyes young - at the same regressive age at which she had demonstrated her ability to see unimpeded. In offering these suggestions, Grinder was aware that he had no idea what they might mean, but relied on Meribeth's subconscious ability to interpret them in some interesting and effective way. These suggestions were repeated several times until John was satisfied that they were understood on a subconscious level.
When Meribeth emerged from her altered state, she reported that she felt quite rested and content. Her attention was quickly diverted to other objects not directly related to the work of the trance. During the subsequent conversation, in which she, John and other members of the group participated, she did not show any awareness of what had happened. More important was the observation that she showed no intention of putting the lenses back on. By the way, she was given a piece of paper on which Grinder wrote in small letters several questions about the trance that had just taken place. He asked her to fill out this form as best she could and, signaling to the other members of the group to leave her alone, he moved on to another task in another part of the room, carefully observing from a distance what Meribeth would do. Meribeth read and filled out the form without apparent difficulty, handing it to John.
Then, with her consent, John put her back into an altered state and asked Meribeth's subconscious for help. More specifically, he asked if the subconscious mind would object to Meribeth becoming aware of what had happened. There was no objection, and the other members of the group saw and heard with silent surprise as Meribeth discovered the result. Her ability to see clearly without artificial assistance lasted for several days and then deteriorated - her vision worked better during the day than at night. Returning to vision without artificial means required something akin to what we now consider to be the essence of Six Step Reframing, as positive intention was revealed behind the lack of vision, and alternative behaviors were proposed to reconcile these aspects, allowing her to see unimpeded.
Thus a remarkable sequence of events occurred:
A. Grinder failed to note that the subject was wearing contact lenses.
b. Grinder then noticed the curious "problem" of the subject, Meribeth, who was attempting to see with an artificial aid (contact lenses) with regressed eyes that did not need such assistance.
This has led to the realization that, under some regression circumstances, it appears possible to restore the physiological states of the age of regression by eliminating subsequently developed deficiencies. 5
These personal memories represent, in part and as a first approximation, some personal strategies that have proven (in my case) effective in the complex modeling task that is the central activity of NLP. I repeat, this is only an incomplete description.
Further, and more importantly, there are undoubtedly other combinations of strategies in our psyche that may be as effective, or more effective, than the above. What these strategies may be will become clear as modeling in the field of NLP develops and becomes more refined.
Of course, this particular (and special) personal story of one of the two creators of NLP constitutes only an example of the biographical path that led to the development of these strategies. Undoubtedly, there are many other, perhaps less tortuous, paths that could lead to the same results.
Fragment from the book “Whisper in the Wind”
This book is an edited transcript of an introductory NLP training course conducted by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in January 1978.
The entire book is organized as a recording of a 3-day workshop. For simplicity and ease of understanding, most of the statements of Bandler and Grinder are given simply in text form, without names. Some of the materials are taken from tape recordings.
The book is addressed to psychotherapists, psychologists, sociotechnicians and anyone interested in problems of behavioral psychology and social communication.
A systematic and clear presentation of the NLP approach to family therapy, compiled by the founders of NLP - Richard Bandler and John Grinder - in collaboration with the famous family therapist - Virginia Satir. This book is a good helper for those who want to effectively resolve family problems - their own or the problems of clients.
Seminar transcript - Creating a trance, neurolinguistic programming of hypnotic states
This summary is compiled from a transcript of a 3-day seminar by R. Grinder, D. Bandler “Creating a trance, neuro-linguistic programming of hypnotic states.” Translator I. Ryabeiko. NOVOSIBIRSK 1987 The summary was compiled by A. Sokolyuk. Editor V. Chernushevich. NOVOSIBIRSK 1991.
The Structure of Magic part 1
This work has remained for the past twenty-five years the best book on the most effective method of change - neuro-linguistic programming - and is unreservedly recommended to any beginner or advanced counselor or psychotherapist. Using the principles of NLP, human behavior can be described in a way that can easily and quickly produce deep and lasting changes.
If you read this book as the authors suggest, the knowledge you gain will give you a clear and precise strategy for your psychotherapeutic work, and you can learn to overcome any psychological limitations, cure phobias, eliminate unwanted habits and addictions, and make changes in relationships with partners .
The Structure of Magic part 2
The Structure of Magic has remained for the past twenty-five years the best book on the most effective method of change - neuro-linguistic programming - and is unreservedly recommended to any beginner or advanced counselor or psychotherapist.
In the second volume, John Grinder and Richard Bandler lay out a general model of communication and change, drawing on other modalities that people use to represent and communicate their experiences. If you read this book as the authors suggest, the knowledge you will gain will give you a clear and precise strategy for your work: you will be an effective professional communicator, easily and quickly making deep and lasting changes.
Accuracy
“The purpose of this book is to provide the manager with a personal technology for developing and using information for successful business communications.
We take a different line than the authors who view information management as the single most powerful determinant of managerial success. Unfortunately, there is a lack of special training and practical procedures that explain the process of successful information processing for managers. Unlike our predecessors, we intend to change this situation - and propose the precision model as a practical technology for information processing." John Grinder, Mikael McMaster
Transformation
If, after reading this book, you still think this way about hypnosis, you will be depriving yourself of the most important ways in which you can use these tools in your life. The communication patterns described in this book are too useful to be left somewhere on a hypnosis chair. Most of the pleasures we all want in life don't happen in a hypnosis chair; they occur with the people we love, the jobs we do, and the ways we play and enjoy life.
You can use the information in this book in many ways, both personally and professionally. The book is of interest to psychologists, as well as a wide range of specialists interested in communication problems.
Judith Delozier is one of the creators and leading trainer of NLP. I studied a lot in anthropology, history of religions and psychology. She devoted a lot of time to researching transcultural differences. Much of her work was done in "primordial culture" in Africa and on the island of Bali. She participated in the creation of the first books on NLP: “Studying the structure of subjective experience”, “There are turtles down there”. Recently, Judith has been actively collaborating with Robert Dilts at NLP University
About the book:
The reader of this excellent book will have the opportunity to think about the "preconditions of personal genius" in unusual ways. She will guide you through inspiring stories with unexpected endings, shift the focus of the first and second attention, provide a balance between conscious and unconscious processes, and also offer you exercises in the spirit of Carlos Castaneda with his “stopping the world” and turning off the internal dialogue. In addition, you will become acquainted with the materials of a seminar on questions of genius, which was actually conducted by the founders of NLP, preceding the appearance of the book, and traces of which are woven into its text like a motley ribbon.
John Grinder is a linguist, psychologist, writer, and NLP trainer. He is one of the creators of the John Grinder method - “The Structure of Magic”, “From Frogs to Princes”, “Turtles to the Bottom”, “Whisper in the Wind” - are among the most popular in the field of practical psychology among readers around the world.
Early biography
John Grinder was born on January 10, 1940 in Detroit, USA. He was the first child of his parents, Jack and Eileen Grinder, of a total of nine children. He received a Catholic Jesuit education, culminating in a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of San Francisco. In 1962, he married Barbara Maria Diridoni, and that same year he enlisted in the US Army and was sent to Germany.
Studying linguistics
In 1967, John Grinder retired and returned to the United States. The following year he attends the University of California at San Diego to study linguistics. In 1970 he became an associate professor. Then he began working at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Collaboration with Richard Bandler
In 1972, University of California student Richard Bandler approached John Grinder with a proposal to model the patterns of the founder of Gestalt therapy, Fritz Perls, and then other prominent psychotherapists - the founder of family and systems therapy, Virginia Satir, and the founder of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, Milton Erickson. Thus began a fruitful collaboration between Grinder and Bandler, which resulted in many books and the creation of a new direction in practical psychology.
From 1975 to 1977, John Grinder and Richard Bandler wrote five books together:
- "The Structure of Magic" (two volumes).
- "Milton Erickson's Hypnotic Technique Templates" (two volumes).
- “We change together with families” - texts that formed the basis of NLP.
The book “The Structure of Magic” is a presentation of the method created by Grinder and Bandler, a description of its very principles. It shows how a person creates a model of the world for himself, based on his sensory experience, how in the future this model of the world forces him to behave in a certain way, and how one can work with it constructively.
Neurolinguistic programming
Created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, NLP incorporates a variety of psychological and linguistic tools. The main thing for this method is the creation of a “working” model, effective practical use that will lead to the desired result. Therefore, this direction has become the most popular in business: in sales, in training, in management, and so on. This system is not based on theory, but on the analysis of observed and direct use of effective behavior.
Modeling
The cornerstone of neuro-linguistic programming is the technique of modeling (or, otherwise, thoughtful copying). NLP aims to create the characteristics of successful people by identifying and describing their verbal and nonverbal patterns. Once the key features have been identified, they can be internalized by others and compiled into a working model that allows the information to be applied in a practical and effective manner.
Anchors
One of the most popular NLP tools is the so-called anchors. According to Grinder and Bandler, any human behavior is not random and has certain patterns, reason and structure that can be understood. Subjective reality depends on objective factors and can be influenced - for example, with the help of “anchors” - stimuli that cause a certain reaction.
They can be positive (giving energy) and negative (removing energy). In the course of our lives, various “anchors” appear to us automatically, but NLP says that we can and should work with them (for example, install them intentionally, replace one with another, more acceptable).
Founders of NLP
While developing their theory, Grinder and Bandler began conducting practical classes, and gradually a circle of like-minded people formed around them, who contributed to the development of NLP, and subsequently began to develop it in various directions. Among them were people such as Robert Dilts, Judith DeLozier, Leslie Cameron-Bandler, Stephen Gilligan, David Godon.
In the materials of general seminars, Grinder and Bandler wrote the book “From Frogs to Princes” in 1979. This book is devoted to the topic of the practical use of neurolinguistic programming in psychotherapy, and talks about the work of the human consciousness and unconscious, about the peculiarities of the perception of the world in different people.
It is aimed at improving a person’s life strategies and gaining flexibility, developing the ability to communicate - not only with others, but also with himself. Its goal is to motivate you to make the most of your internal resources and show previously hidden abilities.
Despite the fruitful work, by 1980 the circle of like-minded people had disintegrated. A serious conflict arose between Bandler and Grinder over the authorship of the works and the theory itself, which led to litigation. Due to these contradictions, the publication of joint books by John Grinder and Richard Bandler was suspended. Bandler tried unsuccessfully to obtain the rights to use the term NLP. Subsequently, he created his own psychological direction, Design Human Engineering.
New NLP code
In the mid-eighties, Grinder, together with his then-wife Judith DeLozier, developed the theory of the “New NLP Code”. This revision of the method arose as a constructive response to criticism of classical NLP, negative and skeptical reviews. John Grinder admits that the rethinking of neurolinguistic programming was largely inspired by the ideas of anthropologist Gregory Bateson and Carlos Castaneda.
An important difference of the new version was greater attention to the subconscious than to analysis. The new NLP code states that in order to realize the desired change, a person needs to move into a “highly productive state”, in which the desired choice will be made automatically. This state resembles a trance and can be induced using special techniques that involve both hemispheres of the brain.
Together with Judith DeLozier, Grinder conducts a series of seminars, the results of which are published in the book “Turtles All the Way Down.” This book is devoted to the preconditions of personal genius, the balance between conscious and unconscious processes, techniques and exercises that help a person work with his state of mind. It appeals to the reader’s inner genius, encourages him to show his potential, to use his psychological resource in order to achieve what he wants.
In 1989, Grinder became co-CEO of Quantum Leap Inc, a company founded two years earlier by his new wife, Carmen Bostic St. Clair. Their company is dedicated to consulting corporate clients and conducting trainings.
In 2001, a joint book by John Grinder and Carmen Bostick St. Clair, “Whisper in the Wind,” was published, which continues the development of the theory of the “New NLP Code” and is an attempt to correct the shortcomings of the classical approach and return to the true origins of this method.
By then, Grinder and Bandler had resolved their conflict, and the book's appendix contains a joint statement from them promising to refrain from belittling each other's contributions to neuro-linguistic programming.
January 1978
PREFACE
Twenty years ago, when I was an undergraduate student, I studied education, psychotherapy and other methods of managing personality development from Abraham Maslow. Ten years later I met Fritz Perls and began to practice Gestalt therapy, which seemed to me more effective than other methods. Nowadays I believe that certain methods are effective when working with certain people who have certain problems. Most methods promise more than they can deliver, and most theories have little relation to the methods they describe.
When I first became acquainted with neuro-linguistic programming, I was simply fascinated, but at the same time very skeptical. At that time, I firmly believed that personal development was slow, difficult and painful. I could hardly believe that I could cure a phobia and other similar mental disorders in a short time - less than an hour, despite the fact that I had done it many times and found that the results were lasting. Everything you will find in this book is presented simply and clearly and can be easily verified in your own experience. There are no tricks here and you are not required to convert to a new faith. All that is required of you is to move away somewhat from your own beliefs, setting them aside for the time necessary to test the concepts and procedures of NLP in your own sensory experience. It won't take long - most of our statements can be verified in a few minutes or a few hours. If you are skeptical, as I was at one time, then it is thanks to your skepticism that you will check our statements in order to understand that the method still solves the complex problems for which it is intended.
NLP is a clear and effective model of human inner experience and communication. Using the principles of NLP, it is possible to describe any human activity in a very detailed way, allowing deep and lasting changes in this activity to be made easily and quickly.
Here are some of the things you can learn to do:
1. Cure phobias and other unpleasant sensations in less than an hour.
2. Help children and adults with learning disabilities overcome their respective limitations - often in less than an hour.
3. Eliminate unwanted habits - smoking, drinking, overeating, insomnia - in several sessions.
4. Make changes in the interactions that take place in couples, families and organizations so that they function more productively.
5. Heal somatic diseases (and not only those that are considered “psychosomatic”) in several sessions.
Thus, NLP has many claims, but experienced practitioners using this method realize these claims, achieving tangible results. NLP in its current state can do a lot, faster, but not everything.
…if you want to learn everything we have listed, you can devote some time to it. There are many things we cannot do. If you can program yourself to find something useful in this book, instead of looking for cases where our method does not find application, then you will certainly encounter such cases. If you use this method honestly, you will find many cases where it does not work. In these cases, I recommend using something else.
NLP is only 4 years old, and the most valuable discoveries have been made in the last year or two.
We have started a list of areas of application of NLP. And we are very, very serious about our method. The only thing we are doing now is researching how this information can be used. We were unable to exhaust the variety of ways to use this information or discover any limitations. During this workshop, we demonstrated dozens of ways to use this information. First of all, it structures internal experience. Used systematically, this information makes it possible to create an entire strategy for achieving any behavior modification.
Currently, the possibilities of NLP are much wider than we have listed in our five points. The same principles can be used to study people gifted with any extraordinary abilities in order to determine these abilities. Knowing this structure, you can act as effectively as these people with extraordinary abilities. This type of intervention results in generative changes through which people learn to create new talents and new behaviors. A side effect of such generative changes is the disappearance of deviant behavior, which might otherwise be the subject of special psychotherapeutic intervention.
In a sense, the achievements of NLP are not new, there have always been “spontaneous remissions”, “unexplained cures”, and there have always been people who have been able to use their abilities in extraordinary ways.
English thrushes had immunity to smallpox long before
Jenner invented his vaccine; currently smallpox, which was killing thousands
lives every year, disappeared from the face of the earth. Likewise, NLP can
eliminate many of the difficulties and dangers of our present lives and make
learning and modifying behavior easier, more productive and
exciting process. So we are on the verge of
a qualitative leap in the development of experience and abilities.
What's really new about NLP is that it gives you the ability to know exactly what to do and have an idea of how to do it.
John O. Stevens
REFERENCE
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a new model of human communication and behavior that has been developed in the last 4 years, thanks to the work of Richard Bandler, John Grinder, Leslie Cameron-Bandler and Judith Delozier.
In its origins, neuro-linguistic programming developed on the basis of the study of reality by V. Satir, M. Erickson, F. Perls and other psychotherapeutic “luminaries”.
This book is an edited transcript of an introductory NLP training course taught by R. Bandler and D. Grinder. This course was conducted in January 1978. Some of the materials were taken from tape recordings of other seminars.
The entire book is organized as a writing workshop for 3 days. For simplicity and ease of perception of the text, most of the statements of Bandler and Grinder are given simply in text form without indicating names.
SENSORY EXPERIENCE
Our workshop differs from other workshops on communication and psychotherapy in several existing parameters. When we started our research, we observed the activities of people doing their job brilliantly, after which they tried to explain what they were doing with the help of metaphors. They called these attempts theorizing. They could tell stories about a million holes and penetrations deep, you can find out that a person is like a circle, towards which numerous pipes and the like are directed from different sides. Most of these metaphors do not allow a person to know what to do and how to do it.
Some organize workshops where you can observe and hear someone competent in so-called “professional communication”; such a person will demonstrate to you that he really knows how to do certain things. If you are lucky and can keep your sensory apparatus open, you too will learn to do certain things.
There is also a certain group of people called theorists. They will tell you their beliefs about the true nature of man, what an “open, adaptable, authentic, spontaneous” person should be, etc., but they will not show you how anything can be done.
Most of the knowledge in psychology today is structured in such a way that it mixes what we call “modeling” with what is usually called theory, and we consider theology. The description of what people do is confused with the description of what reality itself is like. When you mix experience with theory and pack it into one package, you get psychotheology, which is developed in a system of “religious” beliefs, each of which has its own powerful evangelist at the head.
Another strange thing in psychology is the mass of people who call themselves “researchers” and have virtually no connection with psychologists! Somehow it happens that researchers do not produce information for practitioners. In medicine the situation is different. There, researchers structure their research in such a way that their findings can help practitioners in their actual practice. And practitioners actively respond to researchers, telling them what knowledge they need.
The next important feature that characterizes psychotherapists is that they come to psychotherapy with a ready-made set of subconscious stereotypes, which gives a huge probability of failure in their activities. When a psychotherapist begins work, he is primarily determined to look for inadequacy in the content. They want to know what the problem is so they can help the person find a solution.
This is always the case, regardless of whether the therapist was trained in an academic institution or in a room with a pillow on the floor. This also happens with those who consider themselves “process oriented.” Somewhere in the depths of their minds a voice constantly sounds: “Process, follow the process.” These people will tell you:
“Yes, I am a process-oriented psychotherapist. I'm working with the process. I'm working with the process. “Somehow the process turns into a thing - a thing in itself and for itself.
And one more paradox. The vast majority of psychotherapists believe that being a good psychotherapist means doing everything intuitively, which means having a developed subconscious mind that does everything for you. They don’t talk about it so directly because they don’t like the word “subconscious,” but they do what they do without knowing how they do it. It seems to me that actions performed with the help of the subconscious can be very useful and good. But the same psychotherapists say that the goal of psychotherapy is a conscious understanding of one’s problems, insight. Thus, psychotherapists are a group of people who claim that they do not know how they do something and at the same time are convinced that the only way to achieve anything in life is to know what a person's problems really are !
When I first began researching the process of psychotherapy, I asked therapists what effect they were trying to achieve by changing the topic of conversation, or by approaching the patient and touching him in a certain way, or by raising or lowering their voice. They responded something like, “Oh, I didn’t have any special intentions.” I then said: “Okay. Let us then, together with you, examine what happened and determine what the result was.” To which they replied:
“We don’t need this at all.” They believed that if they did certain things to achieve a certain result, they would be doing something bad called "manipulation."
We consider ourselves people who create “models.” We attach very little importance to what people say and very much importance to what people do. Then we build a model of what people do. We are not psychologists, not theologians or theorists. We don't think about what "reality" actually is. The function of modeling is to create a description that is useful. If you notice that we are disproving something you know from scientific research or statistics, then try to understand that we are simply offering a different level of experience here. We do not offer anything true, but only what is useful.
We believe that modeling is successful if it is possible to systematically obtain the result that the modeled person achieves. And if we can teach someone else to systematically achieve the same results, then this is an even stronger test of successful modeling.
When I took my first steps in the field of communication studies, I happened to attend a conference. There were 650 people sitting in the hall. A very famous person took the podium and made the following statement: “The most important thing we must understand about psychotherapy and communication is that the first step is to establish personal contact with the person with whom you are communicating.” This statement struck me in the sense that it had always seemed obvious to me. This man talked for another 6 hours, but never said how to establish this contact. He didn't point out any specific thing that anyone could do to better understand the other person, or at least create the illusion of being understood.
Then I took an active listening course. We were taught
to paraphrase what we hear from a person, which means to distort
heard. Subsequently, we turned to studying what in
actually done by people who are considered “luminaries” in
psychotherapy. When we compared two therapists such as V. Satir and M. Erickson, we came to the conclusion that it would seem difficult to find two more different ways of acting. At least I have never seen a more dramatic difference. Patients who worked with both therapists also claim that they had completely different experiences. However, if we consider their behavior and basic stereotypes and sequence of actions, they turn out to be similar.
In our understanding, the sequences of actions that they
used to achieve, let's say, dramatic effects,
very, very similar. They do the same thing, but they “package” it
completely different.
The same is true for F. Perls. Compared with
Satir and Erikson - he has fewer action stereotypes. But
when he acts strongly and effectively, he exhibits the same
the same sequences of actions as theirs. Fritz usually doesn't
strives to achieve certain results. If someone comes to
and says to him: “I have hysterical paralysis of my left leg,” then he will not
will directly strive for a certain elimination of this symptom.
Milton and Virginia are aimed at achieving a certain result,
which I really like.
When I wanted to study psychotherapy, I took a training course,
where the situation was this: you were dropped off on a desert island and
for a month, every day they bombarded us with information, expecting that it would be so
or else you will find something for yourself. The head of this
During the practical course, he had a very rich experience and was able to do things that none of us could do. But when he talked about what he was doing, we were by no means trained to do it. Intuitively, or as we say, subconsciously, his behavior was systematized, but he was not aware of how it was systematized. This is a compliment to his flexibility and ability to distinguish the useful from the unhelpful.
For example, we know very little about how a phrase is generated. Knowing how to speak, you somehow create complex structures from words, but you don’t know anything about how you do it, and you don’t make a conscious decision about what the phrase will be. You don’t say to yourself: “Okay, I’m going to tell myself something... First I’ll put a noun, then an adjective, then a verb, and at the end an adverb, so that, you know, it’s a little prettier.” But still speak - in a language that has syntax and grammar, that is, the rules are as clear and precise as mathematical ones. People who call themselves transformational linguists have spent a lot of public money and paper in order to define these rules. True, they do not say what can be done with them, but this does not interest them. They are not at all interested in the real world, and living in it, I sometimes understand why.
So, a person who speaks any language has an unmistakable intuition (linguistic). If I say: “Yes, you can understand this idea,” then your impression of this phrase will be completely different than if I said: “Yes, you can understand this idea,” although the words that make up both phrases are exactly the same. Something on a subconscious level tells you that the second phrase is formulated correctly, but the first is not. The modeling task we set ourselves is to develop a similar system of discrimination for more practical things. We want to highlight and show clearly what gifted therapists do intuitively or subconsciously, and formulate rules that anyone can learn.
When you come to a seminar, the following usually happens. The workshop leader says, “All you have to do to learn what I can as a skilled communicator is listen to what’s going on inside you.” This is true if you suddenly have the same thing inside you as the leader. And we're guessing that, in all likelihood, you don't have it. I think that if you want to have the kind of intuition that Erickson, Satir or Perls had, you have to go through a period of training to acquire it. If you go through such training, you can acquire such intuition, as unconscious and systematic as linguistic.
If you watch how V. Satir works, you will be bombarded with a huge flow of information - about how she moves, what tone she speaks, how she changes the subject, what sensory signals she uses to determine her position in relation to each family member etc. It is an incredibly difficult task to keep track of all the signals she gives off, her reactions to them and the reactions of family members to her intervention.
We don’t know what V. Satir actually does with families. But we can describe her behavior in such a way as to give this description to someone and say, “Here, take this. Perform such and such actions in such and such sequence. Repeat until this system of actions becomes a permanent part of your subconscious, and you can cause the same reactions as the Satyr. “We have not checked our description for accuracy or consistency with scientific evidence. We just want to understand whether our description is an adequate model of what we do, whether it works or doesn't work, whether you can use the same sequence of actions as Satyr and still achieve similar results. Our statements have nothing to do with “truth” or what “really happens.” But we know that our Satyr behavior model is effective. Working according to our descriptions, people learned to act as effectively as the Satyr, but each one's style remained individual. If you learn to speak French, you will still express yourself in this language in your own way.
You can use our knowledge to make decisions about acquiring certain skills that are likely to be useful to you in your professional activities. Using our models you can practice these skills. After a period of conscious practice, you can allow the new skills to function subconsciously. We all owe our ability to drive a car to conscious training. Now we can drive a car for long distances and not realize how we are doing it until some exceptional situation attracts our attention.
Erickson and Satir and all successful therapists pay great attention to how a person imagines what he is talking about, using this information in a variety of ways. For example, imagine that I am Satir’s client and I tell her: “You know, Virginia, how... it’s hard for me... my situation is very difficult... My wife... was hit by a train... You know, I have four children, and two of them are gangsters... I I constantly think that I... can’t understand what’s going on.”
I don't know if you've seen Virginia work, but she works very, very beautifully. What she does seems like magic, even though I am convinced that magic has its own structure and can be accessed by all of you. One of the goals that she pursues when responding to that person is to approach, to join this person in his model of the world, approximately as follows: “I understand that you have something that oppresses you, and you, as a person, you don’t want the heaviness that you constantly feel inside yourself. You hope for something else."
It doesn't really matter what she says to him, as long as she uses the same words and tone of voice as the patient. If the same client were to go to another therapist, the dialogue might look like this: “You know, Dr. Bandler, I’m having a really hard time. You know, I can’t seem to cope with this on my own.”
"I see it, Mr. Grinder..."
“I think I did something wrong with my children, but I don’t know what exactly. I think maybe you can help me understand this.”
“Of course, I see what you are talking about. Let's focus on one specific aspect. Try to give me your own point of view on what happened. Tell us how you see the situation at the moment. "
"But...you know...I...I feel like...I can't seem to grasp anything."
"I see it. What is important to me, as became clear from your colorful description, is that it is important to me that we see the road along which we will walk together.”
“I'm trying to tell you that my life was full of difficult events. And I'm trying to find a way..."
“I see that everything looks destroyed... at least that's what your description suggests. The colors you paint everything in are not at all cheerful.”
Now you are sitting and laughing, and we cannot even say that we have exaggerated the colors compared to what is happening in “real life”. We spent a lot of time observing what was happening in psychiatric clinics and outpatient clinics. In our opinion, many therapists are confused in this way.
We came from California, where there are a lot of electronic companies. We had many clients who called themselves "engineers." I don't know why, but engineers usually have the same principles that make them resort to therapy. I don’t know why, but they come and say something like this: “You know, for a long time I felt on the rise, I had achieved a lot, but as I approached the top, I looked back and saw that my life was empty. Can you see it? That is, have you seen a person my age have similar problems? "
“Yes, I am beginning to grasp the essence of your thoughts - you want to change.”
“Wait a minute, I want to try to show you how I see the whole picture. You know..."
“I feel like this is very important. "
“Yes, I know that everyone is worried about something, but I want to make it really clear how I see the problem so that you can show me what I need to know in order to find a way out of the situation, because, Frankly speaking, I feel very depressed. Do you see how this could be?
“I feel like this is very important. There is a lot to grasp in what you say. We just need to work closely on it.”
"I'd really like to hear your point of view."
“But I don’t want you to avoid these feelings. Let us go ahead and let them flow freely, so that they will wash away this hell that you have depicted here.”
“I don’t see this getting us anywhere.”
“I feel like we have hit a barrier in our relationship. Would you like to discuss your resistance? "
Did you happen to notice a stereotype in these dialogues? We observed therapists who acted out this stereotype for 2-3 days. The satyr acts in a completely different way - she joins the client, while other psychotherapists do not. We have noticed one interesting trait in human beings. If they notice that some result of an action that they know how to perform does not produce results, they repeat it anyway. Skinner had a group of students experiment with rats in a maze for a long time. And someone once asked them: “What is the real difference between a person and a rat? “Not afraid to observe people, behaviorists immediately decided that an experiment was needed to solve this question. They built a huge human-sized maze, then recruited a control group of rats and taught them to go through a maze that had a piece of cheese in the center. A group of people were stimulated with a five-dollar bill. There were no significant differences between humans and rats in this part of the experiment. Only at the 95% probability level did they find that people learn somewhat faster than rats.
But the really significant differences came in the second part of the experiment, when the cheese and five-dollar bills were removed from the mazes. After several attempts, the rats refused to go into the maze. People couldn't stop! They were all running. And even at night they entered the labyrinth for this purpose.
One of the powerful routines that ensures growth and development in most areas of activity is the rule: if what you are doing is not working, do something else. If you are an engineer who has built a rocket and you press a button and the rocket doesn't take off, you change your behavior - you look for what changes in the design need to be made to overcome gravity. But in psychiatry the situation is different: if you are faced with a situation in which a rocket does not take off, then this phenomenon has a specific name:
"resistant client" You state the fact that what you are doing is not working and blame it on the client. This frees you from responsibility and the need to change your behavior. Or, if you are more humane, you "share the client's guilt for failure" or say that "the client is not ready yet."
Another problem in psychiatry is discovering and naming the same thing several times. What Fritz and Virginia are doing has been done before them. The concepts used in transactional analysis (for example, “resolution”) were known from the work of Freud. The interesting thing is that in psychiatry names are not conveyed.
When people learned to read, write and transmit information to each other, the amount of knowledge began to increase. If someone studies electronics, then first he masters everything that has been achieved in this field in order to go further and discover something new in the process.
In psychotherapy, we first assume that a person goes to school, and after graduating, he begins to engage in psychotherapy - there are no ways to train psychotherapists at all. All we do is provide them with clients and claim that they have a “private practice”, that is, they practice privately.
In linguistics there is the concept of “nominalization”. Nominalization occurs when we take a process and describe it as a thing or phenomenon. In doing so, we will greatly confuse ourselves and those around us if we do not remember that we are using a representation rather than a part of the experience.
This phenomenon can be useful. If you are a member of the government, then
you have the opportunity to talk about such nominalizations as, for example,
"national security" - people will start to worry about this
safety. Our president went to Egypt and replaced the word
imperialism is acceptable, and now we have become friends with Egypt again. All he did was replace the word.
The word “resistance” is also a nominalization. It describes the process as a thing, without mentioning how it functions. The honest, involved, authentic therapist from the last dialogue would describe his patient as cold, unemotional, and so removed from all feelings that he is unable to even communicate effectively with the therapist. The client really resists. The client will go to look for another psychotherapist, since this psychotherapist needs glasses, he sees absolutely nothing. And of course, they are both right.
So, have any of you noticed that stereotype that we talked about (that will really be the starting point for us in our movement)?
Woman: In the last dialogue, the client uses mainly visual words, for example: “look, see, show, look.” The therapist uses kinesthetic words: “take, grasp, feel, heavy.”
The person you meet for the first time thinks, throughout
probability, in one of three systems of representations. He may be inside
generate visual images, experience kinesthetic
feelings or saying something to yourself. Define the system
representations can be achieved by paying attention to the process words (verbs, adverbs and adjectives) that a person uses to describe his internal experience. If you pay attention to this, you can tailor your behavior to produce the desired response. If you want to establish good rapport with a person, you must use the same procedural issues that they use. If you want to establish distance, you can deliberately use words from a different representational system, and this was the case in the last dialogue.
Let's talk a little about how language functions. If I ask you, “Are you comfortable? “, you have a definite answer. The prerequisite for an adequate response is that you understand the words I am telling you. Do you know how you understand, for example, the word “convenient”?
Woman: Physically.
So, you understand the word physically. With this word, you feel that certain changes are happening inside your body. These changes come from the associations that arise within you when you hear the word “comfortable.”
She felt that she understood the word "comfortable" through internal changes in her body. Have any of you noticed how he understands this word? Some of you may have visual images of yourself in a comfortable position - in a hammock or in the grass in the sun.
Or you hear sounds that you associate with this word:
the murmur of a stream or the sound of pine trees.
To understand what I am telling you, you must take words that are just arbitrary designations for parts of your personal experience, and open access to their meanings, i.e., some meanings of the word "comfortable." This is our simple understanding of how language functions. We call this process transdesiration search.
Words are triggers that evoke certain experiences in our minds and not others.
There are seventy words for snow in the Eskimo language. Does this mean that the Eskimos have a different sensory apparatus? No. I believe that language is the concentrated wisdom of people. Among the infinite number of elements of sensory experience, language selects what is repeated in the experience of the people who create the language, and what they consider necessary. Using 70 words to represent the word “snow” makes sense given the types of activities they carry out. For them, survival itself is tied to snow, and so they make very subtle distinctions. Skiers also have many words for types of snow.
O. Huxley in his book “The Doors of Perception” notes that by learning a language, a person becomes the heir to the wisdom of all those people who lived before him. But he, this person, also becomes a victim in a certain sense of the word: of the entire immeasurable variety of internal experience, only some of its elements receive a name and therefore attract a person’s attention. Other, no less important, and perhaps more dramatic and useful elements of experience, being unnamed, usually remain at the sensory level, without intruding into consciousness.
Between the first and second reflection of experience there is usually
divergence. Experience and the way of presenting this experience to oneself
to a person, these are two different things. One of the most mediated
ways of representing experience is to reflect it using words. If
I will say “On the table that stands here there is a glass, half full.”
filled with water,” then I will offer you a series of words, arbitrary
characters. You may agree or disagree with my
statement, since in this case I am appealing to your
sensory experience.
If I use words that do not have direct referents in sensory experience (although you have a program that allows you to require from me other words that are closer to sensory experience), then the only thing left for you if you want to understand what I am saying is - is to resort to your past experience, finding referents in it.
Your experience matches mine to the extent that we share the same culture with its basic premises. The words must be consistent with the model of the world that your interlocutor has. The word "contact" has a completely different meaning for a person from the ghetto, a member of the middle class, and for a representative of one of the hundred families belonging to the ruling elite. There is an illusion that people can understand each other, although words always correspond to different elements of experience for each person, hence the difference in their meaning.
I believe that a psychotherapist should behave in such a way that the client creates the illusion that you understand what he is saying. But I want to warn you against this illusion.
Many of you, when meeting a client for the first time, already have some intuitive impressions about him. Perhaps there is a client for you about whom you know at first glance that the psychotherapeutic process here will be very difficult, that it will take a very long time before you can help him make the choice that he strives for, although you are still completely clueless you don’t know what this choice is. At first glance, you get a completely different impression about other clients - you know that it will be interesting to work with them and you will try to satisfy yourself in your work. You anticipate excitement and adventure as you explore new ways of behaving with them. How many of you have had a similar feeling? I'll ask you here. Do you know when you have an experience like this?
Woman: Yes.
What is this experience? Let me help you. Start by listening to my questions. The question I will ask you is one of those questions that I want to teach you all to ask. Here it is: “How do you know that you are feeling an instinctive hunch” (the woman looks left and up). Yes, that's how you find out about it. She didn't say anything, that's what's interesting. She experienced the answer to the question I asked non-verbally. This process is similar to the process that occurs when we experience an intuitive insight. This was the answer to my question.
What you can take away from our seminar is at least this: you will receive answers to our questions to the extent that your sensory apparatus is tuned to notice the answers. The verbal or conscious part of the response is rarely relevant.
Let's now go back and recite the question again. How do you know when you are experiencing a gut feeling?
Woman: Well, maybe I should go back to the previous dialogue. I tried to put the answer into some form. This was a symbol for me.
What symbol? Was it something you saw, heard or felt?
Woman: I kind of saw it in my head...
