THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY
AND THE FOUNDER’S SELF-PROMOTIONS

Last week both John Grinder and Richard Bandler held a joint web-presentation celebrating the 50th Anniversary of NLP. But that’s a bit deceptive. They did not actually get together and hold the celebration of 50 years. Instead each of them separately recorded a 30 minute presentation in which they were asked a few questions. Supposedly they were to answer questions that the audience asked, but in the end all of the questions were softball questions. Actually, extremely softball questions! None were challenging in the least. The questions, in fact, were such that the questions allowed each one to boast and glory in himself. I had submitted two questions that would have been challenging, but they were obviously not mentioned as were many others that I knew about.

If you listen to the presentations what you will learn is that each man thinks that what he did was absolutely spectator. And both of them think they created the NLP model completely between themselves! They had no help and needed no help. They congratulate each other, but no one else! They seem to have totally forgotten the role of Frank Pucelik and the way Robert Dilts formulated nearly all of the original NLP model. John seems now to dismiss the role of Frank saying he only imitates(!), a very different story from his book that introduced Frank as “The Third Man.”

They also had amnesia about the many different Gestalt and Meta Groups which in The Structure of Magic they described as “therapists groups.” What a complete forgetting! It was as if none of them existed and none of them were co-founders. I addressed this in the book, NLP Secrets: Untold Stories (2018). And still, 50 years later, the stories are still untold … at least by Richard and John.

Richard tried to emphasize that he gave credit to others, but only to the obvious— Virginal Satir, Milton Erickson, Noam Chomsky, somehow he forgot Fritz! He also magically forgot to mention Frank, Robert, Leslie, Judith, or many other key people who actually turned the first discoveries into what became known as the NLP Communication Model.

He also engaged in a good bit of “change personal history” inasmuch as what he is saying now does not correspond to what he has said over the years in books and videos. He now claims that he got things from various people even though there is no historical record of those people. An example he now credits Dorothy Kimura for eye accessing cue although she was never mentioned in any previous NLP book. Neither Richard nor John ever mentioned her regarding eye accessing cues! Paul Bach-y-Rita was mentioned once, but only a brief reference. Not exactly a big source for NLP. Moshe Feldenkrais was also only briefly mentioned a few times. He was primarily referred to in a training Richard did in London in 1990 Neuro-Dynamics (a training that I transcribed at Richard’s request and turned into a book—a book which has not been published).

The biggest elephant in the room from this 50th year anniversary is that they did not speak at all about their lawsuits with each other, with the divisions they created in the field, or with the $90,000,000 lawsuit that essentially destroyed NLP in the United States. Nothing at all about that! Another nice thing to be amnesic about.

Not a word was said about the fact that neither has supported the field in recommending any of the leaders who have arisen who have made NLP what it is. I’m thinking specifically of Robert Dilts and Steve Andreas. If it were not for Robert and Steve and Connaire, NLP would have never achieved its recognition in the 1970s and 1980s that it did. They did far more than Richard or John in those years to formalize and promote NLP. If not for them, there very well could be no NLP.

Over the years, neither John or Richard ever came to any of the NLP Conferences around the world to support the field. They never wrote articles for the many Journals that we had in the 1980s and 1990s (except when someone wrote an article about them). Instead each worked to keep his ‘camp’ going and refused to acknowledge each other or anyone else. That’s not exactly what we think of leaders.

Given that, I would say that they were only founders, but not leaders. They never groomed others to step up to lead the field. They never gave credit to people making contributions to the field. When I took my training with Richard, there were no patterns from Dilts or Grinder—none. I walked out of Master Practitioner never hearing one word about what they offered to NLP.

Over the years many of us tried to get both of the founders to participate. We asked them in 1997 to come to the Visionary Leadership Conference. Neither did. Although Richard sent his lawyer (!) who met some of us out on “the green grass.” They following day John showed up on “the green grass” to present his side of the 90 million dollar lawsuit. We asked them to show up at the Millennial Project (2000), neither did. We asked them to come to the 40th Anniversary; they did not. Richard sent a two minute video. What’s amazing to me is that while we asked them to be leaders—and they refused.

Then last year (2024) some years after Frank Pucelik and I started the NLP Leadership Summit (2011), we held the Summit in Santa Cruz California where John still lives. Did he show up? No, of course not. But Judith DeLozier did. Then she and Robert gave the group of 70 plus NLP leaders a tour of Kresge College and the University of Southern California.

My view? The founders are bold in taking credit for what they partially founded, something which they did not grow. They contributed a lot of the first intellectual structures, but were unable to contribute any kind of true leadership over the decades. NLP Leadership fell to those who created the Conferences, the Associations, the Journals, the Research Conference, who developed new models, new patterns, and new communities (as indicated in Innovations in NLP, 2012).

References
I wrote NLP Secrets: The Untold Stories as a journalistic investigation researching it via reading countless books on the origins of NLP, collecting sources, cross-referencing, and relying on numerous personal experiences with those who were there. There I emphasized that NLP’s origins were the result of a community effort. It was not accomplished by any one or two individuals. To create NLP, it took Robert Spitzer introducing Perls’ works and to Satir herself. It took Bateson send them to Erickson. It took all of the individuals in the original groups for the collective contribution they made including David Gordon, Stephen Gilligan, Terry McClendon, and many, many more. https://legacy.neurosemantics.com/shop/page/7/

WHAT NLP REALLY IS

NLP, as a Communication model, is not a therapy model. It is not a version of psychotherapy. Nor is it a modeling model, a hypnosis model, or even a model for personal development (self-actualization). So what is NLP? Amazing enough, that is one of the perennial questions that has plagued the field of NLP. This is the question to ask if you want to torture an NLP trainer!

Yes, NLP speaks to, addresses, and provides lots of guidance in each of these disciplines. These are actually the most essential applications of NLP. There are many more—parenting, leadership, managements, coaching, consulting, education, health, fitness, etc. These are so much the essential applications that they are commonly, even to this day, confused with what NLP really is. That’s why some say NLP is Modeling, some say it is Psychotherapy, some say it is Hypnosis, and others say it is Self-Actualization. NLP certain is each of these in terms of applications. But what is it at its core? Can we determine that?

NLP is actually much deeper than any of these. Thinking about it as a communication model, then at its heart, it is about how we communicate to ourselves and others to create our experiences (states, skills, knowledge). As NLP identified how these communications work and the basic communication processes (mechanism), we found that it gave us the inner hidden structure of experience itself. And when you know the structure of an experience, you can model and replicate that experience.

Yet unbeknown to most NLP trainers, writers, researchers, and teachers, NLP is actually deeper than just a Communication Model. Nor is this something new that I’m adding to NLP, it has been deeper since the beginning, but hardly anyone noticed. I did not. And I researched it for decades and delved into the NLP models going back to the original sources. Perhaps that’s because it is easier and makes more sense to simply say that it is a Communication Model. People understand that. What else would you call it?

When Bob and I packaged NLP for the two volumes of User’s Manual of the Brain, we said that it is most essentially a Communication Model. Evidence of that goes to the fact that the first NLP model is “the Meta-Model of Language in Therapy” and the second model was the Representational Model that comprises our communications (including Sub-Modalities or the cinematic features of our inner movies). The third model, the Strategies Model about how the communications generates and “programs” an experience. Fourth, the Milton Model of hypnotic communication patterns and how trance states work. Fifth, the Meta-Programs model about how people think in their communications. That’s a lot of evidence that NLP is a Communication Model. Yet could it be something deeper? If so, what would we call it?

Could we call it a thinking model? What if, deeper than all of the uses and applications of NLP is thinking? Yet there’s a problem with that. Namely, what is a thinking model? How do you model thinking? Thinking itself seems so primary and irreducible, what would be its components? Perhaps that’s why none of us saw that NLP could be defined as a thinking model. But let’s go with it for a moment. Suppose we called NLP a thinking model? After all, take each of the communication models and let’s ask, What lies within and underneath each model? The answer is Thinking.

Meta-Model of Language Linguistic distinctions encoding how we think.
Representational Model Sensory representations encoding sensory VAK thinking.
Sub-Modality Model Cinematic features framing how one is thinking.
Strategy Model Representational steps in how a thinking format is structured.
Milton Model Hypnotic linguistic distinctions that invite a person to construct thinking about possibilities and in terms of metaphors (metaphorical thinking).
Meta-Programs Model Thinking patterns that govern ways of perceiving.
Perceptual Positions Model Thinking patterns from different perceptual positions.
Reframing Model Thinking patterns for framing different ways of interpreting a word, experience, or person, thinking about meaning in different way.
Meta-States Model Reflexive thinking patterns that layer thought upon thought to generate more complex states.

One thing this perceptive highlights is that all ‘thinking’ is not the same. There are many different kinds and dimensions of thinking. It also puts a spotlight on the driving force inside of communication—the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your communicating. As thinking can go wrong, make mistakes, be fallacious—so can everything that thinking generates. No wonder change, and transformation of persons and organizations, require new thinking in new and different ways.

What am I saying here? I’m saying that what NLP is most essentially a Thinking Model. When you really understand NLP, you know that it is a way of thinking, a way of rethinking, and a way to do both critical and creative thinking. With this in mind, then at the core of every change is re-thinking. It is fresh thinking and it is meta-thinking, that is, the ability to think about your thinking so that you can make sure it is accurate, specific, precise, creative, and ecological.

Thinking has been at the core of NLP from the beginning, but we missed it. Perhaps we dismissed “thinking” as too small, too obvious, or not distinctive enough. Perhaps we wanted something more sell-able, something more commercially appealing, something that sounded more sexy— communication, change, reframing, modeling, etc.

Now as a Thinking Model, NLP (including Meta-States) offers us nearly everything we need to build and articulate a model of thinking. And unbeknown to most of the field of NLP, that’s what I’ve been doing in our Brain Camp trainings and in the series of books on thinking. It has been a discovery long time in coming, but it is now coming in a training near you.

From: L. Michael Hall
2023 Neurons #44
October 16, 2023
NLP A Thinking Model #2

IF NLP IS A THINKING MODEL—

I have proposed that deeper than a Communication Model, or a model about modeling, psychology, personal development, etc., NLP is most essentially at its core a Thinking Model (#43). Viewing NLP from this perspective changes several things about NLP. It changes numerous things that we can claim for NLP, how to sell NLP trainings, and perhaps even the future of NLP. Let’s start from the premise of the title, If NLP is a thinking model, then what? What inevitably follows if that is the case?

1st) NLP enables you to think better. Even the very idea of “thinking” suddenly becomes much more specific and actionable. I discovered that when I first studied NLP. Learning about the sensory representational systems, namely, that we think in images (visual), sounds (auditory), sensations (feelings, kinesthetics) along with smells and tastes, I discovered that I had almost completely ignored the auditory channel. Why? That was due to a misbelief I picked up in college, namely, that I was tone-deaf. Having lived with that mis-understanding for 30 years, I simply paid no attention to that system. Now suddenly I discovered a whole new realm for information coding. I was not tone-deaf!

When you know about the VAK sensory systems for representing information, you have many more specific channels for thinking. You have multiple ways of enhancing your internal snapshots and movies about things. There’s scores of cinematic features (sub-modalities) that you can now use to enrich what and how you think. It’s actually quite amazing. It makes actionable the multiple intelligence model of Howard Gardner (see Frames of Mind, 1983).

2nd) NLP enables you to be an effective critical thinker. If the VAK model enriches your internal coding of information so that you can “think” with much more richness, then the Meta-Model of Language empowers you to learn the essence of critical thinking. The discipline of “critical thinking” is about thinking more clearly, precisely, accurately, and rationally. To do that, the Meta-Model specifies 21 linguistic distinctions to pay attention to so that your thinking will be “well-formed” and not suffer from the ill-formedness caused by deletions, generalizations, and distortions.

If that sounds complicated, it really is not. Nearly all of the deletion distinctions are already intuitive in you as a native speaker. When you hear, “He rejected me” you intuitively know that the verb “reject” is not specific. So you naturally ask, “How did he reject you?” The generalizations and distortions are partly intuitive, yet most of them you have to learn to recognize them. When you do recognize the linguistic distinction, then ask a question. That’s what the Meta-Model is—a set of distinctions and questions to get a speaker to be more specific and precise. How important is that for any communicator? For any leader, parent, therapist, coach, teacher, etc.?

When I began doing research in the field of Critical Thinking (yes, there is a whole field!), I discovered that not a single book in that field referenced NLP’s Meta-Model. Not one! So I wrote the first one, Executive Thinking: Activating Your Highest Executive Potentials (2018). Why? Because the Meta-Model is the most direct and simple way to learn how to be an excellent critical thinker.

3rd) NLP enables you to be an effective creative thinker. As a model, the Meta-Model not only allows you to think and communicate more precisely, it enables you to see the very structure (thinking structure) that formulates an experience. Every experience has a structure and that structure entails how a person thinks. Discovering that structure, which is what the NLP Strategy model does, as well as the Meta-Programs, now we can create and/or model expertise that already exists.

In the history of NLP this happened as an accident. It was not planned. All that the founders intended to do was to find out how Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir, two brilliant therapists, were able to achieve tremendous results in psychotherapy. So as they listened to how they talked, they inferred what they must be thinking, then from that they created a whole list of “patterns” for replicating their expertise. Those patterns became the content of NLP training. They reveal how a therapist would lead a client to a new way of thinking and experiencing.

4th) NLP enables you to solve problems at the thinking structural level. From that “accident,” the founders realized that the solutions and cures were not based on the “content” of what a person thought so much as on the process of how the person shifted in thinking. That’s why, they explained, many different approaches and therapies all work. But therapists of those schools are wrong in thinking that it is because of the belief system in the therapy, it’s the shift of thinking underneath or within the content.

It was in that way that NLP was recognized as a meta-discipline from the beginning. The “magic” was not in Gestalt, not in Family Systems, not in Hypnosis, or any other model, it was in the internal structure. Unknown to the founders, this corresponded to what Korzybski said, “Structure and structure alone is the essence of knowledge.” Then, out of this discovery, arose the focus on modeling. When we re-code NLP as a Thinking Model, are many benefits result. I’ll speak of more of them in the next Neurons posts.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

When it comes to defining NLP—for decades the most universal and common definition, and the definition given everywhere in the world, is this: NLP is a Communication Model. And it is a Communication Mode for good reason, namely—
∙ It began with the Meta-Model of Language in Therapy
∙ It expanded to the Representation systems including how we code them with cinematic features called sub-modalities.
∙ It expanded to the Hypnotic communication patterns of Erickson.
∙ It expanded to the Strategy Model for how an experience is structured.
∙ It expanded to the thinking/ perceiving patterns which we call Meta-Programs.
∙ And what is any “pattern” but a step by step way of thinking about how to experience something.

It therefore makes good sense to see NLP as a Communication Model. Yet we now know in Neuro-Semantics that there’s something deeper than communication patterns and linguistic patterns—there is thinking. Yes NLP began as the founders became enthralled by how Perls, Satir, and Erickson communicated and how their communications effected tremendous transformations. Yet later another question emerged: How did these experts in therapeutic communications think? What thinking processes enabled them to communicate as they did? It is these questions which take us deeper into something even more profound than communication.

Thinking is a deeper, and far more expansive, phenomena than communication. After all, to become an expert, it is required that you think like an expert. Bandler noted this in Using Your Brain for a Change:
“When I first started modeling, it seemed logical to find out what psychology had already learned about how people think.” (1985, p. 14).

Similarly, Robert Dilts, another NLP founder and developer, wrote in Strategies of Genius:
“The belief system of NLP is that it is the thinking process behind the accomplishment that is the most important element of creating something like genius. … The field of NLP has developed out of the modeling of human thinking skills.” (Volume I, pp. xxiv, xxv)

What is deep NLP? We can define Deep NLP as a study and presentation of thinking and the art of how to think. Let’s run with that idea. What if NLP is more essentially a Thinking Model than a Communication Model? After all, when you learn NLP, if you learn it properly, you learn to think.
∙ You learn to think clearly, accurately, precisely—the Meta-Model.
∙ You learn to thinking in sensory specifics details—the VAK model.
∙ You learn to think hypnotically to induce resourceful states—the Milton Model.
∙ You learn to think strategically about the form/ process of experience for replication—the Strategy Model.
∙ You learn to think reflexively about your thinking—the Meta-States Model.

Now while “thinking” may not be felt as needed or as sexy as communication, the fact remains that you can communication no better than you can think. It’s ill-formed thinking that leads to ill-formed language and therefore to ill-formed communicating, emotions, and behaviors. That’s because as thinking is the central core of everything in communication, it is also the central core of everything human. And because thinking dominates everything about NLP, what if this re-defines NLP. It now strikes me that—
NLP is actually and essentially a Thinking Model, and if it is a thinking model, then what we most fundamentally do is help people to do quality thinking, or at least we should.

Now, have we not said from the beginning that it is not only the content of what you think, but how you think which determines your experience? Yes of course. So, given that, what if we made it our objective to help people do higher quality thinking? What if NLP (and Neuro-Semantics) developed a reputation for teaching critical and creative thinking skills? I’ve made this my focus for the past several years and have written a series of books on thinking as deeper than communication. I began with Executive Thinking (2018), wrote books on specific thinking skills, and then concluded with Thinking for Humans (2024).

The Many Ways You Think
In NLP we have had a problem. To identify the problem, let’s start with the fact that in learning NLP, you actually learn many different ways to think. While this probably was not pointed out to you when you took NLP training, in the end you learned to think in multiple ways as never before. And in each of these different ways to think, your thinking skills were actually expanded and enriched thereby enabling you to generate all sorts of new ideas, responses, and processes. You learn to think critically and creatively.

Consider all of the different kinds of thinking inherent in NLP: There’s sensory thinking (the VAK), linguistic thinking that leads to descriptive thinking, somatic thinking of the body, semantic thinking for our concepts, beliefs, and evaluations. There is perceptual thinking (our meta-programs) and also the perceptual positions by which we can think using various perspectives. There is imaginative thinking (what if thinking and hypnotic thinking), and there is metaphorical thinking. In terms of time, there is future thinking (predictive, anticipatory thinking), past thinking (remembering, reminiscing), and present time (sensory-based thinking). There is creative thinking and strategic thinking for modeling. There is the thinking that goes into framing and reframing. There is holistic and systemic thinking. There is inductive and deductive thinking (as you chunk up and down the scale of specificity and abstraction).

Wow! That’s a lot of thinking. Further, thinking leads to all of the various constructs of the mind—beliefs, decisions, understandings, intentions, memories, imagination, anticipations, expectations, creativity and innovations. Thinking also leads to all of the things we do relationally— promise, contract, relate, coach, lead, manage, parent, and on and on.

Now because thinking is the process regarding how the brain processes information, it is both a conscious and unconscious process. In fact, it mostly occurs outside-of-conscious awareness rather than in it. Now if thinking is a process—then it is a skill. And if a skill —then a capacity, a power, and a potential! And that brings us to the critical question:

Who Teaches Thinking?
Who teaches clear, precise, and accurate thinking? Who teaches creative and innovative thinking? All too often we assume that thinking is natural, inevitable, and good. Then we encounter poor thinking, crazy thinking, dysfunctional thinking, and irrational thinking and realize that thinking—as a skill—can be good or bad, rational or irrational, functional or dysfunctional, childish or adult.

I mentioned earlier that, ideally, when you learn NLP, you learn to think. That’s the ideal. But are NLP trained people better thinkers than most people? Sadly they are not. Reading books, articles, and websites by NLP people, you can see all sorts of Meta-Model violations that encourage sloppy thinking, vague thinking, and poor thinking.

What’s the problem? How is it that someone could learn NLP and not become a better thinker? Perhaps we are assuming that learning the NLP Models will automatically— and without effort or direction— lead people to think effectively. There certainly are people who experience that. But not everyone. Many people who learn NLP fail to use the appropriate thinking for the appropriate model. As a result, they do not learn how to effectively use the models. Accordingly, if you use the wrong thinking when you learn a specific model or application— your learning will be severely inhibited.

Given all of this, I am more convinced than ever that we ought to be teaching people how to think using NLP. This has led me to research thinking and to model some of the best thinkers which I have then put into a whole series of books on thinking.

The Return of Thinking
It seems to me that a big confusion occurred soon after the founding of NLP. The confusion was about thinking. People began confusing “thinking” with conscious thinking, not realizing that most of our thinking occurs outside-of-conscious awareness. Consequently, a false dichotomy arose between the so-called “conscious mind” and the “unconscious mind.” Yet if we think holistically, there is but one mind, one intelligence, some of which is conscious and most of which is outside-of-conscious awareness.

This dichotomy is still alive and well today in the field of NLP and causing lots of problems. Like the dichotomy of “mind” versus “emotions,” or “mind” versus “body,” this dichotomy creates a false tension and conflict. Some draw the false conclusion that the “mind” is totally inadequate for coping with life, for facilitating change, for enriching the quality of life. They default on their own thinking and become quite willing to let someone else “run their brain.” “Just do some NLP on me and fix this problem.”

To this problem of over-emphasizing the so-called “unconscious mind,” it seems to me that there began in the 1980s a return to thinking. Here’s some evidence of that.
∙ Leslie Cameron LaBeau, 1980s, discovered the role of thinking when she recognized that some ways of thinking prevent certain classical NLP patterns from being effective. Out of that discovery, she identified the first Meta-Programs.
∙ Joseph Yeager, 1985, wrote Thinking about Thinking with NLP. “NLP is the science of thinking about thinking” (viii). NLP practitioners “Know exactly how to change your thinking habits, not just talk about them” (4). “Unless one is able to make a breakthrough from absolute thinking to relative thinking, NLP is just so much bafflegab” (9). “In NLP feeling (Kinesthetic) is defined as a cognitive event. That is, feelings are thoughts, too. As expressed colloquially, the experience of intuition is a kinesthetic mode of thinking.” (182)
∙ Wyatt Woodsmall, 1990s: Modeling II went beyond what an expert did (Modeling I) to his or her person. This brought thinking back to NLP as it shifted the focus from modeling behavior to how the expert thought (Dilts’ Strategies of Genius series).
∙ Reframing models (Dilts’ Sleight of Mouth, Hall’s Mind-Lines: Lines for Changing Minds) introduced how to think about the construct of meaning. In reframing you change the way you think about something as you frame it in a new or different way.
∙ Steven Leads and Rachel Hott: “It’s our tendency as human beings to get into fixed habits so that we do not have to think about everything we do. .. People are mostly unconscious. Without awareness, there is no opportunity for change.” NLP: A Changing Perspective.
∙ Robert Dilts: “The strategy for how one thinks about information is as important as the content of the information.” 1994 Strategies of Genius, p. 185. “In this book I will attempt to model the thinking processes of a number of historical individuals, who have been identified as geniuses …” (xxvi) “NLP provides a set of tools and distinctions that allow us to map out cognitive processes underlying the works of creative and exceptional people. … NLP looks for the deeper structures that produced these results.” (xxix).

In these, and many more, ways there’s been a slow recognition of the importance of thinking, and the quality of thinking, in NLP.

A Visual Picture of Deep NLP — The Meta Place
If you could see deep NLP, what would you see? What does that depth look like? To answer that question, I posed another question to myself a few years ago.
“If we could see mind, what does mind look like? What visual image could help us picture mind or consciousness?”

It’s easy to answer that question about “the brain.” Neurologists and neuro-scientists have been able to map out the anatomy of the brain for many decades and with each decade, their mapping has been getting more and more accurate. Pictures and diagrams of the brain are now everywhere and they can help us understand the functioning of the brain. But while the brain somehow produces the mind, the brain is not the mind. The mind is not an empirical see-hear-or-feel entity like the brain. To therefore learn to see the mind, I asked another question:
“What does the mind do? How does the mind function? When the mind is actively operational, what is produced?”

While the answer is simple, it is also profound: The mind thinks. And yet when it thinks, it thinks in a great many ways, in a great many dimensions, and at multiple levels. That’s because not all thinking is the same. Accordingly I began making a list of words indicating “thinking” and after I had more than 100 words, I began inquiring about the major dimensions and/or stages of thinking. I created a thinking continuum so as to get a picture of the range of thinking over all of the dimensions. That led to the next question:
“What are the central or key dimensions of thinking? If we considered these the primary landmarks of the mind—what would they be?”

I then found that by treating these categories of thinking as the landmarks of the mind, I could create a rough diagram of consciousness comprised of those landmarks. I titled this mental space or place The Meta Place. Given that all thinking (all thought) is inside our minds and therefore above and about whatever we are thinking about— it is meta to the references, hence, a place meta to the world. It is a map about the territory and not the territory.

Then taking these categories of thinking, I summarized them into three primary dimensions or categories of thinking—essential thinking skills (for grounding), eureka thinking skills (for creating), and executive thinking skills (for governing). Then within them, I identified five of the most significant thinking skills in each of these dimensions. The purpose was not to be rigorously accurate, only to create a beginning diagram, one would enable us to see consciousness or mind in action. And that’s what The Meta Place (2023) provides today—a beginning image for how to conceptualize and picture the mind.

Now with that, a person can make a deep dive into the mind (the Meta Place). It is as simple as recognizing the landmarks of the mind which you then embrace and explore to see what a person has mapped. For more, see the books on the thinking series and especially Executive Thinking and Thinking for Humans. Once you have that, you will be ready for The Deep Dive.

2021 Neurons #71

November 1, 2021

Fates #2

DEEPENING CRITICAL THINKING

ABOUT FACTS

“Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.”

Jack Webb’s Joe Friday of Dragnet

I noted in the last Neurons (#70) that we talk about facts as if they were things and objects, as if they were empirical and sensory-based.  We talk about facts as if a fact will bring a controversy to an end..  “Now here are the facts; case closed.”  But unfortunately, things are just not that simple or cut-and-dried.

On first glance, it seems that facts are … well, factual— real, sensory-based and therefore uncontroversial.  While facts seem like a solid things, they are not.  Can you see a fact?  What does a fact look like?  Things are just not that simple.  What we call “facts” are our concepts about things and not the things themselves.  The word “fact” itself is not empirical.  The word fact is a nominalization and a category.  It refers to a category of things that normally we would consider sensory-based of something actually done.  Yet sensory-based facts are, at best, facts at a macro-level.  At worse, sensory-based facts may be illusions altogether.  When you put a stick in water, you will see it as if it were bent and not straight.  But it is not bent.  It only appears that way to your eyes.

Kinds of facts: One fact about a fact (a meta-fact) is that there are many kinds of facts.

1) Empirical facts: A statement that refers to see, hear, feel, referents.  It can refer to macro-level referents, micro-level, or even sub-atomic level referents.

2) Phenomenological / Psychological facts: Statements about an internal experience that you have, your state— joy or depression, calmness or anxiety, resilience or failure, etc.

3) Definition facts: Statements that are facts by definition.

4) Cultural facts: Statements about how a group of people have given meaning or value to something which is now a ‘fact’ in their social life.

5) Conclusion facts: Statements that we make as conclusions from other facts.

6) Interpersonal facts: Statements about relationships, what characterizes them, how people are interacting.

7) Statistical facts: Statements concluded from analysis of data and formulated into statistical percentages.

When it comes to a fact, the data upon which we construct a fact does not speak for itself.  The data, and then the fact, become meaningful via interpretation and we create interpretations based on a number of things— context, criteria, theory, level, and kind.  Facts, are statements that assert something.

Levels of facts:  As we use the same word “fact,” we can use the word, reflexively, on itself.  We can have facts about facts.  At each level, the word refers to and means something different.  Ah yes, it is a multi-ordinal term.  That means the same term refers to different things at different levels.  So we have to ask, “at what level are you using the term?”  Consequently, we now have meta-facts.

Meta-level facts are facts that arise from particular kinds of information processing.  Under this category we have mathematical facts, statistical facts, heuristic facts, inferential facts, etc.  None of these facts occur at the primary level.  To reach these facts, you have to “go meta” and access a higher level meta-state.   In fact, within each and every field of study we have different kinds of facts— psychological facts, sociological facts, economic facts, etc.  We can even have pseudo-facts— a fact that is a false fact.

Finally, when we have a so-called “fact” as a statement that asserts something about reality, we can then distinguish it as — true or false; valid or invalid; confirmed, disconfirmed, or unconfirmable; real or pseudo; congruent or incongruent; conditional or unconditional; perceived or reasoned; limited or comprehensive, objective or subjective, etc.

“Facts” in the Media

We naturally look to the media (newspapers, magazines, TV, cable, social media) for data— information about what’s happening, who did what, who said what, etc.  Yet in searching out data and presenting it to us, the media has its own interests and agendas.  The media inevitably spins and frames the data, serving it up as facts, when that is seldom the case.

It is only weeks or months later that we read about corrections and retractions— usually in the back pages of the newspaper.  An appearance of a fact was taken, a conclusion was jumped to, a bias was exploited, and then an agenda was manipulated for the reading or viewing public.  It happens every single day.

And our only defense against it is an understanding of how to think and listen and reason when people purport to offer us facts.  So when someone offers you a so-called “fact,” that is time to be suspicious, to use the power of skepticism and to do some healthy critical thinking.  It’s time to get out the Meta-Model and challenge the so-called facts.

Modeling created NLP, modeling also created Neuro-Semantics, and modeling will keep this field growing and thriving.  Modeling will keep us creative and on the cutting-edge of facilitating self-actualization for individuals and organizations.  And modeling has been my focus for some 25-plus years and the source of the rich offerings in NLP.  But we need more people doing it.  The following is my story.  I’m presenting it to invite you to start your story.

While I became aware of NLP in 1985, I did not begin studying NLP until 1986.  I had heard of it as a communication model and then I discovered that it had lots of applications for therapy.  As a psychotherapist, that interested me.  So I studied it for eight years before my first big breakthrough in 1994, when I discovered and created the Meta-States Model.  That was a little bit short of “the ten-year rule” of Anders Ericcson.  Perhaps that was because the field was pretty new and I entered into it pretty early.  Anyway, those were the silent years in which my focus was on understanding NLP.

As I learned NLP I began incorporating it into my work.  I added the NLP Communication Model to my book, Speak Up, Speak Clear, Speak Kind (1987) and then added the NLP model of strategies to my work in Motivation, How to Get Yourself Really Motivated (1988/ 1998).

While I was doing my original studies with Bandler, I wrote what became the book, The Spirit of NLP (1997) in 1989.  Then at Bandler’s request I wrote Becoming More Ferocious as a Trainer (1990) during my Trainers’ Training.  After that I wrote several other books for Bandler, Time for a Change and Neuro-Associative Dynamics (unpublished) from video-tapes and worked on creating The NLP Directory (unpublished).

At that time to more fully understand NLP I began reading everything that the three communication experts Perls, Satir, and Erickson had written.  That led me to other sources of NLP, especially Bateson and Korzybski.  I then wrote a series of articles, Almost Inventors (1991-1992) and then later The Missing Meta-Model Distinctions (1992-1993).

In 1990 Richard uged me to engage in a modeling project.  Because my degree and practice was in psychotherapy, I decided that for my first modeling project I would model a therapeutic solution to schizophrenia.  I read Bateson’s work over and over, and because I had had experience with several high functioning schizophrenic clients as a licensed psychotherapist, I approached a mental health clinic in my city.  But after many meetings, the project was refused.

That’s when I began my first modeling project on resilience.  That and all of the other projects were turned into trainings as well as books as I took the discoveries, created models for doing things, and then put them into a training format so that the expertise could be replicated.  Today most of these are Neuro-Semantic Trainings.

Many of the projects slid into the next one.  In fact, sometimes it is difficult to say when one modeling project ended and the next one began.  Often, as with modeling Resilience, while still working on that, I began working on modeling Self-Reflexivity.  Along the way I wrote a number of books that were exclusively NLP books.  Some of these came out of various modeling projects and some simply came from remodeling NLP using the Meta-States Model.

Patterns for Renewing the Mind (1997/ 2000)

Sourcebook of Magic – Volume I (1997)

Sourcebook of Magic – Volume II (2003)

User’s Manual of the Brain, Vol. I (1999)

User’s Manual of the Brain, Vol. II (2002)

MovieMind (2002)

Propulsion Systems (2003)

Games Great Lovers Play (2004)

Innovations in NLP (2011)

The Field of NLP (unfinished and unpublished)

1) Resilience (1990- 1994).  I shifted to study resilience —a project that continued over four years.  I wanted to know how people recovered from a set-back.  DThe discovery and articulation of the structure of resilience led to discovering the presence of states-about-states (meta-states) and that combinations of meta-states resulted in “gestalt” states.  That led to the training on Resilience that now is one of the gateway trainings in Neuro-Semantics.

Books: There is a chapter on resilience in the book Meta-States: Managing the Higher Levels of the Mind (1995/ 2012).

Manuals: Resilience.

2) Self-Reflexivity: (1992–1997).  While studying resilience, I read Alfred Korzybski’s works in General Semantics (Science and Sanity, The Manhood of Humanity) as well as Gregory Bateson’s works on logical levels (Steps to an Ecology of Mind).  That led to exploring the field of Meta-Cognition (whyich is primarily about memory and the philosophy of Mind), which occurred at the same time of the discovery of the Meta-States Model.  The Meta-States model was recognized in 1995 as “the most significant contribution to NLP” by the International Association of NLP Trainers.

Books: The first book on Meta-States was published in 1995, Dragon Slaying (1996), then Secrets to Personal Mastery (2000).  The Meta-States Model models the structure of self-reflexive consciousness— the most unique phenomenon in human experience.  Meta-State Magic (1997-1999 from the Meta-States Journal).  Winning the Inner Game (2000/ 2007, formerly Frame Games).

NLP Books remodeled using Meta-States:

Adventures in Time-Lines

Mind-Lines: Lines for Changing Minds

                        Figuring Out People: Meta-Programs

                        Sub-Modalities Going Meta

NLP Going Meta: Meta-Level Modeling

Papers: The Meta-Dimension.  The Bateson Report (2002), The Four Meta-Domains of NLP.  Series of articles on Logical Levels.

3) Managing Anger and Negative Emotions (1994-1996).  Upon discovering meta-states, I took a new look at “emotions” and especially the so-called “negative” emotions to find the structure of out-of-control negative emotions and the structure of how to manage them.  This meant modeling effectiveness in state (and meta-state) management and how to defuse a person who has reached an out-of-control state that may be characterized by anger, stress, fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, etc.

Books: This led to Dragon Slaying (1996/ 2000).  The Structure of Personality (2001).  Games for Mastering Fear (2001).  The Defusing Strategy (1997).

Trainings: This led to the gateway trainings Emotional Mastery and Defusing Hotheads and other Cranky People.

Patterns: Dancing with Dragons, Meta-Stating Troubling Emotions.

 4) Accelerated Learning (1995– 1996).  From the Meta-States Model came an exploration into the structure and experience of learning and accelerated learning.  The focus was on how those who are exceptionally skilled at learning, at accelerated learning, etc. have increased their capacity to learn and how they have accelerated their learning.

Trainings: This led to the training Accelerated Learning.

5) Women in Leadership (1998).  This project was directed by Jeff Hays of Salt Lake City (NLP Master Practitioner) and Dr. Jennifer Hays, Head of research department, Rice University, Houston Texas.  Invitations were sent to 50 women who broke through the “glass ceiling” and the modeling involved traditional research methodology by Dr. Hays and NLP Modeling by Jeff and his team.  I trained the team to distinguish Meta-Programs and Meta-States and David Gordon trained them in his approach to modeling (the Experiential Array).  25 of the women agreed to the interviews which were both audio and video-taped.  I analyzed the transcripts and sent the results to the team.  Post review of the project revealed that the population of women was far too broad— being leaders in different domains, industries, etc. failed to provide enough commonality.  Sally Ride, the first woman astranaut, Nadine Strossen,  President of the ACLU, Lesley Stahl, TV anchor and interviewer, Candace Pert, author of Molecules of Emotion, Lilia Wallis, Louise Hay, etc.

Materials Proprietary: Dr. Hays required that the intellectual property of this project be exclusively hers and so made the information proprietary.

6) Wealth Creation (1997– 2000).  I began my modeling with three multi-millionaires who I knew personally.  Two had strategies that were highly unecological.  They made lots of money, but at the cost of their health, relationships, marriages, etc.  I then turned to the literature on this subject and found many longitudinal studies that had interviewed wealth creators.  What they had not done was to structure the data so that it provided a specific process for wealth creation.  That’s what I added to the process using NLP and Neuro-Semantics.  My focus was to understanding how first-generation rich individuals became wealthy (financially independent) and maintain that wealth in an ecological way.

Books: Inside-Out Wealth.

Trainings: Wealth Creation, also titled Inside-Out Wealth.

7) Selling Excellence (1998).  The Wealth Creation project revealed the importance of selling, so I engaged in an exploration into the persuasive skills of masterful sales people.  I knew that I needed that competency to succeed myself.  In the search, I discovered that there have been multiple paradigms of sales during the twentieth century and that the field had gone through several stages.  The structure of the first and second generation of Sales Models were called “the hard sales” approach and “the soft sale” approach respectfully.  Then a paradigm shift occurred in the sales field in 1985 introduced by Stephen Heilman’s Strategic Selling (1985).  This revolutionized the field of sales, I based my work on that new paradigm.

Trainings: Selling Genius.

8) Health and Fitness (2000- 2001).   In an attempt to get national and international attention to NLP and Neuro-Semantics, I engaged in this in an attempt to get on Ophrah’s Book Club.  Hiring a publicist, we decided to create a product for Harper Productions that Ophrah would be interested in. That led to the modeling project on the structure of health and fitness.  So I modeled healthy individuals who had attained and maintained a healthy weight with sufficient energy and vitality for living life with passion.  As a result, I wrote a manuscript on the subject and invited 15 individuals to read the original manuscript with the request to apply to self and report the results.  Consequently over the next six-months, eight individuals lost 30 to 50 pounds, took pre and post pictures of themselves and were prepared to go on the TV show.  Post-script: By the time the book was ready Ophrah ended her book club.

Books: Games Slim and Fit People Play (2001).

Trainings: Games Slim and Fit People Play.  The Neuro-Semantics of Health (2005).

9) Business Expertise / Entrepreneurs (1998– 2000).   While modeling Wealth Creation and Selling Excellence, one aspect that many, if not most, entrepreneurs engage in is that of creating a business.  As I had met many excellent business people and read scores of biographies of many more during the Wealth Creation modeling, I used much of the same material for modeling their business acumen and competence.  The research explored the structure, format, nature, principles of business, and those who are experts at succeeding in business.

Books: Games Business Experts Play (2001).

Trainings: Business Genius.

 10) Training Expertise (1999– 2017).  After the demand arose to train trainers for teaching and training Meta-States, and as the Bandler lawsuit was wrapping up (Feb. 2000), I began conducting “trainers’ training.”  That led me to start modeling excellent trainers that I had met and reading the literature of training.  By 2003 I began creating benchmarks for presentation skills, training skills, and business skills.  With a team of trainers and eventually Master Trainers, we have continued to improve the quality of training, benchmark addition skills.

Trainings: NSTT — Neuro-Semantic/ NLP Trainers’ Training manual.  Assist Team Manual.

Papers: Taking Trainers’ Training to a New Level.

11) Writing Best Sellers (2002-2003).  By the year 2000 I had developed a reputation of being a prolific writer, and because several of the books were best sellers in the field of NLP, numerous people had asked to interview (e.g., Pascal Gambardella, Ph.D.) my writing strategy.  So starting from those interviews and my own strategy for reading, researching, and writing, I began a modeling project of writing and best sellers.  To do that I chose ten best selling non-fictional books in the field of self-development and studied them for the distinguishing features.  This then led me to some unique literature in the field written by editors who had also studied non-fiction best sellers and the model for how to write with mastery.

Trainings: Writing Genius (2002).

12) Coaching Expertise (2000– 2017).  I first interviewed Dan Bagley, Ph.D. as an executive coach in 1999.  That alerted me to the new emergent field of Coaching.  Then in 2001, I interviewed and modeled three expert coaches in Sydney Australia—Michelle Duval, Graham Richardson, Cheryl Gilroy.  All of them were NLP Master Practitioners, had successful coaching businesses, were recognized as experts by their peers, and were making $100,000 a year as a coach.  This led to the Meta-Coaching System that began in 2002 in Sydney, to the Meta-Coach Foundation (MCF, 2003), and continues to this day.  Meta-Coaching is now in 65 countries, with 3,000 Licensed Meta-Coaches.

Books: The series of books on Meta-Coaching, now numbering 15 books.

Trainings: Modules I and II of Meta-Coaching— Coaching Essentials and Coaching Genius.  Module III, ACMC Coaching Mastery.  MCC– Manager Coach Certification for Internal Coaching.  Group and Team Coaching, GTMC.  PCMC— Professional Certified Meta-Coach with manuals for each one.  Also Transformational Coaching (Axes of Change), Executive Coaching.

Volume                  Book title                                                                                                               Modeling Project

I:                          Coaching Change                               Axes of Change Model                                       #13

II:                        Coaching Conversations                    Facilitation Model

III:                       Unleashed: Self-Actualization          Self-Actualization Quadrants                           #20

IV:                       Self-Actualization Psychology          Self-Actualization Volcano

V:                        Achieving Peak Performance           Meaning–Performance Axes

VI:                       Unleashing Leadership:                     Axes of Leadership                                             #16

Self-Actualizing Leaders & Companies

VII:                     The Crucible                                         The Crucible Model

VIII:                   Benchmarking Intangibles                 Benchmarking Model                                         #17

IX:                      Systemic Meta-Coaching                  The Matrix Model

X:                       Group & Team Meta-Coaching        Group Trust Spiral

XI:                     Executive Coaching                                                                                                            #18

XII:    Political Coaching

XIII:   The Meta-Coaching System

XIV:   Get Real: Unleashing Authenticity                                                                                                      #22

XV:                     Inside-Out Persuasion                                                                                                         #23

13) Generative Change (2001- 2003).   While modeling coaching experts, the question arose about how they think about change and what model of change were they using.  In modeling the three experts in Australia (Michelle Duval, Cheryl Gilroy, and Graham Richardson), I noted that they were not doing therapy and so not using a therapeutic model.  Yet in my research, I noted that all of the books on coaching promoted TTM and other therapy-based models.  As I modeled them, I detected that they were relying on four mechanisms— motivation, decision, creation, and integration.  By connecting that to four of the basic NLP Meta-Programs, I designed the Axes of Change Model.

Books: Coaching Change.

Trainings: Transformational Coaching.

14) Mastering Stuttering and Blocking (2002).  After writing two articles on the structure of stuttering using NLP and General Semantics, Bob Bodenhamer and I began working with people who stuttered.  We modeled stuttering using the Matrix Model (which I had recently developed, 2002).  As I was getting involved with Meta-Coaching, I asked Bob to take the lead in this and to write a book on our discoveries.  In tracking out the meta-level structures that combine to create the gestalt of stuttering, we found that stuttering is essentially a phobia located in one’s breathing and speech mechanisms.

Books:  Mastering Stuttering and Blocking with NLP and Neuro-Semantics (2004**), now titled In Their Own Voice.   The Matrix Model (2002, 2003, 2012).

Training: Mastering Stuttering.

15) Self-Actualization Psychology (2003– 2017).  This modeling project began as a search for a coaching model for how people unleash their potentials.  In 2002 Michelle Duval began assisting me in  co-creating the Meta-Coaching System.  She asked. “What model will we use for facilitating the unleashing of potentials that lead to self-actualization?”  I commented that it would take me two months of reading in Maslow to identify that model.  After not finding a specific model in the writings of Maslow, I searched the writings of Carl Rogers, and then others of the human potential movement.  It was not there.  Thereafter I took the data that they had collected and organized it into a model.  This led to several models that we now use in Meta-Coaching: The Self-Actualization Quadrants, the Matrix Hierarchy, Self-Actualization Assessment Scale, etc.

Books: Unleashed (2007), Self-Actualization Psychology (2008), The Crucible (2010), Get Real: Unleashing Authenticity (2016).

16) Self-Actualizing Leadership (2005–2016).  This modeling project naturally and inevitably followed the previous one— looking at “leadership” in terms of Maslow’s Theory Y and the structure of that experience.  In studying self-actualizing leaders and companies, I wrote case studies on 15 such companies and the men and women who led them.

Books: Unleashing Leadership and Self-Actualizing Companies (2009).

Trainings: Unleashing Leadership.

17) Benchmarking Intangibles (2004– 2010).  Another question that arose during the development of Meta-Coaching concerned how we would measure (or determine) competency in the coaching skills.  At first we used the Meta-Model and simply looked for behavioral equivalents to the nominalizations or unspecified verbs (e.g., listening, questioning, supporting, etc.).  Later I took this on as a modeling project and began looking at the field of benchmarking in manufacturing, IT, and other industries.  Eventually that led to the Benchmarking Model for “intangibles” based on linguistics and neuro-linguistics.  Because there were no experts in this skill, the modeling was theoretical at first and then practical as we practiced it over the years.  The person who came closest to benchmarking intangibles was Dee Hock, former CEO of Visa International.

Books: Benchmarking Intangibles (2012).

Trainings: In the early years, we taught the Benchmarking Model within the ACMC training.  Today we teach it only to the Assist Team.

18) Executive Coaching (2008— 2015**).  As the special niche of coaching, the field of Executive Coaching was growing, I began modeling the best executive coaches that I had met over the years.  I interviewed between 12 and 20 Expert Coaches from many countries, the US, the UK, Hong Kong, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, etc.  Once the text of the book was completed, I asked Excutive Coach Graham Richardson to assist in the writing, which he did.

Books: Executive Coaching (20**).

            Trainings: Executive Coaching.

            Videos: DVD series on Expert Coaches: first one featuring Graham Richardson.

 19) Collaboration (2013- 2016).  This project began after Shelle Rose Charvet and I edited the book, Innovations in NLP (2011).  This was the first truly collaborative book in the field of NLP in that it represented authors from every sector.  Shelle, Ian McDermott, and myself began interviewing and modeling each other as collaborative leaders.  We had the interviews recorded and transcribed.  I then read extensively into the sub-domain of collaborative leadership.  When Shelle stepped back from the project due to a health crisis, Ian and I continued and eventually we produced the book.

Books: The Collaborative Leader  (2016).

Trainings: Collaborative Leadership Skills.

20) Meaning and Meaningfulness (1999 – 2017).  With the Meta-States Model, the structure of meaning and human psycho-logics began to be revealed.  This led to the Frame Games approach and eventually the book.  Modeling the structure of meaning continues to this day.

Books: Frame Games — now, Winning the Inner Game (2000/ 2006).

                        Neuro-Semantics: Actualizing Meaning and Performance (2011).

 21) Productivity (2004– 2015).  This model project arose from the Self-Actualization studies given that self-actualizers do what is highly meaningful and they do so productively.  That makes them highly productive— both effective and efficiency.  Given also that this is one of the key themes in NLP itself— modeling excellence in top performers, this came together very quickly.  Later, I was asked to focus specifically on the structure of productivity and deliver it in Moscow, which I did in 2016.

Books: Achieving Peak Performance (2005).

Trainings: Unleashing Productivity  (2016).

 22) Authenticity (2016).  This modeling project explored the structure of being an authentic and “real” person— one of the ultimate objectives of self-actualization.   As a gestalt state, authenticity involves a many variables thereby making it systemic in nature.

Book: Get Real: Unleashing Authenticity (2016).

Trainings: Unleashing Authenticity – Get Real.

 23) Ethical Persuasion (2017).  This modeling project looked at the gestalt state of “persuasion” to understand its complex and systemic structure.  Modeling great persuasive leaders such as Nelson Mandella, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc. the focus was on ethical or authentic persuasion in contradiction to manipulative persuasion.

Books: Inside-Out Persuasion (2017).

Trainings: Persuasively Impactful Conversations (2017).

24) Creativity and Innovation (2012– 2017).  This modeling project began during the project on Self-Actualization and led to the training “Creativity and Innovation.”  Later, I modeled several persons well-known for their creativity and innovation.

Books: Creative Solutions (2017).

Trainings: Creativity and Innovations, Module III of the Self-Actualization series.  (2010).

25) Critical Thinking (2015– 2017).  At the heart of communicating, creating, representing, and even thinking is act of thinking and the quality of that thinking.  Noting that the Meta-Model of Language is a critical thinking tool, I began focusing on the experience of critical thinking.  I encouraged one of our trainers to make it his focus and he did, but as I began to mentor him to that end, he treated what he had put together as his exclusive “intellectual property” and refused to share it.  Having prepared to co-develop it with him, I continued on as I modeled and thjen created a transferable model for enabling people to engage in critical thinking.

Trainings: The Neuro-Semantics of Critical Thinking (2017)

Book: Executive Thinking (being developed for 2018).

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Whatever Happened to ‘Abundance’?
Did the Scarcity Meme Gobble it Up?

As you look out onto “the NLP community” does it strike you (as it does me) that we have an abundance of the Scarcity Model and a Scarcity of the Abundance Model?  We talk about, and even presuppose, a Model of Abundance, and yet as a community we seem to live and act more according to a Model of Scarcity. What gives?  How do we explain this?  And even more important, what can we do about it in order to get Abundance Mentality more and more into our way of being in the world and recognized as the very spirit of NLP?

When NLP first burst upon the scene, Grinder and Bandler spoke about operating from a model of the world that presupposed abundance rather than scarcity.   This attitude, in fact, set NLP apart from most of the other models of human beings and human functioning.  Now I don’t know where precisely they picked this up from, but I would suspect they got it from Satir or Erickson with their abundant attitudes of possibility, optimism, options, and flexibility.  And they may have also picked it up from Bateson who wrote extensively about systemic processes and the abounding emergence of new properties.

Now some theorists might want to argue that scarcity has deep roots, even “deep blood,” in our very “nature.” They might want to argue that we have evolved successfully by adapting to scarcity and so we inevitably default to a competitive Win/Lose style. Such genetic determinists would reason we fall back to Win/Lose competitiveness, beating out a competitor, operating from scarcity, etc. as part of our genetic heritage. Evolution has made win/lose, scarcity, competitiveness, etc. our “natural” default program.

Personally, I don’t believe that. It seems to me that at best, the idea of scarcity exists as a meme (a culturally transmitted idea) rather than a gene in our species (see Mark Furman’s articles on Memes, July and August, 1998). And if our race has experienced scarcity of resources and unmistakable universal experience of the Win/Lose mentality (as it surely has over the centuries and millennia), it only makes sense that a meme on the order of — “Survival of the Fittest,” “There’s only so much of the pie to go around,” “Every time someone wins, someone else loses,” etc. has developed as a model of the world. Aristotelian either-or thinking would have further supported this idea.

The Price We Pay for the Scarcity Meme

The idea of scarcity, as a basic model of the world, has further infected (as a toxic virus) many of the most important fields of human concern. In the area of negotiation and conflict resolution, it sets the frame that resolution will involve some kind of compromise or submission. In the area of economics, management, and leadership it leads to one-up-manship games, hostile take-over of companies, strikes, lock-outs, management-labor hostilities, “Wining by Intimidation,” etc.

Personally and interpersonally, scarcity seeds such ideas as “tightening the belt,” passing laws to limit growth, distrust that others will get too much, resentment when someone else “wins” or succeeds, competitiveness against colleagues in the same field for their promotions, refusal to share the newest ideas, refusal to quote or recommend colleagues, the lack of a collegial attitude, lawsuits for resolving conflicts, etc.

The high price for scarcity also includes a whole range of ego games that we play in a bid for gaining some advantage over others. This sets up antagonisms rather than co-operations, it sets up a critical attitude rather than a supportive one.

The Structure of Abundance

Suppose we decided to apply our own model (NLP) to understanding the presupposition of abundance. As we do this, we would undoubtedly begin by meta-modeling the terms abundance and scarcity.

When we examine the term abundance, what do we find? Certainly not a noun (a thing) or verb (action, process). We rather have a nominalization with an underlying hidden verb, “to abound.” Hence, “to experience an abounding of resources.”

As such, this process term speaks about a set of relationships and so we also have an Unspecified Relational Term.

What is abounding?
In what way does it abound?
From what (or whom) and to what (or whom) does it abound?
According to what standard and criteria does it “abound?”
And while we’re at it, we could similarly meta-model the term scarcity.

Scarce in what way?

Scarce according to what standard and measured in what way?

What specifically are the perceived scarce resources that we must fight for?

Can we increase the scarce resources?

Kinds of Abundance

Abundance, as a relational term (hidden inside a nominalization) speaking of a process of abounding may also refer to various kinds of abundances. This means that in this term “abundance” we have a multiordinal term. This cues us to recognize that its meaning depends upon its level of abstraction or context (Korzybski, 1933; Hall, 1998).

1) It may refer to a static kind of abundance: a large inheritance, an abundant corn field, a lush peach tree with abundant fruit, etc. Tangible things.

2) It may refer to a dynamic kind of abundance. This would include any kind of abundance that has a self-renewing kind of internal process:  a living field or orchard that we could work and nurture to make more and more fruitful, a creative mind with abundant ideas, etc. Tangible processes.

3) Or it may refer to a systemic kind of abundance. Here we have ever-increasing abundance with every feedback loop in the system. Every time “the system” (whether a mind, a team of people, a company, couple) acts and interacts, more resources get fed back into the system, thereby enriching the system even more. Intangible processes.

The Strategy Within “Systemic Abundance”

The conceptual and personal strategy that brings forth abundance interpersonally depends upon the attitude or state of trust to drive it. It necessitates first of all that we trust in the concept of abundance, that we trust in others that they operate primarily from positive intentions, that we trust in the process of abundance — that abundance will emerge, that we trust in ourselves as having the coping skills to deal with the lack of trustworthiness, etc. And that we trust in that from out of this overall experience, we co-create the experience of abundance.

Conversely, distrust creates the concept of scarcity (the scarcity model), the perception of static and limited resources, that others operate primarily from selfish agendas, that “the Iron Rule” predominates, etc.   Both function as self-fulfilling prophecies.

Typically, then, when a person operates from scarcity, he or she has had experiences of distrust, disloyalty, betrayal, etc. Out of such experiences, they mapped the world in terms of scarcity.

In a work on conflict management and resolution, Hocker and Wilmot (1974/ 1991 3rd. Edition) speak about abundance and scarcity as systemic and relational processes. In terms of the “influence” people have in relation to each other (“power”). As a result, they describe how “power” becomes an emergent property that abounds for all parties.

“Both parties can increase their power at the same time. A thorough understanding of interdependence makes this clear. If John and Sarah are dating and decide to live together, they both increase their dependence on one another…. as John becomes more dependent on Sarah, Sarah’s power increases. Likewise, Sarah becomes more dependent on John, thereby increasing his power. When two people elevate their dependence on one another, BOTH increase their sources of power. Each one expands his or her currencies valued by the other. Therefore, power in enduring relationships is NOT finite — it is an expandable commodity. The real question isn’t the singular ‘amount of power’ each one has, but the balance between them.” ” (p. 82, italics added).

“We have power over people and they over us because our social relationships means that we are interdependent — we influence one another’s ability to attain goals. Furthermore, the degree of power is a function of the comparison of the dependence the two parties have on one another.  And the degree of dependence is a product of one’s investment in the goals the other can mediate and the number of other avenues available for the attainment of those goals.” (p. 82, italics added).

What enables the sense of power to increase for all parties? How does this process work? It occurs when both parties work from clearly identified goals (having well-formed outcomes). Such clarity itself from well-formed outcomes grants visionary power (a sense of control) to each person. Next, each party makes him or herself vulnerable to the other by presenting the awareness of what they want, what need from the other, and their sense of “dependence” on the other for the accomplishment of their goal. As both parties do this, each empowers the other and thus it also makes abundance possible for both of us.  As you become more ‘powerful” (influential) in my experience, and I become more powerful (influential) in yours, a systemic property emerges — we experience a much more abundant relationships. Synergy occurs.

Thus, the more A depends on B and B on A, the more each becomes invested in the other and that, in turn, allows each to become more Important (valued) to and by the other. And inasmuch as “power” refers to the ability to influence another’s ability to reach his or her valued goals, this increases the power of each person. Each person becomes more powerful in the eyes and experience of the other.

“Power” increases (becomes more abundant) then through the surprising means of each party becoming more dependent through inter-dependency and vulnerability. Yet to walk into such open disclosing necessitates taking the risk of trust.

Let’s run the same pattern on another intangible process. Consider the abundance of the experience of love as a systemic inter-action between people. The more John loves and expresses his love in ways that count for Mary, the more love John has to give. He will never run out. In fact, the more he gives to Mary, the more Mary has received and also has to give back.

This illustrates the nature of intangible processes. They come into being (emerge) from the very process of expressing them. This explains why we can describe them as unlimited resources, and not as limited resources. The same applies to the distribution and creation of wealth in economics, respect and honor in interpersonal relationships, appreciation and status in businesses, creativity and new ideas, etc.

Bob Bodenhamer speaks about this idea of abundance (as a highly desirable meme to contribute to our world) in terms of a metaphor. I’ve heard him use it repeatedly. In his North Carolina accent he says, “When the tide comes in — all ships in the harbor rise equally.”

Hocker and Wilmot (1974/ 1991) have applied abundance thinking to negotiating in the following words.

“If you stick firmly to a collaborative approach, you will find creative options that someone with a competitive approach simply would not find. Creative options often become available (Fogg, 1985) but unless the negotiators believe it is possible and do the hard work to jointly produce those options, the negotiating will begin and end on a win-lose footing.” (p. 221).

The mental set then that we use as we think about negotiating and relating determine to a large degree what we will see and create. Our mindsets of either abundance or scarcity then establish a meta-state.

Basically, cooperative and competitive climates are self-reinforcing — competition encourages more competition and collaboration brings collaboration in return” (p. 223).

Identifying and Getting a Push Away From Scarcity

Most of us (if not all of us) have been deeply contaminated, indoctrinated, programmed, and affected by the Scarcity Model. It exists as deeply within our history as a race. And most of us experienced it for years as young children in school and on playgrounds. Now fully elicit any thoughts, representations, references, emotions, etc. that may indicate its presence in your thinking and emoting.

When I think about people in general or colleagues in my field in particular, or the business opportunities before me, I sense that —

1) There’s not enough for all.
2) There’s a limited amount of the pie
3) I need to show my superiority over others.
4) Get what you can when you can.
5) Nice guys finish last.
6) Let’s work as a team and we’ll generate more for all.

Now elicit all of the reasons and values for developing more and more of a propulsion away from the scarcity model. To do this, first examine the high price you pay for operating from the scarcity model. (When you do this, you’re building a propulsion system in your personality from Scarcity and toward Abundance.)

1) Feel inferior/ superior to colleagues
2) Constantly judging who’s ahead, biggest, better, etc.
3) Feel lessened by the success of my colleagues
4) have difficulty cooperating or collaborating.
5) Filter everything through your own ego, self-value, and dignity.

Now list all of the problems, head-aches, and undesired results that you have actually experienced from using the Scarcity Model as your operation frame. Given these understandings of both abundance and scarcity, I have presented a contrastive analysis of these two ways of viewing the world in Figure 1.

Figure 1
Comparison Chart of Two Models of the World

The Abundance Pattern

A pattern for providing more opportunity for abundance. The following steps allow us to install within ourselves the Abundance Map.

1) Fully represent “abundance.” What VAK pictures, sounds, and sensations come to you as you think about the idea of abundance? Generate a movie for yourself of what you see, hear, feel, and say as you move through the world operating from abundance. Make this as vivid, dramatic, and compelling as possible.

2) Identify the supporting beliefs, values, frames, and meta-states for abundance. What beliefs support this state of abundance for you? What beliefs about yourself? Others? The world? The process of collaborating? What values? What identify beliefs? What other frames of references? What meta-states?

3) Access a Supporting Meta-State of Self-esteem. To prevent yourself from stepping out of the Abundance Frame and into the Ego-Concerned Frame, access fully and completely a strong meta-frame of self-value, worth, and dignity — one totally independent of your behaviors, one totally unconditional. Use this “My esteem and dignity is a given” frame in order to avoid getting sucked into a one-upmanship spiral.

4) Contrast your Abundance Frame with your current model or with the Scarcity Frame. Note how you represent “scarcity” and compare that to your representations of abundance. Turn down and de-energize those representations … let the pictures fade out, the sounds get further away and more quiet.

5) Step into the Abundance Frame fully and imagine using it as your way of thinking, feeling and acting in the world. Future pace yourself tomorrow, next week, next month … using various contexts (work, personal relationships, hobbies, friends, etc.).

6) Check for any remaining objections. If you find any, answer them by establishing some higher frame or state that effectively answers it or that allows the installation of the abundance frame. Treat every objection as legitimate and important. Inquire of the part of you that doesn’t want to release Scarcity as to its fear or concern. Then respond to it appropriately by building in various safe-guards.

For example, you may want to build in a temporary time-frame. “We’ll do this for a week or a month and then check to see how this works.” You may want to build in some good personal boundaries. “To stay alert to anyone who may want to take advantage of me because of my collaborative spirit, I’ll keep aware of anything that seems disadvantageous to me and not mutual.”

7) Make an Enhancing Decision to Commit Yourself to Living by Abundance. Go to a meta-position and grant yourself permission to fully accept and commit yourself to Abundance. As you observe your representations of Abundance, say “Yes!” to it, as you observe your beliefs and values of Abundance, say a strong confirming “Yes!” to those meta-frames. (See The Meta-Yes & Meta-No Belief Change Pattern, Bodenhamer, Anchor Point, May, 1998).

Conclusion

Whatever happened to abundance? It depends. What relationship have you decided to take toward the idea of abundance? Will you use this as an NLP presupposition and enhancing Resource State? I hope so.

Not only can we develop healthier and more respectful attitudes about each other that reflects a Model of Abundance, but as we do we step into a frame-of-reference that allows us to explore new and unthought of ways for expanding the pie. When we operate in the world from a perception of scarce resources, we compete and engage in antagonistic relationships. When we realize that we can expand resources — we have moved to a meta-level state of resourcefulness that gives us the power to create the abundance we have mentally mapped for ourselves and others.

References

Bodenhamer, Bob. (1998). “The Meta-YES and NO Pattern.” Anchor Point, Volume 12, No. 6, June, 1998, pp. 20-25. Salt Lake City, UT: Anchor Point Productions.
Fogg, R. W. “Dealing with conflict: A repertoire of creative, peaceful approaches.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 29 (1985): 330-358.
Furman, Mark E. (1998). “Marked for Death: NLP and the Behavior of Information.” Vol. 12, No. 7; July, pp. 27-33 “Manufacturing Reality,” Vol. 12, No. 8; August, pp. 34-40), Salt Lake City, UT: Anchor Point Productions.
Hall, L. Michael (1995). Meta-states: Self-reflexiveness in human states of consciousness. Grand Junction, CO: ET Publications.
Hall, Michael L. (1998). The secrets of magic: Communicational excellence. United Kingdom: Crown Publishing House.
Hocket, Joyce L.; Wilmot, William W. (1971/1994). Interpersonal conflict. (3rd. edition). Dubuque IA: Wm. C. Brown Publishers.
Korzybski, Alfred. (1941/1994). Science and sanity: An introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and general semantics, (5th. ed.). Lakeville, CN: International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co.

Author
Michael Hall, Ph.D. now travels and trains internationally in Meta-States, author of numerous NLP works, most recently The Structure of Excellence, The Secrets of Magic, Sourcebook Of Magic, and Figuring Out People. P.O. Box 9231, Grand Jct. Co. 81501.
https://legacy.neurosemantics.com

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 personnot 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). thinking-emoting) when he highlighted the fact that feelings and thoughts do

“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).

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 (VAAtK) 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 (At), 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).

Submodalities

James even anticipated submodalities 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.

L. MIchael Hall, Ph.D.

When I first learned about NLP, and even in my first trainings, I did not know that the NLP actually arose as one of the hundreds of off-shoots of the Human Potential Movement.  Did you?  When I was first reading about NLP, the information about it didn’t even hint that NLP was connected to the Human Potential Movement led by Maslow and Rogers.  I did not know that when I took my Trainers Training, nor did I discover it in my first ten years as a trainer.  In fact, it was only after almost twenty years of working inside the field of NLP that I discovered this.  Isn’t that absolutely amazing?

I bet this is also true for the great majority of people in the field of NLP.  When I studied the original literature of NLP, I never read anywhere that NLP was a child of the Human Potential Movement.  It is not in any of the Introduction books to NLP that I know about.  Nor did I learn it from Richard Bandler, with whom I first studied.  In fact, none of the original developers ever wrote about the relationship of NLP to the Human Potential Movement.  So, isn’t it about time that someone speak up about this?   I do.

Now, true enough, the original developers of NLP did speak about getting their original ideas from Perls and Satir.   Bandler was reading Perls’ books on Gestalt therapy and then transcribed tapes for Perls’ last book which enabled him to get the designation of “editor” for that book.1  And that gave him the opportunity to do the same with Virginia Satir’s workshops in family sculpturing.

Embedded in the Human Potential Movement

Only recently did I make the connection.  It happened while I was researching about self-actualization and the psychological models that Maslow, Rogers, Assagioli, May, Bugental, and many others in the “third force” of psychology used.  While reading extensively I discover some facts that put it together for me.

First, a little bit about this research.  I started it in order to specify the generative psychology governing human development after therapy, the psychology of healthy men and women as they continue to develop in becoming all that they become.  I wanted to make explicit the model, variables, principles, and practices of the Self-Actualization Psychology that governs the field of Coaching.2

So I read the books of Maslow and Rogers, then other key players in Humanistic Psychology.  That, in turn, what led me to read some books on the history of Esalen.   Ah yes, Esalen, the place where the “growth centers” of the Human Potential Movement emanated.  The place that served as the Meca of the Human Potential Movement.  Esalen, the small community at Big Sur not far from Santa Cruz.

Here’s what surprised me.  The first resident scholar at Esalen was none other than Fritz Perls.  No wonder Gestalt Therapy was a leading influence in the “third force” and why no wonder Perls played such a key role.  And get this, the last resident scholar to actually live at Esalen was none other than Gregory Bateson.  And the first person in charge of Research and Training was Virginia Satir.  That’s a virtual who’s who of the origin of NLP!3

Incredible isn’t it?  Three of the key foundational contributors to NLP who were also at Esalen were key players in the Human Potential Movement, e.g.,  Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Gregory Bateson.  So before Perls’ and Satir’s communication skills were modeled, they were contributing to the generative psychology of the “bright side” of human nature.  Perls had founded a “therapy” from Wertheimer’s Gestalt Psychology and Wertheimer was one of the primary sources for Maslow’s self-actualization work.  Virginia had founded Family Systems and had written PeopleMaking.  And both of them were operating from the very premises that Maslow and Rogers were popularizing.

What were these premises?  That people are not innately broken and defective, that people have within their potentials the resources to self-actualize and to become authentic as persons, that we do “people-making” within our family systems, that how we use language fundamentally affects and influences how we frame and can reframe things, that meaning is a function of our framing, that sometimes shifting a small variable in a system can have system-wide generative change, we cannot not communicate, etc.

“Say, don’t those premises sound a lot like the NLP Presuppositions?”  Yes, you bet!  In fact, nearly all of what we call “NLP Presuppositions” are simply the basic ideas and assumptions that governed the Human Potential Movement.  For years we have known that Richard, John, Judith, Leslie, Robert and others got most of the NLP premises from Perls and Satir.  I had discovered that back in the last 1980s when I reread Perls and Satir looking for their contributions to NLP.  But now the “standing on the shoulders of giants” phenomenon takes yet another step backward to the previous giants— Maslow and Rogers.

So beginning from an exploration to more fully distinguish remedial psychology from generative psychology for distinguishing therapy from coaching, suddenly I was discovering that much more of NLP originated in the Human Potential Movement than I had ever suspected.  After I finished my work on exploring “change” and creating a new change model based on four meta-programs (Coaching Change: Meta-Coaching Volume I, 2005), I decided to look further.

Embedded in Self-Actualization

I wanted to see if anyone in the Human Potential Movement had made Self-Actualization Psychology explicit.  After eighteen months of research, I realized that no one had.  Maslow would have.  He even had plans to do so, but then he died suddenly in 1970 at a young age of 62.  In my search, I was asking, “What model do we have for self-actualization itself?  Are there any?”   After the shock wore off that there were no fully developed models for unleashing potentials, I began work on modeling self-actualization for the purpose of creating an explicit model, believing that we have most of the ingredients in NLP.

Certainly the Human Potential Movement had explored and detailed the bright side of human nature from a theoretical standpoint.  Maslow’s foundational model, the Hierarchy of Needs had identified the positive motivational and value nature of people and the rich potentials to be actualized for becoming authentic, fully functioning, and at their best.  So there were some grand ideas and ideals, but no models that identify how the unleashing of potentials works.

Not only were there no models, but Carl Rogers had instituted one of the central tenets of the Human Potential Movement via his non-directive client-centered therapy.  That is, he had presented the process of elf-actualization as so organic, so natural, so innate that he believed that it would naturally and automatically occur if we simply got out of the way and did not interfere.  Interference, in Rogers’ view was the key problem for unleashing potentials in of self-actualizing.

Rogers said we only need to offer empathy, unconditional positive regard, and our own authenticity.  And so this, for the most part, became the battle cry of the Human Potential Movement.   Be real, be authentic, be caring and empathetic, let people be, stop interfering, and all will be well.

Years ago a training, I remember Richard Bander speaking about both Maslow, Rogers, and the Human Potential Movement.  Of course, iconoclastically, he mostly spoke of them in derision, criticizing their weaknesses, giving no indication that NLP was built on their idea of modeling healthy people.  The joke according to Bandler was that when he met Rogers, he told him, “There are two other representation systems other than kinesthetic.”  And reportedly, Rogers responded, “So you feel that there are two other representation systems?”

Here then is an mostly unknown fact about the history of NLP—NLP arose in the early 1970s during the heyday of the Human Potential Movement.  It was one of the many dozens of new therapies and fields that were given birth by that movement that was launched in the 1950s through the work of Maslow and Rogers, along with Rollo May, Viktor Frankl, Fritz Perls, Sydney Jourard, Virginia Satir, and many others.

Embedded in Modeling

Maslow actually launched his modeling of self-actualizers in the 1940s.  He even conducted a longitudinal study for years, a study that he called “Good Humans Study.”  And like many of us in NLP since, he studied and modeled highly successful, positive, and productive people, both those living and those who had died.

Maslow began his modeling project of self-actualizers because he was captivated by two extraordinary individuals he met in graduate school (Ruth Benedict and Max Wertheimer), individuals who could not be explained by all of the models and tools of psychology at the time.  Curious, he began a modeling project of those who are people at their best.  He called the self-actualizers, people who actualize their best potentials, gifts, capabilities, and become fully what they were able to become.  Later he called them “peak performers” and set forth the criteria that seemed in common with such people.  Carl Rogers joined in to identify human nature at its best and people who become fully functioning people.

In this, Maslow initiated a true paradigm shift in psychology as he shifted the focus from studying pathology and all of the ways that people are broken, traumatized, and neurotic, to exploring individuals at their best and so the bright side of human nature rather than the dark side.  In NLP we inherited this legacy from the Human Potential Movement.

So What Happened to the Human Potential Movement?
After looking into the Human Potential Movement for several months, one day I suddenly realized that the movement was gone.  There is no “Human Potential Movement” as such any longer.  So, where did it go?  What happened to it?  And, why did it disappear?  Did someone kill it?

There are numerous suggestions, in fact, various psychologists and theoretics have posited numerous explanations in the Humanistic Journal.  Esalen ended as did the more than 200 Growth Centers by the mid-1980s and its energy was dissipated into scores of other disciplines.  It was also undermined by having no explicit model or pattern that could direct the self-actualizing process.  It depended mostly on “encounter groups.”  It was dissipated also by the shift of many to Transpersonal psychology, the entrance of mysticism and religious practices, the strong counter-cultural bias of the 1970s, and the lack of academic research.

By the mid-1980s the Human Potential Movement, having splintered into scores of different approaches, failed to become a School of Psychology.  This has been noted in numerous journals, textbooks, and conferences.  So what happened to it?  Where did it go?  It dispersed into other fields—Integral Psychology, Transpersonal Psychology, Brief Psychotherapy, and NLP.  So, today while the Human Potential Movement is gone, the vision of actualizing human potentials continues as it is presented in a hundred different formats.4

Can the Human Potential Movement be Re-Launched?
C    Can we reinvigorate the Human Potential Movement?
C    Is it possible to launch a new initiative for self-actualizing?

In researching all of this and building the new models of self-actualization for Meta-Coaching, one day I entertained an absolutely fantastic idea.  “What if the mantle of the Human Potential Movement and Self-Actualization Psychology could be put upon NLP?”  I told you it was a fantastic idea.  “What if, instead of being connected to therapy and sales, NLP could be re-positioned as the 21st version of self-actualization?”

Personally I believe that what we have in NLP offers several things to the Human Potential Movement that could give it a new start.  We could offer the cognitive dimension.  After all, NLP is also a child of the Cognitive Revolution in Psychology that was launched by George Miller and Noam Chomsky and their colleagues in 1956.  We could also offer specific processes as the actual mechanisms that facilitate self-actualization.  It would therefore be easy for us to take up the cause of the Human Potential Movement by presenting the specific models, patterns, and technology for people to truly and actually unleash their potentials.

In fact, believing that it is possible for NLP to pick up and carry the torch for the Human Potential Movement and self-actualization psychology today, I have been working to that end.  My vision is to first make Self-Actualization Psychology explicit, to incorporate the best of NLP and Neuro-Semantics into it, and to then take it to a whole new level.   To that end, having modeled a great deal of the self-actualization process and having identified many of the psychological processes involved in unleashing human potentials, in Neuro-Semantic NLP, we are moving to making this our primary approach and brand.  Our aim in developing this as a new focus, is that of taking self-actualization to the next level.

Summary

Today we stand on the shoulders of the original developers of NLP.  And they stood on the shoulders of Perls, Satir, Erickson, and Bateson, and they in turn stood on the shoulders of Maslow and Rogers.  Given that, wouldn’t it be good for us to acknowledge that our roots go back to the Human Potential Movement?  I hope to see this in NLP Introduction books in the future.

I also believe we can learn a lot from the disappearance of that movement.  Already we are grounded in all of its basic premises and operate from the vision that Maslow and Rogers began.  But I’ll save that for another article.

Author:

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., psychologist, modeler, entrepreneur, and developer of numerous models in NLP and Neuro-Semantics.

References:

1.  Dr. Robert Spitzer, publisher of Science and Behavior books, invited Richard to edit Fritz Perls last book, The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy.

2. The models of Self-Actualization Psychology are now a part of the Meta-Coaching Training System and will soon be published as a book, Self-Actualization Psychology.

3. Michael Murphy and Richard Price founded Esalen in 1963; the list of people who lived at Esalen or who were teachers there over the years makes up an incredible list of creative people: Aldous Huxley, S.I. Hayakawa (General Semantics), George Lenard, Abraham Maslow, Alan Watts, William Schultz, James Pike, Roberto Assagioli, Werner Erhard, Timothy Gallwey, etc.

4. In the forthcoming book, Self-Actualization Psychology, I have identified a dozen reasons that many in the field of Humanistic Psychology have postulated for the demise of the Human Potential Movement.  These will become part of the next article.

References:

Anderson, Walter Trueet.  (1983).  The upstart spring: Esalen and the American awakening.  Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

Hall, L. Michael. (2000).  Secrets of personal mastery: Advanced techniques for accessing your higher levels of consciousness.  Wales, UK: Crown House Publications.

Hall, L. Michael; Duval, Michelle. (2004).  Coaching conversations.  Meta-Coaching, Volume II.  Clifton, CO: Neuro-Semantic Publications.

Hall, L. Michael; Duval, Michelle. (2004).  Coaching change for transformation.  Meta-Coaching Volume I.  Clifton, CO: Neuro-Semantic Publications.

Hall, L. Michael. (2007).  Unleashed: A guide to your ultimate self-actualization.   (In development now.)

Hanna, Thomas. (1979, Editor).  Explorers of Humankind.  New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.

Maslow, Abraham H. (1968).  Toward a psychology of being.  New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.

Maslow, Abraham H. (1970, second edition).  Motivation and personality.  New York: Harper and Row Publishers.

McClendon, Terrence L.  (1989).  The wild days: NLP 1972 to 1981.   Cupertino, CA: Meta Publications.

Nevill, Dorothy D. (1977, Ed.).  Humanistic Psychology: New frontiers.  New York: Gardner Press, Inc., Division of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Tageson, C. William. (1982).  Humanistic Psychology: A synthesis.  Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press.