From alt.psychology.nlp Wed May 31 09:34:46 1995 Path: udcf.gla.ac.uk!newsfeed.ed.ac.uk!str-ccsun!news.dcs.warwick.ac.uk!warwick!sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk!qmw!demon!doc.news.pipex.net!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net! From: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) Newsgroups: alt.psychology.nlp Subject: Pascal On Advertising Date: 29 May 1995 16:06:59 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Lines: 289 Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com Message-ID: <3qd9h3$g54@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Reply-To: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) NNTP-Posting-Host: newsbf02.mail.aol.com Mrs. recently made several quite perceptive and intelligent remarks on the nature of advertising as it relates to nlp. I responded with my usual ream of 10, 000 words of vacuous philosophizing. However, her remarks got me thinking. Nlp as applied to print does not in fact have quite the effect of nlp as applied to face-to-face or phone sales; just as hypnotically effective language patterns delivered in person or on the phone or or tape do not have the same effect in print either. Why not? I fingered through a book or two that I have on nlp and sales persuasion; and I noticed a funny thing. Despite the lip service given to 'modelling', very little of the books reported in any detail what really superior salesmen actually. There were no full transcripts of successful sales (as there are infinitely precise transcripts, for instance, of Milton Erickson performing an induction.). What the books did was to present nlp ideas and apply them directly to sales technique (ie 'Rapport works: nod like the customer nods!') or else present those ideas and try to find them used by actual sale people ('Salesman x nodded like the customer nodded: rapport works!). This is not the way to do it. I too was going about it the wrong way. We have many many examples of persuasive print; of successful ads. Perhaps instead of nlp telling print advertising what works, print advertising could tell nlp what works, and let nlp figure it out later. I decided to take a look at what actually works, nlp or no nlp. (And -- incidentally -- I also wished to toss back to some of the trainers in this newsgroup a bit of the business I may have shooed away by my starchy reflections on the training process. Read the following, folks, and follow it to the letter; you'll double your client count or my name isn't David Pascal.) So. What works? What persuades in print advertising? Rather than pontificate myself, I decided to go to the great David Ogilvy, prince of copywriters, and let him pontificate. (His counsel being filtered through and somewhat embellished by my own.) In the classic Ogilvy On Advertising (another thread of some interest) Ogilvy instructs the reader in how to write a good print ad. Such ads have three basic parts: the headline; the body copy; and the illustration. What worked for Ogilvy? This: Headlines: 1. 95% of your readers read the headline. Only 5% go on to read body copy. (If it is good. If it is bad, your advertisement is dead and so are you.) 2. The most effective headlines promise a benefit or helpful information. (A whopping 75% more readers read copy with helpful information than that which deals only with the product.) 3. Headlines with news are recalled by 22% more people than those without news. 4. When you put your headline in quotes, recall increases 28%. 5. When your headline is 'blind', ie, doesn't say what the product is or what it can do for you, recall decreases 20%. (God, don't you wish nlp had research like this? I could almost crank out a book on nlp and advertising myself just on the long shot that Saatchi & Saatchi would commission some researchers onto this stuff.) 6. If your headline appeals only to a select segment of readers -- housewives, homosexuals, nlpers -- place a word in your advertisement which flags them down. (Or place it in the proper publication or -- dare I speak the inevitable? -- in the approproiate newsgroup.) 7. Headlines with more than 10 words get less readership than headlines with less than 10. (The old 7 plus or minus 2 rule here, wherein the human mind can only grasp about seven distinct bits of information at a time? Perhaps.) On the other hand, headlines with more than 10 sell more merchandise. A paradox? No, as we shall see below; long copy sells better, but does not automatically receive more instant attention. 8. Specifics are more convincing than generalities. 9. Markdowns, special offers, sales, all have better recall. 11. 'Tricky', witty headlines -- puns, etc. -- typically do worse than straight ones. 12. Certain words -- old warhorse like 'new' and 'improved', but also less expected ones such as 'darling' typically draw far more attention than others. (John Caples' Tested Advertising Methods is the treasure trove to plumb here.) 13. Time counts. Time-limited offers do better than ongoing offers. Also, in a study of 70 sales campaigns, it was found that *every single* before-and-after campaign increased sales. Showing the successful end result of using a product will work; adding the current situation (presumably your reader's) for contrast as well will work better. Body copy: 1. Only 5% of your readers read the body copy and the headline; 95% read just the headline. I'm repeating myself, but it bears repeating: the first 7 to 10 words you write will make you or break you. 2. Remember: whoever reads your ad, reads it *alone*. Despite the fact that you may be addressing a million people, you are speaking directly to only one. (Ogilvy sagely counsels you to pretend you are writing them a letter on behalf of your client.) 3. Never never never never never never bore. The magnificent Howard Gossage struck the truth about this like a Zen archer: "People do not read advertisements. They read what interests them; and sometimes it is an advertisement." Aspiring copywriters should tattoo this saying across their foreheads and on the backs of their palms. 4. Think Short. Paragraphs, sentences, words. Shun the clause. Fear the adjective. Abhor the adverb. And avoid difficult (usually Latinate) words. Use the language of everyday conversation. And if you don't know what it is, go sit in a mall and LISTEN. 5. Use the imperative mode. The declarative sentence. The sentence fragment. Parallelism. The second person singular. And the question. *Almost* exclusively. (And if you do not know what these things are, place a paper bag over your head for utter shame and go hire a professional who does.) 6. Don't write your *opinions*; write stories. Describe. Tell the story of what the product will do for the reader (or has done for some other reader) and tell it with believable detail. 7. Avoid analogies. (I.E., 'Colgate! The Richard Bandler of toothpastes! People will assume you are peddling Richard Bandler, not your client's wares.) Avoid superlatives ('The new Big Mac! The best! The greatest! Comparable only to orgasm itself!' The reader's reaction? 'Rubbish.'). Avoid the improbable-sounding claim, even if true. ('DHE will TRANSFORM you on the CELLULAR LEVEL!' A true believer may buy it; all others will be driven away.) 8. State the price of whatever you're selling. People are afraid to ask; they do not wish to seem cheap or poor if the price is out of their range. With smaller goods this effect is lessened, but with large ticket items, such as cars, naming the price outright invariably gets a better response. 9. Testamonials are particularly effective, especially if the giver is an expert, or believably resembles the reader. Testamonials by those obviously for hire, such as celebrities, are considerably poorer in effect. 10. Long copy invariably sells better than short. David Ogilvy, in a illustrious career spanning decades, noted that only twice had he ever failed when allowed to use short copy. And length does not mean empty length: success increases as the number of pertinent *facts* in your copy increase. (That the long copy should be well-written should go without saying.) 11. A numbered list of unrelated facts (such as this) are more likely to be read than an unbroken run-on string of them. 12. Particularly important paragraphs or sentences should be bold-faced or italicized. 13. Copy which gives readers an (apparently) rational reason does better than that which does not. 14. Rational copy works best with rational products (aspirin, cars, technology). With irrational products (perfume, lingerie, wine), association far outstrips the syllogism. Illustration: (Visuals are a fascination in themselves. For instance? Tests show that nothing so catches the eye as the human face; yet larger than life-size photographs of the the human face tend to repel. Why? Who knows. But visuals are not our subject just now. What follows are a few brief notes about text as it relates to visuals in the succesful ad.) 1. Headlines below the ad are read by 10% more than those above 2. Captions under illustrations are read more often than body copy. 3. Advertisements that *look* like articles of editorials have more readers than ads that look like ads. 4. Readable text is better than fancy, conventional fonts are better than quirky. (Ogilvy once took an fund-raising ad with white words on a black background; reversed the color so that it became black on white; and doubled -- doubled! -- the amount of money raised.) These are the rules. And while bearing in mind that it is better to break all the rules to bits, rather than do something that is outright stupid, you bend these maxims at your peril. Implement them and prosper; flout them and rot. I might add, that (should anyone out there think of advertising) of all advertising mediums, the queen is undoubtedly Direct Mail. I work in it closely, and adore it. DM is superb, because it is *testable*. One can never be sure of a ad tossed to the public in general. But an ad targeted to a specific address gets a specific response. One no longer guesses about effectiveness. One knows. Anyway. How does this look in the nlp perspective? First, the Ogilvy Model is clearly not the Milton Model. In print, vague words do not seduce. They repel. Specificity is king. The long loping gait of presupposition-laden clauses is broken: one lives or dies by one's headline, and one's headline is seven words. One cannot vocally or visually mark out or embed commands; one cannot mirror or match the reader or pace him; one cannot use spatial anchors, or anchoring in any of the usual senses. The reader is radically split off from his senses. What is the result? A paradox. On the one hand we have what surely could be defined as a trance state. The reader is focused and concentrated. Yet the reader is alone, aware, individual, critical, rational. Could it be that -- trance is not the sole property of the unconscious alone? Could one venture the formula: reason is the trance of consciousness? And reading is the royal road to its induction? -- Nah. A last observation. In cyberspace we are discarnate. We do not interact with our faces, our voices, with shaking fists, with delighted laughter. I believe this state produces a kind of nostalgia for the body. We come to hunger for the things of the senses. Hence the immense fascination with pornography and seduction that permeates the net. Hence the rudeness and flames and abuse. The separate passive viewer seeks out the carnal and the violent, just as the television viewer seeks out the sports spectacular and the cop show, and the film viewer seeks out Schwartzeneggar apocalypses. In real life we have the balanced play of the senses, and we avoid the perverse and the brutal; but in our media we are disconnected, out of sync, and strive for balance by chasing each sniff of the physical. How different, I wonder, are our inner representational systems as used in real life from our inner representational systems as used in our media life? How interrelated have they become? Perhaps, how garbled? What is constant immersion in electronic media doing to our way of ordering our inner selves, eh, students of nlp? Tune in tomorrow. And happy ad-writing, amateurs! (And do remember to be polite, like Mr and Mr , and never never never advertise on a newsgroup. A word or two after your signature isn't ( -- shudder -- ) advertising, so that's OK. But nothing else!) Sincerely Yours, David Pascal, B.S, B.A., Cert. Prac. NLP Corporate Communications Consultant David Pascal Writing And Consulting Services The Galen Group PO Box 18051 Rochester, New York 14618 Fax: (716) 256-3514 email: Davpascal@aol.com/GalenGroup@aol.com Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations Copywriting Ghostwriting Speechwriting Direct Mail Press Releases Copyediting Proofreading Infomercials Brochures Annual Reports Corporate Histories Grant Proposals Fundraising Letters Sales Letters Catalogs Jingles Greeting Cards Classified Ads Personal Ads Love Letters Homework Lawnmowing Carwashing Haircutting Escort Service Lady's Lingerie Pants Pressed While-U-Wait Take-Out Service This Week Only 10% Off For Senior Citizens Internet Our Speciality Visa and Mastercard Accepted Satisfaction Guaranteed Or Some Of Your Money Back "We Deliver"
From alt.psychology.nlp Wed May 31 09:34:46 1995 Path: udcf.gla.ac.uk!newsfeed.ed.ac.uk!str-ccsun!news.dcs.warwick.ac.uk!warwick!sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk!qmw!demon!doc.news.pipex.net!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!news-e1a.megaweb.com!newstf01.news.aol.com!newsbf02.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) Newsgroups: alt.psychology.nlp Subject: Pascal On Advertising Date: 29 May 1995 16:06:59 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Lines: 289 Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com Message-ID: <3qd9h3$g54@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Reply-To: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) NNTP-Posting-Host: newsbf02.mail.aol.com Mrs.recently made several quite perceptive and intelligent remarks on the nature of advertising as it relates to nlp. I responded with my usual ream of 10, 000 words of vacuous philosophizing. However, her remarks got me thinking. Nlp as applied to print does not in fact have quite the effect of nlp as applied to face-to-face or phone sales; just as hypnotically effective language patterns delivered in person or on the phone or or tape do not have the same effect in print either. Why not? I fingered through a book or two that I have on nlp and sales persuasion; and I noticed a funny thing. Despite the lip service given to 'modelling', very little of the books reported in any detail what really superior salesmen actually. There were no full transcripts of successful sales (as there are infinitely precise transcripts, for instance, of Milton Erickson performing an induction.). What the books did was to present nlp ideas and apply them directly to sales technique (ie 'Rapport works: nod like the customer nods!') or else present those ideas and try to find them used by actual sale people ('Salesman x nodded like the customer nodded: rapport works!). This is not the way to do it. I too was going about it the wrong way. We have many many examples of persuasive print; of successful ads. Perhaps instead of nlp telling print advertising what works, print advertising could tell nlp what works, and let nlp figure it out later. I decided to take a look at what actually works, nlp or no nlp. (And -- incidentally -- I also wished to toss back to some of the trainers in this newsgroup a bit of the business I may have shooed away by my starchy reflections on the training process. Read the following, folks, and follow it to the letter; you'll double your client count or my name isn't David Pascal.) So. What works? What persuades in print advertising? Rather than pontificate myself, I decided to go to the great David Ogilvy, prince of copywriters, and let him pontificate. (His counsel being filtered through and somewhat embellished by my own.) In the classic Ogilvy On Advertising (another thread of some interest) Ogilvy instructs the reader in how to write a good print ad. Such ads have three basic parts: the headline; the body copy; and the illustration. What worked for Ogilvy? This: Headlines: 1. 95% of your readers read the headline. Only 5% go on to read body copy. (If it is good. If it is bad, your advertisement is dead and so are you.) 2. The most effective headlines promise a benefit or helpful information. (A whopping 75% more readers read copy with helpful information than that which deals only with the product.) 3. Headlines with news are recalled by 22% more people than those without news. 4. When you put your headline in quotes, recall increases 28%. 5. When your headline is 'blind', ie, doesn't say what the product is or what it can do for you, recall decreases 20%. (God, don't you wish nlp had research like this? I could almost crank out a book on nlp and advertising myself just on the long shot that Saatchi & Saatchi would commission some researchers onto this stuff.) 6. If your headline appeals only to a select segment of readers -- housewives, homosexuals, nlpers -- place a word in your advertisement which flags them down. (Or place it in the proper publication or -- dare I speak the inevitable? -- in the approproiate newsgroup.) 7. Headlines with more than 10 words get less readership than headlines with less than 10. (The old 7 plus or minus 2 rule here, wherein the human mind can only grasp about seven distinct bits of information at a time? Perhaps.) On the other hand, headlines with more than 10 sell more merchandise. A paradox? No, as we shall see below; long copy sells better, but does not automatically receive more instant attention. 8. Specifics are more convincing than generalities. 9. Markdowns, special offers, sales, all have better recall. 11. 'Tricky', witty headlines -- puns, etc. -- typically do worse than straight ones. 12. Certain words -- old warhorse like 'new' and 'improved', but also less expected ones such as 'darling' typically draw far more attention than others. (John Caples' Tested Advertising Methods is the treasure trove to plumb here.) 13. Time counts. Time-limited offers do better than ongoing offers. Also, in a study of 70 sales campaigns, it was found that *every single* before-and-after campaign increased sales. Showing the successful end result of using a product will work; adding the current situation (presumably your reader's) for contrast as well will work better. Body copy: 1. Only 5% of your readers read the body copy and the headline; 95% read just the headline. I'm repeating myself, but it bears repeating: the first 7 to 10 words you write will make you or break you. 2. Remember: whoever reads your ad, reads it *alone*. Despite the fact that you may be addressing a million people, you are speaking directly to only one. (Ogilvy sagely counsels you to pretend you are writing them a letter on behalf of your client.) 3. Never never never never never never bore. The magnificent Howard Gossage struck the truth about this like a Zen archer: "People do not read advertisements. They read what interests them; and sometimes it is an advertisement." Aspiring copywriters should tattoo this saying across their foreheads and on the backs of their palms. 4. Think Short. Paragraphs, sentences, words. Shun the clause. Fear the adjective. Abhor the adverb. And avoid difficult (usually Latinate) words. Use the language of everyday conversation. And if you don't know what it is, go sit in a mall and LISTEN. 5. Use the imperative mode. The declarative sentence. The sentence fragment. Parallelism. The second person singular. And the question. *Almost* exclusively. (And if you do not know what these things are, place a paper bag over your head for utter shame and go hire a professional who does.) 6. Don't write your *opinions*; write stories. Describe. Tell the story of what the product will do for the reader (or has done for some other reader) and tell it with believable detail. 7. Avoid analogies. (I.E., 'Colgate! The Richard Bandler of toothpastes! People will assume you are peddling Richard Bandler, not your client's wares.) Avoid superlatives ('The new Big Mac! The best! The greatest! Comparable only to orgasm itself!' The reader's reaction? 'Rubbish.'). Avoid the improbable-sounding claim, even if true. ('DHE will TRANSFORM you on the CELLULAR LEVEL!' A true believer may buy it; all others will be driven away.) 8. State the price of whatever you're selling. People are afraid to ask; they do not wish to seem cheap or poor if the price is out of their range. With smaller goods this effect is lessened, but with large ticket items, such as cars, naming the price outright invariably gets a better response. 9. Testamonials are particularly effective, especially if the giver is an expert, or believably resembles the reader. Testamonials by those obviously for hire, such as celebrities, are considerably poorer in effect. 10. Long copy invariably sells better than short. David Ogilvy, in a illustrious career spanning decades, noted that only twice had he ever failed when allowed to use short copy. And length does not mean empty length: success increases as the number of pertinent *facts* in your copy increase. (That the long copy should be well-written should go without saying.) 11. A numbered list of unrelated facts (such as this) are more likely to be read than an unbroken run-on string of them. 12. Particularly important paragraphs or sentences should be bold-faced or italicized. 13. Copy which gives readers an (apparently) rational reason does better than that which does not. 14. Rational copy works best with rational products (aspirin, cars, technology). With irrational products (perfume, lingerie, wine), association far outstrips the syllogism. Illustration: (Visuals are a fascination in themselves. For instance? Tests show that nothing so catches the eye as the human face; yet larger than life-size photographs of the the human face tend to repel. Why? Who knows. But visuals are not our subject just now. What follows are a few brief notes about text as it relates to visuals in the succesful ad.) 1. Headlines below the ad are read by 10% more than those above 2. Captions under illustrations are read more often than body copy. 3. Advertisements that *look* like articles of editorials have more readers than ads that look like ads. 4. Readable text is better than fancy, conventional fonts are better than quirky. (Ogilvy once took an fund-raising ad with white words on a black background; reversed the color so that it became black on white; and doubled -- doubled! -- the amount of money raised.) These are the rules. And while bearing in mind that it is better to break all the rules to bits, rather than do something that is outright stupid, you bend these maxims at your peril. Implement them and prosper; flout them and rot. I might add, that (should anyone out there think of advertising) of all advertising mediums, the queen is undoubtedly Direct Mail. I work in it closely, and adore it. DM is superb, because it is *testable*. One can never be sure of a ad tossed to the public in general. But an ad targeted to a specific address gets a specific response. One no longer guesses about effectiveness. One knows. Anyway. How does this look in the nlp perspective? First, the Ogilvy Model is clearly not the Milton Model. In print, vague words do not seduce. They repel. Specificity is king. The long loping gait of presupposition-laden clauses is broken: one lives or dies by one's headline, and one's headline is seven words. One cannot vocally or visually mark out or embed commands; one cannot mirror or match the reader or pace him; one cannot use spatial anchors, or anchoring in any of the usual senses. The reader is radically split off from his senses. What is the result? A paradox. On the one hand we have what surely could be defined as a trance state. The reader is focused and concentrated. Yet the reader is alone, aware, individual, critical, rational. Could it be that -- trance is not the sole property of the unconscious alone? Could one venture the formula: reason is the trance of consciousness? And reading is the royal road to its induction? -- Nah. A last observation. In cyberspace we are discarnate. We do not interact with our faces, our voices, with shaking fists, with delighted laughter. I believe this state produces a kind of nostalgia for the body. We come to hunger for the things of the senses. Hence the immense fascination with pornography and seduction that permeates the net. Hence the rudeness and flames and abuse. The separate passive viewer seeks out the carnal and the violent, just as the television viewer seeks out the sports spectacular and the cop show, and the film viewer seeks out Schwartzeneggar apocalypses. In real life we have the balanced play of the senses, and we avoid the perverse and the brutal; but in our media we are disconnected, out of sync, and strive for balance by chasing each sniff of the physical. How different, I wonder, are our inner representational systems as used in real life from our inner representational systems as used in our media life? How interrelated have they become? Perhaps, how garbled? What is constant immersion in electronic media doing to our way of ordering our inner selves, eh, students of nlp? Tune in tomorrow. And happy ad-writing, amateurs! (And do remember to be polite, like Mr and Mr , and never never never advertise on a newsgroup. A word or two after your signature isn't ( -- shudder -- ) advertising, so that's OK. But nothing else!) Sincerely Yours, David Pascal, B.S, B.A., Cert. Prac. NLP Corporate Communications Consultant David Pascal Writing And Consulting Services The Galen Group PO Box 18051 Rochester, New York 14618 Fax: (716) 256-3514 email: Davpascal@aol.com/GalenGroup@aol.com Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations Copywriting Ghostwriting Speechwriting Direct Mail Press Releases Copyediting Proofreading Infomercials Brochures Annual Reports Corporate Histories Grant Proposals Fundraising Letters Sales Letters Catalogs Jingles Greeting Cards Classified Ads Personal Ads Love Letters Homework Lawnmowing Carwashing Haircutting Escort Service Lady's Lingerie Pants Pressed While-U-Wait Take-Out Service This Week Only 10% Off For Senior Citizens Internet Our Speciality Visa and Mastercard Accepted Satisfaction Guaranteed Or Some Of Your Money Back "We Deliver" From alt.psychology.nlp Sat May 27 21:02:15 1995 Path: udcf.gla.ac.uk!newsfeed.ed.ac.uk!str-ccsun!zippy.dct.ac.uk!yama.mcc.ac.uk!sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk!qmw!demon!doc.news.pipex.net!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net! Newsgroups: alt.psychology.nlp Subject: 's Errors Message-ID: <3q3lj4$g0k@newsbf02.news.aol.com> From: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) Date: 26 May 1995 00:31:32 -0400 Reply-To: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) NNTP-Posting-Host: newsbf02.mail.aol.com Lines: 354 In , posted an article by Mr in which Mr offers the world what he claims to be scientific refutation of Mr Ross Jeffries system of Speed Seduction. The only claim that it refutes, however, is the claim of either gentleman to any credibilty as dispassionate critics of nlp technique, at least as it applies to Mr Jeffries. I'm afraid that this needs to be pointed out in detail. Not to defend Mr Jeffries, who is more than capable of defending himself, but only to point out the ease with which psychological research can be misused. A close reading of Mr 's text more than amply displays the simple but glaringly obvious errors that invalidate it. But few people bother to give this sort of thing a close reading. As with most intellectual pillow fighting in which participants quote study after study, the body of the argument is written in the sort of gnomish verbal academese that one can only penetrate with vast applications of No-Doz. The grim face of Mr 's prose will no doubt dissuade many a student of nlp from probing his article to its (admittedly bitter) depths. And rather than probe it, they will merely accept it and confirm their prejudices. And in that way, error creeps into our thinking, valuable techniques and pathways are discarded, lies become our truths. This is to be discouraged. So. What does Mr have to say? The entire brunt of Mr 's monograph is that speed seduction is reducible essentially to the Erickson-derived technique of indirect suggestion. It is the 'overriding hypothesis', a 'core concept', to quote Mr ; speed seduction is 'heavily dependent' on indirect suggestion. What evidence, apart from Mr 's willful assertion, do we have that this is so? Mr. does not quote Mr Jeffries, his writings, his postings -- nothing. He does not offer one single statement in proof of his assertion. It is as though one were to assert that democracy is totally reducible to voting; since most Americans don't vote, democracy in America does not exist; therefore we live in a fascist state; whereas in Stalinist Russia, where all citizens were required under arms to vote (for a single candidate), the majority did. Therefore, under Stalin democracy flourished. Well: nonsense. Democracy does involve voting, of course; but it also involves equality before the law, judicial review, the balance of powers, etc. It involves many things. As does Mr Jeffries' system. Literally *all* of Mr 's subsequent article, however, is *solely* devoted to defacing the effectiveness of indirect suggestion in hypnosis, and assuming the naive reader will accept his arbitrary equation of that technique with Mr Jeffries' system. But Mr Jeffries system is *not* reducible to indirect suggestion at all. Mind you, I do not claim to be an expert on Mr Jeffries' system; but I have (unlike many of his critics) actually read it through and received Mr Jeffries' explanations on various points. It is simply *not* a matter of formally hypnotizing a subject through the exclusive use of indirect suggestion. Indeed, to equate the reactions of a subject consciously agreeing to undergo formal hypnosis by doctors under controlled conditions, with those of an unaware subject receiving covert suggestions in an everyday environment is to compare apples to oranges. That error alone should serve to discredit Mr 's thesis. But that error is not alone. Yes; indirect suggestion -- in the *technical* sense in which Mr presents it here -- is *one* of Mr Jeffries techniques, but it is by no means the single, principal -- or even a necessary! -- part of his system. Mr Jeffries' system is built principally around the (usually covert) evocation of mental states by various means, principally descriptive in nature, followed by the associative linking of those states to the operator. In short, he attempts to evoke a state and then associate it with himself. How does he evoke that state? By naming it; by describing it; by describing his own experience of that state, or the experience of others; by asking questions; by having the subject recall the state or imagine it; by modeling the state himself, through facial expressions, postures, gestures; by embedding direct commands; and even by embedding indirect commands. But no one of those techniques is indispensible. Let me give you a graphic example. Imagine you're having lunch with friends, and an acquaintance turns up and says, "Y'know, I just saw this TV report about some plane crash in the Andes. Nobody could find the survivors for months, and the people turned to cannibalism. Some of the parents actually ate parts of their dead kids. God! Can you imagine what it must feel like actually eating your own dead children?" Now, if you felt your stomach turn as you read that hideous description-- as I did -- you begin to understand the nature of speed seduction. Can you imagine how you would feel if that individual continued on and on with that story, elaborating detail after nauseating detail? Can you imagine the reaction he would get if every conversation with him resulted in similiar repellent tales? He would have evoked a particular state; intensified it; and associated it with himself. Alas. But observe! He did not stand there in a white laboratory frock coat, dangling a pendulum and saying 'Go-into-Trance!'; he did not use any suggestions whatsoever, direct or indirect. And it made absolutely no difference. Mr 's absurdly reductive equation of speed seduction with indirect suggestion in formal hypnosis is therefore not so much untrue as just completely beside the point. He has set himself up as a dispassionate judge, but he has condemned the wrong man. Has he even discredited indirect suggestion, however? Let us see. Only about a fifth of his article contains studies that actually seem -- I stress the word 'seem' -- to discredit his thesis. Of the four-fifths remaining, one-fifth of his article, the Introduction, is devoted not to studies that examine indirect suggestion, but to articles that try to define it. Why? Because 'indirect suggestion' does *not* mean what we might expect it to mean, and what Mr himself somehow seems to think it means, namely any form of suggestion that is not presented directly. Quite the contrary. 'Indirect suggestion' is a *technical term* with a specific and unexpected meaning that has nothing to do with covert hypnotic techniques. What, then, are indirect suggestions? Essentially they are suggestions "designed to increase vagueness or response ambiguity" (as opposed to direct suggestions, which "involve an unambiguous tacit request for a specific response"). In other words, when you say, "Go to sleep," you are giving a direct suggestion; when you say, "If you like...you can go to sleep...or not...or do something else relaxing..." you are giving an 'indirect' suggestion. Not, mind you, a covert one; but one (according to the definitions Mr quotes) that seems to offer the subject a variety of responses. Fine. But what has this to do with speed seduction? Mr seems simply to be making, and spreading, the simple error that, since 'indirect' sounds somewhat like 'covert' which sounds somewhat like 'sneaky', Mr Jeffries must be engaged purely in 'indirect'-suggestion-giving. When Mr Jeffries says something like, "What's it like when you (pause) FEEL TOTALLY AROUSED," he is obviously giving a direct suggestion, not an indirect one. He is not saying, "What's it like when you (pause) FEEL...SOMETHING....LIKE MAYBE A LITTLE AROUSED...OR MAYBE TOTALLY...OR NOT...". Moreover: I have seen no evidence that Mr has read Mr Jeffries writing; but has he here even read his own? To quote Mr himself: " the context in which suggestions or interventions are embedded may override subtleties in language and suggestion transparency, minimizing differences between direct and indirect suggestions...many indirect suggestions contain embedded direct suggestions that minimize differences between direct and indirect suggestions (see Murphy, 1988)." Well: if the difference between the effectiveness of the two is 'minimal' when presented in embedded form, what is the argument about, then? Is Mr saying that *direct* suggestion does not work either? That no sort of suggestion works? That hypnosis itself is some sort of hoax? The assumption behind indirect suggestion is that if the subject can select his own response, he will be less resistant. When Mr Jeffries speaks of avoiding resistance, he does not mean it in the sense of letting the subject do whatever they please; he means it merely in the sense of avoiding conscious resistance by giving the suggestion in an covert or embedded manner. That suggestion *can* be indirect, in the technical sense quoted by Mr . But in my review of Jeffries' writing I have nearly always found it to be a direct suggestion, albeit an embedded one. And surely the overwhelming evidence of decades of hypnosis research, indeed the very studies that Mr himself presents, show that direct suggestion -- works. And once these facts are recognized, the substance of Mr 's criticism becomes, not merely irrelevant, but if anything supportive of Mr Jeffries' ideas. Consider. The core of Mr 's argument, all his support for his notion that indirect suggestion is ineffective, comes in the section he terms 'Empirical Research'. What is the substance of this research? He offers his own summaries of, first, three reviews of research related to direct vs. indirect suggestion, then his own summaries of six studies related to the same issue. Let us examine the studies first. The first three: "Matthews and Mosher (1988) not only found no support for the superiority of an indirect approach in terms of hypnotizability and rapport with the hypnotists, but also found that subjects who received the indirect induction reported more resistance to the hypnotist relative to subjects who receieved the direct induction. In a second study (Isenberg & Matthews, 1991), comparing the ISS and the SCHS, no behavioral differences were found for direct versus indirect suggestions for hearing or deaf subjects. Murphy (1988) found no support for the hypothesis that Ericksonian-type suggestions,based on truisms or presuppositions, resulted in greater behavioral responsiveness to a suggestion. In fact, it was found that when the effects of direct suggestions for postural sway were compared with the data pooled from all the conditions, including a no-suggestion control condition, "direct suggestion was more effective than the indirect forms used for this study." Combined, these findings refute the claim that indirect suggestions bypass resistance." Now what *precisely* have we just read? The first study finds no reason to claim that indirect suggestion is superior (in what sense?) to direct. The second, that there are no apparent differences in effectiveness. The third that 'Ericksonian-style suggestions' *that involve truisms or presuppositions* (my italics) do not result in 'greater behavioral responsiveness' (than what?); and that the direct forms *of this particularly restricted sort* seem to be more effective than the indirect forms. But what *all* these studies seem to say is that both indirect and direct suggestions work; merely that there is no particular proof that indirect suggestions work better than direct. It is as though one were to have a Nissan and a Toyota race from New York to Los Angeles. Which one gets there first? The Nissan, by five or six minutes. But which one gets there, period? Both. None of these studies discredit either form of suggestion. As for resistance, the first study shows that indirect induction -- *not* suggestion, but *induction* -- produced more reports of resistance to the hypnotist. *Not* to the induction, *not* to the suggestions (of whatever sort), *not* with regard to the production of hypnotic or posthypnotic phenomena -- but merely to the hypnotist. Well! Perhaps the gentleman had bad breath. From this Mr concludes: "Combined, these findings refute the claim that indirect suggestions bypass resistance." No. They don't. Go up one screen and reread them. They don't refute them, they don't support them. They don't even bring up the question. What of the last three studies? "In three studies, Lynn and his associates (Lynn, Neufeld, & Matyi, 1987; Lynn, Weekes, Matyi, & Neufeld, 1988; Weekes and & Lynn, 1990) found no advantage for indirect communications on a measure of behavioral responsitivity using HGSHS:A and AWIHSS scales. In the first study, Lynn et al. (1987) manipulated the induction wording independent of the suggestion wording. The wording of the induction had no effect on subjects' responsivity and their ratings of subjective involvement or suggestion-related involuntariness. In the second study of the research, direct suggestions fostered greater subjective involvement and feelings of incoluntariness, a finding consistent with previous research (Lynn et al., 1987). In the final study in the series, Weekes and Lynn (1990) replicated the finding that direct suggestions facilitated suggestion-related involuntariness, whereas indirect suggestions enhanced fears of negative appraisal by the hypnotist. In summary, the extant research indicates that whereas indirect suggestions enhance archaic representations of the hypnotist, direct suggestions facilitate involvement in the events of hypnosis, as measured by subjective involvement and involuntariness." Again. What precisely have we read? In three studies -- not independent studies, but studies given by the same researchers -- we apparently are given proof that both indirect and direct suggestion...work. Albeit somewhat differently. The first study does not deal with indirect suggestion at all, but with indirect induction; the second asserts that direct suggestion produced 'greater subjective involvement and involuntariness', which implies that indirect suggestion produced these phenomena also, merely not as well, and that in all other respects its effects were comparable to direct suggestion; and the third, that, again, direct suggestion produced greater involuntariness, but also 'fears of negative appraisal by the hypnotist'. Did those 'fears of negative appraisal' produce a poorer response to indirect suggestions -- or did they perhaps motivate the subjects to produce stronger and better responses? We do not know. We do know that none of the studies proved either direct or indirect suggestion ineffective; on the contrary. And the rest of Mr 's definitive proof? This: "In several independent reviews of the use of indirect hypnotic phrasing on pain control (Van Gorp et al., 1985, Crowley, 1980, Lynn et al, 1994), all groups concluded that studies which imposed the greatest amount of methodolgical control yielded outcomes least favorable to the hypothesis that indirect suggestions are effective and account for pain relief achieved, above and beyond factors common to placebo treatments. The use of indirect hypnotic phrasing in analgesia was found to be no more effective for subjects tested than pain analgesia achieved by a placebo effect." In several independent reviews -- i.e., in three -- it was found that using indirect hypnotic phrasing for the relief of physical pain was no more effective than that a placebo effect. Which is to say, the researchers went up to human beings in physical pain and said, "You can feel gruelling pain...or not...or maybe something else...or maybe it'll get better...or maybe it won't...". I would have imagined that that would have been somewhat ineffective myself. I would be wrong! According to Mr 's summary, indirect suggestion equalled that of the placebo effect. What is the placebo effect? It's a test control. Person A gets a pill which presumably will stop (for instance) a headache, and person B gets a pill which has no medical properties whatsoever, and a doctor tells both persons that both pills are effective. The assumption is a technique which equals the placebo effect will be -- or to be precise, *may* be -- as intrinsically without merit as the placebo. The paradox is that the placebo all too often *does* result in a cure. Mr Richard Bandler noted this in his new book "Time For A Change" where he reports sending Mr Robert Dilts out to find how often placebo pills cured headaches. Mr Dilts reported that research showed placebos to be effective in five out of six cases. Mr Bandler wisely pointed out that what was operating in the placebo principle, then, was belief in the efficacy of the placebo -- that is to say, the 'direct suggestion' of the doctor that the pill worked. Are we safe to assume, then, that in the studies Mr shows us -- or rather in the reviews of the undocumented studies he summarizes for us -- that indirect suggestion was successful in providing pain relief in five cases out of six? No. Mr did not summarize the actual numbers for us. Merely the conclusions he wishes us to reach. So. Out of some fifty years of Ericksonian hypnosis and research, we are presented with six studies that demonstrate -- what? That indirect suggestion operates somewhat differently than direct suggestion, and perhaps not as effectively. What conclusions may we draw from this revelation? Mr is quick not to leave us in the dark: "It seems fair to conclude that the best controlled studies provide no support for the superiority of indirect suggestions, and there are indications that direct suggestions are superior to indirect suggestions in terms of modifying subjects' experience of hypnosis. On the basis of the studies presented, three conclusions are drawn. Indirect suggestion, as presented in the "Speed Seduction" material, has little effect on subject response or in bypassing subject resistance, therefore, the methodology used will not evoke state specific changes in subjects. Second, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that hypnotizability level and suggestion wording interact, such that low to moderately hypnotizable subjects are particularly responsive to indirect suggestions within the "Speed Seduction" framework. The phraseology and linguistic manipulation as presented in Jeffries' material has no firm scientific support, and does not appear to contribute to the induction of a hypnotic state. In summary, the attributed benefits are the result of a placebo effect." What are we to make of such pseudo-scientific gobbledygook? The 'best' controlled studies -- i.e., the six he quotes. Six, after over fifty years of Ericksonian hypnosis. Are we supposed to conclude that since indirect suggestion is not shown in this miniscule handful of studies to be *superior* to direct suggestion, that we should foolishly assume that it is ineffective -- when the very studies themselves show that *both* forms show measurable results? That because Mr 's unfamiliariarity with Mr Jeffries system is so profound as to allow him to equate all of Mr Jeffries work with one single, and marginal, hypnotic technique, we should allow him to make that equation? This is nonsense. The simple fact of the matter is that Mr Jeffries system is deeply and logically grounded in nlp, and that nlp is deeply and logically rooted in Ericksonian hypnosis. Mr Jeffries *use* of those techniques may be criticized; but his actual *techniques* are part and parcel of nlp and its ancestry. To invalidate speed seduction is to invalidate nlp, which is to invalidate the work and achievements of Milton Erickson himself. Mr wishes to pull the entire house down around all our ears, merely in order to have a piece of it land on Mr Ross Jeffries' head as well. How absurd. Nlp teaches us to look for the positive goal behind any action. I'm sure that Mr is moved by such a goal. He does not want to see women hurt and manipulated. Who can fault him for this? That is a noble wish, and we should all applaud Mr for having it, and for at least trying to bring his low opinion of Mr Jeffries' system to the bar of objective scientific truth. But you cannot stop the manipulation of women by indulging in the manipulation of truth. Speed seduction is neither good nor evil; it is a set of techniques; it can be used for good purposes or for bad purposes. Mr is like a man who, because he wants to save women from a virus he fears, tries to find comforting studies showing that the virus does not exist. But it does. And any serious effort at innoculation lies in the study of the virus, not in slapping absurd and inaccurate labels over it, or in rude and vacant moralizing at it. Yes, the techniques of speed seduction can be used to hurt people; but they can also be used to help. Rather than descending to slipshod logic and libel, rather than placing paper bags over our head and hiding, why can't we simply *look at the system*? David Pascal. From alt.psychology.nlp Wed May 31 16:33:39 1995 Path: udcf.gla.ac.uk!newsfeed.ed.ac.uk!str-ccsun!news.dcs.warwick.ac.uk!warwick!lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk!sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk!qmw!demon!doc.news.pipex.net!pipex!news From: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) Newsgroups: alt.psychology.nlp Subject: Is Training Worthless? Date: 26 May 1995 10:32:13 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Lines: 345 Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com Message-ID: <3q4opd$kvt@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Reply-To: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) NNTP-Posting-Host: newsbf02.mail.aol.com Mr , taking a break from his brilliant work on the MBA program at Harvard to reply at length to an earlier post of mine, wrote: (Pascal:) > Most studies don't support eye accessing or rep system predicates, > though the methodologies are sloppy, and some tests do in fact show some > confirmation. Mind you, those two are (in my opinion) among the weakest of > NLP techniques. () Interestingly, Richard was talking about these just today. He said that eye accessing cues *are* quite weak. He's never found much of a use for them. Watching people's eyes AFTER they've accessed a representation, however, gives you all kinds of information about their submodalities. I don't consider eye accessing OR predicates to be "techniques." I consider them to be solely diagnostic. I think I put some comments about the topic of confusing diagnostics with interventions somewhere on the Web page. If not, I'll remind myself to do it sometime soon... (Pascal:) > As for management training (or any sort of training), the person to > talk to is John O'Connor, () You must mean Joseph O'Connor, who is a friend of mine. I've read his NLP and Training book... He covers a lot of good territory, but frankly, no one's really come up with the training program I want, which is to learn how to do covert installation with an audience the way Bandler does it. I just spent a week at his latest Trainer's Training and was once again totally blown away by the sheer magnitude of the changes he's able to produce in BEHAVIOR, just by telling stories. *snip* () I study with Bandler. He's continually throwing stuff out and improving. Dilts also improves [but I don't know if he prunes]. Neither, however, write much about the old stuff. (Pascal:) > Though I doubt that it's worth the price tag, I admit I could learn > several things by watching Bandler. () My goodness. You're making a HUGE assumption about how the learning process takes place at one of Richard's seminars. I daresay you would NOT learn very much by watching Bandler. You could learn a lot by experiencing the things he puts you through, however. He does not give a didactic understanding in his workshops; he does direct installation of skills and attitudes. That's what impresses me so much; he's the only one in the field who has truly torn apart the process of teaching and rebuilt it from the ground up using NLP principles. [Everyone else, Dilts included, uses a much more didactic approach.] (Pascal:) > But Bandler learned by watching others. (): And experimenting, extending, discarding, refining... (Pascal, later:) > People may go, 'Bandler observed such-and-such, Grinder taught > this, Dilts said that.' Fine. But what do *you* notice, what do > *you* teach, what do *you* say? Why train elsewhere but in the > actual world, in the actual living of your life? That's where the > real lessons are; it's where they always have been. Why 'train'? (Pascal:) This argument doesn't work for me. You can apply it to anything. Heck, Newton developed differential calculus at the age of 19. So why bother to study it? Just derive it. (:) The reason I study with Bandler is that he's gone through the learning curve. After studying with him, I start off in the "actual living of my life" at a much higher skill level. If you don't have worthwhile sensory acuity, judgment, decision making, or belief-building, then it doesn't MATTER what *you* notice, what *you* teach, or what *you* say. The only thing "*you*" will be saying is stuff that comes solely from your head, with no rigor, and likely no relationship to the real world. NLP seminars are about developing sensory acuity, learning judgment, refining your decision making, and building beliefs rigorously. Most people can't even notice another person's breathing. Without that level of sensory acuity, they're never going to notice some of the really GOOD stuff. (Pascal:) > the darkest day in NLP was the day Bandler and Grinder realized > they could make more money charging .. NLP stopped evolving that > very minute. (:) Now hold on. The previous screenfull of text was all about how you've never worked with the people who are doing all the new development. Not only that, but your paragraphs said there's no POINT to working with them ("why train?"). But yet, you're perfectly willing to conclude that NLP stopped evolving 25 years ago. That's hardly using solid, sensory-grounded evidence to create your beliefs. If you're going to develop NLP on your own, via "life," you owe it to yourself to examine how you build and maintain beliefs. It sure seems like your belief building strategy goes something like this: "Make something up on the basis of a single data point. Stop collecting data, but rather generalize to include all other data points." If your intention is to present a rigorous conclusion, it doesn't come across that way. ***** (Pascal:) Sadly, my desire to present rigorous conclusions (and I really do have such a desire, you know) is greatly constrained by the medium in which you and I both scribble. I do in fact believe that twenty-five years ago nlp attained to its current intellectual outlines and has by and large remained there. When I read "Time For A Change" or then look back at "Trance-formations" or "Neuro-linguistic Programming Volume One", I don't see an Olympic leap. What can I say? I could argue the point at length, but I'd rather just point people to the books and say: look. As for covert installation in training. You might consider getting in touch with a Mr Kenrick Cleveland. As far as I know, he's the only other person with a reputation for covert installation work. I don't recall his email address, but Ross Jeffries at sandworm@earthlink.net might help you there. As for training with Bandler? Hmmm. You speak of Richard Bandler with obvious respect. Well, let me tell you a secret: I respect him too. Immensely. I was trained pretty much in the Grinder wing of The Party, and Bandler was not spoken of kindly at all. I chose to judge for myself, however, and read things by him rather than about him. I came away with at least as high a regard for the man as you. In large part because he is one of the very few people who *does* extend, refine, discard, etc. But (of late) he does so...unsystematically. Bandler may remark to you privately that he finds VAK pretty marginal stuff; he may stand up in front of people and go, "Fuck rapport", and in so doing he may echo my sentiments and experience on those points. But I do not consider his remarks *by themselves* to be compelling proof, much less scientifically validated evidence. You seem to be impressed by Bandler's ability to obliquely transmit 'skills and attitudes'. What impresses you, depresses me. Human knowledge has not advanced because scientists arrived at 'unconscious skills and attitudes' but by the lengthy, laborious, exacting -- noble -- work of defining their terms, recording their observations, testing their hypotheses, sharing their results. In short: by dragging objective truth, not subjective validity, kicking and screaming, into the light of consciousness. And, Bandler and Grinder be damned, it is a *bright* light! I want to *know*! I want to know *how* and *why* in the light of *reason*. Consciously. Explicitly. I don't want merely to sit there entranced and have 'skills and attitudes installed at a covert level'. If Bandler is really taking giant steps forward, let him *tell* us what they are. Overtly. Yes, he's a great figure. Even more: a great psychologist; and I do not make that statement lightly. But he would be even greater if someone kicked him in the ass occasionally and said, "Dick, stop putting your seminar groupies into trance all the time, sit down with a pencil and some paper, and *give us some didactic understanding.*". Richard Bandler is arguably the finest hypnotist alive, and it may be that he can in fact install NLP skills and attitudes with one wave of his magic wand. Nice trick! But if that is *all* that he is doing, it is a pity, not an advance. Because if it means that he is no longer interested or capable of making any conceptual contributions as well, nlp has lost a great, great deal. And it will not regain it by having practitioners sitting around mysteriously gaining 'skills and attitudes' without gaining clear and simple understanding. I sound hard, I know. But -- believe me -- it doesn't come from disrespect. It comes from knowing what Bandler achieved. Grinder pretty much came out of Chomsky and Bateson; Bandler came out of Milton Erickson. He's said to have repeatedly gone into deep trance identification with Erickson. Well: it shows. So much of what he's been reported doing lately reminds me so much of Erickson, particularly the late Erickson. Not giving explanations. Playing. Telling stories. That -- granted! -- just seem to have 'magical' effects on the listeners. But those effects are not magical. They occur -- if they occur -- for reasons. What reasons? Bandler doesn't seem to want to bother saying, to take the trouble to reason it out, just as the later Erickson didn't. But this was not the attitude, nor the practice, that made nlp. That was not the magnificent work that gave nlp what little regard it does have in scientific circles. A generation of psychologists -- Weakland, Watzlawick, de Shazer, Rossi, Haley, O'Hanlon -- have stemmed from Milton Erickson's almost pixie-like reluctance to explain precisely how he achieved his successes. That generation tried to understand. Of them all, I believe Richard Bandler tried the hardest. Look at "Patterns" 1 and 2 again. A meticulously lucid, concise, penetrating explication of Milton Erickson's practices. A virtual manual of technique. The final word? No, of course not. But solid, lasting, effective words. Compare the step nlp took in going from modeling Chomsky and the Meta Model to modeling and then incorporating Erickson and the Milton Model. A huge, gargantuan extension. Take a few minutes: can you imagine what nlp would have looked like, might have been, if, instead of Chomsky and Erickson, it had modeled, say, Gurdjieff and Reich? Or John C. Lilly and Wittgenstein? Or Buckminster Fuller and Quintilian? If you can, then you can see, faintly, part of what nlp might have been and might yet be. But isn't. Because Grinder is too busy reading Castaneda, Bandler is too busy marketing 'New Age Rap' tapes, and people like you and me are too busy bitching on the Internet. I know, I know: people keep talking about DHE and the New Codes and whatnot. What can I say? I've trained in the New Codes. I find them vacuous and wanting. I've heard interesting things about DHE lately here and there. But quite frankly, I haven't heard anything very concrete. It seems to be the same things over and over: 'well, there aren't really any new techniques, there isn't a list of things to do -- it's an Experience'. Oh? As the creaky old meta-modelers used to say: of what? What sort? Experienced by whom? In what state? With what objectively verified result? All I hear regarding DHE seems to me to be fuzzy language, vague words. Which, as we all know from Milton, may move us profoundly, and draw up all sorts of powerful idiosyncratic associations from the psychic depths; but which remain surprisingly empty in the rather unforgiving light of day. Maybe it is, a la Mao, a Great Leap Forward. But I have no tangible evidence to prove it. You tell me to train with Bandler. Yet how do you describe this training? I am to go there and sit while Bandler 'tells stories'. Mysteriously, 'skills' and 'attitudes' will suddenly be mine. Skills in what? DHE is not about techniques -- a dirty word in DHE circles, I take it. What sort of attitudes? 'Nlp attitudes'. What are those? Will I come out of being zonked by Richard Bandler with a wide, uncritical grin, mumbling, 'Nlp is totally awesome, man!. Skills without techniques? Attitudes without content? Can you imagine training a surgeon like this? Counter people at Burger King get better training. No, no, I don't believe that Bandler is ripping anyone off. Far from it. But what is he doing? It just isn't being presented with any clarity. I would be more than happy to see a list of new innovations, a description of new techniques, an explanation of what works and why. But I don't. Please understand. I don't write this to fault you or Bandler or to display to my further public shame how faulty my 'belief building apparatus' is. (By the way. Were you trying to say, 'You are wrong' there? These new jargon phrases always confuse me.) I am merely trying to be honest. The fact is, I don't teach nlp or train anyone or make one cent off it or associate with any particular group or faction. My mind, so far as I can tell, is an open one. I think there is solid merit in nlp. I would like to believe that nlp is evolving at mach one, that its every flaw is being purged, and that its every technique is rooted in stone. I just don't have any reason to believe that. "Time For A Change"? Some nice stuff. A leap comparable to the leap from the Meta Model to Patterns 1 and 2? No. I've heard people I think well of say nice things about DHE and Bandler's current training. Not very specific things; but nice things. But please: if there is some radical breakthrough being concocted, don't *tell* me: *show* me. No promises, no rhetoric, no sales pitches. If people are actually doing seminars on the stuff, someone must have a couple of hundred of pages of text, exercises, notes, written down *some*where. Post some of it on the Net. Let's see it. Are my criticisms about DHE valid? Of course not. I don't know what DHE is. My guess is that Bandler is returning to his Ericksonian roots, and putting people into deep trance and having them them try to get their unconscious to grasp all the separate nlp stuff as a whole and viscerally, rather than technique-by-technique and intellectually. He seems to be indulging in his old, brilliant, unacknowledged twistings of covert conditioning behaviorism by having people imagine machines and associate their responses to it (ie you visualize a control panel with a sliding switch; you (probably hypnotically) associate the far left is utter despair, the far right with ecstatic bliss; then, when you feel down, you think of the panel and slide the switch to the far right and voila! Relief.). And he seems to be playing around with Erickson's old time-distortion and pseudo-orientation-in-time techniques, setting up some sort of ideal holistic future self-image or resolved future problem situation and using suggestion to get people to work up after it. I almost think that Bandler (reflecting on the fact that Erickson was not all that impressed with nlp, as you probably know) thought to himself: what would Erickson be doing if he were kicking around in the 90's as an nlp trainer? And this sort of heavily pro-unconscious anti-conscious-technique variety of training is the result. But is this DHE? I don't know. You know, I've gotten some horrible flaming from people for actually praising Ross Jeffries' stuff. But what can I say? His uses have been rather original, his explanations of them have been clear, he's responded to my questions about it with courtesy and generosity, I've tried it, it seems very effective. Well: I feel compelled to say so. I would be very happy to say as much for the latest stuff put out by Richard Bandler and the New Coders and the Core Transformers. I simply -- can't. As with much of nlp before it, people -- I'm sorry to say, usually the ones who stand to make a profit, or the ones who have already sunk a mint into it and don't wish to seem like fools -- get up and say, 'Golly, this stuff has quintupled my Alpha State, dissolved my Repressed Memories, given me multiple zen orgasms, evolved me to A Higher Stage, etc.'. Yet, if you ask for any proof apart from their subjective opinion, a rather artful silence descends. Or else the suggestion that you take a few months and several thousand dollars and leave your job and home and family and Experience DHE(tm) Halfway Around The World Today. Thanks; but I have things to do at home. I am not hostile to DHE or Bandler -- quite the opposite. Hope stirs me. But hope doesn't convince me; print convinces me. When someone explains to me, specifically, clearly, explicitly, what it is and what it does and why it works -- I'll think about going. Who knows? Maybe it's the greatest thing since Victoria's Secret discovered direct mail. But if there is a rule to observe in the often comical country of Personal Growth, it is Caveat Emptor: let the buyer beware. As for trainers and students -- let me tell you a story of my own. One of my favorites. It concerns the great nineteenth-century biologist Louis Aggasiz. Aggasiz would occasionally get what he considered a promising student. He would give the student a fish, and say, "Go somewhere and sit down and study this fish really closely. Tell me everything you notice about it. Then come back and tell me what you've observed." The student would go off with the fish for an hour or two, then come back, and say to Aggasiz, "Well, sir, I noticed this and that, blah blah blah." And Aggasiz would look at the student with an expression of great pity, and hand him back the fish. "Look more closely." The student would take the rest of the day, come back, report on a few things he hadn't noticed before, and Aggasiz would shake his head. "No! Observe *closely*. With *precision*. Here. Take this pencil. Draw the fish. Note down how how many scales it has. Note down the number of ribs, in its fin. Notice *everything*. Take a week. Go!" And the student would come back in a week, hollow-eyed, with a full notebook of papers, and Aggasiz would look them over and nod and think and sigh. "You've barely noticed a thing. Here. Take this magnifying glass. And here! This scalpel, too. Take a month. Take two months. Notice *everything*. Now go." And then in two months the student would reappear, bleary, haggard, staring, with ton of notes and drawings and papers. And Aggasiz would finally smile. Because he now had a student who actually learned a few things. And who knew how to learn a few things. And *I* daresay a student like that WOULD learn a lot from watching Bandler. And Bandler might learn something too. David Pascal. From alt.psychology.nlp Sat May 27 16:07:48 1995 Path: udcf.gla.ac.uk!newsfeed.ed.ac.uk!str-ccsun!zippy.dct.ac.uk!yama.mcc.ac.uk!sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk!qmw!demon!doc.news.pipex.net!pipex!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news-e1a.megaweb.com!newstf01.news.aol.com!newsbf02.news.aol.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: alt.psychology.nlp Subject: Is Training Worthless? Message-ID: <3q3c2b$d5s@newsbf02.news.aol.com> From: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) Date: 25 May 1995 21:48:59 -0400 Reply-To: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) NNTP-Posting-Host: newsbf02.mail.aol.com Lines: 241 Mr, smarting a bit from a woefully rude post of mine, sent me a bit of private email to which I feel I really ought to respond publicly (for reasons explained in my response). Mr graciously wrote: "I write privately (and with good humor) because I agree with you. I also note you engage in the very same airing. Did you intend to - or was your post design to teach us how to do NLP better?" No. I was just running off at the mouth, like a boob. A writer, French, I believe, once sent someone a long letter, then added that if only he'd had more time he would have sent a short one. So with me. I do rationalize my over-oration by looking at what I write and trying to see if there is at least one solid thing about doing nlp better or offer some sort of information someone might consider useful -- an email address, a web page number, something. (Though having met that requirement, I have a tendency to scribble away at length. A grievous failing.) I do honestly try not to air *just* my opinion about things, though. "Sometimes learning how to do NLP better results from understanding the attitude of NLP and the methodology. Of course, if one only knows NLP as a technique based practice then only discourse on techniques would make sense. Like anchor with two fingers instead of one." Hmm. It would take me an essay to respond fairly to that one. The question would be: does the attitude and methodology of nlp, and the techniques and technical practices, exist in separate airtight compartments? My answer would be no. Attitude and method is sharpened in the course of actual practice. Rather as in Karate or Tai Chi. There's something of the Cartesian mind-body split in your question; and of course, as that split permeates the whole western outlook, I certainly don't mean to fault you for it. I'm quite (quite) subject to it myself. But I've found that often the solution is to lean toward the body, toward the concrete. Toward 'technique', if you will. It's like neurosurgery: is it *purely* a matter of technique? No. Attitude's a part of it. But journals on the subject concentrate on technique. And they're right to do so. -- Let me put it this way: I find people's opinions on the swish pattern to be interesting. But I find the actual swish pattern itself to be both interesting and truly helpful. I prefer examinations of the latter to mere judgments on it. In fact (...oh dear, I'm beginning to drivel away again...), let me give an excellent example. The great Ross Jeffries debate. How many utterly pointless posts have we both had to wade through on this subject? Yet in my case, I bypassed the judgments, went to the techniques, looked at them, and courteously asked Jeffries several technical questions about them. Surprise! Not only did I get useful and interesting responses about technique, I got several demonstrations of courtesy, generosity, and thoughtful reflection from the Great Satan himself. Ends, ethics, praise, blame -- concentrating on these things separates us. But simple concentration on useful technique brings us all together. So I favor it. "Humor, freedom of thought (yours and mine and everyone else') learning, growing, exchanging ideas is what freedom is about? You ask do we want censorship and then suggest only talking about NLP in a certain fashion (while stating that you agree with the other author's) you then engage in the same kind of 'frankly substance free communication' philosophizing. It was supposed to be a joke right - satirical meant in good humor?" , you perceptive devil! No wonder snapped you up! Yup, I was doing all that multiple-level stuff, and semi-tongue-in-cheek too. (Just a touch of ambiguity lends great dividends in personal and intellectual freedom, my boy; but that's a technique, so I'll have to be quiet about it.) Censorship does in fact repel me; I want everyone to be free to say whatever they want. Self-censorship, however -- self-discipline, to be precise -- , holds an appeal. Oh, I too am a great sinner in this regard, babbling away. But I think the point holds true and was worth saying: I wish we all (especially me) would sit down and think about the value of what we write before we post it. Is it really worth saying? Worth reading? (I think of things like the great 'Why Is Bandler Fat?' controversy some weeks ago. Was that really worth fifty-some posts? We would all be better off re-reading Trance-formations, don't you think?) My private rule (to which I but raggedly adhere) is that I try to put at least one thing I think someone could truly profit by in a post before I'll pop it into the newsgroup. And to wait a day or so before placing it. I do think it's a (ahem) technique worth mentioning. By way of demonstrating the value of that, may I shamefacedly say that in retrospect I would not have picked your and Mr 's posts to illustrate 'frankly substance free communication'. I did so because I wanted examples of relatively insubstantial paragraphs by people who have obviously contributed extremely substantial paragraphs indeed, and with whom I explicitly agree, so as to make my point (that statements of simple agreement or disagreement, praise or blame, are not really very informative statements) quite plain. Alas! On second thought, I seemed to me that a newcomer to the group (or a brain-dead oldcomer, of which there are not a few) could incorrectly interpret that post as a mean-spirited put-down of yourself. Which was absolutely not my intention. Please: accept my apologies. Which I here post them publicly, writhing with shame. Alt.psychology.nlp is much, much, the better for your presence. "I would love to know where and when you got your training? You apparently have not been around good trainers for awhile - or are up on who does what and how?" Although I have known about nlp for, oh, about 15 years now, and studied it during most of that time with real interest, my formal training took place about two years ago. I would prefer not to say with whom, though. Partly because (as you obviously know by now) I found the training process to be, shall we say, a trifle lax; and I don't like publicly bad-mouthing other people. Also because -- I liked my trainer. A competent trainer? No. But charming, sincere, knowledgeable, committed? Yes. Very much so. We were friends; despite my being quite honest about the flimsiness of nlp training; and we still are. I have occasionally wished my trainer *were* a grasping New Age rip-off artist. Regrettably, that is not the case. And I say regrettably because I believe it highlights the real difficulties in the seminar training process itself. Am I aware of any good trainers and where they are? Alas, : I am totally isolated. I have no contacts whatsoever with the nlp world or crowd. I'm all by myself. The only other neuro-linguistic programmer I know is my astonishing friend, Mr Rudy Matic of The Galen Group. And Rudy Matic -- phew! Nlp resides in his encyclopaedic head the way a single bush resides in Yosemite National Park. We don't spend a lot of time talking about nlp; but on the odd occasions that we do he puts the usual understandings of it through more twists, warps, and heretical inversions than an origami master does with a mobius strip. DHE is a model T Ford compared to some of the implications of this guy's off-the-cuff remarks. He should be posting here; not me. But in terms of regular nlp? I am quite quite alone. "Training a good way to make a buck? You have to be kidding!!! Yes lots of goofs want to be trainers and lots of goofs are. But for those who live their skill training is a dedication to the transfer of skill. It involves longer hours and more heartbreak and reward than many other occupations. If one is a true trainer it carries a burden of responsibility you probably wouldn't understand or even begin to appreciate. You have reduce it the the few who (including those you name) hand out certificates like candy. You got one I take it? Did it mean anything to you - or was the experience somehow devalued becasue everyone else did too? Certificates should be a reward for a job well done - but the most important thing is behavioral acquisition and you don't absolutely don't get that from a book or tape program. You get it by having dedication and studying with one who is equally if not more so dedicated to assisting you in getting the skills." 1. I did in fact get formal Practitioner Certification. 2. I do not consider it worth much. 3. The reason I don't consider it worth much is that I know from personal experience that it can be awarded to people who cannot grasp a door handle, much less neuro-linguistic programming. (Mmmm...I'm sorry, I'm being facetious again. You see, I think certification in nlp ought to be like getting a veterinary license, or a TV repair certificate. Yes, there are incompetent vets, bad TV repairmen, but by and large when you see their license on the wall, you can be relatively sure the person may not be brilliant but at least knows his stuff. In nlp -- I'm sorry, that's just not the case. You should read some of the horror stories e-mailed to me privately the last couple of days! Sure, I know there a good, solid, even brilliant trainers out there. I've said as much in my posts. You, : your own commitment and concern and desire to excel are obvious to me -- to anyone. There were people who came out of the same training who tried hard and are good and know a little about nlp. Me, for instance. But 'training' didn't confer it on them; hard personal individual effort outside the classroom did.) And! It seems to me that in that last sentence you have said it absolutely right and absolutely wrong; everything I stand for and everything I stand against. YES: the most important thing is behavioral acquisition. You learn it by *doing* it, by *practicing* it, by integrating into your thinking and living. And NO: you *don't* get it by merely going to a seminar. You *can* get part of it that way. If you're lucky enough to get a really dedicated, intelligent, first-rate trainer -- well, of course it helps. Who denies that? But merely attending a seminar, or even several seminars, isn't enough. Maybe there are many other ways to train people in nlp; perhaps we ought to be out there modeling Zen archery schools or interactive software or Vince Lombardi. But I have to judge by my own experience, and in my experience, I've found that the only way you ultimately learn is on your own. "NLP has been mythified and cannonized and everyone thinks that if it is NLP it is the same worldwide. That last point is absolutely hands down false! We both agree on that. But rather than knocking the transfer of skill why not inspire people to get sound hands on, practical training that benefits them. Learn to steer people and direct them using NLP skills so we can all get better and improve rather than dissuading people from learning and growing becasue you had a poor experience" Oh . Tsk tsk tsk. Where have I said to people: "Hey you! Stop learning and growing!" Of course people should learn and grow; it's a truism. I have the highest opinion of nlp; I just don't consider it complete, perfect, and flawless in each and every respect. Nlp needs a good swift kick in the ass every now and then. Doesn't it? Come on, admit it. (Hell, so do I, for that matter). As for my 'poor experience', ah, you miss the whole point of my angry tirades. I did not have a poor experience. I had what I believe to be a pretty standard experience. It isn't unique to nlp -- I've attended marketing seminars, writing classes. Hell, I've spoken before audiences, taught college students, myself. I've found that some come away with more than others, but that no one really comes away with a whole lot. You do learn a lot by giving one; but not by simply attending one. Nlp seminars just aren't that different. They're worth attending. But -- it's like exercising. Can you get in shape by hiring a personal trainer? Sure. Can you also get in shape by just doing the exercises yourself? It's a little harder, it's takes will and self-discipline, but -- sure. I've learned more about doing nlp via the second route than the first. I don't say that's true or best for everyone. But it's been true for me. "I think you need to expereicne other trainings. Round out your expereicne should you choose to counsel, or write. Find out whos hot and who is not before you lump everyone together." -- where have I lumped everyone together, or said that all trainers are alike? Read my stuff, son. Savor its succulent subtleties. Imbibe in its rich and silken depths. All trainers, bums? I've explicitly said that some are brilliant. And some are. I judge by my own experience; and how can I say that all trainers are lax, when trainers such as you, my friend, write to me with such an honest concern for the highest standards in your craft? Sure: training is worth getting. I got some. It didn't kill me. And I am glad to post this, my duly considered judgment, on the Net; I hope it brings you and DHE many a supplicant. (But: I do believe that the nlp training and certification could do with a *great* deal of critical examination and revamping. Who doesn't know that?) But as for getting more experience myself -- ! Get real! Suppose I were to say to you, " , your Usenet posts could do with a little verbal pizazz here and there. Why, I'll bet a really crack posting or two would help your reputation -- increase your profile -- get you more business -- raise your profit margin. Tell you what. Why don't you put doing trainings on hold for a while, cancel your weekends for the next three months, leave and the toddlers, and come to New York to the David Pascal Institute of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric(tm). Only $6000 a crack. And if you bring along, well -- $10,000 will cover you both. And, you know, afterwards, there's ten or eleven or twenty other reeeealy good newsgroup writing seminar guys you could also look into...no?...I got a couple of my audiotapes here...only $500...We take Discover Card..." I suffered once, . Once is enough. "I hope (though the words may sound strong - that the tone of this message is not) that you realize I agree with you. I agree with your ability to comment and to post. (I find it odd in light of your other posts on airy philosophizing - that either you do it and aren't aware of when you do it - or you are pokinh fun at yourself as well). But also I think it is important that you experience more of the NLP world than you have expereinced. You sell them and yourself short if you don't." Maybe. But you can make quite a profit by selling short, you know. :-) David Pascal. From alt.psychology.nlp Fri Apr 21 14:33:34 1995 Path: udcf.gla.ac.uk!newsfeed.ed.ac.uk!uknet!peernews.demon.co.uk!doc.news.pipex.net!pipex!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!newstf01.news.aol.com!newsbf02.news.aol.co From: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) Newsgroups: alt.psychology.nlp Subject: Re: Taking Jeffries Seriously Date: 12 Apr 1995 11:28:32 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Lines: 164 Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com Message-ID: <3mgrj0$g2l@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Reply-To: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) NNTP-Posting-Host: newsbf02.mail.aol.com In reply to my post concerning taking Ross Jeffries seriously, wrote: "Never have I so badly wanted a separate alt. group for NLP..." How very right you are, . Me too. There was such an alt. -- alt.seduction.fast -- which was choked off the byte-stream by alt.config. As a result you and I must put up with Speed Seduction here at alt.psychology.nlp, like it or not. Personally I don't, which is why I sent the letter of protest to alt.config. I don't imagine it'll do any good, but feel free to send one yourself. Friends and foes of Ross Jeffries both can agree on this one. Also, wrote, regarding a remark of mine about Milton Erickson: "Whoa! Let's not simplify the artistic genius of Milton H. Erickson that much. I don't know how you know what he didn't use. I do know from his explanations of why he used certain techniques, phrases, tonalities, etc. in different sessions that he gathered and knew an awful lot of information about his patients, either before or as he was treating them. Yes, he could do "instant therapy" and Ross tries to help people do "instant seduction" or "instant salesmanship," but I don't think anyone who has studied the work of Erickson, even Ross, would agree that ALL he did was "hypnotic language patterns" and that it is the same as the training that Ross offers." Well. If I have given you, or anyone, the impression that I was belittling Milton Erickson, let me correct that mistaken impression at once. Erickson is clearly the most important psychologist since Rank. We shall be learning from the magnificent, enigmatic work of that great hypnotherapist for decades if not centuries. Indeed I consider the major bulk of NLP (as is the case with Brief Therapy, Solution-Oriented Therapy, Quantum Psychology, etc.) to be simply an attempt to systematize and make explicit Erickson's ground-breaking work. But let's face facts. Although much of NLP derives from Erickson, and there is undoubtedly a certain amount of overlap as regards technique, Erickson was not purely doing formal NLP. In addition to that historical fact, Erickson was color-blind, tone-deaf, and crippled with polio. He essentially related to his clients, he *could* only principally relate to his clients, as I say, through 'hypnotic language patterns'. To say that is not to say (nor did I say) that that was 'all' he did. To say that is also not to take away from his immense achievements, any more than to say that Shakespeare essentially related to his audience through 'Elizabethan language patterns' takes away from Shakespeare's achievements. The artistry and insight of both men was vast, and by all means let us acknowledge it; but let us also acknowledge that it was principally verbal in nature. But. That was not the point I was trying to make in my post. My point was concerning Ross Jeffries. And I'd like to restate it. Why are we here in this newsgroup? To discuss NLP. Supposedly. Not to accuse Ross Jeffries, and each other, of stupidity, pederasty, and incest. To discuss NLP; to deepen our understanding of this unique and interesting tool; to learn something. Hopefully. Now whether one approves of Ross Jeffries or not (and my own view is somewhat mixed), he is clearly practicing a highly stripped-down form of NLP that is both unusual, and (if it is anything as effective as he claims) surely worth taking seriously. On top of this, he is the only NLP practitioner that I am aware of who is seriously examining, practicing, and reporting on, the *covert* uses and applications of NLP -- or perhaps I should say, the only practitioner who admits to it. Both these things warrant taking the man and his system seriously. And quite frankly I wish we all would, rather than wasting our time and everyone's by spewing on one another like a pack of two-year-old brats. And speaking of The Devil: Ross Jeffries wrote, in explaining some aspects of his system: "..while people usually will resist direct commands and directions of any sort, they will NOT resist descriptions; that in fact, THERE REALLY IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SKILLFULL DESCRIPTION and a set of directions, in terms of the impact it makes on the person's mind, except that people DON'T RESIST THE DESCRIPTIONS. Once the person is in the state described, I teach men to accelerate and amplify the state and, equally important BIND IT and LOCK IT IN to them! It's one thing to create a temporary "soap-bubble" of attraction or connection that lasts for a moment and then "pops". I teach how to use embedded commands, presuppositions and TIME DISTORTION to keep the state locked in; in effect we move it from a STATE to a TRAIT!" Let me ask a few questions about that. Speed Seduction is interesting to me, as I said, not because applies conventional NLP to seduction, but because (in my view) it is a surprisingly unconventional version of NLP in itself. Jeffries, with refreshing cynicism, is stripping recent NLP of much of its New Age ecology-posturings, and perhaps helping to turn it into the bright hard-edged tool it once promised to be. Nonetheless, I don't consider that application flawless. You see, in my experience, NLP tends to let the air out of intense emotional states far more easily than it intensifies those states. It cures phobias just fine; but it doesn't seem to create them very well. I find there's a terribly faded quality to most NLP techniques. For instance? "THERE REALLY IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SKILLFULL DESCRIPTION and a set of directions, in terms of the impact it makes on the person's mind." -- RJ. Well -- there is, of course. If I say to you, "Jump off a bridge", you will say, "No." If I say, "Gosh, didja hear about Rick? He took a JUMP OFF A BRIDGE! I heard he used to WALK ACROSS THAT BRIDGE BACK AND FORTH and LOOK INTO THE WATER and I guess he used to SEE PICTURES OF JUMPING AND HITTING THE WATER AND DROWNING." Now it's true that that second statement will not get you a flat out "No" type of resistance response; but neither is your listener going to get very wet. A 'skillful description' (what, incidentally, are the exact criteria for that?) can help get someone into a particular state of mind; but it will not necessarily lead that person to do a particular act. True: they do tend to overlap. But not invariably. (As in the case of describing feelings of arousal to a girl who barely knows you. She may get aroused, all right; but does she turn to you, or to an exorcist?) Another example? Time Distortion. "Can you IMAGINE A TIME IN YOUR FUTURE when you SUDDENLY WANT TO UNDERGO A SEX-CHANGE OPERATION and while you're on the operating table you MYSTERIOUSLY SEE A VISION OF JOAN OF ARC and DECIDE TO BECOME A FEMINIST NUN and after you ASSASSINATE THE POPE, can you IMAGINE LOOKING BACK ON TODAY AS HAVING BEEN THE START OF IT ALL?" Well, yeah; I can *imagine* it. I can even visualize it, and move pictures around, and make a voice in my head go "How totally cool". The Pontiff, nonetheless, is safe. There are other weaknesses. 'Locking it in'. I can't help but find that to be one of the softer links in the Jeffries system. Linking is Anchoring, of course; NLP's Pavlovian Classical Conditioning rip-off. Ross seems to say: just gesture to yourself, and the link is established. Kenrick Cleveland is blunter: forget anchoring: just get the girl into the state you want and be there: she'll associate you with that state. Maybe so. But I find that link to be an excessively weak one. 'State to Trait'?. Now that is interesting. You seem to be saying that if a girl thinks, "Gee, I'm excited," she may or may not sleep with you. But if she thinks, "I'm a slut with no self-control or resistance whatsoever", your carnal goal increases its liklihood. Again, maybe so; I have to say, though, that I see no evidence (yet) of covert identity change in your work. (Mind you, I don't say its impossible. In fact the New Ross Jeffries Pattern all but writes itself: "Think of a total tramp, Debbie." "Why -- Madonna, Ross!" "Ooh, yeah, she's the lowest. Say, Debbie, when you think of an unutterably cheap harlot like that, where's her picture? There? Gosh, isn't the human mind interesting? Say, if you were to picture yourself as a rock superstar, Debbie -- .") Of course, as some of you out there read that, your lips curl, the phrase 'unethical juvenile trivia' quick upon them. Unethical juvenile trivia? Maybe. But -- after all, what if it works? From alt.psychology.nlp Thu Jun 8 13:33:42 1995 Path: udcf.gla.ac.uk!newsfeed.ed.ac.uk!str-ccsun!news.dcs.warwick.ac.uk!warwick!sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk!qmw!demon!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news- From: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) Newsgroups: alt.psychology.nlp Subject: Why Is Bandler Illiterate? Date: 6 Jun 1995 23:22:55 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Lines: 481 Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com Message-ID: <3r362f$i6e@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Reply-To: davpascal@aol.com (Davpascal) NNTP-Posting-Host: newsbf02.mail.aol.com A pupil of Mr Richard Bandler's, chiding me for my lack of seminar experience with the redoubtable Mr Bandler and for my lack of understanding of Mr Bandler's weighty new innovations, took me to task at length on this matter. He said I might repost his messages to me on alt.psychology.nlp, with which (to this newsgroup's loss) he has nothing to do; but, since I rather think well of the guy personally (whereas his position is one I heartily despise), I have elected to leave him anonymous. So. To reply point by point: 1. "Time for a Change," which seems to be your major data point, was edited by someone else, from a several years old transcript of a hypnosis seminar. I'm not sure how you can infer ANYTHING about the rigor of his R&D or his new non-hypnosis material from the book." Sir, you're absolutely right. But what are my options? How can I infer something from nothing? The 'rigor of his R&D'? What R&D? Bandler has grad students running around Psych 101 labs doing his stuff? First I've heard of it. As near as I can tell, Bandler tries out some hunch of his on one of his luckless seminar guinea pigs, and then -- because the Design Human Engineer never engineered himself into picking up a pencil -- forgets about it. Very amusing for Mr Bandler, I'm sure. But who learns anything from it? 2. "The books ("Time For A Change", "Trance-formations", "Neuro-linguistic Programming Volume One") are outdated. Richard hasn't put the last eight years' work into print. He doesn't intend to. His recent stuff is highly auditory and kinesthetic; it doesn't lend itself to print. (The principles do, but his strength is DOING, not MAKING-DIDACTIC.)" Music is highly auditory and kinesthetic too. It doesn't lend itself to print either. Does that mean that classical scores aren't written down somewhere? Or that books on music instruction, criticism, don't exist by the ream? You say the principles *do* lend themselves to print? Great. Care to name one? 3. "NLP wasn't intended to advance knowledge. It is a tool for uncovering, codifying, and transmitting cognitive strategies. Your statements presuppose that advancement of knowledge is somehow a goal of NLP. It isn't." Advancement of knowledge is not a goal of nlp? Well, good Lord, what is it good for then? An aesthetic experience of some sort? Some incommunicable mystic spasm? Don't you *learn* something by 'uncovering, codifying, and transmitting cognitive strategies', even if they're only your own? Isn't uncovering a cognitive strategy a form of knowing *something*? Doesn't *any* cognitive strategy involve knowing *some*thing? Isn't cognition itself cognition of something outside itself? Nlp is the, quote, *study* of the structure of subjective experience, unquote, right? If pure subjective experience is what you want, stick your head in a microwave. You won't get understanding, but you'll get 'subjective experience' galore. 4. "...you're so attached to your style of learning and understanding that you're unwilling to investigate something that doesn't fit your preexisting model. A lot of scientists do that. We don't have a separate word for it, though, because those scientists aren't remembered or talked about by very many people. Some scientists perform vastly wild thought experiments. They look for the outlying data points. They embrace the "impossible," and sometimes come up with radically new ways of thinking that transform the world. But they do it by stretching their thinking; not by waiting until stuff has been watered down into their old paradigms." My 'old paradigm', to which I confess I have great sentimental attachment, is that things can be explained. Einstein performed vastly wild thought experiments. But even he wrote the Special Theory of Relativity down. It took seventeen pages ( -- phew! War And Peace, by the standards of Richard Bandler's last decade! -- ) but he did it. He did not embrace the "impossible," as you put it; merely the truth; and he made the assumption that people could follow his steps. Is the complexity of DHE such that it's beyond all possible human comprehension (except Richard Bandler's), or merely beyond the puny brains of alt.psychology.nlp? I think it is neither. But no one seems to want to go to the trouble of explaining it clearly and at length. And *because* no one tries, I think the opposite situation has risen: it's not that DHE is so profound it can't be explained: it's that because no one bothers trying to explain it that DHE remains an incoherent blur of confused verbiage whose 'achievements', so far as I can see (and, yes, that is perhaps not very far) can simply be ascribed to superb but not particularly complicated hypnosis. Listen. Do you really want to know how to think? Write. Then *look look look* at *what* you write. Look at what you've written above. When you say things like the stuff above about science, what are you doing? You're sinking into woozy Milton Model prose that looks like thought but isn't. 'Stretching their thinking'? Like silly putty or like cheap panty hose? 'Embracing the impossible'? Around the neck or by the shoulders? Did the impossible slap their face for being fresh? You *want* to say: good scientists are open to new and unusual ideas. Very true. So am I. So are you, probably. But even a new and unusual idea has to be *clearly stated*. DHE, so far as I am aware, has not been. 5. "You are wrong." I am? How neat! I love being in error. That means I've come up against a hard truth somewhere. Umm -- do you happen to remember which one it was? 6. "Your beliefs seem based on an obsolete book, with gaps filled with stuff you made up. Despite lofty words about "*light*" and scientific technique, you seem more interested in third-hand interpretation of someone else's summary of real-world experience than in getting some first hand experience and observation for yourself." My words were about *reason*, not light. And they wern't lofty words at all; reason is itself lofty. As for my my aversion to first hand experience, you're quite wrong; I consider it the ultimate test. But what can I do? These third-hand interpretations are all I have. My aversion is not to first-hand experience at all. It's to this notion that nothing can be comprehended except through the seminar-superstar system; that knowledge and innovation somehow have to be hoarded; that revolutions in psychological theory are only available on cassette tape via UPS for $500. 7. "Every evidence-related sentence in your message is that you want things in WRITING. New knowledge filters into writing very, very slowly. If writing is all that convinces you, you're out of luck. None of the NLP I've learned since 1988 is written down anywhere. Sorry." Me too. But tell me -- doesn't it strike you as a trifle, um, funny?, that in nearly a *decade* of teaching, training, 'rigorous R&D', hundreds if not thousands of seminars by the author of several classic books, seminars given to often highly educated, articulate, academically oriented people such as yourself, *no* one has written down *anything*? I admit I kind of like to have things in writing; but the reason isn't some neurotic attachment to my pencil (phallic symbol though it is...hmm...maybe I ought to use the keyboard more often...). You see, I write for a living. Businessmen, corporations, inarticulate people, essentially come to me and want me to express something well which they themselves seem only to express poorly. They are Bandlers, if you will; allergic to the Word and its graces. I've found that as I try to make articulate sense of the inchoate mush they hand me, I -- find out things. I learn more. I understand better. I often have creative insights, valuable criticisms, useful ideas. I particularly find that re-writing has these benefits. As I sit there searching for the right word, thinking about the experience, crossing out and re-crossing out a sentence, and deliberately trying to articulate an idea and make it as clear as I can, the idea itself becomes clearer. The misunderstandings I brought with me clear up; the lack of knowledge is filled. I may not be in the possession of the truth, but I come closer and closer; and end up, perhaps, in the possession of at least some truths, small though they may be. I may be mistaken; but if I articulate my understanding publicly, someone may correct me. I may only be half-right; but if I articulate my thoughts publicly, someone may supply the other half. I may be completely self-deluded and wrong; but if I state my errors publicly and in good faith, seriously trying to understand what is right, someone somewhere may see it, and, if not set my feet going in the right direction, at least set his own, or another's. I may be blind, I may stumble, I may fall; but others will progress; man will progress. Is this so contemptible a path to undertake? 8. "If direct experience convinces you, NLP has lots of that. But you have to be careful who you train with, because very few NLPers are good at creating direct experience." See, this is what puzzles me. What do you mean by 'direct experience'? It sounds to me like you mean having some nlp master trainer *impose* some sort esoteric 'experience' on you -- the Cattle Brand school of nlp instruction. To me, 'direct experience' means testing nlp in everyday life situations, seeing whether it works, and trying something else if it doesn't. One of the best things about nlp practice I ever heard came from the Great Satan himself, Ross Jeffries. He was trying to get some guy to try one of his techniques and said, basically, "Look, here's this technique. Now you take this one pattern here and go out and try it. You don't have to believe in it; you don't have to have me there holding your hand; you don't have to use it on someone who knows nlp and knows how they're supposed to react to it; just go out there and use it and if it works, go with it, and if it doesn't, forget it, try something else." Exactly! The point of using nlp techniques is not to use nlp techniques, it's to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve in life a little more easily; to do better things in better ways. It's not an end in itself. 9. "Few people present Bandler's recent stuff. He, himself, is the least-inclined-to-write individual I've ever met. He changes things (experimenting) each workshop, and has no consistent handouts." Does this sound like DHE hasn't been consistently worked out? No, foolish reader! It means (*gasp*) Bandler's Revolutionary Breakthrough Is Not Only So Far Beyond Your Unsophisticated Understanding That Words Cannot Express It But Is Evolving Even Further As We Speak! 10. "Once I posted a written description of some of his stuff. Someone thought they understood it, and it ended up in a popular book on NLP. But the author GOT IT WRONG. Without me there to demonstrate what I meant, the verbal description wasn't adequate. Since then, I've stopped *putting the stuff in writing." He GOT IT WRONG? One person GOT IT WRONG? No *wonder* you stopped communicating with the remainder of humanity forever. Why -- if one person got it wrong -- the entire human race would unquestionably screw it up too! Why should a gentleman of your dazzling insight deal with four billion boobs like that? 11. "What writing I've done, I will no longer post to anyone who hasn't had some direct experience of the stuff I've written about. If you want other people's stuff posted, you'll have to ask them." I have asked. But, alas, most responses have been as -- coy? rhetorical? insubstantial? -- as your own. But -- hey: I'll ask again. (Silence, everyone, please.) Please, O Mystic Guardians of DHE, explain publicly to this most unworthy servant in the most plain, precise, prosaic, exact, rhetoric-free terms possible, exactly what DHE is, how it differs from nlp, what its techniques are, how they work, and why. Give us exercises, that we may try them out for ourselves in the real world. Give us techniques to practice, that we may know the validity thereof. Give us a free sample or two, that we may perhaps later open our purse-strings and buy the whole cake, as we did with nlp. Favor us in our darkness with your postings, O Insightful Ones. In the name of Bandler, and of Grinder, and of Judith DeLozier, amen. 12. "It's pretty obvious that the descriptions you've read have failed to convey the actual experience to you. Either because the person discussing it wasn't able to put it into words, or because you filled in the gaps. Incorrectly. That's why I prefer direct experience." It is not the 'experience' that matters to me. It is the results. Listen, let me give you an example. Back in the 60's, I believe, the Russians were doing experiments in depth hypnosis. They took a girl and hypnotized her into believing she was the great Renaissance painter, Raphael of Urbino. They let her remain in that state for several days, attending art classes, drawing, sketching. Her work while in trance was judged to be superior. Once out of trance, her skills remained -- indeed, she considered taking up studies and a career in art. Does this sound like modelling? Like Deep Trance Identification? Yup. Does it sound like what Bandler's doing? I have no idea *what* Bandler's doing. He's not telling us. The Russians, on the other hand, are offering a clear, simple technique with measurable results. Well: Russia, 1; Bandler, 0. 13. "...if print is what convinces you, then ABANDON NLP. Go FIND SOMETHING THAT WORKS IN PRINT. NLP isn't it." How can I explain this to you? True, print is my medium of choice for learning things. Just as the street is my medium of choice for getting to work. I could parachute to work. I could tunnel to work. But the street gets me there fastest and best. I don't confuse it *with* work. It's just the most convenient means to an end. When I make a salad, I don't tear the recipe out of the recipe book and eat the page. I read the recipe, follow the directions, and voila: there the salad basks, in the joy of pure being. Your point seems to be that DHE is like swimming, or like zen enlightenment: there is some kind of experience there that can't be put into words but has to be felt and done in order to be completely understood. I can accept that. But I have to point out that the library book shelves are packed with books on swimming and books on zen. And that these books are a big, big help. I have no manic obsession with print as such. Would it surprise you to know that I've heard tapes of Bandler telling stories? That I've seen him on a few NLP Comprensive videotapes? Interesting performances, certainly. But 'skill-installing'? 'Attitude-enhancing'? Seems to me I have the same crummy attitude I had before. OK, maybe those were not DHE(tm) tapes. But what is keeping someone who goes to DHE seminars from just getting a camcorder, or a cassette recorder, or just a lousy pencil and paper and putting down what this stuff is, what it's supposed to do, and how it works? Why doesn't Bandler just zap some groupie of his and go, "Me Don Juan, You Carlos Castaneda. Scribble, boy!" 14. "Next time you're in [nameless distant metropolis], buy me lunch, and I'll give you a specific, clear, explicit discussion of what it is, what it does, and my theories as to why it works." Next time you're in Rochester, buy *me* lunch, and I'll listen! Better yet. Tell you what. Send me your address. I'll send you a 30-minute TDK cassette, and you can reveal the mystic secrets of DHE over the linguini without either of us undergoing jet-lag. Hell, a 60-minute cassette -- have dessert too. 15. "...I study only from the best. I've learned incredible amounts from watching Bandler and analyzing my own behavioral changes after a Bandler seminar. Plus, one of my biggest skills is codifying things so they can be understood. You see, I never said that *I* didn't develop an explicit codification of some of what he does. (I did, and I've even written some of it down.)" While I can but humbly marvel at the incredible amounts of learning you have no doubt gleaned from laying your cheek against Mr Bandler's papal hem, and while I do not question the incisive accuracies of your behavioral self-analyses ('Dear Diary: I picked my nose three times less today than yesterday! Thank you thank you Richard Bandler!'), I can't help but point out that (a) you keep giving me no hard evidence whatsoever of *any* of these things, (b) you keep giving me no hard *definitions* of any of these things, and (c) since you spend nine-tenths of your criticisms telling me that print's no good and that DHE can't be explained, why do you follow it up by telling me that print *does* work and DHE *can* be explained -- and then by not explaining it? To give you back your own advice: stop talking and act. You know something? Post it. 16. "You're not here in person; I can't show you. If you want me to write a hundred pages of didactic text that's descriptive enough that I don't feel it will be abused and/or misinterpreted, I'm not interested in that (unless you'd like to do it as a contract job)." Your dazzling ability to codify understandings is not in evidence here. If in the above statement you are asking me to help you write an epoch-making magnum opus on DHE that will beat Mr Richard Bandler to the punch and establish you as a glittering star in the nlp firmament, why, completely shameless writer-for-hire that I am, I gleefully accept, and await your cash, check, or Mastercard number. (Be warned: I charge even more than Bandler does. On the other hand, *my* results are tangible.) If however you are asking me to extricate one hundred pages of didactic text from your stream-of-consciousness monologues on nlp, and pay you for the privilege, I must with great sorrow forego such an honor. 17. "You haven't the direct experience to back up your suppositions about what Bandler is or isn't interested or capable of doing. My experience with him and NLP seems to come from a different decade than yours. The very thing we mean by "NLP" is probably so different that it's not worth continuing this." Maybe so. Let's find out. What is my sense of nlp? This: twenty years ago, Mr Bandler and Mr Grinder had an intuition. They felt that if you observed really closely how someone really good at something did it, you could copy how he did it, and teach others to do it. If you found a phobic or a neurotic who'd recovered from something, you could trace the mental steps he'd taken, and teach someone else suffering from the problem to take the same steps and get better. If you found an Olympic athelete giving the performance of his career and traced the inner logic that led to that performance, you could teach a fledgling athelete to go that path. A thought came to them: ransack every psychology there is for everything in it that works: pull out all the gold and toss out all the dross: then weld all the gold together into a gleaming Nietzchean synthesis that could not only make men better than they are, but could even push man as such forward. Wow! Mssrs. Bandler and Grinder were inspired: they went out and modeled Fritz Perls, and learned to be garrulous raconteurs just like Fritz. They modeled Noam Chomsky and Virginia Satir and Gregory Bateson, incorporating the substance and spitting out the fluff. They did a huge furtive rip-off of covert conditioning behaviorism and paid their debt by extending behaviorist technique subtly and immensely. Finally they arrived at the foot of the great mountain that is Milton Erickson. They gave the academic performance of their lives by painstakingly rendering explicit Ericksonian hypnosis in Patterns 1 and 2. And then -- they stopped. They could have gone on and done Goethe or Newton, Gurdjieff or Shakespeare, Socrates or Stephen Hawking. They could have sat there in academia and set squads of graduate students out to validate or test their theses. But suddenly they found themselves in possession of a whole set of techniques that -- actually seemed to have market value. Let us be neither cynical about this nor forgiving: they found quick easy effective ways to cure phobias, get people motivated, improve work performance, etc., etc. Good, desirable, socially useful things; things people wanted; things people needed; things people were willing to pay for. And they found they could make more money giving a seminar to such people in one evening than they could sitting in an obscure campus psych department in one year. Ivy-covered halls, farewell! For reasons altruisitic and cynical, nlp had entered its second phase. Bandler and Grinder begat practitioners, and practitioners begat master practitioners, and master practitioners begat trainers, and trainers begat master trainers, and the Church Triumphant, with its hierarchies and evangelists and collection plates spread across the land. Nlp as a scientific discipline did not advance; nlp as a philosophical body of thought never even came into existence; but nlp as a set of business skills and pop therapy tools flourished. And justly so. In its self-limited way, it did a certain amount of good. And as time passed the skills of those who'd been doing it the longest got better, and they themselves got a bit more reflective and quirky. Grinder turned to Bateson and Casteneda and turned up with the New Codes; Bandler went back to his master, Milton Erickson, and out came DHE. Nlp therapeutic techniques started turning up furtively in Brief Therapy writings and in various niches of psychobabble. Several of the techniques for self-discipline and motivation and better communications ended up in sales and sports courses. The briefly envisioned Nietzchean project of taking the finest minds of the West and the world, analyzing them, summarizing them, synthesizing them, extrapolating them forward? That got lost in the shuffle. Too bad, eh? But at least we know how to speed seduce waitresses now. "This conversation is neither stimulating any new ideas for me, nor helping me clarify any old ones. You're just knocking NLP with no recent experience of it, and I'm responding out of knee-jerk habit. In other words: we're both engaging in mental masturbation. I would rather just stop here, and file the conversation into the archives of Internet randomness." Personally, I rarely engage in mental masturbation; too difficult to work my fingers around my frontal lobe, quite frankly. (True, my frontal lobes seems to be somewhat larger than those of one or two of my net correspondents; but if I were willing to let my subjective judgement pass for truth, I'd be on the other side of this argument.) But I see we are not communicating. Let me say it again: how can I clarify your ideas when you won't tell me what they are? How can I stimulate your thinking when you don't give me the foggiest notion of what you're thinking about? Look. Years ago when I was getting my practitioner certification and dinosaurs were roaming the earth, there was an outdated technique called -- what was it? -- oh yeah, second position, something like that. You put yourself in the other guy's shoes and try to see how things look to him from his angle. Well, put yourself in my shoes. You come up to me and you say something like this: "Man, you know nothing about DHE." "OK. Explain it to me." "It can't be put into words." "The guy who came up with it's wrote a dozen books, and he can't put it into words?" "Pff. Nlp's simple. This stuff is not." "Einstein put the Special Theory of Relativity into words. Is Relativity simple? Bertrand Russell put the Principia Mathematica into words." "Yeah, but they felt like it. Bandler don't." "How about the people trained by him for the last decade? None of them can put it into words either?" "Nope." "Has anybody -- uh -- tried?" "Well -- well, yeah. Me. I've developed an explicit codification. (I've even written some of it down!)" "Why you clever son-of-a-gun you!" "One of my biggest skills is codifying things so they can be understood." "I'm sure it is. Must have been tough this time around, though. Complicated thing like DHE." "Oh it was. Bandler changes things every workshop. Changes his handouts constantly, experiments, never writes anything down, sits around chain-smoking and just telling stories -- ." "Gee. But I'll bet that only sounds confusing and inconsistent on the *surface*, right?" "Right." "So -- since you've got the explanation all written out, let's hear it." "No." "Why not?" "I tried to explain to someone else once -- and he GOT IT WRONG!" "He did?" "And now I'll never ever explain it to anyone ever again. Never ever." "Please?" "No." "Pleee-eea-aase?" "No." "Pretty please?" "Well...I'll tell you what. Take a plane a couple of hundred miles over here and treat me to lunch and I'll explain it all to you." "Lunch? It won't take four months of seminars, two dozen audio tapes, special headphones, exercises, deep trance states, hands-on demonstrations?" "Lunch'll do it." "Well...actually I've got a date for lunch...you know us students of speed seduction (Sordid Chuckle)." "Then you'll just have to do seminars with Bandler. Compuserve says last one was in Deutschland." "But I don't want to go to Deutschland...Deutschland is icky...I get plane-sick...I'll miss the new episode of 'Star Trek: Voyager'..." "Bandler's seminars. No other way." "But -- see, what makes me nervous is -- uh -- " "Yass?" "Well, you sit down in front of what is maybe the world's greatest hypnotist and he lights his Chesterfield King or whatever and zonks your brains to tofu, right -- ." " -- And installs mind-blowing skills and attitudes!" "Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure. But see -- maybe they're not, uh, 'real' skills and attitudes -- maybe they just 'feel' real -- . Like when the hypnotist goes 'You're a chicken'? And you feel like a chicken? Only you're not a chicken?" "Of course I'm a chicken! I mean -- of course I've got mind-blowing skills and attitudes.!" "You've run tests, of course." "We don't need tests!" "You've done objective before-and-after measurements, naturally." "We don't need measurements!" "You at least get a clear explanation of what's happening to you and why?" "We don't need explanations! We don't need words! Don't you UNDERSTAND? DHE can't be verbalized! DHE can't be taped! It has to be felt! It has to be experienced! Richard Bandler(tm) himself, the Most Holy, must personally climb down from his Cross of Sorrows and place his Divine Hands upon your unbelieving darkness-clouded brow. Only then will you experience what I (*sob*) experienced -- the It -- the Ineffable -- the That-Which-Is-Beyond-All-Description -- ." "Did you and Bandler have a cigarette afterwards?" " -- This conversation is not stimulating me anymore. Goodbye." So great is my respect for the achievements of Richard Bandler as a psychologist, so profound is my regard for his abilities as a hypnotherapist, so deep is my admiration for his immensely creative contributions to nlp, so lasting is my fascination with his sharp, quirky, active intellect, so sincere is my belief in the honesty and honor of some of the people who are associated with him in his new endeavours, that I am prepared to stand here with no evidence at all, nothing, and yet believe that, by God, it's Richard Bandler, and Richard Bandler must have come up with *something* worth looking at. But for the life of me, I couldn't tell you what it is. Because nobody's ever told me. Not Bandler, not Grinder, not you. In message , Mr , valiantly stepping forward to rebuke me for rebuking him for rebuking me for rebuking him for rebuking me, rebuked me. So I in turn strolled over to my keyboard, sadistically chortling as I slipped my brass knuckles over my chain-mail gloves and prepared to wade in with yet another rhetorical left hook. But as I did so...sanity momentarily swept over me, as it will on rare occasions. Re-reading the messages on this subject, it seemed to me clear that I was not going to get what I had hoped to get, namely a open and detailed exposition of what exactly DHE was and how it worked. And I felt that I had encountered a rather sad explanation why. Further verbal jousting therefore seemed pointless. To argue about any topic can be fruitful; to argue about the absence of a topic is either a play by Samuel Beckett or just plain dumb. Certain points nonetheless seemed worth stating. Let us praise Mr . He has done meritorious work attacking foolish positions and illogical reasoning. Unfortunately he thinks that those positions are mine. Which is not the case. I feel obligated to answer those specifically, since I do not want people to go around thinking that I believe things that I don't. There are one or two observations sparked by his post that also, I think, are worth setting down. I am trying to keep my posts under one megabyte, however, so I will put these (relatively briefly, I hope) into a subsequent post. For the moment I merely want to speak, fairly seriously, about a subject that has puzzled me -- the mystery surrounding DHE. Let me take a step back then and sum up (not unfairly, I hope) the situation. In the beginning, I remarked somewhat offhandedly that I thought nlp had not progressed greatly since the publication of Patterns 1 and 2. Since this was a very large and vague sort of generalization, I specifically pointed out the (to my mind) great leap nlp had taken in going from its Chomsky and Perls Meta Model days to its current outlines, which came about once Milton Erickson had been meticulously analyzed and gobbled down. By 1976, in short, I felt that nlp had become pretty much what it is today; and its extensions since then were and are by and large extensions from and refinements of this outline. Core Transformation, Imperative Self Therapy, Time Line Therapy were interesting developements, perhaps, but hardly radical paradigm shifts. Such shifts were not likely to take place either, I felt, since by the time the seminar training and certification system had set in, nlp had ceased to become a disinterested search for new truths, but had rather become a marketable product. A good product, perhaps. But a product. Now Mr apparently took this to mean that I had said that his teacher (or trainer or guru or whatever) Mr Richard Bandler personally had done nothing in the past twenty years. He went on to add that in his experience Mr Bandler had indeed come up with many new and savory innovations of which I obviously knew nothing. Leaping merrily in the air and clicking my heels with boyish delight, I said in return that I would be happy to know of these brave new innovations in detail. Were there books, papers, research reports, tests, wherein the subtleties of Mr Bandler's bold-eyed foray into the psychology of tomorrow lay waiting to be perused? Mr ' response perplexed me. There was nothing. Because (a) the nature of Mr Bandler's innovations were such that they couldn't be put into words but had to be 'directly experienced', (b) Mr Bandler himself never wrote, never published, indeed had not written or published anything in close to a decade. ("Time For A Change", which I purchased and read, in part hoping to be enlightened as to the nature of DHE, was merely a transcript from a seminar on hypnosis taken several years ago), (c) although Mr suggested taking a seminar with Mr Bandler as the only true way to arrive at an understanding of DHE, apparently Mr Bandler did not use seminars as a vehicle to explain his ideas, of which he seemed conspicuously free. Mr Bandler simply never quote, explained ANYTHING, unquote, nor even presented his new material consistently from seminar to seminar; he merely sat about 'telling stories', which seemed to produce great, desirable, and measurable changes in his students. What those changes were, Mr did not specify. How and by what standards they were measured, Mr did not say. Need I say that this struck me a trifle strange? One solid decade of seminars, lectures, interviews, and so forth, by the published author of several books, and not merely he but *no* one had written *anything* detailing this new system? I ventured to suggest that perhaps someone ought to. Certainly I would not be very interested in attending a seminar or training about a subject which was both unexplained and, according to Mr , inexplicable. Mr responded that I was obsessed with print. I responded that to discard print was to dispense with words; to discard words was to discard concepts; to discard concepts was to discard thought itself. Nlp seminars traditionally have a high price; but this price was too high for me. Gallantly, Mr did not call me simply cheap, and suggest I return to scripting dog-food commercials whilst he and Mr Bandler ushered in Design Humanity without me. He merely re-iterated his point about the value of direct experience over print; I re-iterated mine about the value of print and direct experience both; a tedious and sterile standstill had been reached. Why sterile? Because we had gotten stuck in an either/or distinction that was false. Mr argued for experiential learning; I for intellectual learning. And the truth is proper learning involves both. Writing serves to guide and articulate experience; experience to illuminate and inform writing. The two are allies, not enemies. They support one another. Why hobble along on one foot when one can run forward on two? But then Mr did an apparent about-face that perplexed me; he announced that DHE could in fact be explained and codified; that indeed he himself had done so; that he had even posted (he did not, alas, specify where) some of the result. But that it had been misunderstood. And that therefore he would post no more. Now this position struck me as intellectually outrageous. Not to publish something because *one* person might misunderstand it? Why, Good Lord, *any* text *whatsoever* not only *could* be misunderstood but almost certainly *would* be. What of it? Should the Gospels never have been written merely because *a* crazed Jehovah's Witness might misinterpret Revelations? Should all mathematics texts be banned because *a* grade school pupil might mis-bisect a 90 degree angle? Tyrants have burned books; churches have forbidden them; but Mr ' version of intellectual self-abortion would have the texts snuffed out before ever seeing the light of day in the first place. This pernicious notion clearly deserved to be thrashed; and I whaled into it. Was I in retrospect being fair to Mr ? In retrospect -- I think not. He was speaking for himself (at least so I hope), and not generalizing his own unfortunate silence into something to be universally emulated. I did not mock Mr personally -- indeed I did not even name him as the author of his remarks, and it is hard to toss a pie into the face of a man whose head is not there -- but the idea seemed eminently mock-worthy, and I hit it hard. Partly in the hope that Mr would prove me wrong by 'direct experience' and posting what he had written. (A vain hope; he simply said again that, by golly, Mr Bandler was innovating left and right these last ten years, and that I was print-crazed and not being very stimulating; though how one can be stimulating on an ASCII medium like the net without using print was not explained to me. Typing in a stream of exclamation points and Smiley faces, perhaps?). But mostly I assailed this aversion to verbal explanation (whether in print, tape, or video) because, despite appearances, I felt and still feel that nlp has the potential to be both a serious and substantive psychological movement and a valuable and effective method of personal development; but that, like the mythological Laocoon being strangled by twin serpents, nlp is being strangled by twin serpents itself -- snakes by the name of commercialism and irrationalism. A commercialism which repels academic interest and study, which fosters mediocre standards of training and understanding, and which slows and undercuts innovation. And an irrationalism which disdains testing and evidence and objective proof and, now, finally, even explanation itself. Understand, I am not merely bitching about nlp fees. That training and personal instruction -- as opposed to knowledge as such -- should have a price tag seems to me to be reasonable and fair. I've paid the price on that tag myself. I have Practitioner Certification. I don't say that (God knows) to brag. The reason that I got practitioner training was that I wanted to be able to do nlp well, and because I knew -- as Mr rightly points out -- that there are some things you can pick up a lot more easily by directly experiencing them than by reading them. But I did not go into that training wearing blinders. When I went in -- indeed the reason that I went in -- , was that I knew what nlp *was*. I knew what swishes were, and TOTEs, and six-step reframes, and VAK, and Meta and Milton Models, and synesthesia. I knew about it because I read about it. It wasn't concealed or hidden. It was right there. On paper. I read it. It sounded convincing; hell, it was convincing; it convinced me. I went out to get hands-on instruction. And as I did, I found that that reading helped. Immensely. Had I gone in totally unprepared, I would not have gotten a thirtieth as much out of my training as I did. People say I have spoken critically about the training process. That's untrue. I have merely spoken honestly about my personal experience of it. In my experience you do not get a lot out of any seminars, nlp or otherwise. Which is why neurosurgeons get their 'practitioner certification' by studying constantly for ten years, rather than by enduring seminar speeches for ten weekends. Now I did learn things about nlp in my training. But I learned far far more about nlp by actually going up to people outside the seminar and trying to apply what I had learned. The book would say: 'Page 10 -- Rapport: go and try to adopt (without mimicing) the gestures, postures, characteristic phrases, etc. of a person you're talking to; see if he feels closer to you and you to him, etc. etc.". Well, I tried it. And (not always, but by and large) it worked. But in my experience, what taught me most about nlp was reading about it. Reading and putting what I had read into effect in the real world. Hearing trainers read from prepared texts and notes did not teach me as much as the texts themselves; practicing nlp in the artificial world of nlp seminars, where people react the way they're expected to, did not teach me as much as practicing it solo in daily life, where people react naturally without being prompted. Yes, having training helped. But having the will to practice, training or no training, helped more. And reading helped most. Reading allowed me to better grasp both the general concepts and larger outlines and the concrete techniques that practice later supported and refined -- or disproved. But in the case of DHE, what is there to go by? Mr maintains that I think that Mr Richard Bandler has done absolutely nothing but sit there slack-jawed in a zombie stupor for twenty years. Of course I do not believe any such nonsensical thing. I am merely asking: what specifically *has* he done? What *are* his new ideas? What *are* his new practices? And I have not been able to get an answer to that question. Some people -- most notably Carolyn Sikes -- have gallantly and at length tried to explain some things about DHE; and others -- most notably Rex Sikes -- have convinced me of their sincere desire not merely for a 'gut' understanding of the phenomenon but also an intellectual one. Commendable efforts! For all their efforts, however, I just haven't gotten it. And while the explanation may be simply that I am coarse and dense, I sometimes think the true reason is that nlp was concrete and clear whereas DHE is neither. When nlp taught you to do a swish, it's method was very plain. "Picture this like so, in color; and that like that, in black and white; no, no, no, see yourself disassociated; got it?; swish!; again; again -- voila!' Well. That was simple and concrete. Anyone could do that and see for themselves if it worked. When DHE, however, speaks of 'automating unconscious processes via machine metaphors' -- I simply draw a blank. I don't know how to 'automate my unconscious' with a metaphor. I'm not sure I'd want to if I did know. 'Transformation on the cellular level'? What does this *mean*? The examples of DHE practice that I've read simply puzzle me. Someone wishes to see more clearly so he 'hallucinates' a pair of binoculars? Why not just buy some binoculars? A man has difficulty calculating numbers, so he 'hallucinates' a calculator? Tell me: would you really want this guy to do your taxes with such a method? A man depressed by tedious business meetings hallucinates cartoon characters leaping around the conference desk? If I hallucinated cartoon characters during business meetings, I'd be depressed myself. I'm not saying these things to be facetious. 'Direct experience' I value as much as Mr ; but these things flee direct experience. I simply cannot try these things out for myself, as I could and did with nlp. Short of taking LSD and exposing myself to a fission reactor, I cannot hallucinate on command or change my cells, and I am not sure I would want to if I could. If there is something of substance to DHE -- and I am quite prepared to believe that there is -- it is simply going to have to be explained to me with much -- much -- greater precision. And it hasn't been. The question is, why not? Because Mr Bandler is a crummy writer? Having read all his books, I found that to be not so. Because all his coterie are crummy writers too? Having corresponded with a few, I find that too not to be the case. Why then? A possible answer to that question arrived in the form of a story about another Mr -- Mr Anthony of 'Unlimited Power' fame. Who had apparently gotten sued thoroughly by Mr Richard Bandler for using nlp material in his best-selling book. Alas -- suddenly a possible explanation for the silence surrounding DHE came into view. Was the whole problem simply that the most important initials in DHE are (tm)? If people in general felt that Mr Bandler viewed nlp as his personal property and was willing to go to the lengths of a law suit to defend his personal property rights, then of course it would be very foolish indeed to discuss in detail his new product, DHE (tm). Very foolish, and possibly very expensive. One would have to disregard the supreme standard shaping contemporary nlp: money. Of course, to assert that would be to speculate; as I cannot read Mr Bandler's mind nor the minds of his many fans, I cannot assert that any of this is so. Certainly I don't know that it is. But if legality is a factor, then to press individuals for details about DHE would be -- dare I say -- 'unecological'. As well as the act of a bully. Which is a role to avoid. Yes, who knows. Perhaps they are just crummy writers after all. Yet, curiously, as I played with that interpretation, I found myself thinking about Sigmund Freud, whom I occasionally re-read. Particularly the Freud of the late 20's and 30's. In those years, Nazi persecution was to exile him to Great Britain, and was soon to exterminate his family. He had lost his home, his friends, his country; he was still being attacked by his former students and collegues and by the press; he had to endure anti-semitism and financial insecurity; he was feeble with advanced old age; cancer was killing him, pain was torturing him, death was haunting him. And still he managed to work and to write. To try to understand the human mind. To try to communicate that understanding to others. I tried to imagine that hated, persecuted, honorable old man hawking audiotapes of sessions with his patients for $200; or suing Carl Jung for mentioning the Unconscious (tm); or deliberately sealing his lips, whatever the persecutions, or rewards. I couldn't quite do it. Of course, those were older days; and Mr Freud was never very successful anyhow. But that is to digress. Mr summed his position up cleanly and plainly and fairly: if you want to know about DHE, you will have to open your wallet, accept on blind faith that it will be worth it, and go find Mr Bandler and get hypnotically zonked by him personally. Mr Bandler will not explain what he is doing, according to Mr , but he will do -- something. Well. I do want to know about DHE. But am I willing to get zonked by Mr Bandler? No. I am not. Perhaps Mr Bandler's trainings are churning out more supermen than a Nazi boot camp. Others can attend them with my blessing. I myself shall follow Mr ' advice and keep my distance, at least till *some* more reasonable information is presented. If apparently I am to be experimented with and put into some sort of hallucinatory states, I want the person who does it to: 1. Explain precisely what is being done to me. 2. Explain precisely how and why it works. 3. Explain precisely what the objective results should be; and 4. Have objective and verifiable ways of measuring those results. Too high a standard? I think not. People, curiously, keep writing me email about Ross Jeffries all the time. "David," they go, "you seem like an decent sort of fellow. You almost show a flicker of intelligence every seventh megabyte or so. Why are you always sticking up for an [expletive deleted] like that [expletive deleted] Ross Jeffries? Well, let me tell you. Like Bandler, Jeffries is a nlp practitioner offering a controversial sort of nlp. Is he hiding from questions about it? No. He's available on the net and by email to any one who wants to ask him anything. And he answers too. Is he vague or ambiguous about what he's doing or how it works? No. He can list every single technique he uses and he can tell you why he believes it works. Is he making weird-sounding or unverifiable claims for his stuff? Well, I suppose some of his more outrageous advertising must come across like that to some people. But in his posts, his books, his tapes, he's saying, here it is: try it yourself: go out and do it. You don't have to believe in it or in me or in nlp or in anything, just go try it and judge for yourself. Is he teaching something vague and esoteric? No, he's teaching simple rhetoric-free nlp practices to be used in the real everyday world ten minutes after you pick them up. Is he giving you windy verbiage, and telling you to go out and figure out how to apply it yourself? No, he's teaching a specific real-world application that, once mastered, can be generalized to other everyday practices. Is he charging you an arm and a leg for a peek at his system? Afraid not. He's got his whole book, his system, his newsletters, the works, available at an ftp site free of charge, and he's set up his own node on the net for anyone interested in his system to go there and discuss it. Is he babbling about reaching 'higher levels' or posturing and moralizing about 'ecology' or promising some mystic sort of 'cellular transformation'? He simply says he can show you how to get a girlfriend, or your money back. Is he perfect? No. Is he as significant a figure, as experienced a trainer, as Richard Bandler? No. He is not. Not perhaps as yet. But if I had to make a choice between attending a seminar by Bandler and one by Jeffries, I'd go to Jeffries. Say what you will about his goals, formally this is the very model of what an innovative nlp practitioner ought to be and ought to be doing. Clearly explaining what he's doing. Clearly explaining why he thinks it works. Plainly setting forth his thoughts for every one to see. Openly responding to criticisms, questions, attacks. Continually testing his ideas and practices in everyday life situations. Willing to get paid for his results rather than his promises. This is how it ought to be done. And is Mr Jeffries alone? No. Mr Tad James' theories are available at the public library. I believe Ms Carol Anne Ogdin is the author of six books. Rene Pfalzgraf has written several original critiques of nlp. Contact him and purchase a few; he isn't hiding his reasoning and slapping initials on it and calling it 'innovation'. This is the sort of openness that Richard Bandler used to practice. Once. And this apparently is the very opposite of what Richard Bandler is doing now. To psychology's loss, and ours. So let me say it again. And again. And again. And again: 1. Explain precisely what you are doing. 2. Explain precisely how and why it works. 3. Explain precisely what the objective result should be; and 4. Have objective and verifiable ways of measuring those results. A gym teacher can do this; a cabinet maker can do this; a basketball player can do this; a subatomic physicist can do this; and nlp, lax and shabby as it often is, can do this. And maybe DHE can do this too. But from what Mr tells me, it hasn't; and it isn't likely to. Perhaps one day it shall. Perhaps Mr Bandler will model Freud and pick up a pen. Perhaps good and honorable people like the Sikes' will objectify and explain just what Mr Bandler is trying to do. Perhaps some idealistic student will post his notes on the complete DHE system anonymously via anon.penet.fi. Perhaps some less idealistic student will re-label DHE into P*Q$ZO@!X and make a small fortune on it. Until something of this sort happens, however, I myself will take Mr ' advice; and stay away from DHE. Regretfully. But let me be very precise about this. Like Mr , I do not want to be misunderstood. I am not attacking DHE. I know nothing about it, apart from the tantalizing but insubtantial glimpses afforded by this newsgroup. I am not attacking the trainers of this discipline. I only know of two, Rex and Carolyn Sikes, and I am convinced of their intelligence, their kindness, and their will to competence. I am not attacking Richard Bandler, to whom all students of nlp must obviously forever be in debt. Who knows? Perhaps Mr ' portrait is inaccurate. Perhaps Mr Bandler is scribbling Volume 11 of his magnum opus on DHE with Dostoyevskian intensity even as we speak, and is directing fervent squads of researchers with a formal rigor Captain Bligh would envy. I am not even attacking Mr . He says I should take him at his honorable word and believe that Mr Bandler is making fascinating and effective innovations in nlp. I *do* in fact take him at his word, which I believe *is* honorable. I personally believe Mr Bandler is doing new and worthwhile and rational things. What I *am* attacking is this notion that those rational things have to be defended and bought and sold *irrationally*. That explanations are not needed. That evidence is unnecessary. That knowledge can be achieved by a flux of 'direct experience' and cash and not by explicit reasoning and thinking. That supposedly revolutionary psychological understandings are available only to select yuppies with American Express cards. To see Bandler's ideas defended irrationally is as irritating to me as seeing Jeffries' ideas attacked irrationally. Why, when there is so much in nlp that is reasonable, explicit, and testable, must we allow fluff like this to obscure and belittle it? When one looks at the tedious commercialism, the anti-literacy, the lack of rigor and the contempt for proof, the sheer ignorance of of related psychologies and research standards, that unnecessarily permeates and limits so very much of nlp, is it any wonder why the established psychological community regards us with contempt? Who is going to hold us to a higher standard if not ourselves? Perhaps DHE is in fact the greatest advance in psychology since Jung went to Vienna. Having been given few reasons and little evidence to believe that that is so, however, I prefer to wait till a little more comes in. If we must replace our thinking with pure experience and faith, let us do it in Church rather than DHE. The wine is better and the Bach is free. David Pascal