[Neurons] Book Review --- For any NLP website or egroup

[Dr. Hall]

Book Review

by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.  ( <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com;  <http://www.self-actualizing.org/>
www.self-actualizing.org) 

 

 

Richard Bandler's Guide to Trance-formation (2008)

Richard Bandler; Edited by Garner Thomson

Deerfield Beach, FL.  Health Communications, Inc.

 


 

I bought and read Richard Bandler's newest 2008 book hoping to find
something new, to hear more of his delightful "stories," and to see what
he's been up to.  For years many have been asking, "What's new in NLP?"
"What model has Bandler or Grinder created that's new?"  And for years we
have not seen anything.  And, sadly, this is all the more evident in this
new book by Bandler.

                                                                        V

Actually, Guide to Trance-formation is a good book if you are looking for a
basic "Introduction to NLP."  The only problem is that there are many other
good Introduction books like Introducing NLP O'Connor and Seymour and even
User's Manual of the Brain, Volume I by myself and Bob Bodenhamer.  And this
book, coming from the co-developer, is only 33 years late!  Here you will
find eye accessing cues, a list of predicates, a list of sub-modalities,
list of the original Meta-Model distinctions, list of Milton Model patterns,
and one or two basic NLP patterns in each chapter: Swish, Collapsing
Anchors, Visual Squash, Fast Phobia, Well-Formed Outcomes, Stealing a Skill,
Spelling Strategy, Sub-modality Changes, Overlapping Representation Systems,
etc.  But if you are looking for anything new-look elsewhere.  It is not
here.

 

Except for the few places where Richard complains about people claiming to
have invented NLP, all of the stories and illustrations are those that have
been in NLP books since the mid-1980s.  In fact, in terms of content, the
entire book could have been written in 1988 rather than 2008.  Is there
anything new in it?  Not really.  I transcribed two books for Richard in
1990 from videos of his seminars in London, 1988.  And the material that I
put in those books is much the same as what is here as you can also find in
the early books by Bandler and Grinder.

 

There is one new thing.  Here Bandler describes and reframes NLP as
"hypnosis" and says that it was created from studying the "hypnosis" he saw
in Virginia, Fritz, and Milton (pages 21, 41, 126).  He does acknowledge
that DHE is a form of hypnosis (p. 111).

"NLP developed from our study of hypnosis." (p. 113)

"When I started studying psychotherapists, I focused on the details of what
they were doing.  Quite early on, it became obvious that they were all using
hypnosis without realizing it." (p. 126)

 

There are some pretty good lines about the value of process over content, of
searching for the what and how rather than the why.  And Chapter 4 on the
Meta-Model presents the strength and power of language.

"The Meta-Model has nothing to do with therapy.  It is a powerful,
recursive, linguistic pattern used to uncover quality information. . . .
The purpose of the Meta-Model is to be meticulous, to ask the kind of
questions that will help you find out how somebody's problem works so that
you can make sure you alter just the problem and not everything else in the
person's life. . . .  Using the Meta-Model requires a certain amount of
finesse and elegance. ... You can think of the model itself as a sword that
chops up meaning.  It slices things out, sorting what works from what
doesn't, always moving toward whatever outcome you want. ... You slice away
the nonsense..."  (pp.34-37).

 

Even a little more disappointing is the tone of the book.  In editing the
book, Garner Thomson has created a tone of mildness.  Can you believe that?
And at times, the voice of Bandler in the book is that of someone in
thoughtful reflection.  Yet for anyone who has seen and heard Richard, that
is not his voice; it is not the way he speaks!  So in my opinion, putting
that tone into the book makes this new work less valuable than the original
NLP books.  At least Steve Andreas kept Richard's own voice and tone in
those.

 

Now true to form, while Richard mentions Virginia, Fritz, and Milton
constantly, he only mentions John Grinder once in passing (p. 24) and then
nobody else in the field of NLP.  In fact, the bibliography only has
Bandler's books and then some of Paul McKenna's, one of Garner Thomson, and
one of Robert Anton Wilson .... and nothing else.  No a single other NLP
author is mentioned- not Dilts, Grinder, myself, McDermott, Andreas,
O'Connor, Bolstad, and on and on.  If a person didn't know better, you'd
think that there's not been another writer in the field!

 

Here as Richard did in Persuasion Engineering, he traces the history of NLP
to his teenage years. Really!  He speaks about creating NLP "forty years"
ago (p. 142).  Well that would mean 1968 when he was 17 years old!  Is that
when he was "a scientist and mathematician?"  Give me a break!  If we date
NLP from 1975, it's been 33 years or if we go back as Terry McClendon does
in The Wild Days of NLP to 1972, then 36 years when he was 21 and a young
student.

 

It is also obvious that Bandler has not been paying attention to the field
he co-created.  So for changing beliefs, he again quotes the old
sub-modality belief change pattern.   But then again, he's pretty committed
to that old model, "I consider the model of sub-modalities to be probably
the most significant thing I've done so far." (p. 82).  Apparently he
doesn't even know about the discovery that the cinematic features of our
movies are not "sub-modalities" but meta-modalities and work semantically
(Sub-Modalities Going Meta, 2005). 

 

So new it is not.  Good?  Yes-good as a basic Introduction to NLP.  A new
Guide to Trance-formation?  But no.  I'd recommend buying the original that
Steve Andreas edited, Trance-formations: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and
the Structure of Hypnosis.

 

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

International Society of Neuro-Semantics

Meta-Coach Training System

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA

1 970-523-7877

1 970-523-5790 fax

     www.neurosemantics.com 

      www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com 

      www.self-actualizing.org

      www.meta-coaching.org

      www.ns-video.com 

 

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