[Neurons] 2016 Neurons #36 Bateson's Contributions to NLP

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2016 “Neurons” Meta Reflections – #36

August 1, 2016

Reflections about NLP #4

 

 

BATESON’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO NLP

 

In the field of NLP we consider Bateson as one of the “grandfathers” of this
field.  He and Alfred Korzybski, along with Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers,
perhaps also George Miller and Noam Chomsky, these were key people who
provided the content information of NLP when it appeared in the early days
(1972– 1976).  Yes, NLP has content! 

 

When NLP began at the brand new alternative style college (Kresge College)
on the campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz, British
anthropologist and systems thinker, Gregory Bateson had just been hired as a
Professor.  Prior to that Bateson had been into just about everything.
Bateson was not only an incredible scholar, he also danced between many
disciplines and was one of the most interdisciplinary persons to ever live.
He began as an anthropologist with Margaret Mead (his first wife), he
studied trance (Bali), dolphins (Hawaii), alcoholism, schizophrenia,
cybernetics, biology, genetics (his father a famous geneticist),
epistemology, politics, consciousness, and the list goes on and on.

 

Bateson’s history goes back to the beginning of the Human Potential Movement
given that his first wife, Margaret Mead was the protégé of Ruth Benedict—
one of Maslow’s first mentors (along with Max Wertheimer, co-founder of
Gestalt Psychology).  He was also connected to Korzybski inasmuch as he
spoke at the General Semantics Conference in 1969 on “the difference that
makes a difference” as he explored about what gets mapped onto the map.

 

Bateson played a crucial role in the creation of NLP and it could well be
argued that without his original endorsement, NLP may have never became the
world-wide influence it became.  Grinder acknowledged this in Origins of
NLP.  First of all, Bateson was the teacher of almost every one of the
original leaders in NLP— they all studied under him.  Second, he wrote the
Foreword to The Structure of Magic and convinced the publishers about the
value of the book.  Third, he introduced the early leaders to Milton
Erickson.  Bateson was also a second-generation leader of the Human
Potential Movement presenting the second workshop at Esalen in 1963 and
moving onto Esalen’s property to become “the Scholar in Residence” there
where he died in 1980.

 

So, what did Bateson contribute to NLP?  Bateson contributed a focus on
framing, reframing, form, patterning.  In fact, it was Bateson, more than
any other person, who introduced the terminology of frames, framing, and
reframing.  He discovered this in his anthropological studies, in his
original contributions to the understanding of schizophrenia, and to his
logical-levels of learning and change.

 

Bateson further contributed systems thinking and was a key pioneer in
systems.  He spoke at the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics back in the 1940s
and 50s.  It was that systems thinking that corresponded to the holistic
system thinking of Gestalt, of Satir’s Family Systems, and to Korzybski’s
Non-Aristotelian system.  No wonder systems thinking lies at the heart of
NLP!  Almost every source of influence to NLP involved systems thinking and
working.

 

>From this systems emphasis, Bateson gave NLP an emphasis on flexibility and
ecology.  Several of the NLP premises comes directly from systems,  “In a
system, the person who has the most flexibility will have the most influence
(control).”  And from systems we got our emphasis on feedback and
feed-forward.

 

Bateson contributed logical levels and the terminology of meta.  Maslow also
introduced the term, he talked about meta-pay and other uses of meta.  Yet
it was Bateson who conceptualized how the logical levels work, how higher
levels govern and direct lower levels, how the prohibition from moving to a
higher (meta) frame explains the symptoms of schizophrenia and how making
the meta-move begins to resolve that confusion.  From that Robert Dilts
created the Neuro-Logical Levels in NLP and I created the Meta-States Model.

 

Long before the Meta-Model distinctions which came from Transformational
Grammar, Bateson identified many of the problems with words and labels.  He
talked about the false concreteness (reification) of some words—what we call
“nominalizations” in NLP.   He focused on how words work to describe things
and make sense of things and the importance of clarifying our terms.

“The ‘self’ is a false reification of an improperly delimited part of this
much larger field of interlocking processes.” (1972, p. 331)

 

Bateson emphasized non-verbal communication, actions that communicate,
actions that indicate a negation and via Bateson we recognize that NLP
itself is an epistemology.  These was the theme of Part V of Steps to an
Ecology of Mind.  

“Mental process, ideas, communication, organization, differentiation,
pattern, and so on, are matters of form rather than substance.” (p. xxxii).

 

Yet there was a lot more that NLP could have learned and developed from
Bateson. For example, Bateson’s anthropological thinking and modeling could
have really expanded what we do in NLP.  This could have led to more of a
focus on larger level themes than individuals, i.e., culture, politics, etc.
His work on words and language led him to write a lot about critical
thinking— getting out of muddles, avoiding shoddy thinking, learning to
think straight, etc.  These are themes in his 1972 book, Steps To an Ecology
of Mind.  There also he wrote Metalogues—humorous and imaginary
conversations between himself and his daughter that dealt with difficult
subjects that addressed “the structure of the conversation as a whole.” 

 

Sources:

Bateson, Gregory. (1972).  Steps to an ecology of mind.  New York:
Ballantine Books.  Reprinted (2000), University of Chicago.

              Hall, L. Michael. (2003).  The Bateson Report.   Clifton, CO:
Neuro-Semantic Publications.

              Hall, L. Michael. (2008).  Meta-States.  Chapter 17
“Meta-States Epistemology.”

Hall, L. Michael. (1997).  NLP Going Meta.  Chapter 7.  “Bateson’s Logical
Levels of Learning.”

 

Order Meta-States

           www.neurosemantics.com 

           

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

               Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

               Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

                    Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net


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