[Neurons] 2019 Neurons #33 A BRILLIANT AUTHOR GETS IT WRONG

Mon Jul 22 01:51:29 EDT 2019

From: L. Michael Hall

2019 Neurons #33

July 22, 2019

A BRILLIANT AUTHOR GETS IT WRONG

I recently read an NLP Book which was recently updated (2018) in which the
author simply got many aspects of NLP wrong.  And it was written not only by
an NLP trainer, but someone who somehow got somebody to designate him a
master trainer.   And yet he does not seem to know, or maybe he does not
value, knowing the field of NLP- at least staying up with the field.  So how
could anyone be considered a "master" of anything if that person isn't even
aware of current developments in the field?  I ask that rhetorically.

Now the book is a book about using NLP in business, and the author simply
and constantly gets things wrong, in fact, lots of things wrong.  What
strikes me in reading this book, and others that the author has written
about NLP, is that after he took his basic training, he stopped learning.
Perhaps he caught the toxic thought-virus known as "Everything I ever needed
to know I learned at X course; now I know it all."   

And yet ... it is not all bad.  Not at all.   On the one hand, there are
moments of brilliance in this author's writings-excellent insights.  I have
gotten many wonderful ideas from him.  But then, on the other hand, there
are statements which show what I can only describe as an incomprehensible
ignorance.  For me, they bring into question his willingness to read what
others are writing or whether he has taken a simple moment to re-read and
think about what he has written.

For example, while he repeatedly asserts that the Meta-Model is important
and puts it up as an incredibly powerful communication tool, then he
prodigiously uses Universal Quantifiers (always, never, everyone), Either-Or
Statements, Comparative Deletions, etc. in his own writings.  Here are some
examples of Universal Quantifiers:

"The unconscious mind -both your client's and your own-always knows what it
wants, and always knows what to do..." (280)

"When the client first tells you what they want, or what the problem is,
they will tell you everything you need to know...  All you have to do is pay
attention." (281)

Now if I give him credit that he knows what he's doing, then I would be
implying that he very manipulative.  Conversely, if I assume that he is just
making a point and using "regular" language to do so, then I would be
implying that he does not pay attention to his own writings in terms of
applying the Meta-Model to himself.  He also doesn't know that the old "7-
38-55 percent" myth about communication has been invalidated (see the
Neuro-Semantic Website  <http://www.neurosemantics.com/the-7-38-55-myth/>
http://www.neurosemantics.com/the-7-38-55-myth/).

Now some 25 years ago, I introduced into the field of NLP Alfred Korzybski's
linguistic distinction of Multi-Ordinality.  This means that the same word,
when used reflexively on itself, thereafter operates at various meta-levels
and will mean something different at each level.  For example:

           You can fear a bear, and you can fear your fear (become
paranoid).  You can fear your paranoia (experience agrophobia). 

           You can love a new boyfriend, and you can love the love that you
feel (infatuation).  You can then love your infatuation (romanticism).

Language has this wonderful and wild and weird quality of being reflexive or
recursive.  Some words (mostly nominalizations) can be used on themselves.
But not true nouns.  They do not work this way.  You can not have a chair of
a chair, a house of a house.  True nouns are not reflexive.  Nor do verbs
work reflexively.  So we do not sit on sitting, run on running, etc.

But as Korzybski pointed out some words, like nominalizations are reflexive.
I noted this in 1991 as I wrote about seven linguistic distinctions that
Korzybski identified in Science and Sanity.  Later, in 1997, I added them to
create the Extended Meta-Model which is today in the book, Communication
Magic (2001, Crown House Publications).  Then Byron Lewis included it in his
2012 edition of The Magic of NLP DeMystified.  Yet this NLP author does not
seem to know anything about any of this development of the Meta-Model.  It's
as if he has not kept up with the field or read from others in the field.

"The Subject-Verb-Object language structure reflects our observation of
life; someone or something does something to someone or something.  Note
that the subject and the object are different, they cannot be the same.  A
chair cannot sit on itself.  A person cannot carry themselves. ...  The
action cannot be recursive, it cannot apply to itself.  I can love you, and
you can love me. ...  You cannot love yourself, and you cannot value
yourself, so here is the central paradox." (276)

"You cannot love yourself!"   That is the point that he writes about and
seeks to prove.  Amazing!  And note the definitive, absolutist,
over-generalized statements. "The action cannot be recursive, it cannot
apply to itself."  Yet it is by over-stating things in an over-simplistic
way that he paints himself into a corner- declaring at the end that it is a
paradox.

Well, yes, if you do not know that the human mind is reflexive and that we
can linguistically map    things in a reflexive, recursive way.  That's what
multi-ordinality is linguistically- some words do indeed operate
recursively, they apply to themselves.  Linguists have known and written
about this for more than a century.  This is not a new discovery.  It is
what I wrote about in great detail in Meta-States in 1995.  Now because this
trainer / author does not know about reflexivity, he argues, "You cannot
coach yourself.  It is not possible.  You can't see yourself, you see, so
you can't give yourself feedback." (319).  From this misunderstanding he
then assets that "it's not possible to love yourself." (275).

What a tragedy!  Here is a NLP Trainer who potentially has all of the
resources of the field of NLP at his disposal (if only he will stay in touch
with the field) to correct these misunderstandings.  Yet he doesn't seem to
know how to look beyond his own thinking and that, in turn, obviously limits
his understandings.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com   look for the special offer

Author of the stunning new history of NLP--- NLP Secrets.  

Investigative Journalism which has exposed what has been kept secrets for
decades. 

http://www.neurosemantics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/NLP-Secrets-2_sml2.
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