[Neurons] 2025 Neurons #20 THE DAY BANDLER NEEDED CONTENT
Michael Hall
meta at acsol.net
Sun May 18 15:10:00 EDT 2025
From: L. Michael Hall
2025 Neurons #20
May 19, 2025
THE DAY BANDLER NEEDED CONTENT
The NLP founders drew a very strange conclusion from the fact that
information has both content (the subject, the what) and structure (the
form). They concluded that we do not need content at all, only structure.
So if a person has a problem, you could call it "Yellow" and then work with
"Yellow" without every knowing anything about "Yellow." But this is a far
too over-generalized notion. We need at least a little bit of content so we
know what we're talking about. Otherwise a person could be referring to
suicide, bombing his place of work, cheating on his wife, etc. Content does
count. In Neuro-Semantics I have suggested 80/20 as a guideline- 20%
content and 80% structure.
In the following dialogue occurred prior to 1984; it is recorded in the NLP
book, Magic in Action (pp. 171-181), Richard Bandler is working with a woman
trying to get her to identify a strong belief that she has about herself
which she did not want. But because he has this bias about "no content,"
and because the woman appears to be very global, vague, and ambiguous ...
for more than ten pages the conversation went round and round as Bandler was
trying to understand what she was talking about. At least he had an
intuition that he needed some content-a what. I suppose that since he did
not believe that content counted, that's why he didn't stop her and get
specifically clarify, "What is the belief that you didn't want about
yourself?" And ultimately neither he, nor his audience, nor us never found
out!
I find it amazing that someone took that transcript and actually printed it
in the book. It is certainly not Bandler's best work. ... not at all. He
seems to have missed her kinesthetic statements as he assumed that she's got
pictures in there somewhere. The dialogue would be comical if it wasn't so
sad.
RB: Some beliefs are very, very strong and last for a long time. Now
how do you know when you are having a belief? Well, stop and think about a
belief that you have. ... If you think about a belief you have, what do you
do inside your head when you're thinking about it?
Woman: I feel it. [kinesthetic]
RB: Well, you have a feeling, Now how do you know which belief it is?
W: It's strong. [kinesthetic]
Okay ... now how do you know what the subject of the belief is? [The text
says tht he said this slowly, one word at a time.]
Because that's the strongest feeling I have. [kinesthetic]
Well, how do you know which ... which feeling it is?
I ... hear? [She presents it as a
question.]
You hear something. You tell yourself like, what? Like what
do you tell yourself?
I tell myself the belief's there and that it's real.
Okay, now. How do you know what to tell yourself? If I ask you to think of
a strong belief, do you go inside and go, 'a strong belief?" And then a
voice answers you and names something?
No, I listen to myself ...describe what my basic core is. [She's also
global and vague.]
Okay, now, do you have more beliefs than just that one?
Yeah, but that's a simple one.
Okay, now when you think about another belief you have, do you do the same
thing?
Yeah.
Okay, how do you know what to say? When you're saying what the core belief
is.
Yeah. I hear myself saying it.
Okay, How do you know what to say?
From a host of chemical anonymous past human
experience. [This answer really does not make any sense! And Bandler does
not even ask or meta-model it!]
... Do you do that auditorily also or do you do that
visually?
No, I have a feeling. [kinesthetic]
Okay, well you have the feeling. And there aren't any
pictures attached to them?
One.
One for each feeling? Is it a slide or a movie?
No, this is just one at a time. Hangs in this little wall. For this
particular belief. [Here Bandler doesn't even inquire, no meta-modeling of
her vague language.]
Okay, alright. So you have one. Is it a slide or a movie?
It's just there. It's a slide.
It's just a still picture?
Yes. But it's dimensional. [! Who knows what
that means?]
Okay. Holographic. ... How do you know you have that belief?
It's not that I have much of a question, and
then I go, 'Yeah, well whatever' and then that feels bad so I go look until
it feels good.
Okay, but how do you know what the subject of it is?
Because then I feel, ... I start feeling. That's all I need... [She is
highly kinesthetic, and Bandler never seems to pick up on this. Here he
works from his assumption that 'beliefs' are pictures.]
[Richard mimics that this makes sense...] How do you know what
the need is when you feel it?
Well, if I can't decide, I go, 'Hmm, you know,"
and I know ... [!! Amazingly she almost never answers his questions!]
...
Now, with a strong belief, when you say it (snap) you have a
very solid feeling?
Centered.
Centered feeling. Now when you have the feeling, are you
looking at that picture?
No.
Okay, you just have a solid feeling?
Sometimes I can look up and see the picture
too. [I would guess that she is also a mismatcher; at least she's skilled at
mismatching!]
Well, at least you know what ... what the solid feeling is
about.
Yeah. [I would have followed up by saying,
'Tell me about that it is.']
Otherwise someone could tell you that it is about buying a car from them.
[Finally Bandler introduces 'content,' buy a car, I assume to get her to
talk about the content of the belief.]
Got one that doesn't quite match.
Yeah, what doesn't it match?
My picture.
It doesn't match your picture. ... can you look at that picture? Now how is
that particular picture different than other pictures that you have? ... You
made the slide of, let's say, beer as opposed to wine. If you make a slide
of beer, do you have a solid feeling? [here he introduces a little
more content- beer, wine.]
No. Little bitty picture.
Little bitty pictures. And the other one is a bigger picture? What happens
if you make the picture of the beer just as big?
I don't want to. [Self-Referent]
Does it change the way you feel?
Yeah. But we don't want to replace what I've
got up there with beer. [!!]
You don't want to. The question is, can you?
I probably could.
Do you have big pictures up there of beliefs that you have that you wish you
didn't have? Wasn't one of the things you did today, to think of things
that you believed about yourself that you wish weren't the case?
The conversation continues and Bandler slowly sets up things so he can do a
swish- getting her to swish her big picture to a dot (of whatever it was
about). Once it was a dot, he asked, "Do you still believe that's true
about you?" (181), she said "Yeah, but I can handle it now." And with that,
he wrapped things up and left it at that.
Content does count. You do need to know what a person is representing and
that actually will help you ask about the relevant cinematic features of the
picture, sound, words, and/or kinesthetics. Content is also processed
through meta-programs and without identifying a person's thinking patterns
(meta-programs), you can be lost in terms of understanding what the person
is communicating.
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Executive Director, ISNS
738 Beaver Lodge
Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA
meta at acsol.net
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