Trance–formations. Neuro–Linguistic Programming™ and the Structure of Hypnosis

Process Instructions

The topic this morning is utilization. Once you have achieved an altered state, how do you utilize it in a useful way? Today I'm assuming that you already have attention and rapport, and I'm assuming that you've already done an induction¹ and your client is sitting there in an altered state.

The major positive attribute of an altered state of consciousness is that you don't have to fight with a person's belief system. The unconscious mind is willing to try anything, as far as I can tell, if it is organized and instructed in an appropriate way. The conscious mind is continually making judgments about what is possible and what is not possible, rather than simply trying some behavior to find out whether it is possible or not. The conscious mind with its limited belief system is typically extremely limited in terms of what it is willing to try, relative to what the unconscious is willing to try. The unconscious typically doesn't have those kinds of restrictions.

If a person arrives in your office and says "I can't do this and I want to" a useful assumption to make is that she has already done everything she is capable of to try to make that change with the resources she can get to consciously, and has failed utterly. So the least interesting part of the person to communicate with will be her conscious mind. One way to avoid fighting with someone or having "resistance" is simply to get the conscious mind out of the way and go directly to the "boss."

A question many of you have been asking since this workshop began is "What do I do once I get someone in a trance?" The simplest way to utilize any induction is to give the person a content–free set of instructions that essentially says "learn something," "change now." We call these ''process instructions" because they are very specific about the process the person is to go through to change and solve problems, but very unspecific about the content. The what is left ambiguous, but the how is specified. Following many of the inductions we did earlier, we gave a brief process instruction. The benediction we gave you at the end of the day yesterday was essentially a process instruction. In that benediction we instructed you all to review your experience, pick out the useful pieces, and use them in the future. Notice that the content was left out. We didn't say which experiences to pick, exactly when to use those experiences, or what to use them for. All those specific details are left to the unconscious mind of the listener.

There are several advantages to presenting instructions in this way. One big advantage is that you don't have to know what you are talking about. You don't have to know details about another person's life in order to give a set of content–free process instructions that will be useful. If someone comes in with a problem, you can give process instructions to "Search through your personal history at the unconscious level, taking time to identify a particular resource that could be of use to you now in dealing with this difficulty." You do not specify what the "resource" will be, only that the person will find one. You don't specify the "problem" and you don't even need to know what it is!

A second advantage is that process instructions engage and occupy the listener in a very active way, because the listener has to fill in the content that you leave out. A third advantage is that the other person's integrity is completely respected. You are never going to introduce inappropriate content for her, because you are not introducing any content at all.

For those of you who know the Meta–Model, it may help you to know that the verbal patterns of hypnosis, including process instructions, are the inverse of the Meta–Model. The Meta–Model is a way of precisely specifying experience. Using the Meta–Model, if a client comes in and says "I'm scared" my response is "Of what?" I ask this in order to get more specific content information about what's missing.

If I'm giving process instructions, I am deliberately unspecific. I leave pieces out in order to give the client the maximum opportunity to fill in the missing pieces in the way most meaningful to her or him.

You can recall examples of this in what we did following many of the inductions we demonstrated earlier. We said things like "And you can allow your unconscious to present you with some memory from the past that you can enjoy. …" I hope that you have a general sense of what process instructions are. (If you want to learn the specific language patterns you can use to build process instructions, see Appendix

II.)

One language pattern, presuppositions, is so important I want to mention it here. Jane, would you come here a minute? Do you know that there have been times in your life when you've been in a deep trance state?

Jane: I'm not sure. I think I'm in one now.

Today would you prefer that I do a verbal or nonverbal induction

to

take you into a deep trance? Jane: Verbal.

All right. Would you prefer to do it now or would you like for me to describe to everyone else what I am going to do before I begin? Jane: Describe it first.

What was the technique I just used with Jane? Man: Giving her choices.

I was giving her choices. However, what was common about all the choices I was offering her?

Man: That she would go into an altered state.

Yes. They presupposed the outcome that I was interested in. "Would you prefer I do a verbal or nonverbal induction to put you into a deep trance?" It doesn't matter which one she says. She has now accepted a world where very shortly she is going to find herself in a trance. "Would you prefer that I induce the trance now, or shall I explain what I am going to do first to the rest of the audience?" Again, the presupposition is that she is going into a trance; the question is whether she'll go now or in a few moments. I create what Erickson calls an illusion of choice—a , false sense of alternatives. That is, she really can choose between verbal or nonverbal, and now or after I finish the explanation. However, all of the alternatives that i am offering her have in common the response that I want, namely a trance. If you were watching, you know that she began to go into a trance before I had a chance to do anything. In a way I agree with Jane. She was in an altered state when she arrived up here and sat down.

Example I: Now I'm going to continue and give you a simple example of a process instruction. Tm going to continue to use presuppositions, as well as the other hypnotic language patterns.

Jane, would you form a really vivid mental image of a particular place that you find restful, maybe a place where you once took an extremely pleasurable vacation. And I trust that your unconscious mind can make a distinction between . . , (He faces Jane.) when I direct my words to you, specifically … (He turns his head to the audience.) and when I direct my words elsewhere… . And I request of your unconscious mind … that it take only those portions of what I offer … directed toward you, which are appropriate . . , for your needs … and respond to those in a way … tailored to your particularly appropriate desires for the task at hand.

And while you are there … Jane … enjoying that particular place and time … I would very much appreciate it if your unconscious mind … would select …a fragment … of a particularly amusing … experience … perhaps one … that you had forgotten about … so that in a few moments, with your permission … when I reach over and … touch you on the right shoulder … you suddenly … remember something of interest and amusing pleasure … that you haven't thought about in years… . (He touches her shoulder.) En …joy… . (Jane smiles broadly; audience laughs.) Really enjoy it! Our past experiences … are a source of constant amusement. And once you've enjoyed it … fully … go ahead and allow yourself to settle into a comfortable state… . When you have that sense of refreshment … please drift back and rejoin us here … so that your conscious mind …as well as your unconscious mind … can be engaged in the learning process… . (He changes to normal speaking voice.) Thank you, Jane.

Is it clear how I just used process instructions with Jane? I asked her to think first of a restful place, and then to think of a pleasurable experience from the past. If I had simply said it that way, however, I wouldn't have gotten the intense response you just observed in Jane's change in expression. As we said at the beginning, hypnosis can be

thought simply as an amplifier of experience.

Example 2; Now I'm going to get a little more complicated. Let's pretend that 1 just walked up to Liz here, and said "Hello, my name is Richard Bandler" and extended my hand. (He does this as he says it.) As her hand comes up, I've already got an unconscious response. Now I need a way to amplify it and utilize it. I might take her wrist and turn her palm toward her face and say "Look at your hand." That gives her a program to replace the one I've just interrupted.

"Watch the changing focus … of your eyes … as you see the tops of your lids slowly move down … over … eyes … only as fast as you become aware of that need to blink. Take all the time you need, and allow your hand to go down only as fast … as you become completely relaxed … in your own special way. And it isn't important how fast that hand goes down. It's only important that it goes down … at the same rate … and speed … that the other hand begins …to lift up.

Because there's something that you want to learn about . , . and it isn't really important that anyone but you knows what that special learning is, because your unconscious mind has known … all along … and if you're going to learn about it, it will be important … slow down!… to learn about it in a balanced way… . And your unconscious mind knows what kind of balance will be necessary… . That's right — — It's so useful and it's really so important …to allow your unconscious mind …to give you , . . the opportunity … and ask it for your own meanings … to make changes and to have a learning experience … and new understandings … which you can use … for yourself … in some way … which will be … beneficial to you as an individual human being… .

Now, I don't know … whether or not … you could begin to dream a dream … which has within it the solution that your unconscious knows … will give you what you want. But I do know that if and when you do begin that dream, it won't make any sense at all. And it's not important that you understand… . It's only important that you learn … and you learn … exactly what you need to know… .

Every night … Liz … you engage in the natural process of dreaming… . Some of those dreams you're aware of … and some you're not aware of. … That's right… . And I'm going to reach down now. . , . I'm going to lift up your arm … and I'm not going to tell you to put it down … any faster … than you take all the time that's necessary … to begin to build a conscious understanding … of what it means … to use your unconscious creatively. And when your hand touches your thigh, you will slowly awaken … and you will take that new understanding with you. In the meantime … there'll be no need to listen to anything … else… . But it is so pleasant to eavesdrop in a way that you learn. …"

Now, can you tell which of her movements were conscious movements, and which ones were not? If you're going to work with altered states, it's very important to be able to discern that. In the beginning, there were many, many movements that she made with her body. Some of those were movements that she made in relationship to her own conscious responses to what was going on, and many of them were not.

Woman: When she turned on the chair, that seemed like it was a conscious movement.

OK. When her left hand lifted up off of her thigh, was that a conscious movement?

Man: I would say no.

What leads you to say that? What about the movement was different?

Man: It was flowing. It seemed smooth.

Can you be even more specific about exactly what you observed? When she moved her feet, she made a perfectly smooth movement, but it was a very, very conscious movement. Liz, did you know your hand was going to lift up? …

Liz: I'm not sure of that. {Her hand lifts in a gesture, responding to the embedded command.)

It just did! Her hand lifting just now was a very unconscious movement. One of the characteristics of unconscious movement that you can notice is that at the beginning, the movement is often very small and hesitant.

Pick up your hand —deliberately pick up your hand. When you pick up your hand consciously, do you begin with your wrist? … No, you don't begin with your wrist. You begin with your elbow, or possibly your shoulder. Martial arts masters begin with their belly—their center. That's really different than starting to lift at the wrist.

Even if she were to begin with her elbow, the quality of movement is very different when it's unconscious. I would have the tendency to call it jerky movement. It's a more graceful kind of movement in one sense, but it's more hesitant; there are lots of pauses. Conscious movement is more like a whole program, and as it begins, you can see where it's going to end. It's all one piece.

There's a real difference between the kind of movement that you get when a person is in an altered state, as compared to a familiar suite. There's a real difference between the way her hand lifted up off her thigh when I gave her the instructions in trance, and when I asked her to lift her hand deliberately. If she decided in her mind "I want a Kleenex" and reached for one, it would look very different than if i instructed her to do it in trance.

It's really important to recognize these differences if you want to know what state your client is experiencing. When I lifted up her hand and I told her to allow it to go down and so on, it began to move down very slowly with small pauses, like a leaf from a tree. That was really good unconscious movement. Then it began to go down more smoothly and faster. Her conscious mind had interceded. Her arm began to have weight again. I said "Slow down!" and it looked as if her arm hit something, or as if it were on the end of a string. It stopped as if a string held it there, and then it went down with the same kind of movement as before. Being able to discern the difference between the two kinds of movement allowed me to be able to amplify one and diminish the other. That allowed me to boost her more and more into an altered state.

Now, what about the handshake movement? When I come over here and I put out my hand, what kind of movement does she respond with? When people engage in automatic unconscious programs like shaking hands, or perhaps taking out a pack of cigarettes, their movement usually looks more like conscious movement in that as it begins, you can see where it's going to end. It has a definite direction. There are still ways to distinguish this kind of movement from conscious movement, and if you watch examples of both you will know what I mean. When people engage in automatic programs like shaking hands, they perform the motor activity smoothly and easily, but without focusing their attention on their movement. It looks automatic.

OK. What 1 just did with Liz was another example of a process instruction, with some other things added. First I spent a little time developing a trance state, amplifying unconscious responses. Then 1 began to instruct her to have "new understandings" and to use them in a "beneficial way." I didn't say what the new understandings were, or even what they were about, and I didn't mention what the beneficial way would be. I didn't mention that because I had no idea what they were. I left that entirely up to her unconscious mind.

Then I asked her to dream a dream in which she will learn what it means to use her unconscious creatively. Again, I'm not saying anything that means anything in and of itself. I'm allowing her to make the most appropriate meaning out of it for her. And then I equate completing that task with allowing her hand to come down.

When you give process instructions, you use a lot of words like "understanding," "resource," and "curiosity." We call these kinds of words nominalizations. They are actually process words that are used as nouns. If you turn a word like "understanding" back into a verb "You will understand… , " you realize that a lot of information is deleted. You will understand what? If someone uses nominalizations when they're speaking to you, it forces you to go inside and access meaning. If a client says to you "Well, I'm looking for satisfaction," you can turn satisfaction back into a verb and ask "You are trying to satisfy yourself how?" or "You would like to satisfy yourself about what?" But if you don't do that, then you have to fill in the missing pieces yourself. That's what most therapists do with what their clients say. They hallucinate what the person means. If all I say is "I'm looking for support" you have to go inside and get your ideas of what it means for someone to support someone else.

Each time I select verbal patterns that do not refer directly to sensory experience, I'm calling upon you to be active in the process of understanding them. Each time you do that, you're doing a process which we've named, incomprehensibly, "transderivational search." People take the words that you offer and relate them to their own personal experience. As a hypnotist I use the fact that people do that naturally. I begin to generate language that is stuffed full of nominalizations. I have no idea what the meaning of those nominalizations is, but my client will fill in what's most relevant for her. (See Appendix II for more details.)

Woman: Several times during the process instruction you said "That's right." What was your purpose in saying that?

Saying "That's right" is one of the simplest ways to amplify whatever response is occurring. For example, if I'm giving her process instructions to make some learning, and I see rapid eye movement or other changes indicating that she is processing material internally, saying "that's right" is an instruction for her to do more of it, It's a pace of any experience, and allows me to amplify her response without having to describe it.

Example 3; Let's play a little more. Ann, let me ask you to do something. Close your eyes. First, I want you to make a clear, rich, focused, visual image of a wall, and on the wall I want you to have doors. Do the doors look different to you, or do they look the same?

Ann: Yes, there's a difference.

i here's a difference. OK.. Now, the door that's farthest to the right will take you someplace that will be very familiar. Just keep looking at those doors. And the door that's farthest to the left will take you somewhere that will seem totally different, but when you get to the end, you will discover you've already been there before. Now, there's another door there, is there not? Now, feel yourself walk up to that third door and put your hand on the door knob, but do not open that door.

Ann: I'm just really … not feeling a door knob. It's a swinging door.

You haven't looked around. Search it very carefully. It may open in a way that you've never had a door open before. … Do you discover anything unusual about this door? …

Ann: Yes.

Go ahead and try in vain to push it open… . Search the door more … until you find some unusual characteristic … which has meaning for you as a person … to allow you to really get the door open … in a way that it's never opened before… .

Ann: Well, I did it.

Now, very slowly … I want you to step through, but before you push the door all the way open, I want you to realize … that you are going to enter an experience … which will have the following characteristics: There will be elements … that will make no sense whatsoever … and you will have no words for those elements. But they will be the most important of all … and they will have the most meaningful relationship to changing you … as a human being … in ways that you don't fully understand. And as you notice those elements, pay close attention to them. There will be certain other elements which will surprise you delightfully … like when you turn around, there's no door there anymore… .

Now I want you to observe your environment … with clarity … and with depth … because there's something … there … that you haven't seen yet. Something that will have personal significance for you. And as your eyes drift up and down … around your environment, you won't know what it is until after you pass it. … That's right. Now, when you go back, however, it's not quite the same. But when you do go back, you can use that as an opportunity … and as a reminder … of something that you've needed to know for quite some time.

Now, while you're doing this consciously, I know … at the unconscious level you are doing something else … and that something else is much more important than what your conscious mind is engaged in … because at the unconscious level … you're beginning to build a foundation …on that one object. A foundation which will be a solid structure … on which to build new … and more satisfying future behaviors.

And while your conscious mind continues to explore your environment … and to wonder, really wonder … what the unconscious mind is going to do … that structure is being built all the while … as you continue to engage in this process. That solid foundation … will serve as the same basis …as the foundation you built … the very first time you stood on your own two feet … because before that you'd only had the experience of crawling … until someone lifted you up … and for only an instant … you balanced on your own two feet … with their support… . But even then … you were building an unconscious foundation … which would later serve … as the basis … for your own walking … and running … standing and sitting.

And that object … is the beginning of a foundation … for a whole new set of experiences … and I know … that your unconscious mind can build that foundation quickly … or it could build it slowly, but in cither case it must build it thoroughly … so that it doesn't collapse at a later time… . Because the choices that you want in your future behavior … must have all the necessary ingredients available … at the unconscious level… . And in order to be available, they will have to have a solid structure of understanding … and the necessary elements …to make that behavior available …to you as a human being.

Now you're faced with a dilemma … at this moment in time, that you hadn't consciously realized … but you're beginning to realize it now… . Either … you go back and find the door and walk out … leaving something unfinished … or you allow your own unconscious processes to finish it for you. Or you stay where you are … and leave the world … outside you … to itself … and take all the time that's necessary …to build a structure … which will have all the ingredients … that will be necessary for you to have the future development … that you have been informed … would be beneficial to you … as a human being… .

And that decision … has got to come from you … and your own unconscious processes… . There's no need for it to come from anywhere else… . While you sit there … your unconscious processes … have kept your heart beating … have kept you breathing … have kept the blood flowing through your veins, and have done a hundred thousand other things that your conscious mind is not even remotely aware of. … The importance of this … is realizing that you can trust your own unconscious processes … to take care of you. When you walk down a busy street … and your mind is lost in thought, you automatically … stop at a red light … and even though you arc engaged in internal activity, when the light changes you know that it's time to proceed ahead… ,

And you can always trust those unconscious processes … to do something … which is beneficial … and useful … if given the proper impetus to do so. And it's not really important why it didn't happen in the past. It's only important to know … that it's possible in the future.

Once a long time ago, before I had ever done any therapy, 1 sat observing a man in a restaurant. One of the interesting things about this man …is that he was completely drunk … and yet … each time a fly landed on his hand, he involuntarily twitched … and the fly would move off his hand. He repeated this process … again … and again … and again … and even though his conscious mind … did not know what was going on, his unconscious activity was organized … and methodical … and protective… .

When you're driving down a highway, sometimes the roads are icy; sometimes they're not. Sometimes you are concentrating on what you're doing … and other times your mind is elsewhere. And when your mind goes somewhere else, one of the most important things you can learn from that experience … is that if something suddenly needs your conscious attention, you're suddenly there… .

Now I want you, Ann, to take all the time that you need … to solidify all those learnings and understandings … for yourself … in a way which will be most useful for you as a human being. And it isn't really very important … whether your conscious mind knows that occurs. It's only important that your unconscious mind … begins Immediately to demonstrate to you … in new behaviors … its vast potential to make changes in your ongoing behavior … now and in the future.

Now, in a moment I'm going to come back and talk to you. And I'm going to ask you questions … and some of them you will answer willingly … and some of them you may not want to answer. There will be no need to answer them. Before I do that I am going to speak to other people … and you will always know when I am speaking to them … because I will direct my voice elsewhere. So you can take your own time and do what you know you need to do … and what you don't understand that you need to do. That's right. And be as conscious as you need to be in that process… .

Now let's talk about what I did with Ann. There was no content in any of those instructions. At the process level there was an explicit set of instructions which said basically two things: 1) engage your unconscious; and 2) solve your own problems.

Notice that as we teach you utilization methods, we're still using the tools we taught you earlier, I started by pacing everything that I could see about the way she was, and then as she would slowly begin to change, I would lead her along by slowly changing my output channels. For instance, I gauged the tempo of my voice … to her breathing so that as … I began to … slow my … tempo down … her breathing would slow down. I was watching all of the behavioral cues we mentioned earlier: her skin tone, her skin color, her breathing, her pulse rate, the movements of her eyelids, and so on. These nonverbal cues give me feedback. 1 know what people look like when they go into deeper and deeper altered states—states that are accompanied by physical relaxation.

Ann, are you consciously aware that this kind of experience has an impact on you?

Ann: Yes.

So I established lots of pacing mechanisms and set up feedback loops. I made myself an elaborate biofeedback machine for her. I watched the changes in her skin color, and as her skin color changed I very slowly began to change from my normal tone of voice to a very different tone of voice. Initially I changed my voice tone and tempo at the same rate that she changed. Then by changing my voice even more in the same direction, I could lead her further and further into an altered state.

While I was doing this nonverbally, I was also giving her verbal instructions, both at the conscious and unconscious level. Some of these verbalizations were particularly designed to give me feedback about whether or not she was with me. I talked about the drunk twitching when a fly landed on his hand, and then watched to find out whether or not her hand would twitch. And it did.

Ann: But did you use my resistance to—

There can be no resistance.

Ann: All right. When you told me to visualize the three doors, I visualized two doors at the top and one like an archway. When you started giving me instructions about the first two, after the first few words were out, I knew I was going to take that third door no matter what you said. Did you know that?

Of course. That was part of the program. The question is, how did it turn out that you would only take that door?

Ann: Well, I'm asking–How were you aware that I was not going to take that first door?

What was the difference in my descriptions of the three doors— above and beyond the words I used to describe them? … I said (low tonality, expressing slight disgust) "There's a door that you can go in and everything inside will seem familiar" Listen to that tone of voice! Does it make sense to you now that I would know which door you were going to go through?

However, if when I said 'There's one door and you can go through it and everything on the other side will be familiar'" your face lit up, color came into it, and you sighed, then ! would know something different. The rest of my communication would have been adjusted to that.

Ann: How would you have structured your communication differently if 1 had chosen the first door?

Well "chosen" is not a word that I'm willing to accept. If you had responded to that door, if unconsciously I had gotten indications that what you needed to do was to have an experience with what was familiar, 1 would have had you go in the door expecting everything to be familiar.

If I start with an opening like that, I can still do anything I want! Then I can have it transform into something unfamiliar. "As you reach for what you thought was there, you are surprised to find that. …" "Have you ever cracked open an egg and had a little bunny rabbit fall out?"

What I'm trying to do is give a set of instructions that allows Ann to make unconscious changes. So the most important rule is to respect her unconscious responses. That requires that I'm able to do only one thing—know which responses are conscious and which ones are unconscious.

Did you notice how I structured the experience of the third door? What did I tell her to do with that door? ! told her to "try in vain" to open it. If I say "I tried to open the door" that's very different than "I tried in vain to open the door." If I say "I tried to open the door" I can try again. It may even make sense to try again. But if I say "I tried in vain to open the door" there's no possibility. One has the possibility; the other doesn't.

Now why did I do that? … If she's going to go in a door which has unfamiliar things behind it, the best way to begin is to make the door have a response which is unfamiliar—to have a door that opens in an unusual way. That makes the door itself and the experience she's about to have congruent with each other.

I structure my language carefully. For instance, if I say to you (He turns to a woman in the audience.) "Now you can try to lift your hand" there's an implication that you won't be able to, but there's still a possibility that you might. But if I say "You can try in vain to not lift your hand… . It's a far–reaching experience… . And then you begin to wonder which hand won't lift first … because you thought it was that one."

Now, if you notice, this woman is completely immobilized–That's a trance phenomenon, by the way. And it's utilization of "resistance" by including lots of negations. I gave her something to respond to, found out how she responded to it unconsciously, and amplified the unconscious response. Her unconscious response was immobility, and the way to increase her immobility was to ask her to move more and more. The more I asked her to move, the more immobile she became. The point is, that response of "resistance"is as predictable as anything else, as long as you have the sensory experience to notice which response is unconscious.

The main ingredient you need to be able to function as a communicator is sensory experience. If you can make the distinction between what is conscious and unconscious, and amplify the unconscious responses, you will alter someone's state of consciousness. One way to do this is to ask, as Fritz Perls did "What are you aware of?" If she says "Well, I'm conscious of talking to myself and tightness in my jaw" then you say "But you weren't aware of the warmth where your hand touches your face, and the feeling of your feet on the floor, and your elbows against your thigh, and your breathing, your chest rising and falling." That is all you need to do. That person will start to go into an altered state because you are directing her awareness to places where it would not normally go. That's one way to amplify unconscious responses.

It doesn't matter if the conscious mind is involved in the process. In fact, it's more useful to engage the conscious mind in something of relative unimportance—like which of three doors it's going to go through. Who cares which door it goes through? What's important is that we alter her state of consciousness. Once we've done that, then we can begin to create experiences by which she accesses unconscious resources. She's still consciously concerned with which door she went in, and why, and it really didn't matter, because as soon as she gets inside the door, I can put anything I want in there! The important thing is that in experience she goes through a door. That experience is leaving her usual state of consciousness and entering one that is altered with respect to her normal state of awareness. Once she is through that door, I give her unconscious a process instruction—a program for positive change.

I gave her this program using very unspecified language, for the reasons we discussed earlier. It's very important to understand when to use unspecific language, and when not to use it. When you give process instructions, make your language very unspecified. However, if you want someone to do something very specific, like bake a particular cake or cure a phobia, it will be important to give that person very specific instructions, so they can understand how to do it. If you want someone to bake a cake and you tell him to "take all the appropriate ingredients from your refrigerator, mixing them together in the most satisfying way …" you probably won't get the cake you wanted.

Often I hear people using the unspecific language we use for process instructions when they are trying to communicate something specific to another person. And they have no idea that the other person has no way of understanding them, because of the words they are using. For example, in therapy, people talk about how important it is to have high self–esteem, or a positive self–image rather than a negative one. But they don't talk about exactly how you build those things, or how you know when you have them.

Sally: It happens in comparing their personal experience.

What are they comparing with what?

Sally: They arc comparing their child emotions with their adult understanding of what they think is happening in the present.

OK, and when they compare those, what do they do with the comparison?

Sally: They then have an improvement in their own self–image — their own self–esteem. How?

Sally: By seeing. You see, sometimes a person has a feeling of badness about herself because it is incorporated in a memory. So as you take the present experience or knowledge in the person, and you look back at that, then at the same time you're helping that person in the session. She can then rework things so she has a different—

Let me ask you something. Do you understand that there is nothing in the description you are giving me that allows me to know what you are saying? This is not a criticism of your understanding, because I think you know what you're talking about. But you aren't talking to me in a way that will lead me to understand.

Sally: Maybe it's the knowledge base that I have. Our communication is a little bit different.

Well, it's not that, because I even know what you want to tell me. I know because people have told me many times. However, the discrepancy between how you're telling me and the way you would need to tell me in order to communicate what you want me to know, is an important distinction for what we're learning here.

You see, the kinds of descriptions you are using will be exactly what works in hypnosis. If I want you to make something up, to go off on your own and hallucinate, then I use the kind of non–specific linguistic structures that you were just using.

However, if I want you to do something specific, I have to tell you something specific. If I want to give you information about doing something, I've got to make sure that you know every detail about how to do it. You see, if I wanted you to use a particular mental program that I believed would raise your self–esteem, I might say "OK.. I want you to pick a specific unpleasant memory from your past—a memory in which you realized that you did the worst you could possibly have done… . And as you look at that memory and feel the feelings you had back then, what you don't yet realize is that without unpleasant memories like that one, you wouldn't have learned anything of importance in your whole life. If you'd never experienced the pain of a burn, you wouldn't be smart enough to avoid fires."

That instruction is at least somewhat specific. It tells you to take some unpleasant memory, feel the feelings, and then reevaluate the memory in a specific way. While that instruction doesn't tell you detailed content, it does specify the kind of memory you are to think of and what you are to do with it.

If I don't care how you make a change, I unspecify my language even more and use lots of nominalizations. Close your eyes for a minute and try something. I want you to go inside and pick two, three, or four pleasant past memories which may seem unrelated … but your unconscious never chooses anything in a random fashion … because there's a learning of importance for you as a person… . Now I know in your past, there's a wealth of experience … and that each and every one of those experiences . . , constitutes the basis for building a learn ing …or understanding for yourself … that is relevant to you … only as an adult … that wasn't relevant to you as a child … but it can serve as the basis … for building something that you learned.

Now take a few moments to let that relearning begin to take shape …to crystallize. . , . You might be beginning to see an image . , . which is not clear … and which you do not understand… . And the more you look at it … the more you realize how much you don't understand … and as you watch at the unconscious level … you can be building that learning in a way … which is significant… . The significance of your building that learning … is something that consciously … you can appreciate only when it's complete … and then you'll realize … suddenly… the ideas … and understandings about how to make changes in yourself … can begin to flow … into your conscious mind… . But those ideas have nothing to do with that new learning … because when one of those ideas comes into your mind … if it's truly an unconscious one … it will have to have a giggle attached to it. …

Now, the way I just communicated with Sally is very much like the way she communicated with me. However, there's a big difference between trying to get the conscious mind to understand something and trying to get the unconscious mind to do something. The description that she made is the kind of description I might make to a client when I want her to do something, but it's not what I'm apt to give a clinician when I want him to understand something.

It's always easier to see these things from outside the field than from inside it. That's true in almost everything. A friend of mine who is a prominent technology physicist told me about a time when he'd been working on a very complicated problem. He'd probably been awake for a month, diligently working on this problem.

His mother had been staying at his house and taking care of his kids while he was locked away in his laboratory. She came into the lab and brought him a cup of coffee and asked "How's it going?" He said ^uOh, it's going fine." She asked "What exactly are you doing?" and he explained the complicated problem to her. She listened and said "I don't understand it, I would have just done this" and she gave him the answer that he needed. She had never even gone to high school, but her answer is now the basis for one of the most sophisticated digital computers that has come on the market.

When you're inside a field, you're programmed to see certain things at the expense of others. Of course that gives you capabilities, but it also gives you limitations. When I entered the field of therapy, people said "All you need to do to be a good therapist is to be fully in touch with the needs of people. You help them to raise their self–esteem and their image of themselves so that they can have better and richer lives." I said "How do you do that? How do you raise self–esteem?" And they said "By making people see things the way they really are." I disagree with that; I think it's by creating more useful self–deceptions than the ones they already have. I don't know how things "really are."

The point is that there are many words that sound meaningful but aren't. Nominalizations always sound meaningful, but that doesn't mean that they are. If you want to get someone's unconscious to do something, nominalizations are exactly the kind of words that you can use effectively to do that.

Let me give you a general way to think about making up process instructions, because in addition to copying the kind of instructions we've been demonstrating here, you can make up your own. To make up process instructions, first think of any sequence that will lead to learning. One such sequence is to 1) pick some important experience from your past, 2) review and rehear what occurred then thoroughly enough to learn something new/additional from that experience, and 3) ask your unconscious to use the new learning in appropriate situations in the future.

If you're going to learn something, you need to have a way to learn it, and you need to have a way to determine when and where to use the new learning. So make up a sequence that includes those components. Once you have a general idea of what steps you want to include, you can deliver the instructions using hypnotic language patterns, allowing the client enough time to respond.

Generative Change; Hypnotic Dreaming

Next I want to give you a strategy for inducing generative change, both for those of you who want to make personal changes and those of you who do therapy. Generative change doesn't mean you want to quit smoking, lose weight, or get over your problems. I call those "remedial changes." Generative change means you'd like to be able to do something more exquisitely, or you'd like to learn something new. It's not that you want to change something you do badly, but that you want to improve something that you already do well.

When I started doing therapy and my sixth or seventh client walked in, I had an amazing experience. He started out in the usual way, He said "There are certain changes I'd like to make." I asked "What are they?" He said "I would like to be able to meet people and get them to like me." Since I was programmed to respond in a certain way, I asked "Do you have trouble doing that now?" He said "No, I'm really great at it."

I stopped. All of my presuppositions were being violated. I asked him "Then what's the problem?" "There's no problem" he said "I just do it so well, and 1 enjoy it so much, I'd like to be able to do it twice as well." I looked down into my therapy bag of tricks, and nothing was there! Most therapies aren't designed for that kind of situation.

Don't restrict yourself to fixing things that are broken. If you do something well, wonderful! You might enjoy doing it twice as well. There's no restriction on making that kind of change. Usually if you make enough generative changes, you will inadvertently wipe out lots of remedial problems. If you concentrate on making yourself better in an area where you are already good, very often other "problems" will be taken care of spontaneously.

I'd like to have you try out an interesting strategy for generative change that makes use of hypnotic dreaming. As far as I can tell, hypnotic dreaming doesn't differ very much from regular dreaming, except that during hypnotic dreaming you are not snoring.

There are lots of formats to use dreams to alter your reality. The first thing you'll always do is figure out what outcome you're after. You might want to be able to do X better, or for your client to be able to do X better. Let's say your client already can do X, but you want her to be able to do it better.

Then you ask yourself "What kinds of things would allow somebody to do anything better?" Be really general in responding to this. Remember, this is hypnosis, and you are in the Land of Nominalizations.

Woman: Improved perceptions. Man: Energy.

Be careful about using the word "energy." You have to be very careful about using certain idioms that are widely used in other contexts. The energy crisis has produced a tremendous number of hypnotic messages about energy conservation. If you use energy as a metaphor for having more personal oomph, sometimes you can get into trouble, because you will have to counter massive publicity. There are advertisements now on radio and television for the entire nation to conserve energy and become lethargic.

A well–known therapist uses a metaphor for personal growth called "yeasting." I discovered in one of her seminars that some of the women in the group developed yeast infections! This, by the way, is one of the primary things that old–school hypnotists discovered. They discovered that there's a sense in which all language is computed literally, particularly in a trance state. Any phrase that has an idiomatic meaning gets computed two ways. The phrase "kick the bucket" has an idiomatic meaning that someone has died, and also a literal meaning. Both meanings are computed whenever you use an idiom.

If you frequently say "My children are a real headache" I can guarantee that you will begin to get headaches. People who have a lot of back trouble talk about everything as being a pain in the back, or about carrying the world on their shoulders. We've already talked about this class of language. It's called "organ language" and it's very powerful.

What else will lead to doing something better? Woman: Knowledge. Practice.

OK. Some kind of new idea will, and practicing something will. If they already do something well, they may have already practiced it enough. If they haven't, practice is something that could lead to improvement.

What we are doing is beginning to build an equation. I know most of you don't like the word equation, but you will begin to. The more you try to not like it, — the more appealing and mysterious it might become… .

What I just did is always a good equation. Remember, this is one of the ways you can deal with abreactions. It's the same equation. "It's so pleasant to learn from unpleasantness. And the more unpleasant it becomes, the more pleasant learnings you will have." This means the more they go into the negative state, the more they will come out of it. "The more X, the more Y" is a very useful equation for you to keep in mind.

This morning we're going to build an equation that uses dreaming. We can say that anything that produces one of these things—a new idea, practice, or improved perceptions—implies doing something better. That's the same equation I just talked about. We still need something that will produce the new idea, etc., and we'll use dreaming to do that.

Exercise 7

In a moment I want you to make generative changes with each other. Do this in pairs so you can all do it fairly quickly. Person B, I want you to choose some particular behavior that you already do well, and would like to do even better. Person A, I want you to do any induction you choose with B, until you get a fairly deep trance state. Then reach over and say "I am now lifting up your arm, and I'm not going to tell you to put it down any faster than you begin to dream a dream… . During this dream … odd and diffuse things will begin to happen… . But you know that unconsciously … something is building up … which is going to crystallize … into an idea … which will produce in you … a change in your perceptions … which will allow

you to be able to do X … even better than you ever suspected… .

Because there is something about X … that you have overlooked … and your unconscious knows how to go back … and look again.

… What does it mean to overlook something? … Overlooking means you looked too high … so now you can go back … and shift your gaze … past experiences … at the unconscious level, when you were in that particular experience … only this time … your unconscious can look at it in a new way … and find out … what it was in the times you did it absolutely exquisitely … that was different … from the times you only did it … sort of exquisitely… .

Discerning that difference … it can present you that difference in a mysterious dream … so you will continue to dream that dream … a very colorful dream … and enjoy it immensely and wonder …really wonder … what it is you are about to learn … and the idea will not come to you any faster , . . than your hand moves slowly down . , . and touches your knee … such that when it does that, that idea will crystallize in your mind , . . and you will wonder how you could have been so foolish as to overlook it all along." …

This is another example of a process instruction. 1 said to have a dream and learn something from it. However, I also added specific instructions about how the unconscious is going to learn it. I said "Go back, review your past experiences, extract the difference between when you do really well and when you do only a mediocre job, and present this new perception in a dream."

However, if I were to just say those things directly, I wouldn't be as effective. It wouldn't work as well, because it wouldn't have the color or the punch. It also wouldn't have the artful vagueness that allows the unconscious to respond in a way that's natural to it. Dreaming is a very natural means for the unconscious to present material in a way that the conscious mind doesn't understand, and then to have it slowly evolve into something which is more meaningful consciously.

Man: What can IdoifI want to come up with a solution to a problem that has so many factors I can't compute them all consciously?

What would be a way of going about that? Let's do it this way. Let's go back to the dream. This is one of my favorite instructions. Let's have him dream six dreams, and each one will be the same dream, but will have a different content and different characters. However, he won't understand the first dream at all, because there will be too many things going on in that dream. He won't really understand the second dream either, but unconsciously, with each dream, he will begin to collect and distill the meanings and understandings of all the factors involved into a more and more coherent package. In this manner, by the sixth dream even his conscious mind will be able to understand what is going on. The first dream will be totally confusing. The second dream will be a little less confusing. The third dream will be even less confusing than that. The fourth one will begin to become clear, but he won't quite grasp it. And the fifth one will feel like it is on the tip of his tongue. But in the sixth one, the meaning will suddenly burst fully into consciousness. This is a pretty direct way of going after it—indirectly. It's a great instruction.

Now I want you to pair up and try one of these utilization methods. You've been practicing inductions quite a bit already, so don't spend much time on that. Just tell your partner to close her eyes and relax and pretend that she is in hypnosis. That's always a quick induction. Then either give her a process instruction, or give her an instruction to use hypnotic dreaming to learn something. If you give her a process instruction, make it a more involved one than you used when you practiced inductions previously. Give her a sequence of steps that can lead to learning. Use everything else you've learned up to this point too. If something unexpected occurs, you can incorporate it into what you are doing, and what you want to have happen. OK. Go ahead.

*****

Clean–up Routines

Dorothy: What do you do if the person is in a trance and the hour is up before you've finished working with her? What if she's right in the middle of something?

You need to have a way of dealing with that kind of situation in many contexts. I call such methods "clean–up routines." You might be a family therapist, with mother here, daddy here, and baby Joan over there. They've all just gotten into a disagreement, and it's two minutes before the arrival of your next client. In any situation like this, you ought to have two–minute "tape–loops" — absolutely meaningless content–wise and absolutely meaningful process–wise—to put everything together.

"We've worked very, very hard and a lot of things have been stirred up at the unconscious level that are extremely useful in a positive way. Over the next days and weeks, you will notice understanding emerging from your unconscious. As a result of beginning to put things together here, you will notice changes, alterations in your behavior that will delightfully surprise you. And now, as you gather all the parts of yourself that have expressed themselves today, once again into yourself, you can sense the energy that they represent made available to your unconscious mind, to continue these processes which we have begun here, in a meaningful way. …"

This is another example of a process instruction. You stay entirely at the process level and say "Put yourself back together." You include post–hypnotic suggestions that their behavior will continue to change as a result of many of the things that you stirred up. The instructions essentially say "Continue this process even though I won't be here." You can suggest that her unconscious will continue to search for an optimal solution which it will reach sometime before she awakes the next morning.

"During the afternoon, as your unconscious mind continues to work hard to find and test the various possible solutions, in order to find the one which most uniquely fits your needs as a total organism, leaving you free at the conscious level to go about the rest of your day in safety and perform adequately any tasks that you intend to. So as your unconscious mind continues this work, your conscious mind will attend to the tasks of the day and your own safety." Doing this kind of thing is important as a close. It's an integration; it's reassembling the person.

I remember once when I first started doing gestalt therapy, I was working with one person as a demonstration in a group. I didn't have the faintest idea of what I was doing, and as far as I could tell, nothing happened. So at the end I said "Now Irv, we've worked hard here today, and we've stirred up a lot of things inside you. So I want you to be particularly alert and sensitive to those behavioral changes which will occur over the next two–week period until we get together again, which are the direct result of the marvelous work that you've done here today. And don't be too surprised to discover how radical these changes are — but appropriate to your particular needs." That's saying nothing, but it will work. It's a post–hypnotic suggesion.

If you're doing trance work as a part of an exercise in this workshop, and you want to end things quickly because we've called you back, first spend a few moments pacing your partner's breathing. Then you can say "Now I would like the opportunity to join you once again… . Allow yourself to finish … those important and meaningful things … that have been made available to you . , . during this process… . Draw from your experience any … sense of refreshment … and renewal available … and return here … at your own rate … rejoining me here in the room … to begin the next phase of this seminar."

That's a cleanup that is particularly appropriate for what you are doing in this workshop. The principles I used to construct it are the same ones I used to make up the other examples I just gave you.

Building Generalizations: A Hypnotic Utilization

The next question we want to pose to you is "How do you take a series of experiences and build a learning from them?" If I gave you a magic wand that would allow you to tap someone on the head five times and give him five experiences, what five experiences could you use to change somebody? Pick one client that you have and decide how you would like him to be different. Think about it more specifically than "having higher self–esteem." What would be really different about him in sensory experience? How would he act differently? … Now, what experience would he need in order for him to act that way?

You see, having experiences in a sequence is what served as the basis for you and everyone else to build old generalizations. No matter what content your generalizations have, the processes people use to create generalizations are similar. People who have phobias have generalizations about elevators, closets, water, or something else being dangerous. You all have generalizations about learning that are having an impact on how you are learning hypnosis right now. Some of you might have a generalization that you can do anything that you try. That generalization may be based on several examples of having succeeded in the past. Some people form generalizations based on only one experience; most phobias are created that way. Other people require more examples of the same thing before they form a generalization.

When you want to change someone, you can give him experiences to get him to make a new and more useful generalization—one that would make his life more positive. Of course, the first thing you need to decide is what generalization you would like to build. How could you determine that?

Man: Ask him what he admires in somebody else.

Yes, you could do that, and then you'll find out what he thinks he could benefit from. I don't do it that way. I figure that if what he wants would be a good choice, he would have learned it already.

I don't buy into the "you shouldn't impose upon people" philosophy, because I think you end up doing it anyway without knowing it. I keep meeting people who are the result of that kind of imposition. When I ran a private practice, over half of the people who came to me were there primarily because they had been screwed up by therapists — often "non–directive" therapists. The therapists didn't know they were doing it. They were intending to help their clients in some way, and instead they screwed them up.

For example, some therapists teach their clients about self–esteem, and then they can feel bad about not having it. That happens over and over. Most people never felt bad about feeling bad when they first went to a therapist. They just felt bad. But when they were taught about self–esteem, then they felt bad about feeling bad, and they were worse off! When you give people concepts, you have to be careful to do it in a way that takes them somewhere useful.

Some therapists teach their clients to accept all their limitations so they can be happy. Sometimes that works really well. However, if they come in with hysterical paralysis, that probably won't be a very good way of working with them.

Man: What do you mean by "happy?"

I'm not talking about philosophy here; I'm talking about the subjective experience of enjoying something, it's a subjective, kinesthetic experience in which people have the absence of pain, and they have stimulation of the nervous system in such a way that they describe themselves as liking what they're getting rather than being in a state of desire. You see, if people come in to therapy whining and moaning and complaining, it seems to me that they're not happy.

If you as a clinician don't have your own life together, it's going to be really hard to figure out a basis on which to do something to help somebody else. When I did an ongoing training program, one of the most rigorous parts of the program was that my students had to get their own personal lives together — right away! Because if I found out they were having long, meaningful conversations all night with their wives and things weren't working out, and they felt like they had to have affairs, I canned them right out of the program. They knew I would do it, so they made sure they got their lives together.

It is of paramount importance to me for people to be able to take care of themselves. I'm not talking about being able to survive, but taking themselves to places that are enjoyable. I make jokes about my next book being titled "OK is Not Good Enough." I don't consider the paradigm of repair a good paradigm. The paradigm of repair in psychotherapy, where people come in unhappy and broken and you fix them, is only part of the picture. It makes more sense to me that we build models based on notions of generativity.

People are just beginning to do this in the area of physical health. For a long time, medicine used a model based totally on repair. However, the only really amazing thing that medicine has done is to invent innoculations. The fact that people can be injected with vaccines against polio which prevent them from getting it is a miracle. It's the finest thing medicine has ever done, and it's certainly not based on repairing what's gone wrong.

If you're generative, you modify things so they're better than they were when you started. You utilize the natural propensities of the system to make the system even more effective. That's the way I think about everything. I want to work with what's there in such a way that it's better than it needs to be — not just adequate. My personal criterion for doing successful work is whether people are happier. Those are just my own ethics. You can work towards unhappiness if you want. You see, whatever you do, you set up target states. If you're a lawyer, you don't work toward happiness, you work toward conviction: toward getting people convinced of things. If you're a clinician, hopefully you set up happiness and competence as target states.

A lot of therapists set up understanding as a target state. Clinicians have been very successful at building paradigms that give people understanding, so that people understand exactly what's wrong with them. They end up with clients who really understand, but they still can't cope with the world, and they can't make themselves happy. Other therapists have referred me dozens of clients who would sit down and give me a long, detailed explanation about where their problems came from, why they have them, and how they affect their lives. I'd say to them "Well, that's really interesting, but what do you want?" They'd say "I want to change it!" So I'd say 'Then why did you tell me all of that stuff?" They'd respond "Well, don't you need to know that?" I'd say "No, I don't have to know about that." They'd be flabbergasted, because they had just spent five years and $50,000 finding out why they were screwed up!

Husbands and wives often make each other unhappy because they set "being right" as a target state. So they end up being right, but everybody ends up being unhappy as a result.

We want to teach you to build learnings in the context of hypnosis. You can use these techniques to get any outcome you want. If you want to you can make people unhappy, you can make them ill, or you can give people hysterical paralysis or phobias. Those things don't seem eminently fruitful to me. However, if that's what you want to do, it's an ethical choice that you'll have to make.

The question I'm asking you is "What experiences could you give somebody that would result in building a useful generalization?" It's a practical question.

Man: If he already has a troublesome generalization, you could give him a counterexample.

Yes, that would work. I believe that learning can happen in a number of ways. One of the best ways to teach the conscious mind something is to provide it with a counterexample to what it believes. There's a nice example of this in our book Magic I. In one of our groups a woman who couldn't say "no" lay down on the floor and began to cry hysterically. She exclaimed that she was helpless and people walked all over her. I asked her "What do you mean 'people walk all over you'?" Then I started to walk across the room towards her to stomp all over her. Having been in enough of my groups, she was smart enough to get out ofthe way.

She said that she lived with two other women, and they constantly made her do everything and ran her life. I said "Well, why don't you do something primitive like turn around and say 'Don't do that'?"

Saying that got one of the most intense nonverbal responses I have ever seen in a person. She turned paler than she already was and said "I can't do that." I said "What do you mean you can't do that?" She said "Well, I can't tell them 'no.'" I asked "What would happen if you told them you wouldn't do the dishes or you wouldn't do something else?" She said "Oh, it's just impossible."

She ended up telling us a traditional story that would please a psychiatrist. She had learned not to say "no" when she was a little girl. One day she was about to go to the store with her mother, when her father said "Why don't you stay home with me?" She said "No, I'm going to go with mommy." She went with mommy, and when they came back to the apartment, her father was lying on the floor covered with blood. His hand was about two inches from the telephone. He had been an alcoholic, and had just died.

After that, she just never said "no." That meant she probably didn't keep her virginity too long. She was a homosexual, which I thought was interesting. That one experience with her father was enough for her to build the generalization that if she said "no," somebody was going to die.

I put her in a "double–bind" by telling her that I wanted her to go say "no" to someone on the other side of the room. She said "No, I won't do that." And I said "Did I die?" She said "What?" And I said "You just said 'no' to me. Am I dead?" She went through another set of visible changes and then said "Well, you're special."

1 had given her an experience of a counterexample to her generalization that if she said "no" people would die. At that point she could say "no" to me and know I would live, but she still couldn't say "no" to anybody else. So I had other people come up and tell her to say "no." 1 had to build a broader base of experience on which she could do something else.

This took a long time. You see, there's something terrible about knowing you're wrong, but not knowing what you're supposed to do differently. I didn't know how to do hypnosis then. Had I known how to do hypnosis, I could have changed her generalization much more easily, gracefully, and without all the struggle and pain.

Let me pose another possibility for building generalizations. Any time you define something as being new, you can just build new generalizations for it. If you define something as new, you can build a generalization without destroying or changing one that's already there. Give me an example of when that would be useful.

Man: Don't you do that with children?

I hope so. But I want you to give me a specific example.

Man: If you're teaching someone to multiply and he doesn't know anything about it, then you can give him a generalization about learning multiplication without breaking an old one. Right.

Judy: I disagree with that. I think that when you teach addition, you don't have any generalizations to break. In teaching my children multiplication, 1 teach them that it's based on addition. It's sort of like addition, but it's just a little bit different. So in that example I think you do have generalizations to break.

Sometimes hypnotic communication flies right by, doesn't it? Judy just said in essence "When I teach my children multiplication, I do in fact have to break generalizations, because I teach them that it's like addition." Now, I agree with her reasoning. The reason that she has to break generalizations is that she thinks multiplication and addition are related to one another and she teaches her children that they are. They are related to one another, but no more or less than addition is related to subtraction or division or exponents or anything else. If she taught multiplication as a totally new thing, she wouldn't have to break an old generalization.

Man: This workshop on hypnosis is an example. I wasn't aware that I knew anything about hypnosis until I came in here. For me it's totally new learning, so I'm not breaking any generalizations about living— being–growing. Since I assumed there were no old ones to begin with, I'm just making new ones.

I'm suggesting to you that there are at least two ways of building new generalizations. One way is to break an old one, and the other way is to simply build a new one. You see, one nice thing about people is that they can have incompatible generalizations within themselves. There's nothing that prevents them from being able to do that. There's a whole form of therapy based on trying to get rid of all your incompatible generalizations so you can be one–dimensional. According to that system, to be authentic is to be totally consistent.

There's no need to break old generalizations or get a person to be completely consistent, it can be simpler to define something as being new, so that the person has no generalizations and therefore no limitations. That doesn't mean the person will know what to do, but it does mean he won't have any interference once he finds out.

The nice thing is that you can define anything that exists as something new. You see, if you have a generalization that you can't get along with your mate, you can go for something besides "getting along." You can build a totally new kind of relationship that's different than any thing that you ever had before, because now you're going to understand something that you didn't really know about before. Before you were trying to survive. You were trying to get your way or be right. You never stopped and thought about what it would be like if both you and your mate did everything you could do to make your partner make you feel good.

If I can build a new outcome for you, and then teach you specifics about how to get there, either consciously or unconsciously, your other limitations can make it easier for you to get there. They won't get in the way of your new generalization; instead they'll get in the way of your doing all the other things that you used to do and which didn't work. So the limitations that somebody has can become assets.

Another way you can build generalizations unconsciously is to build learnings that encompass everything. In Greek society there was an occult group based on something called mathematics. Mathematics is now considered a science, but not long ago people who did mathematics were considered sorcerers, and thought of themselves that way. It was like practicing magic or some religion. Mathematicians at that time discovered that there were two sets of numbers. First they discovered positive numbers, and then they discovered subtraction, and with subtraction came negative numbers. This caused a division in mathematics. Some mathematicians thought that everything was addition. There were others who believed that the right way to think about numbers was subtraction. Those two groups had wars about who was right.

Then someone came along and said "Hey, we can put both of these principles into the same schema and call it algebra." The idea of algebra didn't require breaking any generalizations or violating anything. It only required being inclusive; it required getting a larger picture.

I used to go to lots of psychotherapy groups to find out what group leaders did. At one seminar they locked us all in a room and told us we were all jerks. They said the reason we were jerks was that we felt bad about ourselves. They said that since we sometimes felt stupid and helpless, or didn't feel like we were worthwhile, we were dummies. This was true because we had another choice. That choice was to feel good about ourselves.

They went through a rigorous procedure of torturing us for days and days, and somehow this was supposed to make us feel better about ourselves. What they didn't teach us is that feeling good or bad about yourself is really part of something bigger called feedback. You see, if you feel bad about yourself, but that doesn't lead you into changing your behavior so you can feel good about yourself, it's not very useful. If you feel good about yourself, but you're doing things that hurt other people and you don't get feedback about that, that's not useful either. Just because you feel good about yourself doesn't mean that you're doing good things; and doing good things doesn't mean that you're going to feel good later on.

One of the things that has amazed me more than anything else in my experience with human beings, is that people who are supposed to be in love, fight. And when they fight they do things that could really affect their relationship negatively over a long period of time. Usually it's because they forget what they are doing with each other. They forget that they arc together to be intimate. It slips their minds, and they start arguing over where they're going to go on vacations, how to bring up the kids, who should take out the garbage, and other wierd little things. And they arc really effective at making each other feel bad. They have forgotten something that would tie meaningfulness to the whole experience.

Now I want to give you a more official example of hypnosis, because too many of you are not looking around the room and noticing what's going on in here. So I'd like to take somebody out of the audience and put him up here. There are certain advantages to sitting in this chair, because you get to watch 100 people go in and out of altered states, and they only get to watch one. Is there somebody in the audience who would volunteer?

OK. What's your name?

Woman: Linda.

OK, Linda. Are you married? (Yes.) Can you think of anything that your husband does that makes you feel some way that you don't like? You don't have to talk about what it is, but I'd like for you to think of some idiosyncratic behavior of his—perhaps some tone of voice, some gesture, some set of movements—that makes you feel unpleasant, If he didn't do that behavior, you wouldn't have to feel unpleasant, but if he kept it and your response to it was really positive, it would make your life a lot easier. So he could do exactly what he does, but rather than feeling bad, you could still enjoy yourself—perhaps even feel very pleasant… .

OK. Take a few moments. Close your eyes and look at times and places where you've seen him do those things. And when you look at him in those situations, I want you to be very sure … that you can discern which of his hands moves the most… . In each memory notice specifically how he's dressed … and approximately what time of day it was. , . .

It's not that these facts are important in and of themselves … because what's important here … is not necessarily , . . going to be … facts at all… . Because in your past you've had the experience … where what you thought was an absolute fact … became the opposite of what you came to believe later on. … That's the nature of time… . Time changes everything. … In fact, without time … nothing at all changes… . Light wouldn't exist without motion … and motion doesn't exist without time, …

Right now, I want you to take the time to go way, way back into your own childhood, and find there some past, pleasant memories that you haven't thought about fora long time… . Because many things happened to you …in your own childhood … things that were fun … things that were important… . Right now, the most important thing … is that your unconscious mind … begin to learn … to separate out. . , one thing from another …to begin to work actively … and sort through those childhood memories …to find one that is just … pleasant … enough… .

And I want you . , . that's right …to enjoy that process …. When you find that pleasant memory … I want you to experience those feelings… . Get inside that memory… . Notice the smells and sounds and the tastes … of what goes on. … Because inside that memory … is enjoyment for your conscious mind… . And inside that memory … is the foundation that your unconscious mind … can use to build an entirely new learning… .

Now, inside that memory … that pleasant memory … something is occurring. … Do you know what the name of that something is? … That's right… . Remember that name… . That's a set of words … that you can remember later on. Now, when you went through life . . , you went from one memory to another. Only they weren't even memories yet, they were just experiences… . And as you moved from one experience to another … you'd have an enjoyable one … but as time went on, your enjoyment would change to something else . . , because there were also experiences which were very, very unpleasant … some which really scared you … some which you fought your way through … and from which you learned a lot about living… . That's right… .

And as you got through those experiences, you said to yourself "Never again." … And as time went on … those unpleasant experiences faded into the past . . , and they became the basis … of powerful learnings … about how to cope with the world in a way that was effective… . They were useful… . However, they're not nearly as useful …as what happens when you say the name …of that pleasant memory… . Say that name to yourself… and as you do … you can go back there again… . That's right. … Go back inside that memory … the pleasant one … and find the enjoyment… . That's right… . Because you forgot to do something… . Lots of people forget… .

When you go from a pleasant experience to an unpleasant one, you don't use the pleasantness as a way of coping… . On the other hand when you leave an unpleasant experience and go to a pleasant one, somehow or other it's so easy to take the unpleasantness with you. … It seems foolish somehow, but yet it's easier that way. And if you take some time … take a deep breath … and let that unpleasant memory really fade … and then move forward … and go back into that pleasant memory … that enjoyable memory … and when you're in that memory this time … you tell yourself … "I'll never forget this again… ." Because some things … are a resource … that you want to take with you … to be at your beck and call… . And some things are a burden . , . and they're no longer needed… .

A long time ago … my aunt told me … that whenever something bad happened … I should never forget it because if I would ever forget it, it would happen again, … If I had taken her advice, 1 would have spent a long time trying to remember a lot of bad things… . But if you have a bad experience and you say to yourself "Never again" … you can trust that your unconscious will allow you to know what to avoid in the future… . And if you say "A few moments ago I forgot to take that pleasant memory with me, and I felt all those bad feelings, and I'm never going to do that again" …you can go back into that enjoyment … go into that pleasant memory … and perhaps remember another one that's even more pleasant… . Find one that may even have a giggle under it or a giggle over it … perhaps one that has tenderness … perhaps one that just has a lot of fun… . Because you

went through your childhood … you became a teenager … and now you're an adult… . You made it, so to speak. But since you've made it … that's no reason for you to give up all the good things… . It's much more effective to take them with you… .

See what is the most pleasant memory your unconscious mind can find. , . , You can consciously look for memories, but unconsciously you know how to sort through memories much faster … and much more effectively… . Your unconscious knows much more about your own experience than I do … and it can sort through memories at a high rate … until it finds one that it thinks your conscious mind would never have thought about, which is pleasant in a very unique way. … It can find more than one if it chooses. …It might show you a piece of one … a fragment of another; it might show you a whole sequence of pleasant memories… .

And as it does so … you might not realize it … but you're doing the same thing you did … every day of your childhood for the first four years and every day thereafter… . You're sorting through memories and experience, trying to make sense of them … in a way that's useful… . And if you find that thread … that allows you to have a good feeling … then very, very slowly I want you to feel the palms of your hands … begin to touch one another, slowly … the warmth and texture… .

And as they come together I want you to keep those good feelings , . . and I want you to see your husband doing that special idiosyncratic behavior … that in the past you didn't like … and I want you to see him do it … and keep those good feelings … and know how good it can feel to have somebody special in the world. , . . That's right… . The most unique experience that a person can have … is to have someone who is special for them.

You see, one of the things that you may have noticed … is that if you've ever been in a room with a woman and her young baby … and when she looks at that baby and you see her face … there's something very special there … and very meaningful there… . And that special quality is something that's more important… .

Now … in my years of working with people … I've seen many people who forgot… . I've seen mothers who come in and yell at their children in front of me—they scold them, they strike them, they make them feel bad… . They've forgotten that special feeling, and they think what they're talking about is more important. . , . That's a terrible waste. …

When you see your husband doing that idiosyncratic behavior, you will have palms on your hands … and if you feel that good feeling inside you, that pleasant thread of enjoyment, not only will you have palms, but you'll have someone special in them… .

Now, I don't know , . . if you feel that you can afford … to do otherwise … but I know that as I go through life, it's important to me … to be able to appreciate and to enjoy all the qualities … that make a special person unique … and individual … not just some of

them, because what you're learning here is not just a way … that your unconscious can assist you in taking one piece of behavior and making it tolerable … but a way in which your unconscious can begin to appreciate every idiosyncratic piece of behavior… .

I remember when I was young …I didn't like the crust on bread …. And when I'd get a sandwich, the first thing I'd do is peel the crust off and feed it to the dog… . I had to be very covert about this because

my mother believed that the crust on Wonder Bread was nourishing. My mother was very naive. Now as time went on, I discovered that not all breads tasted like rubber; I discovered that there were some breads on which the crust really did taste good. There was San Francisco French bread, certain kinds of rye bread, and certainly cinnamon toasts of odd, interesting fashions. And I discovered that as time went on my tastes … changed … from one thing to another … and as your tastes change and you learn to appreciate something … that you didn't before … it makes you aware … and more alert … to just exactly what it is … that makes something important.

Now above and beyond all of this … there's something else going on here … which is that you've begun …a process … which can continue for many years … about learning to use your unconscious resources … to go deeper into a trance if you wish to … or just to communicate … with the unconscious portions of yourself … for the purpose of learning … and change… .

Now, one of the things that will help you … is to realize … the significance of one foot as opposed to the other. If you very slowly begin to move your right foot, you can wake yourself up … but if you hold that right foot still … and begin to move your left foot, something else will happen… . Try it. … Now isn't that interesting …. Now why don't you use that right foot … and under your own control and steerage bring yourself right back here to the Grand Ballroom. OK, thank you. You can go sit down now.

What I just did with Linda can be thought of in many different ways, because it includes a lot. Some of it was quite explicit and straightforward, and some of it was not. At the simplest level it's a process instruction. It included hypnotic language patterns and guided Linda through a sequence that will lead to learning.

You can also think about what I did as reanchoring. I accessed positive experiences and attached them to situations in which she used to be irritated with her husband. I instructed her to do that verbally, but the verbal part of my behavior was probably the least important part in getting the response from her. I was also anchoring tonally: I used one tone of voice to anchor her positive memories from the past, and another to anchor what her husband does. Then as 1 talked about her husband's behavior, I shifted to the tone that anchored the positive memory, to give her a new response to her husband.

Along with that, I was makinga content reframe: I was changing the meaning of her husband's behavior. Now seeing or hearing her husband do those things will simply be an indication that he is the unique person who is special to her.

I included another pattern that we haven't talked about yet, and several that we won't teach you consciously. The pattern I'm thinking of is a fairly complex one, and makes use of a kind of metaphor that we haven't taught very often. You see, there are two kinds of metaphor. One kind is based on isomorphism. That is, if a woman comes in who has two daughters that argue, I might tell her a story about a gardener who had two rosebushes which were snarled together in his garden. If you use isomorphic metaphor to produce change, you tell a story that has a one–to–one relationship to what is occurring, and then either build in a specific solution, or provide a very ambiguous, open–ended solution. You can read about that kind of metaphor in David Gordon's book. Therapeutic Metaphors,

There's another kind of metaphor that elicits a response which is really a command to do something or to avoid something. This kind of a story elicits a response without necessarily being parallel to anything in the person's life. I might tell a story about a person I know who was completely convinced that he was right about a particular way of doing something. He and I and several others were all involved in designing a computer, and we all had our own ideas about how to do it. He wanted to do something with the transformer that none of the rest of us thought could be done. When we disagreed he yelled at us and told us that he wasn't even going to waste his time talking to us about it. He said that we didn't know, and we didn't understand, and he was smarter than us. So he just went in and took the transformer, hooked it up, (lipped the switch, and it electrocuted him and killed him.

That kind of metaphor is very different from an isomorphic metaphor. It elicits a response of avoiding something. It's an exaggerated example of what I just did when I told Linda about the mothers who had forgotten about what they'd had children for.

I used other examples of this kind of metaphor. I told a story about myself, and how my tastes changed naturally as I grew up. That story isn't parallel to anything I know about Linda; it's simply a story that elicits a response—the response of things changing spontaneously. That's a response that can be very useful when doing hypnosis.

This kind of metaphor is particularly effective if you use stories that are universal in order to elicit responses. By universal I mean stories that everyone can relate to and will respond to in the same way. Almost everyone has experienced liking some food and later disliking it, or vice–versa, so I know that if I describe such an experience, almost everyone will respond to it in the same way: by accessing an experience which indicates that spontaneous change is possible.

Milton Erickson used to use this pattern very effectively. He put people into a trance, and then talked about going to school for the first time and being faced with the alphabet. "At first it seemed like an overwhelming task. But now each letter has formed a permanent image in your brain and has become the basis for reading and writing."

That's a universal example, for people in this culture, of something difficult becoming easy. Even if it didn't happen quite that way, as an adult looking back, it seems as if it would have happened that way. That means it's an experience that you can use with anyone to elicit the response of something difficult becoming easy. When people ask for help in making a change, you can be sure that the change will seem difficult to them. So it can be really useful to elicit the response of something difficult becoming easy.

Often Milton would talk to his clients about what it was like to be a small child. He would say "And when you were a very young child, and you first learned to crawl, you saw toes and table legs, and the world looked a certain way. And when you first stood up, you had a whole new set of perceptions about the world. The whole world looked different to you. When you bent over and looked between your legs, the world looked different again. You can gain new perceptions for yourself as you change your abilities. And as you change your perceptions you have the possibility of acquiring new abilities." This kind of description is really an instruction to do something—to change your perceptions. He describes an experience we have all undeniably had of doing so, easily. "And you may be able to remember being a child, or think about what it would be like to only notice the carpet, and the little mysterious things in the fiber … to only notice the relationship of the underside of tables … and then one day you learned to stand. Perhaps you held onto someone's fingers or the side of the couch, and you looked at the world. Rather than looking up or looking down, now you could look straight ahead. And what you saw looked very different. It changed the things that you were interested in, it changed how you saw things, and it would change what you could do."

When you tell that kind of story, it doesn't matter if things actually occurred exactly that way. All that matters is that if adults look back at what it must have been like to be a child, it seems as if that would have occurred. That means that adults will universally respond to that kind of story in the same way.

If you get someone to recall that experience, and the next things you talk about are experiences that could serve as the perceptual base for changing a particular problem, that sequence is a command. It's not just a story. The command is to change your perceptions using this particular data.

We aren't going to go into detail about this kind of metaphor during this seminar. However, you can make what you do more powerful and have more punch by using this in a simple way. You can think about what kind of responses you can elicit that will make your change work easier. Then you can think of universal experiences that include those responses, and describe those experiences to your clients after you put them in a trance.

One response that's very useful to elicit when doing hypnosis is the experience that one's unconscious is wise and can be trusted. What are universal experiences in which people respond appropriately without thinking about it consciously? … You can talk about how when you run, your body knows just when to make your heart beat faster, and your breathing faster, and when to slow them down again. Consciously, you have no idea just how fast your heart should beat in order

to get the appropriate amount of oxygen to your cells, and there's no need to, because your unconscious has a wisdom about how and when such things should occur.