JOHN GRINDER’S PHOBIA— Why is Grinder so Afraid of Consciousness?

I recently re-read one of the classic NLP books, Frogs Into Princes (1978). This book, written in 1977 from some of the very first NLP workshops, maybe 1976 or 1977. From those workshops Steve and Connaire Andreas edited this book. And in spite of it being so early in the field, already there is in it a strong anti-conscious awareness theme, especially by John Grinder, a theme that continues to today. Bandler did not follow this theme until much later. This raises the questions: Why is John Grinder so afraid of consciousness? Why is he so put off by it?

1) He frames and dichotomizes consciousness and unconsciousness as an Either/Or choice. In speaking about the 6-Step Reframing patter, John describes conscious and unconscious as warring and the “unconscious always wins” it must be smarter or more powerful. Here he frames the conscious mind and the unconscious mind as if they were radically different. Your choice is an either/or dichotomy, you can side with one or the other.