Uncorrected Errors of NLP (Well Until Now)

Error #5. Dissociation: “If you are not associated in an experience, you are dissociated.”

Here is another big misunderstanding that continues to this day in the field of NLP. This either-or format (associated or dissociated) presents the choice you have as one choice or the other. Nothing in-between. Yet you can step out and stop associating inside of one state (say ‘fear,’ ‘anger,’ ‘sadness’) by stepping out and into another state (say ‘calmness,’ ‘curiosity,’ ‘playfulness,’ etc.). When you do that you are now associated into something other than, and different from, the first state.

What shall we call this? Let’s say that you are now un-associated to the first state. To use the term “dissociation” (or disassociation) refers to a psychiatric pathology. And that is not what we are referring to. Therefore I recommend that you do not use that term. There are Conferences for the Dissociative Diseases and the DSM-5 are full of descriptions of these. How much simpler is it to say, “Step out of X-state and step into Y-state.” If you use dissociation, people from psychiatry and psychotherapy will think that you don’t understand what you are saying.

Error #6. A meta-state is a dissociation and a dissociative state.

This is an error that I have been battling since 1994 when I introduced the Meta-States Model into the field of NLP. Because of the previous error, many NLP trainers could not even put their heads around the fact that when you access a second state and apply it to the first state, you actually step into another state—perhaps calmness about your fear so that now you have calm fear. When you do that you transcend and include the fear or the anger inside of the higher classification of calmness. This gives us calm anger, respectful anger, thoughtful anger, etc.

Those who have not read Korzybski’s Science and Sanity are at a disadvantage regarding this. After asserting that the map is not the territory, Korzbyski said that for both sanity and science you have to recognize self-reflexive consciousness and a Theory of Multi-Ordinality. When you move upward to the next highest state (from 1 to 2, ordinal numbers), you think about your thinking, you feel about your feeling. This meta-state then sets the frame and classification for the first experience: hence joyful learning, playful seriousness, curious openness, etc.

In all of this, you are more emotional and more into a feeling state, not less. Fear of fear is stronger emotionally than just fear. Joyful learning is more emotional than just learning. When you go meta and apply state to state, you do not have dissociation at all!

Error #7. You are your favorite representation system and/or meta-program.

This is an error of sloppiness. It is easy in NLP to identify your favorite representation system and or meta-program. But if it is visual, then it is just sloppy languaging to say that “you are a Visual,” or if auditory, “you are an Auditory,” or if feeling (kinesthetic), then “you are a Kino.” This falsely identifies a person with a single variable. The truth is that we all have, and use, all of these systems. Many have done the same with Meta-Programs, over-identifying a person with his way of processing information or emotion.

Error #8. Whatever you have ever experienced is stored away in your memory; you remember everything you have every experienced.

This came from a conclusion of Penfield made in the 1950s when the neuro-sciences were just beginning. As he prodded the different parts of the brain with an electric prod, people began recalling memories and usually in a highly associated way. From that he drew the conclusion, we remember everything. But by the 1970s, the neuro-sciences reversed that idea, declaring it a false idea, and that it was not sustained by research. The truth is that we humans have a good forgetter! Further everything we experience is not recorded in the first place—we weren’t paying attention; we were distracted, we didn’t have the brain development to encode everything, etc. and so lots of things, in fact most things, are not attended to and so cannot be remembered.

There are more errors to be mentioned, look for them in the next Neurons.