A BRILLIANT AUTHOR GETS IT WRONG

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

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

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

For example, while he repeatedly asserts that the Meta-Model is important and puts it up as an incredibly powerful communication tool, then he prodigiously uses Universal Quantifiers (always, never, everyone), Either-Or Statements, Comparative Deletions, etc. in his own writings. Here are some examples of Universal Quantifiers: “The unconscious mind —both your client’s and your own—always knows what it wants, and always knows what to do...” (280) “When the client first tells you what they want, or what the problem is, they will tell you everything you need to know... All you have to do is pay attention.” (281)

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

Now some 25 years ago, I introduced into the field of NLP Alfred Korzybski’s linguistic

distinction of Multi-Ordinality. This means that the same word, when used reflexively on itself, thereafter operates at various meta-levels and will mean something different at each level. For example: You can fear a bear, and you can fear your fear (become paranoid). You can fear your paranoia (experience acrophobia). You can love a new boyfriend, and you can love the love that you feel (infatuation). You can then love your infatuation (romanticism).

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

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

“The Subject-Verb-Object language structure reflects our observation of life; someone or something does something to someone or something. Note that the subject and the object are different, they cannot be the same. A chair cannot sit on itself. A person cannot carry themselves. ... The action cannot be recursive, it cannot apply to itself. I can love you, and you can love me. ... You cannot love yourself, and you cannot value yourself, so here is the central paradox.” (276) “You cannot love yourself!” That is the point that he writes about and seeks to prove. Amazing! And note the definitive, absolutist, over-generalized statements. “The action cannot be recursive, it cannot apply to itself.” Yet it is by over-stating things in an over-simplistic way that he paints himself into a corner— declaring at the end that it is a paradox.

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

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