DEMYSTIFYING “MAGIC”

One of my favorite books in the field of NLP which I found just a few years after I entered the field of NLP was the book, Magic of NLP Demystified: A Pragmatic Guide to Communication and Change (1990) by Byron Lewis & Frank Pucelik. Following on from the original books, The Structure of Magic Volumes I and II (1975, 1976), this book focused on simplifying and de-mystifying the structuer of language as coded in the Meta-Model of Communication. Now originally, that book was titled, Meta Principles for Communication and Change (1980) which really is an excellent summary of what NLP is primarily about and used for— communication and change.

Now today, 2012, after more than two decades, Byron Lewis has updated and extended the book. In fact, in this updated version he has especially used the work of Tosey and Mathison NLP: A Critical Appreciation for Managers and Developers (2009) and my work Communication Magic (2001 Crown House Publ.) in extending the book Magic Demystified.

Now in terms of the term “magic,” this term does not refer to real magic or to stage magicians. People seem to easily confuse “the structure of magic” in NLP with these. Instead, it refers to what seems like magic in experts. That is, when someone is highly skilled in a particular domain, what they do can seem like “magic” to those who don’t know how they do it, the models they use to guide their perceptions and performance, or the distinctions that they are making. This was the original case with Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erickson when Bandler and Grinder first found them and so began modeling the structure of their expertise so that the so-called “magic” could be understood and replicated. And that gave birth to this field that we call NLP.

Byron’s newest edition of Magic Demystified contains the same chapters as the original books and so presents the essential modeling of NLP and the original tools that were developed for modeling.

1: Models 2: The Communication Categories Model 3: The Meta Model 4: The Visual Model

If you ever tried to read the original books, The Structure of Magic, Volumes I and II and found it thick and undecipherable, then try Magic Demystified. It is an excellent introduction to NLP and the models of NLP, a much user-friendly version. And in this edition, Byron quoting Susie Linder-Pelz has put the Meta-States Model in Chapter 1 as part of the basic NLP model. This is the first time I’ve seen this in any work other than what Bob Bodenhamer and I did (User’s Manual of the Brain, Volume I, Crown House Publications). So in answer to the question, “Is the Meta-States Model part of NLP?” The

answer has always been yes, and works like this keep supporting that.

Also, in Chapter 3 on The Meta-Model, Byron adds all nine of the distinctions that I added to the Meta- Model in 1997 (the book was then titled, Secrets of Magic and now it goes under the title, Communication Magic, 2001). Byron Lewis has taken and used the research I did at that time when I reviewed the development of the Meta-Model, extended it with linguistic distinctions and questions (challenges) from Korzybski and others. I did that in 1996-1997 at the bidding of Richard Bandler who wanted the book to be co-authored, but who later got upset with me and refused to complete the co- authoring project. Eventually it was published by Crown House Publications anyway under my name alone. And now you can find those nine extensions of the Meta-Model in this book (Magic Demystified) along with Byron’s correlation of the different Meta-Model distinctions and how they fit and overlap.

Here are some great quotations from the book: “This systematic demystification of normally out-of-awareness aspects of communication gives the client a heightened sense of control over himself and his environment.” (p. 2)

“One of the most important ingredients in being influential is the ability to elicit the belief that you understand. Understanding implies that you can ‘join’ a person at his model of the world.” (p. 18)

“Susie Linder-Pelz ... explains that people ‘layer’ information from the outside world and then ‘frame or meta-state that information as they feed back to themselves more information about that information; that is, they feed back to themselves layer upon layer, beliefs and understandings.” (p. 30)

“Language is the only system that can represent all of the other representational systems. It can create models of each system including itself.” (p. 41)

“Even though a person demonstrates a preference for one of the representational systems, it does not mean that he does not use the other systems too. On the contrary, we all use all of the systems all of the time.” (p. 49)

If you are interested, go to www.crownhouse.co.uk and you will find this new book.