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Six Blind Elephants: Volume
I
Understanding Ourselves and Each Other
Fundamental Principles of Scope and Category
by Steve Andreas
This two-volume book presents a detailed “unified field theory”
of experience, thinking, and personal change that goes beyond NLP to outline
and explain the structure of any experience or change of experience. If you
have ever found yourself out of choices - either in your own life, or in your
work with others - you know how nice it would be to have choices about what
tto do next.
The fundamental distinction between scope and category offers a way to describe
and track someone’s experience - from ordinary troubles and difficulties
to positive mystic experiences of union or oneness. The same knowledge provides
surprisingly endless possibilities for changing your experience when you want
it to be different. Rich examples gleaned from a variety of different therapists
and a lifetime of experience illustrate every aspect.
Six Blind Elephants . . .
Were discussing what wise men were like (never having seen one).
Failing to agree, they decided to find one and determine what
it was like by direct experience.
The first blind elephant felt the wise man, and declared,
“Wise men are flat.”
After feeling the wise man, the other blind elephants agreed.
“We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself,
but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
—Werner Heisenberg
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction vii
1. Perceptual Scope: framing 1
2. Simple “Basic-level” Categories: bundles of scopes 27
3. Indication: picking from bundles 54
4. Criteria: binding bundles 67
5. Categories of Categories: dividing and binding bundles: logical levels 94
6. Distinguishing Scope and Category: framing or bundling 123
7. How Scope Influences Category: framing bundles 140
8. How Category Influences Scope: bundling frames 168
9. Needs, Values and Importance: feedback 181
10. Hierarchy and Heterarchy: dynamic balance 205
11. Significance: beyond indication and logic 223
12. Recategorization: changing bundles, inside bundles 245
13. Higher Level Recategorization: bundlingbundles 267
Closing Note 287
Appendix 290
References 293
Index 297
Introduction
“What made this brain of mine, do you think?
Not the need to move my limbs;
for a rat with half my brains moves as well as I.
Not merely the need to do, but the need to know what I do,
lest in my blind efforts to live I should be slaying myself.”
—G. B. Shaw, Man and Superman
How does a wife leap from an experience of overcooked eggs for breakfast to the
conclusion, “I have to get a divorce!”? How does a husband jump from noticing
his wife’s silence to deciding that he “married the wrong woman”?
All of us, all the time, attend to a limited scope of experience, and then categorize
it to create meaning and understanding. This automatic unconscious process usually
works very well. But at other times and places it can also lead us into very unpleasant,
confusing, and sometimes deadly traps. My fundamental purpose in writing this
book is to understand how we do this, and how we can use these understandings
to change the scope we attend to, and/or recategorize it in a way that serves
us better.
For instance, the wife, starting with her experience of “overcooked eggs” may
have categorized her husband as “uncaring” and then thought of all the other times
when he didn’t do what she wanted, decide that he “doesn’t love her,” and see
divorce as her only choice. But if she had been more aware of her husband while
he was cooking the eggs, she could have noticed that he lost track of the eggs
because he was diligently arranging some important events for the children on
the phone.
The husband, noticing his wife’s silence, may have categorized this as “indifference,”
remembered earlier girl friends’ attentiveness, and decide that he “married the
wrong woman.” If he had been more attentive to her he could have realized that
she was very tired from a long hard day at work, and needed a little “alone time”
before fully attending to him.
When we understand how we unconsciously attend to a scope of experience, immediately
categorize it, and then respond to the meaning of this categorization, it opens
up a world of alternative choices and options. When we don’t like the meaning
of an event, we can change the scope and/or category that we are attending to,
in order to change its meaning.
Scope and category interact with each other in several ways. A change in scope
often changes the way we categorize an experience. As I was writing this, my wife
asked me for a “sticky” for a note to put on a letter, and when I offered her
a pink one, she said she wanted a yellow one. I categorized this as “picky” and
unreasonable, thinking that a pink one would surely do just as well, and felt
irritated as I searched for a yellow one. Then I saw that the letter was on bright
pink paper; a pink sticky would be nearly invisible on it, so her request for
a yellow one was quite reasonable after all! A larger scope changed how I categorized
her request, the resulting meaning I made, and my response to her.
A category can also be subdivided into more specific categories, or combined with
others into more general categories, creating “logical levels” of thinking. Often
we climb rapidly up this ladder of levels, arriving at a categorization that is
not useful.
For instance, perhaps you can think of a time when you were doing something very
well, and then realized that someone else was observing you. Probably your ability
to do that activity decreased as you became self-conscious, recategorizing what
you were doing as some kind of “performance” or “evaluation.” In that case a larger
scope created a problem, rather than a solution.
If you review a recent argument with your spouse, or someone else special to you,
and then think of all the other positive experiences that you have had with that
person, that larger group of scopes will automatically change your feelings, and
make it easier to communicate reasonably about your differences.
Categorization always alters the scope of our experience. The category “all the
other positive experiences that you have had with that person,” brought many other
images to your mind, placing the argument in a much broader “perspective” of a
group of other scopes.
If someone says to you, “That’s an interesting way to do that,” and you categorize
that statement as a “criticism,” you will tend to feel bad, and then think of
other unpleasant experiences in that category, and feel even worse. But if you
categorize the statement as a “compliment,” you will feel pleased, and then tend
to think of it in the context of other compliments, and feel even more pleased.
These many interactions between scope and category can sometimes make it difficult
to discover the different sequential steps in what is usually a very rapid unconscious
process, but the result is well worth it—a huge decrease in frustration, helplessness,
and unpleasantness, and a corresponding increase in your freedom, choice, and
satisfaction.
Understanding how we understand the things and events around us is one of the
most difficult things we can do, because we have to use our process of understanding
in order to understand the process, a bit like using a microscope to examine itself.
The limitations and biases in our way of understanding can easily blind us to
those same limitations.
All verbal description is as linear and sequential as the words on this page.
But events in the real world, and in our minds, are only partly sequential; many
are simultaneous. It is impossible to describe simultaneous events using a sequence
of words. As I describe one or more aspects of how we create understanding and
meaning in our lives, I often have to temporarily ignore others that are happening
at the same time. So if at times, you think, “Wait, what about—?” a little patience
will usually give me an opportunity to respond to your concern.
Because of all these complicating factors, I have to start with some relatively
simple distinctions, definitions, and examples, and then assemble these into a
foundation for describing more complex ones, and their practical applications.
If the first few chapters sometimes seem a bit plodding and irrelevant to understanding
life’s problems, a little patience will be rewarded with a multitude of very useful
practical applications. For a quick taste of some of these, you can look ahead
to chapters 12 and 13 on recategorization, or try the Aggregate Categorical Scope
Perspective Exercise on page 175.
Since the earlier chapters of this book lay a foundation of understanding for
what follows, reading them first makes it much easier to make full use of the
remaining chapters, most of which could be read in any order. However, if you
like to browse, dipping briefly into later chapters can be a way to discover the
usefulness of what lies ahead, before returning to the beginning chapters. Each
chapter has a summary at the end, so that is another way to quickly preview the
range of topics included.
This book points to different aspects of your experience, and offers you new ways
to think about it, organize it, clarify it, expand it, and give you more choices
about how you can change it when it serves you. But ultimately the answers will
be in your own experience, in your exploring and finding out how your mind works.
Scope and category are fundamental processes that underlie every human experience—from
ordinary confusions and satisfactions, to the blissful experiences described by
some mystics and spiritual teachers. They provide a way to unify, organize, and
reexamine all the useful methods and understandings that have been developed in
the field of psychotherapy and personal development over the years. They can also
be used to clearly identify why some approaches are “dead end” paths that lead
nowhere—or worse.
Like a small boy with a new hammer, I have been happily looking everywhere, to
find what else I can pound with these new tools, finding more and more useful
applications. Many sections of this book have gone through substantial revisions,
sometimes because I have recognized my own mistakes, but more often because others
have pointed them out. There are probably still mistakes that we didn’t find,
and I look forward to others’ further corrections and additions in the ongoing
search for useful understandings. If my writing seems unclear at times, please
heed Warren S. McCulloch’s plea, “Don’t bite my finger; look where I’m pointing.”
Read Exerpts from
Several Chapters
Logical
Levels (excerpt from chapter 5, Categories
of categories)
Reframing
using a different scope (excerpt from
chapter 7, How scope influences category)
“Crazy”
Recategorization (excerpt from chapter
13, Higher level recategorization)
What others have said about Six Blind
Elephants . . .
V.1 0-911226-41-9
Paperback, 292 Pages
$16.50
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