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.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
vi
Introduction vii
1. Implication: saying without saying
2. Negation: not this, nor that 28
3. Judgment: the trap of good and bad 60
4. Modes of Operating: basic attitudes 84
5. Self-reference: circularity 111
6. Self-contradiction: yes and no 137
7. Logical Paradox: self-reversal 159
8. Certainty: the unholy grail 178
9. Double Binds: narrowing choice 197
10. Metaphor: overlapping bundles 233
11. Reaching Forgiveness: a client session 265
Closing Note 293
References 295
Index 299
Introduction
“The great end of life is not knowledge, but
action.” -Francis Bacon
This book presupposes that
you have read Volume I of Six Blind Elephants, which explores the fundamental
properties and functioning of scope and category, processes that exist in
all our thinking. A scope is the extent of what we attend to in all our senses,
and our internal images (remembered or forecast) of sensory-based experience.
Then we select and collect a group of scopes into what is called a basic-level
category, according to some criteria, in order to organize and simplify our
experience.
We also subdivide these basic-level categories into more specific categories,
and group them into more general categories, creating “logical levels” of
understanding, one of the hallmarks of human intelligence, and the basis
of all its successes in understanding and modifying our world. Scope and
category also interact in a number of different ways. A change in scope often
changes how we categorize it, and a change in categorization always changes
the scope that we attend to.
Categories of events create meaning and significance in conjunction with
context, which is one example of a larger scope. Our values are categories
of what is important to us, interacting in a dynamic heterarchy, (in contrast
to a fixed hierarchy) guiding our attention in satisfying our many different
needs. The category “shelter” protects us from the elements, while the category
“food” nourishes us. If we got these categories mixed up, we would try to
eat our homes, and find shelter under food, neither of which would work very
well.
These processes are mostly unconscious, and we usually act as if the result
of these processes are “truth” or “reality,” rather than the somewhat arbitrary
construction that it is. In most of our lives it works very well to ignore
these processes and assume that the world of experience that they create
for us is real.
However sometimes we are led into understandings that are frustrating and
painful, and from which we can find no escape. At those times we desperately
need to understand how our process of understanding has led us astray, or
into unpleasant or painful dead ends. Without that understanding we are stuck,
and no matter how hard we struggle, we will be captives of our own misunderstanding.
In volume I we explored how we can change the scope of what we attend to,
and how we categorize it in a variety of different ways, in order to change
our experience.
This volume applies the fundamental understandings developed in volume I
to a number of interesting problems that commonly occur in human communication
and misunderstanding, beginning by examining implication, a way of saying
something without actually saying it. Implication relies on categories of
which we are usually only dimly aware, and it can be used in both positive
and negative ways.
Verbal implication is based on negation, a unique and fundamental skill in
both human thinking and mathematics, yet one that has dangerous pitfalls
for the unwary. Judgment splits the world into two halves, good and bad,
a skill that is useful in life-or-death emergencies, but which can cause
enormous and pervasive suffering in everyday life. Nonverbal or contextual
implication utilizes the ways that we unconsciously categorize and respond
to things and events around us.
We divide our experience into different modes of operating, basic attitudes
like “having to,” “wanting to,” and “choosing to,” that are useful in categorizing
our activities, but which can also become traps that limit us and cause unhappiness.
Talking about ourselves, our understandings, or our relationships creates
self-reference, another uniquely useful human skill that can also cause confusion
and difficulty.
Self-contradiction creates a puzzling situation in which we simultaneously
must and can’t do something, an impossible situation unless it is recognized.
Paradox, which has puzzled thinkers for thousand of years, is created by
a combination of self-reference, negation, and a universal statement in which
“must” and “can’t” oscillate endlessly. Although paradox often traps people
in quandaries, it can also be used to free them, particularly when they have
too much certainty about their categories. Since our categories are always
uncertain, thinking that they are certain will keep us from even considering
changing them.
A double bind, like implication and paradox, can either create a horrible
and punishing trap, or can release someone from a trap that they are already
in. Metaphor is a unique way of understanding and communicating that has
been used since before the dawn of civilization. Metaphor is one of the subtlest
and most powerful ways of communicating, but like all our capabilities and
skills, it can be used either to poison us or nourish us, enslave us or liberate
us.
Finally, I present a complete verbatim transcript of a client session, “Reaching
Forgiveness,” that illustrates many of the patterns of changing scope and
categorizations that we explore in these two volumes.
With understanding of all these different processes, and the choices and
options that they offer us, we can use them wisely and carefully to enhance
our lives and the lives of those around us. Without that knowledge, we are
powerless, “wandering about in a dark labyrinth.”
“As you tease the reader with your humor, you’re an expert at getting
us to think. After each chapter I was more and more convinced that you
have offered us something new and all-encompassing. You have done for me
in the area of counseling and therapy exactly what mindfulness has done
for me in my 50-year search in the areas of prayer, self-knowledge, growth,
and wisdom. I look forward to re-reading your book with more and more enjoyment.
Many, many thanks, Steve, for this rare gift.” -Dick McHugh, SJ
“Steve Andreas has provided readers with a thorough, practical and well-written
examination of the ways scope and category affect thought and behavior.
As usual, he gives us powerful tools for understanding and transforming
behavior that will provoke new approaches to communication, change, and
personal awakening for generations of readers.” -Richard M. Gray,
Ph. D., Assistant Professor, Fairleigh Dickinson University, author, "Archetypal
Explorations", Creator of the Brooklyn Program, a strengths-based approach
to substance abuse treatment
“This book is impressive, surprising, and so practical and interesting,
offering readers a new way of understanding mental processes, and providing
specific ways to use and influence them-innovative methods, presented
with striking clarity. Only a master can make complex and revolutionary
ideas appear so simple.” -Danie Beaulieu, Ph.D., author
of "Eye Movement Integration Therapy"
“Steve Andreas’ "Six Blind Elephants" has the depth and scope that only
a deep knowledge of NLP and its applications to life could provide. Therapists,
coaches, teachers and mentors will find this book useful for its wealth
of information and enjoyable for its many pertinent and entertaining
examples and anecdotes. Steve brings a welcome and much needed humanism
to NLP.” -Michael Colgrass, Pulitzer Prize and Emmy award-winning
composer
