Robert Dilts - Neuro–Linguistic Programming - Volume I. The Study of the Structure of Subjective Experience

We are now ready to begin to apply all of the various components of the elicitation procedure together. Through a few examples we will demonstrate how the process as a whole takes place.

EXAMPLE A

Consider the following sequence of behavior presented by an administrative director of an organization in making a decision. She has just read a written report that had been submitted to her and must generate an outcome decision on the basis of the information contained in the report. This person could just as easily be a judge, diplomat, executive or anyone in a decision making capacity.

"As I look this over . .." (eyes scan paper, then she pauses and takes a deep breath as her eyes shift down and to the right momentarily and then move over to the left) "… I get the feeling that something may have been left out …" (reaches up and strokes her chin) "… and I have to ask myself, how might this affect the results of this decision where it is so important that we have a clear understanding?" (Eyes move up and to the right where they make a number of slight lateral shifts and then move down and to the right before returning to make eye contact with the person standing before her.) "I really don't know what to say about it."

Analysis:She begins with the external visual stimulus from the written report (V e) which she has probably read in detail sometime earlier.

Predicate:"look over"

Accessing cue:Eyes scan external object.

Analysis:The visual stimulus accesses internal kinesthetic sensations (K i) about what was printed.

Predicate:"I get the feeling"

Accessing cue:Deep breath, eyes move down and right.

Analysis:These feelings then initiate an internal auditory digital response (A i d).

Predicate:"ask myself”

Accessing cue:Eyes down and left, hand strokes chin.

Analysis:She then constructs a series of internal visual images in response to the internal verbalization (V c 1, V c 2, … V c n).

Predicate:"clear understanding"

Accessing cue:Slight shifts of the eyes while in up and right position.

Analysis:The constructed images access internal feelings (K i).

Predicate: -

Accessing cue:Eyes down and right.

Analysis:Were the decision to be made, or still in progress, the administrative director would be able to make some verbalization (A d) in response to the feelings to either exit or continue the decision process. Her comment here, however, indicates the absence of experience within that representational system. (Lack of information is information.)

Predicate:"don't know what to say about it."

Accessing cue: -

Assume this administrative director is talking to you. Perhaps you have submitted the report she is reviewing and have some concern about the outcome of the decision. Perhaps you are a consultant assisting the person in making this important decision. In any case, you wish to access resources to help this administrator deal with her indecisiveness. In our way of thinking, arguing with or confronting the person over the content of the proposal will typically be of little value in helping her get the decision made. It is the way the individual processes the content (her strategy) that is important in cases like this. She has already given you all of the information you need to unpack the strategy that is leading to the indecision:

We could notate this strategy in the following way:

You will notice that we have bracketed the series of constructed visual images, one beneath the other, to indicate that they occurred in the same step. We have put the (?) in front of the A^ step to indicate that even though it is the appropriate next step in the strategy, the activity within it has not reached a sufficient magnitude for the strategy to continue.

You could also punctuate the strategy into the following functional steps.

1) The external visual experience of the written material anchors, synesthetically, the kinesthetic representation of an incongruence the administrator has derived from previous testing of the material in the report.

2) The content of the feelings were such that they initiated an operation involving internal dialogue (asking herself a question) and generating images on the basis of the verbalization.

3) The constructed images were then tested against one another or against remembered images (this isn't specified directly by the administrator's behavior, nor is it particularly important for the analysis of the strategy), and an incongruence again appears, in the form of feelings, that blocks the strategy from existing.

4) Some constraint, however, prevents the individual from operating again — the first step in her operation procedure, auditory digital activity, doesn't have enough signal strength to initiate any new images ("I don't know what to say about it."') The constraints could be caused by the feelings of incongruence overriding the administrator's internal dialogue, or by interference from other representational systems bringing up time constraints, or by the need to gather more information before a successful operation may be made, or even because the present operational strategy could be ineffectual.

From the short statement made by the administrator we can determine the essential elements of her decision making strategy. These can be represented in their most elegant form as:

This shows that she typically starts with auditory digital activity, derives internal visual images from that activity, tests the images, the results of which are represented kinesthetically, and on the basis of these feelings will either exit or cycle back through the strategy. We will return to this example after a brief but important excursion into notational punctuation.

At this juncture we would like to add a final set of modifiers to the behavioral calculus that we have presented so far. These modifiers have to do with the relationships between the representational components of the strategy. These modifiers distinguish whether a step in a strategy is a congruent response, polarity response, or a meta response to the step before it.

a. We will define a congruent response as essentially a continuation of the representation before it but in a different modality. A "modality" difference, here, will be constituted by a change in any of the 4–tuple modifiers we have presented so far. A switch from a visual external to a visual internal representation would constitute a modality change. So would a switch from constructed auditory experience to remembered auditory experience, or from a digital auditory representation to a tonal representation.