Richard Bandler - Trance–formations. Neuro–Linguistic Programming™ and the Structure of Hypnosis

Harry: Is there a way that I could speed up learning things, like hypnosis?

My guess is that you should be able to tell me the answer to that question. 1 can give you an example of how to do it, but I'm more interested in your knowing how to do it yourself. You know what it is that you want. So what are the parameters you are working with? If you want to speed up your perceptions, find some examples of having done it, and then give yourself some control over the process. You know that you've learned things. You know that you can integrate them. You know you have a standard speed. So how can you speed that up?

Harry: By going to the contexts in which I would do that normally. Sure. But the factor that is really going to allow you to learn more quickly is the presence of more time. All you have to do is create two months. Is that enough? In other words, do what's called "pseudo–orientation in time." Put yourself into a trance and project yourself into the future. Tell yourself that instead of being tomorrow, it's two months from now, Then, in trance, relive fully all the time between now and then; create all the necessary history for if to be two months from now. You can make up all the clients you worked with and all the things you did; you can make up everything that happened between then and now. Create in detail all the history that you need in order to have already learned lots about NLP and hypnosis.

Whenever you want anything, all you have to do is think of where it would happen anyway, and then make that up. Hypnosis is a way of making a reality. If you know that something you want will happen in a specific reality, then use that reality to create what you want. If it doesn't happen in any reality that you know of, then create a reality in which it would happen.

Woman: Is it possible to create an overload of other realities?

Yes. It's called psychosis. When you use alternative realities, you must do so as a lawyer would. You must make sure that when you build realities, you build ones that are thorough and complete. You must make sure that they will accomplish what you want, and you must make sure that there's a doorway out of them. If you create sloppy realities and live in them, then you will respond in a sloppy way, and that will make you a junky person.

There's a book written by a well–known hypnotist that gives people inductions to read aloud to each other. There are programs in those inductions that make people really junky. People who read them will install strategies in each other which will not be beneficial for their overall functioning. To me that's foolish, and it's a kind of foolishness that I call indulgence. It's important not to be indulgent about using hypnosis. When you build a reality, build one that will work, and build it completely and thoroughly so that you gel exactly what you need. You don't want to just build a crazy reality and go live in it, because you have no idea how you will respond to it. You may respond to it with emphysema! You want to make sure that you build one that is going to work well for you.

Most of the hypnotic realities that people have built for themselves and live in most of the time—what they call the waking state —are not profoundly useful. I mean that literally. The majority of the people I meet in the world have built a hypnotic reality which, on the whole, weighing the good against the bad and the pleasure against the pain, isn't really beneficial for them. To me that's indulgent. You don't want to make matters worse, only more useful.

Erickson's criteria of usefulness were for all his clients to get married, get a job, have children, and send him presents. Those are not my criteria. People sent me presents but I never got anything 1 wanted, except once. I'm not going to change everybody so that they get married and so on. Erickson did, because he believed that you must do those things,

I do think that you've got to be thorough when you build alternative realities, or when you build your own reality. For instance, I think the reality that humanistic psychologists have built is incredibly indulgent and not useful. That kind of indulgence is dangerous. Sometimes I get invited to do a keynote address at some humanistic psychology conference, and I find being there more terrifying than being in a criminal institution. The ethic that criminals have is at least conducive to survival. Many of the programs and kinds of realities that people are installing in each other at humanistic conferences are not even conducive to their own survival. If anything, they are detrimental. Those realities have a tendency to put people in situations of danger where they might actually get hurt. It may never happen, but it could. People don't usually consider the premises of what they do, and it's not just humanistic psychologists who operate that way. Everybody does.

Woman: What kind of realities do psychologists create that are destructive?

For example "To be a good person is to meta–comment." So you come in and say "I'm really mad about your walking out on me last night" and 1 say "Well, I really feel good that you can express your anger towards me." That kind of response is built into the fabric of most humanistic psychologies. That is not a useful response in any way. It does not help either of the two human beings. If anything, someone who uses that particular kind of response will end up becoming more and more alienated, and having unpleasant feelings more and more often, That's a logical outcome of using that particular kind of response. Just look at the people who use that response a lot, and you can find out for yourself.

There was a guy at the college I taught at who was a humanistic organizational development consultant. He used to be a hero, but now he's only a counterculture hero. His whole world is built upon those kinds of responses. He meta–comments about everything. He is also lonely, depressed, miserable, and alienated. It's no surprise to me, because his responses are never responses to people; they are always responses about people. He doesn't respond to people, so he can't have any intimacy or any feeling of connection. That limitation is built right into the fabric of his reality: he believes that a meta–comment is a "genuine" response.

People often create realities or pick outcomes that aren't worth having. That is a limitation in self–hypnosis. One of our students had a client who had decided that it was crazy for one person to carry on a conversation with himself. He read in a book "It takes two people to have a conversation. Since conversations are for two people to talk to one another, he decided that talking to yourself is stupid. So he just stopped having internal dialogue. When he stopped, he lost the ability to do certain things that he had used internal dialogue for—little things like the ability to plan! All he could do was see pictures and have feelings. He couldn't ask himself questions like "What would i liketo do today?" He hadn't considered the overall impact of that change before he made it.

Clients often come in asking for things that wouldn't make them happy. Sometimes 1 give it to them and let them suffer for a while. Then it's easier for me to go back and give them something more meaningful.

One client of mine came in saying he didn't want to be able to feel anything. He told me that everything he had felt for years had been terrible, that people had hurt him over and over again, and he didn't want to have to feel things anymore. So I hypnotized him and hypnotically removed his kinesthetic experience. Of course he lost his sense of balance and could no longer stand up. Then I brought him back out of trance, still without any feelings, and asked if he would like to come back next week. He said "Please! Do something!" I said "All right, now we'll do it my way."