Richard Bandler - Reframing. Neuro–Linguistic Programming™ and the Transformation of Meaning

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Rather than go to unconscious reframing, we did something which may sound curious but it's something I do from time to time when I have suspicions, or what other people call intuitions. We had her go inside and ask if the part knew what it was doing for her. When she came back outside, she said «Well, I … I don't… I don't believe what it said.» We said «Oh, yeah? Well, go ask if it's telling the truth.» She went inside and then said again «I don't want to believe what it said.» We asked «Well, what did it say?» She said «It said it forgot!»

Now, as amusing as that sounds, I've always thought that was a great response. In some ways it makes sense. You are alive for a long time. If a part organizes its behavior to do something and you really resist it and fight against it, the part can get so caught up in the fight that it forgets why it organized its behavior that way in the first place. That's a real possibility. I don't know how many of you have ever gotten in an argument, and in the middle of it forgot what you intended to do in the first place. Misers are like that. They've forgotten that money is only useful if you spend it now and then. Parts, like people, don't always remember about outcomes.

Rather than going through a lot of rigamarole at that point, we said Look, this is a very powerful part of you. Did you ever think of how powerful this part is? Every single time you go near a freeway, this part is capable of scaring the pants off you. That's pretty amazing, you know. How would you like to have a part like that on your side? The woman said «Wow! I don't have any parts like that on my side!» So we said «Go inside and ask that part if it would like to do something that it could be appreciated for, that would be worthwhile, and that would be worthy of its talents.» Of course the part went «Oh, yeah!» So we said «Now go inside and ask that part if it would be willing to be responsible for being sure that you are comfortable, alert, cautious, breathing regularly and smoothly, and in sensory experience when you go on a freeway entrance ramp.» The part went «Yeah, yeah. I'll do that.» We then had her fantasize a couple of freeway situations. Previously she had been incapable of doing that; she would go into a terror state, because even the fantasy of being near a freeway was too much for her. When she imagined it this time, she did it adequately. We put her in a car, sent her out to the freeway, and she did fine. She drove happily for three hours and ran out of gas on the freeway.

Now this made me curious. I thought «If you can have a part hanging around that's not doing much, and you can give it some other job, you can probably build a part from scratch!» When I thought about it, I realized that's what Transactional Analysis does. TA goes through a rather laborious procedure to build three parts—parent, adult, and child. The Michigan TA people build nine parts. If you can build nine, you can probably build any number. If you can build a «critical parent» to torture you all the time, you ought to be able to build just about anything.

When you start thinking about it, most therapies teach you how to have your parts organized. Gestalt builds a topdog and an underdog. Psychosynthesis is a little bit more creative about it: They've got a big circle, and you get to have a whole bunch of parts inside. However, they all have to be famous people; there are no unknown parts.

Most of the time when parts are described, they are described not in terms of what they do—their function—but in terms of how they do it—their behavior. If you have studied the psychosynthesis model or the TA model, you know that people usually describe, isolate, and create parts in terms of how the parts behave. So for example, if you go through a Satir parts party, you might have a «stupid» part—a part that makes you act stupid. At the end of the party, rather than being a «stupid» part, it would become your «ability to learn at your own rate» or your «ability to ask questions» or some other positive behavior. The behavior goes from being something negative to being something positive. However, it is still a behavior that is not clearly tied to an outcome. This is a very important difference. We build parts to achieve outcomes. The parts that are created through the random processes that people use in therapy usually achieve behaviors rather than outcomes.

Every therapy I've ever studied has within it some way of building parts. Some people don't have an unconscious mind until they go into hypnosis. If you believe that the «unconscious mind» exists a priori, then one day you're going to hypnotize somebody and when her conscious mind is gone, you're going to be all alone! That has happened to me. You can't assume that everything is there. Sometimes a person has all her marbles in her conscious mind. Sometimes a person doesn't have much going on in her conscious mind, but has a very well–developed unconscious entity that is a single organized unit. Sometimes that has happened through therapy and sometimes through experience.

No matter how parts are created, people have a tendency to describe how a part behaves, rather than to describe the behavior in relationship to outcomes—what that behavior does for them. At one of my first workshops for TA people, I said I believed that every part of every person is a valuable resource. One woman said «That's the stupidest thing I ever heard!»

«Well, I didn't say it was true. I said if you believe that as a therapist, you'll get a lot farther.»

«Well, that's totally ridiculous.»

«What leads you to believe that that's ridiculous?»

«I've got parts that are totally useless. All they do is get in my way.»

«Well, name one that's useless.»

«No matter what I decide to do, I have a part that tells me that I can't ever do it, and that I'm going to fail. It makes everything twice as hard as it needs to be.»

«I'd like to speak to that part directly.» That always gets a TA person, by the way. Talking directly to a part isn't in the TA model. Then if you look over her left shoulder while you talk to that part, it really drives her nuts. It's also a very effective anchoring mechanism. From that time on, every time you look over her left shoulder, that part knows you're speaking to it.

So I said «I know that that part of you does something very important and is very sneaky about how it does it. And even if you don't appreciate it, I do. Now, I'd like to tell that part that if it were willing to inform your conscious mind about what it's doing for you, then perhaps it could get some of the appreciation that it deserves.» Then I had her go inside and ask that part what it does for her that is positive. It came right out and said «I was motivating you.» When she told me that, she added «I think that's weird.» So I said «Well, you know, I don't think it would be possible for you, right now at this moment, to come up here and work in front of this entire group.» She immediately stood up defiantly, walked up to the front of the room and sat down.

Those of you who have studied strategies know that this was a demonstration of the phenomenon that we call a «polarity response.» This part of her was simply a Neuro–Linguistic Programmer who understood utilization. It knew that if it said «Aw, you can go to college; you can do it," she'd respond «No, I can't do it.» However, if it said to her «You're not going to be able to cut the grade," then she would say «Oh, yeah?!» and she would go out and do it.

I began to discover that no matter how you organize yourself, or what parts you build, if the model that you use to think of parts is tied to how they behave, then 1) You don't do them justice, and 2) You might be right, which would be dangerous. If you really had a part that didn't have a positive function—it was just critical or destructive— then what can you do? Exorcism?