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

Man: Sometimes in my work I have difficulty setting a very explicit outcome frame with people. When I try, they often resist that.

Well, let me give you my frame for establishing a, frame: «Look, I'm a professional. I refuse to engage in random behavior here. I have certain criteria for my own performance, and until we know whether there is a basis for us to proceed here, I'm not willing to spend my time and skill.» I have only had that challenged once, when a man said «Well, I ain't doing that!» and I said «Fine. Goodbye.» I reserve the right to walk out on any transaction, including psychotherapeutic transactions.

By the way, if there is a category of client that you have trouble with, then seek them out. Working with them will provide you with an opportunity for developing your own flexibility. However, once you have demonstrated to your own satisfaction that you are competent to work with that class of clients, if you still don't like them, don't take them. A professional ought to have the option to engage in a business transaction or not, based on her own personal criteria.

However, in the context of professional psychotherapeutic help, I recommend that if you are going to exercise the option of refusing a patient or a client, you have a list of people to whom you can refer them, so that they do have somewhere to go. That is part of your professional responsibility. But there is no need to torture yourself. I worked with heroin addicts for a while until I satisfied myself that I could succeed with them. I don't work with them any more, because I really don't like being around them.

Woman: I'm interested in tuning myself so I can see and hear the patterns that go on between two or more people at one time. I'm trying to be aware of how a family system is interconnected, but I think it's too big a chunk. I want to broaden my ability to do that. Do you have any helpful hints?

Whenever you are learning about sensory experience, you have to chunk it small enough so that you can cope with it. The place I learn the most about multiple–person systems is in restaurants. Go sit down in a restaurant next to a family, and never look at the person who is talking. That way you can see how the others respond to the speaker.

Woman: My question is about validation. How do I differentiate between when I'm actually seeing and hearing something and when I'm hallucinating? When you think you might be hallucinating, do you use somebody else to check what you see?

No, I can induce any belief system in just about anybody, so that wouldn't work. So what if I can convince somebody else of my hallucination? That is the way that a lot of therapies operate right now. The therapist says, «Well, you know, what I'm feeling right now is X. Are you feeling that now?» The person goes «I hadn't noticed it, but now that you mention it, yeah.» So now that we have a shared hallucination, we'll act as if it is a basis for choice. That isn't going to work.

You have to learn to make distinctions, and it's probably best to start doing this with couples. You have to figure out what is going on in terms of the naturally–occurring anchored sequences. Let's say that each time he begins to use one tone of voice, you notice that she starts accessing kinesthetically, but if he uses another tone of voice, she accesses visually. When you notice that this relationship exists, then your job is to be able to test it behaviorally. You can always do that inside quotes, of course. You can say «Well, if Jane here said to you …» and then you can become Jane. As you do this, you watch Ralph, and notice whether the predicted response occurs. Then you can be Ralph and test another portion of the calibration. «If Ralph said …» So you can always test for calibrations fairly explicitly by using quotes. Or you can just adopt the calibrated analogue behavior covertly, and notice what happens.

A friend of mine is a mime. One of his great skills is mimicking another person, both tonally and visually. When we're talking, Lennie will say «Oh, yeah, I saw Jimmy the other day» … and then he will become Jimmy. If Jimmy's wife is there, she'll begin to respond to Lennie as though she's married to him. All the systems that operate between Jimmy and his wife will then operate between Lennie and her. And then he can become somebody else and she will respond differently.

One of the things that Lennie jokes about is that when my students come in and he wants them to do something, he simply becomes me. They respond immediately, because they are programmed to respond to me.

I do this kind of role–playing with individuals, too. I become one of their parts, and it works just the same way. I find out how they respond to the part. Behavioral testing is the only way I know of that you can count on for validating your sensory experience in systems relationships. You and I and Linda over there may have the same hallucination, but that's no basis on which to make a decision.

Man: Could you give us an illustration of becoming a part?

I've been doing that for two days now!

Man: Could you label one so my conscious mind would know?

I'm capable of it, but I'm not going to do it. I'm going to tell you about a family I worked with, to give you an example of how to determine and utilize the family system. In this family the mother was a matriarch. And her mother had been a matriarch. Her grandmother had founded a church, and there were streets named after her in the Midwest. This woman knew her dead grandmother's name, but she couldn't remember her grandfather's name even though he was still alive!

The one thing that was really noticeable to me was that everybody in the family responded to the mother. All she had to do was to look at them, and everyone would cringe. All the males were freaked out. The husband was an alcoholic, the older son was a hoodlum, and the younger son was failing in school and was starting to follow in the older son's footsteps. It's a typical pattern. However, there was a five–year–old girl in the family who was very cute and very expressive. She could get the mother to respond positively to her every time she did something.

In order to intervene effectively in this family, I needed to find out how the family operated as a system. I wanted to know what the natural sequence of interaction was. The best way to do that is to create a crisis, which is something that most family therapists avoid. If I make everything nice and lovely and warm, then I don't get down to the nitty–gritty. So I usually mention the most taboo things in the world for the family.

Virginia Satir taught me this. A lot of people think Virginia doesn't do it, because she does it in a nice tone of voice, but Virginia talks about everything that the family doesn't want to talk about. My style may be a little bit closer to Frank Farrelley's in the way I go about it, but it accomplishes the same thing.

So the family comes in and I say «Well, what are you doing here? What went wrong?» Immediately the mother says «This lousy kid over here has been getting out of hand.» I might turn around and say to the son «You son–of–a–bitch!» And then I ask the mother «What has he been doing, swearing?» Immediately the family goes into crazy land, and the system begins to operate. I can say «Well, what do you do if he does this? You probably don't scold him or anything.» She'll immediately start in quotes «Well, I tell him blah, blah, blah» and then immediately the kid will lose quotes and say «Look, goddamit, get off my back!» Then the father will say «Can I get a drink of water around here?» As soon as the family system starts operating, I sit back and observe, because I want to know how the family system operates without me. If it starts to slow down, then I step in and kick it to get it going again. I find out what the really sensitive areas are, so I can keep mentioning them to keep the family going.