WarpMyMind

Ericsson was a successful and innovative hypnotist. Heller was successful and innovative hypnotist. And just adopting their beliefs and patterns of speech won't make you any more successful or innovative than you are already, perhaps even make you clumsier. Because they're beliefs and patterns of somebody else, not your own.

I've read a book a year or so ago, and there was an interesting research result described there. I don't have it on hand, so I can't look up the exact details of the study or proper citation, but basically it went like this: A group of med students was presented with a faux article on psychology that contained blatantly fallacious reasoning, like "people are getting sleepy because their sleepiness factor increases." Another group was presented with essentially the same article, circular logic and all, but with strategically placed neurological jargon and a few pictures of a fMRI scan. You can guess the result, although the extent of it surprised me.

But let's think ahead. What would happen if this result would've been widely known? There would be basically two large groups of people: one would start consciously pepper their speech with neurobabble in hopes to sound more convincing, another would just be conditioned into complete dismissal of any text containing the word "amygdala" as quackery. The effect would vanish, and yet continue a zombie life of sorts, - thousands of lazy people parroting a "very effective pattern" that no longer applies. Isn't that what happened to orthodox hypnosis? Did NLP reach this stage already? It did for me, seriously, I just can't stand seeing people who are consciously "using NLP" on me or anyone else. Who do they think I am?

And why, understanding all this, I still sometimes drop into NLP-speak when trying to sound more convincing? :lol:

A nice demonstration. And while it is thought-provoking, the problem here is that it's not really a thought in itself. Just a pattern for somebody else's thought, mine, in this case. I thought that thought, yes. But did it do anyone any good?

A well-known nietzschean metaphor of a development of philosophy and philosophers, "a camel, a lion, a child" sums it up nicely, I think. Back in the 70s NLP was a child, all new and creative, and now it's a camel's burden, something one "learns" only to discard later. And I'm trying to be that lion, maybe a bit too early. I just want to see what else there is, and so need to fight everything that is there already. Which is still not exactly anything new. But it will be one day.

Maybe, it would be still the same species of "constant improvement" where no one really improves anything, by and large talk therapists and hypnotists and shamans and all sorts of people-convincers and mind-changers are as (in)efficient now as they were back in Neolithic... Or maybe there is a way out. Or maybe, "adjusting" people to the environment is doing it wrong in the first place, no one really believes Dr. Pangloss, after all, if we did we'd still be a weird species of ape.

Still, hypnosis is a valuable tool, and so is NLP. It really shows a difference between critical thought and critical conditioning. Between rejecting something "just because" and rejecting something because you know why you're doing it. And thanks for reminding me of that. ;)

Words are clumsy representations of thoughts and feelings.

As soon as a better method for communicating is discovered; one that's faster and more complete than talk; at that point, I wonder whether poets, priests and politicians will become pointless.

In the meanwhile, the philosophy of Kaizen (continuous improvement) teaches us to embrace the discipline of standardization (shitsuke).

I could tell you the word "habit" is a form of standardization. But that's a clumsy representation of my thoughts. It's more important for me to acknowledge the lion; acknowledging it because you're not alone in the quest to improve.

The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they’re too heavy to be broken.

Lol. All this stuff is way to complicated. To me it seems the only true history, is present history. What has all been said seems not at all what I found Bandlers stuff to be. Or Ive seen more maybe.

I think Bandler uses humour to shield people from their problems. My favorite is when he says people tell him their problem and then he says thats a bad plan. They sorta laugh a little and say well Im stuck this way. Then he says thats a bad plan too. He says hes a mind decorator. If I put the most horrible piece of art on your wall, youd get rid of it. The same should apply to the mind as well.

All I know is that Im a better person because of his stuff. A faster way to communicate would be too invasive right? I mean wed all be sharing each others thoughts all the time. Reminds me of dark city. lol.

Speaking as a subject and aspiring hypnotist, it is interesting to read criticism of NLP as a technique. Why pray tell is it generally so effective?

I was introduced to NLP in my business career via classes to help me "sell my ideas to management". It was a cockamamy class for certain but I did learn some interesting approaches to word use.

For my mind it's about having ideas presented in views I had not previously conceived. The mind decorator idea being a great example. Before reading this today I had never considered getting rid of bad ideas or assuming new ones to be simple as changing wall art.

It's that new perspective that drags me into hypnosis and creates real change. Food for the brain I guess. Or at least something that creates a good mental picture.

Absolutely in. Please help me by defining your goals and the path you envision to take us there.

Just in case: I'm not a "hypnotist" by any commonly accepted measure. It would be extremely Walter Mittyish of me to pretend otherwise.
But trance in myself and others is one of the most interesting, fun and helpful things I ever found. Which means I think about it a lot, and practice it when I can.

sfhole2stretch wrote:Absolutely in. Please help me by defining your goals and the path you envision to take us there.

My own goal was to learn how to think about hypnosis and NLP in a skeptical way. It's very difficult to do proper skepticism, at least for me. It's too easy to forget the difference between skepticism and denial. (Or, as I dubbed them, for these purposes, "critical thinking" and "critical conditioning." )

For me this whole thing started with a re-interpretation of an example from "Monsters and Magical Sticks," Do you really think 2+2=4 only because a teacher convinced you it is? Or are there other ways you can get there? It couldn't be teacher turtles all the way down, so someone somehow did it. S/he had a novel thought, and evaluated and accepted it (and rejected the thought that 2+2=3) without any suggestion from anyone. And that someone was a great skeptical philosopher. A naysayer who just said something along the lines of "Bah, I just don't trust that newfangled 'numbers' thing" was just a "not very suggestible guy." Possibly with "analytical mind" susceptible to confusion.

sfhole2stretch wrote:Speaking as a subject and aspiring hypnotist, it is interesting to read criticism of NLP as a technique. Why pray tell is it generally so effective?

Same reason any form of talk is effective. Because people let it to be.

Read that obligatory story of "how a 'non-suggestible' subject was hypnotized" that is in that book (it doesn't really matter which one, it's in every book on hypnosis, often several times, and it's generally the same story) and it's fairly obvious. Not being in trance when talking to someone is a skill that takes learning. ADD: Asch conformity experiments are a good example of how the majority of people would say, believe, or even actually hallucinate that the wrong answer to a simple question about a picture is correct, simple because they saw a lot of people (experimenter stooges) agreeing it is.

And people generally learn not to go in unwanted trances in two ways: The denial way is basically a post-hypnotic suggestion run backwards. This "critical conditioning" just skims what you see/hear/feel for simple "red flags" and when it finds them, it reclassifies the source of this input as "The Opponent" who cannot possibly be right or even worth listening to on any subject, with elaborate rationalizations if needed.

And once something makes it to the Red Flag List of enough people, it's worthless, whatever its inherent merits. The thought is simply suppressed before it has any chance. And, of course, since everything "bad" is denied uncritically the rest is accepted uncritically.

True critical thinking isn't like that, it can use methods like proof by contradiction or even think it through and decide that The Opponent has a point after all. Unlike critical conditioning it doesn't start with the premise that "your team" is always right. But, for most people, it takes years to develop it to any useful degree in a few very limited fields. Which is another problem with it, it's not just a mindset you can learn, it's not just some "data" you can memorize, it's a discipline one practices. Knowing it's not perfect, and it may fail you.

To illustrate, there was a test on the Internet some time ago that asked you to tell if what you saw was a piece of genuine abstract art or just some random nonsense. Anyone who knows anything about art can actually score pretty high on that test, even if they don't know the paintings in question, and even if the art they actually studied was photography, by just knowing some rules of composition and color theory. They won't score perfectly, but they will do better than random guess.

But it's much easier to dismiss all abstract art as nonsense, or wax lyrical about random doodles. It's psychologically safer.

Well I dont really want to tell all of his stuff without you actually buying his book. lol. but one of my favorites is learning how to draw. one of his stories is about a guy he saw on the river drawing a house. bandler asked him how does he make it so detailed? and the guy smiled and said it wasnt me who was drawing. bandler then said but i saw you draw it. the guy said i see gods hand fall out of the sky and draw the painting. lol. basically you see your hand draw whatever it is you want to draw. im happy with this since its awesome to draw manga characters!

As far as being able to do what Bandler does is asking for a lot since people have called him everything from scam artist to genius! As for the other stuff, it all seems too complicated for me, lol. got lost in the goat cat and bird stuff. lol. generally if you dont want to buy his book then Id suggest asking people how they do, what they do. and figure out what they do that makes them great. i know alot of what people do to be great and use a lot of it. another favorite is thinking as a winner where you take the whole number and take one down at a time. example I love chess and i play ten games a day, when one is over with i say nine left, eight left, etc. This can be applied to anything basically.

Then again, this can all be a moot point since what I really love is being in ultra depth. My theory is the small amount of stem cells in our noses and ears are used all over our body to make heal us. Then again the hallucinations are also amazing part of it as well. To me, it seems like the more I learn with some understanding what the brain can do it makes me feel like we;re all some freak alien experiment gone wrong. How do we know what electricity is? Magnets? Our brain? If its all some joke by some omnipotent god out there Id be very mad! lol.

I've followed this thread with a moderate interest so far, but now I'm going to jump in. I've always preferred to learn by doing. I read just a wee bit of information about hypnosis before starting to script and record, and I never really thought about a style of speech pattern or whatnot. My first file (and all the ones to follow) have mostly been laid out in a story-like fashion, based on what I had gathered from listening to some files before. I slowly describe something and add details one at a time. A good example of this would by my "Ultimate Plugs" file. It starts off with just a plug. That vibrates. And stretches. And shocks. And cums. And then there's another one. It does the same stuff the first one does. And so on and so forth.

That was the start. I read the thread about analytically minded people, and while that helped how I approached the listening side of things, it didn't change my scripting too much. I also read (maybe it was the same thread) another thread that I'm forgetting what it was about, but I know it contained some stuff about subtlety, like how "You can feel x" instead of "Feel x" is more subtle and is thus more effective. I picked up a little of that and it's seeped into my scripting a little bit, but not much.

So what's the point of this wall of text? What I'm trying to say is that I never really gave that much care to flow and patterns and such. What I think is what I say. How it comes out is how it comes out. And so far, I know it's worked for at least one person, and worked really well.

What do those of you who are formally trained 'tists think of this?

Also, is Richard Bandler OUR Bandler? As in, the one on this site.

Sorry about abandoning this. Just when I thought I'm going to have some time, some important RL stuff happened that would keep me way too busy for a month or two :(

I just found and read the entire thread. There is one point that some may find interesting and that's the speed at which people text. In the past it was rather slow, but it has increased in speed to the point that twitter can now at times be regarded as pre-thought, mapping the thought process as they are developed. Something to look at maybe. I imagine it's like quarks to protons/neutrons. The gluon would be twitter itself? Anyway, kudos to all involved in this wonderful thread!