Apr 10
7
Wednesday Weekly Wisdom 7th April 2010
This week from Jonathan Chase the Hypnotist
I am Against NLP & Hypnosis, Words and Understanding
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I am against NLP
Apparently I am *against* NLP according to a comment on my very good friend Reg Blackwood’s blog.
This is in facet not true. Neuro Linguistic Programming is as far as one can tell, a study of human behaviour and how that results in excellence at any given task. And a theoretical application of it’s findings to create the potential for such excellence in others by dint of emulation. Being against it would need it to be something more than just another way of making the simple complex. It would be like being against flatulence.
That’s what it appeared to be when Messieurs Bandler and Grinder originally thought the whole thing up. Bandler is now on record of saying that it was a way of selling hypnosis to a larger market. However.
Now it’s mostly a sort of psudo-psychology for people who can’t be bothered to go to college to get the real thing, and it’s almost totaly ignored by established psychology and as such is massively attractive to lay therapists.
As a field of learning NLP is what it is – a sort of anchor for the good old school of let’s-make-it-up-as-we-go-along. As a tool for change it reminds me of most software produced by Microsoft, complex and bloated and full of stuff you’ll never use and which has only been tested in the mind of the developers. Even after all these years it’s still in Beta and gets updated every three months or so. That is compared to the Mac OSX approach of real direct hypnosis which is basically Zap ‘em and tell them to stop it!
Richard Bandler talks about NLP but uses, promotes and teaches what I and anyone with half a brain would realize was straight forward hypnosis. Well okay, not straight forward hypnosis. Side-winding corkscrew hypnosis. But at the end of the day hypnosis by any other name.
John Grinder seems to be closer to the original idea and so his videos are generally longer than Bandler’s and slightly more complex. More Linguistic. It’s like dong hypnosis but first having to shove the suggestions through the intellect rather than giving them directly to the subconscious.
So am I ‘against’ NLP? No.
I think it’s long-winded, largely inaccurate, inflexible, unproven and 80% bovine excreta but I’m not against it. You are free to waste your money and belief system on whatever you want.
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Hypnosis, Words and Understanding
Induce means to create or bring about. Comply means to agree or capitulate which means there is some kind of a choice involved. Understanding means the meaning given to a word, action or symbol by the observer or recipient.
Hypnotist in an online group, club or forum means having the capacity to ignore what a word means and to apply understanding ballistically.
Nothing is more frustrating than the endless discussions that go on and on in the hypnosis ‘community’ about what words mean. And nothing is more ludicrous than writing “Well that isn’t My understanding of what that means”, even in the face of the full dictionary definition.
Samuel Johnson must be rotating fast enough to achieve orbit.
I see that all the time. It’s okay I suppose. You have every right to ignore what some person has painstakingly researched and entered into the dictionary. Hey, language is after all organic and changes it’s pants at the drop of a diphthong. But does it help when the users of the Hypnotic in-speak can’t even agree on what the words they are using mean?
Semantics apparently are not important. Although to be honest that is usually an argument put forward by people who are not entirely sure what semantics actually means.
However, in Hypnosis nothing is really more important to the hypnotist than semantics. At least Lexical semantics. Because if you get the meaning of the words wrong for the hypnotee then their understanding comes into force and that could cause a lot of problems.
The subconscious mind understands words to a degree. To about the same degree as a bright nine year old child.
Vocabularies at that age are large and are not far off adult. Understanding however is far from clear or learned. The average kid can use some pretty damn complex words, even if they have no idea what they mean or what to do with them after. And funny enough the same can be said about the average adult. Especially those involved in a process which has it’s own language and understanding.
So what are Hypnotic words that and phrases that most people will understand, and that are not really open to argument?
Errm, ummmm, weeeelllll, urrrrrr, frarppppp, duhhhhhh….
Off hand there aren’t any. The artisans of hypnotism can’t even agree on what Hypnosis itself means let alone any of the other in-terms such as, Induce, Deepen, Compliance, Choice, and the big three, Subconscious, Unconscious and Conscious, all of which can apparently mean a process, a factor, an aspect and a real entity. And none of which come even close to meaning what their dictionary definition puts forward as a potentially agreeable understanding.
I put out a daily dose of hypnotism hints and tips to people who have signed up for it on my web site, and today’s is going to be this…
Find out what your hypnotee understands hypnosis to mean and give it too them. It’s their understanding that counts after all.
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This weeks The Hypnotist Radio Show
Sunday at 7pm UK Time my celebrity co-host Reg Blackwood and I are back together, this week interviewing American Stage Hypnotist Justin Tranz.
Justins record is indisputable, 10 years in his Las Vegas show, 18 months just finished on Broadway, 5 years with his own show on the PlayBoy channel where he hypnotizes couples to divulge their deepest darkest secrets.
Should be world class interview.
Of course there will be Regs Rant, The BIG [business in gear] Question, and the usual live chat and call in.
Are you ready to sleep with strangers?
