Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming

She couldn't! She was paralyzed! But she was right. It wouldn't have worked with her. However, it was perfect for him. If nothing else, it was just the opposite of what she had been doing all that time. It wasn't that what I did was more powerful than what she did, it was just more appropriate for him, given that all those other things hadn't worked. That therapist didn't have that flexibility in her behavior. She did the only thing that she could do. She couldn't do gestalt therapy because she couldn't yell at anybody. It wasn't a choice for her. She was so nice. I'm sure there were some people who had never had anybody be nice to them, and that hanging around her was such a new experience that it had some influence on them. However, that would still not help them make the specific changes that they came to therapy for.

Woman: What we did was to ask the conscious mind of the partner "Will you agree not to sabotage, not to try to—"

Oh, there's a presupposition there that the conscious mind can sabotage! You can ignore the conscious mind. It can't sabotage the unconscious. It couldn't sabotage the original choice that it didn't want, and it's not going to be able to sabotage the new ones either.

What you're doing with reframing is giving requisite variety to the unconscious. The unconscious previously had only one choice about how to get what it wants. Now it's got at leas four choices—three new ones and the old one. The conscious mind still hasn't got any new choices. So given the law of requisite variety, which is going to be in control? The same one that was in control before you got here, and that is not your conscious mind.

It's important for some people to have the illusion that their conscious mind controls their behavior. It's a particularly virulent form of insanity among college professors, psychiatrists, and lawyers. They believe that consciousness is the way they run their lives. If you believe that, there is an experiment you can try. The next time somebody extends their hand to shake hands with you, I want you to consciously not lift your hand, and find out whether your hand goes up or not. My guess is that your conscious mind won't even discover that it is time to interrupt the behavior until your hand is at least half-way up. And that's just a comment about who's in control.

Man: How about the use of this method in groups?

I hope you notice how we have used it here! While you are doing reframing, you spend about seventy to eighty percent of the time alone, waiting for the person to get a response. While you are doing that you can start with someone else. Each of us used to do ten or fifteen people at a time. The only limitation on how many people you can do at one time is how much sensory experience you are able to respond to. You set your limitations by the refinement of your sensory apparatus.

I know a man who does it with groups, and he takes them all together through each step. "Everybody identify something. Everybody go inside. What did you get?" "I got a feeling. ""Intensify for 'yes.'" "What did you get?" "I got sounds." "Have them get louder." "What did you get?" "I got a picture." "Have it brighten." He makes everybody else wait instead. That's another approach. It's easier if you have a homogeneous group of people.

Man: I'm kind of curious. Did you ever do this with somebody who had cancer—have them go inside and talk to the part that is causing the cancer?

Yes. I worked as a consultant for the Simontons in Fort Worth. I had six people who were terminal cancer patients, so I did them as a group, and that worked fine. I had enough sensory experience, and there was enough homogeneity in them as a group, that I could do it that way. The Simontons get good responses just using visualization. When you add the sophistication of all representational systems and the kind of communication system we develop with reframing, I don't know what the limits are. I would like to know what they are. And the way to find out is to assume that I can do anything and go out and do it.

We had a student who got a complete remission from a cancer patient. And he did something which I think is even more impressive: He got an ovarian cyst the size of an orange to shrink away in two weeks. According to medical science, that wasn't even possible. That client reports that she has the X-rays to prove it.