The User's Manual for the Brain Volume I
Page 39
These rep systems function as the building blocks of behavior. We make mental distinctions using categories and classes. Each sensory modality has specific qualities, which are the properties of representational systems. These qualities are traditionally called submodalities in NLP. We prefer to call them “modality qualities” or “representational distinctions.” They provide the brain specific information for sorting and coding experience. Even though we usually do not experience submodalities consciously, we can easily make them conscious by simply becoming aware of them. This awareness enables us to alter the submodality structure of the experience.
16.4 Key Visual Submodalities:
__ Brightness
__ Focus
__ Color
__ Size
__ Distance
__ Contrast
__ Movement
__ Direction
__ Foreground/Background
__ Location
16.5 Key Auditory Submodalities:
__ Pitch
__ Continuous or Interrupted (Digital/Tonal)
__ Associated/Dissociated
__ Tempo
__ Volume
__ Rhythm
__ Duration
__ Distance
__ Clarity
16.6 Key Kinesthetic Submodalities:
__ Pressure
__ Location
__ Extent
__ Shape
__ Texture
__ Temperature
__ Movement
__ Duration
__ Intensity
__ Frequency
Ultimately we format or program our behavior, skills, and competencies through the process of combining and sequencing these neural system representations.
We then format or program our behavior, skills, and competencies using the process of combining and sequencing these neural system representations. Our processing of input stimuli occurs through a sequence of internal representations, which we call “a strategy.” Thus, in strategy work we focus on the processes of unpacking and repackaging behavior into efficient and communicable sequences. In this way we can format new and better ways of functioning.
16.7 “Map”-Making: Creating “Maps” For Charting The Territory
Bandler and Grinder suggest that we use three modeling processes to create our internal ‘maps’ of the world (our “programs”). These processes are deletion, generalization, and distortion, and they specify how we abstract or summarize from the territory and transform them into a representational “map.” These involve three processes:
16.7.0.113 Deletion
We delete because we cannot possibly process all of the billions of bits of information that impinge upon our nervous system at any given moment. Such would overwhelm us. Nor do we have the sensory apparatus to input all available data. Our eyes scan only a very narrow part of the light spectrum. Our ears receive only a very narrow band of sound wave frequencies. Thus we do not deal with reality directly, but indirectly— through our brain and nervous system. We only register a small portion of the sights, sounds, sensations, smells and tastes do come in. In this way, our brain protects us by selectively attending to items. This deleting function only becomes problematic when we delete essential or important items of information.
Huxley (1954) describes the function of the brain and nervous system as designed
“to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment… To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.” (p. 23, emphasis added).
He later describe our experience of “the world of reduced awareness” as expressed and “petrified” by language (p. 24).
Miller (1956), in a classic paper, asserted that consciousness has a limit of 7+/-2 chunks of information.
Miller (1956), in a classic paper, asserted that consciousness has a limit of 7+/-2 chunks of information. This severely limits our learnings and us. So we have to habitualize perception, learnings, “programs” so that our “unconscious” mind runs them. When we habitually repeat a certain mental pattern it drops out of conscious awareness as we store it unconsciously. This model treats consciousness as “an emergent property of neural system activity.” A representation attains consciousness only when it reaches a certain level of intensity. Given consciousness limitations of 7+/-2 chunks of information at a time (a “chunk” in consciousness refers to a patterning in experience we haven’t yet made unconscious), when it achieves the status of a TOTE, it drops out of consciousness, leaving consciousness free to attend other things.
16.7.0.114 Generalization
With the over-abundance of data, we generalize to summarize patterns. We create generalizations to simplify the world by categorizing, organizing, abstracting, and making higher level learnings. We generalize by putting items of similar function, structure, nature, etc., into categories. We look for Gestalts of meaning, configurations of significance, and synthesis of information so as to build generalizations. We look for patterns and when we find an experience repeating over time, we often jump to the conclusion that we have a pattern. This saves us time and trouble so we don’t have to constantly face the world anew. We generalize to give the world order and meaning, based on our ability to notice patterns, of similar syntax, context, form, and significance.
16.7.0.115 Distortion
As we build our models we inescapably distort things by deleting and generalizing data. We experience the territory through our perceptual filters. Once we install our programs, our “thoughts” (rep system) move to a higher logical level as beliefs, values, and attitudes (higher level distortions). When we “see” potentials in something, we distort. When we impose meaning or value on some item—we distort. We don’t evaluate this modeling process as good or bad in itself, but simply the way our nervous system handles and organizes data. Thus “color” does not exist out there in the world, but inside our nervous system.
Every form of distortion (e.g. beliefs, values, and perceptions) “organizes” us.
Every form of distortion (e.g. beliefs, values, perceptions) “organizes” us. Eventually the format of the distortion will psychologically organize our very “being” or personality (the way we think, perceive, feel, value, believe, and act). In other words, our “maps” have a reflexivity to them such that they form us in their image. The beliefs and values that result from our “map”-making induce us into our “states of consciousness” which, in turn, define, identify, motivate, and order us. This creates our particular form of “personality.” (Hall and Bodenhamer, 1997b).
16.8 Modeling That Creates Strategy “Maps”
What results from deleting, generalizing, and distorting? An internal “map” of the world—a paradigm. We construct this “map” in order to navigate reality.
What results from deleting, generalizing, and distorting? An internal “map” of the world—a paradigm. We construct this “map” in order to navigate reality. This explains how very intelligent people can engage in stupid behavior. They have an internal “map” that demands it! Their “map” “programs” or controls their perceptions, behaviors, communications, skills, states, etc. If their “map” causes them to delete something essential, to generalize a principle, rule, belief, decision too quickly, to distort too much, those programs (strategies) can organize and motivate them in unproductive ways.
We describe these processes and learnings as strategies. As we “run our brain” and nervous system in structured and organized ways, deleting, generalizing, distorting, etc., our brain gets into the habit of “going to the same place.” It develops a strategy or sequence of rep systems to generate its experiences. For this reason we say that every experienc
e has an internal structure. Even disorganized states such as madness, confusion, stress, procrastination, etc., have a governing, specific, sensory blueprint.
All behavior (learning, remembering, motivation, making a choice, communicating changing,, etc.) results from systematically ordered sequences of sensory representations.
Strategies simply provide a formal description of what we do inside our head and nervous system to generate some particular behavior, whether it consist of thoughts, emotions, beliefs, values, states, skills, experiences, communication, etc. All behavior (learning, remembering, motivation, making a choice, communicating, changing, etc.) results from systematically ordered sequences of sensory representations.
16.9 Conclusion
This basic introduction to the component pieces that make up “mind,” “personality,” and human subjectivity, provides the necessary ingredients for our behaviors. Our next concern is to focus on how these ingredients come together and blend to create our “subjectivity.”
Part II—The NLP Strategy Model
16.10 Tracking Down Consciousness
Consciousness goes places. You can count on that! And in our thoughts, emotions, neurology, behaviors, we sometimes feel as if the stream of consciousness rushes us along its currents. We get up in the morning minding our own business (or someone else’s!) and then all of a sudden, a thought flashes across consciousness thereby activating our memories so that, inwardly, we travel to another time and place… and find ourselves feeling strong and familiar emotions!
Phenomenologically, we experience “consciousness” on the inside in terms of the “senses that we originally used to input information”.
How can we track down the steps and places that consciousness takes us? The pieces of subjectivity—the coding “thoughts” in terms of the sensory systems and submodality qualities—give us a content on which to focus. We need to watch our internal “screen of consciousness” and pay attention to our coding. Because if every behavior and experience has a structure, then the explanation of (and key to) any behavior lies in its code. Phenomenologically, we experience “consciousness” on the inside in terms of the “senses” that we originally used to input information.
If these internal rep systems comprised the ingredients that we throw in and mix around to create all of our “experiences” including our thinking, thinking style, emotions, behaviors, “personality,” etc., then how do these ingredients relate to each other? What relationships govern their order, sequence, amount, timing, etc.? Describing this takes us into the next realm of NLP—strategies. But before we get there, I want to ask a historical question. How did NLP come up with this strategy model for tracking down the flow and movement of consciousness in the first place?
16.11 “Once Upon A Time There Was A Stimulus-Response Model…”
When modern psychology began at the turn of the twentieth century, several new models of “mind” and “personality” vied for acceptance.
Wilhelm Wundt in Germany and his American popularizer, Titchner, presented a theoretical model that almost invented NLP with their emphasis on the sensory systems. But Wundt hated application and thought of anything clinical as below him—so he worked to keep his model entirely theoretical. For Wundt and Structuralism, psychology ought to operate as a “science of mind.” Today we find many facets of his model subsumed within other psychologies.
Sigmund Freud in Vienna mixed “the hard science” of medicine with the very “soft” art of mythology and mesmerism to create psychoanalysis. His model started with a wild, primitive, out-of-control Id full of sexual, aggressive, hateful, rebellious, etc. forces, and to that Id, he postulated two other entities—a conscious ego “mind” that brings “the reality principle” to bear upon it hoping to restrain the wild primitive urges; and the superego. Then as the super-ego consciousness gets more and more programmed with the rules of home, of culture, of society, of work, etc., it brings more restraint upon the irrational and totally selfish inner Id. For Freud and psychoanalysts and even the neo-analysts, psychology should function as the “science of the unconscious.”
John Watson and the behaviorists had a different idea. They suggested that the inner “black box” of “mind” or “consciousness” didn’t matter in terms of building a scientific discipline of psychology. So they completely refocused psychology. They designated it as “the science of behavior.” As they prevailed more and more in influence throughout the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and into the 50s, Behaviorism or Learning Theory popularized the S-R Theory of human subjectivity. Stimulus-Response (S-R) theory sought to explain human functioning exclusively in terms of conditioning. “This stimulus sets off that response.” “This eating disorder originated from that particular conditioning at such-and-such a date.” Relying heavily upon the original work of Pavlov in Russia, this model found two tremendously effectively popularizers in John Watson at the beginning of the century and B.F.Skinner in the middle of the century. Miller, Galanter, and Pribram (1960) wrote,
“Sir Charles Sherrington and Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov are the two men who are probably most responsible for confirming the psychologist’s image of man as a bundle of S-R reflexes.” (p. 23).
16.12 “And Then The S-R Grew Up Into A TOTE”
Then came the information age of computers, cybernetic systems, the cognitive revolution of George Miller et al. Many famous psychologists within Behaviorism (e.g. Edward Tolman) began increasingly arguing for an Intervening Variable between S-R. Tolman (1948) wrote in “Cognitive Maps In Rats and Men,” in Psychological Review:
“[The brain] is far more like a map control room than it is like an old-fashioned exchange. The stimuli, which are allowed in, are not connected by just simple one-to-one switches to the outgoing responses. Rather, the incoming impulses are usually worked over and elaborated in the central control room into a tentative, cognitive-like map of the environment. And it is this tentative map, indicating routes and paths and environmental relationships, which finally determines what responses, if any, the animal will finally release.” (emphasis added).
Noam Chomsky’s (1956) classic reply to Skinner about the source and nature of “language” within human consciousness delivered a death blow to Behaviorism. Then came Miller, Galanter, and Pribram’s (1960) analysis of Plans and the Structure of Behavior.
Going beyond the simple behaviorist Stimulus-Response model and the reflex arc, they utilized their newly developed TOTE model (TOTE). This model provided a flow-chart for tracking human subjectivity from stimulus through internal “processing” in terms of the human responses of Testing the stimulus against internal models (plans, expectations, thoughts, ideas, paradigms), Operating either on the stimulus to alter it or one’s internal map to alter it, Testing for congruency or the lack of it, and then Exiting the program.
The S-R model as well as the TOTE model describe the process of modeling.
The S-R model as well as the TOTE model describes the process of modeling. It starts with some stimulus in some present state and tracks the process of getting to some new, different, and better response that leaves one in a more desired state. Thus:
Figure 15:1 The TOTE Model
The TOTE model updated the S-R model of the reflex arc primarily by incorporating feedback and outcome.
The TOTE model updated the S-R model of the reflex arc primarily by incorporating feedback and outcome.
It also offered a formal format of internal processing sequence triggered by a stimulus. Tests referred to the conditions that the operation had to meet before the response would occur. In feedback phase, the system operates to change some aspect of the stimulus or of person’s internal state to satisfy the test. Dilts, et al (1980) illustrate the working of a TOTE in tuning in a radio station (see Figure 15:2).
“When you adjust the volume dial on your radio or stereo, you continually test the sound volume by listening to it. If the volume is too low, you operate by turning the knob clockwise. If you overshoot and the volume becomes
too loud, you operate by turning the knob counterclockwise to reduce the intensity of the sound. When you have adjusted the amplifier to the appropriate volume, you exit from the ‘volume-adjusting’ TOTE and settle into your comfortable armchair to continue reading.”
Figure 15:2 Dilts’ TOTE Model
“What do the arrows represent? What could flow along them from one box to another? We shall discuss three alternatives: energy, information, and control.” (p. 27)
They discussed this information according to the method of measuring information that Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon developed. Then they discussed the concept of “control” and wrote about information as “a set of instructions” controlling responses or behavior.
“It is the notion that what flows over the arrows… is an intangible something called control. The arrows may indicate only succession. This concept appears most frequently in the discussion of computing machines, where the control of the machine’s operations passes from one instructions to another, successively, as the machine proceeds to execute the list of instructions that comprise the program it has been given. Imagine you look up a particular topic in a book. You open the book to the index and find the topic. As you look up each page reference in turn, your behavior can be described as under the control of that list of numbers, and control is transferred from one number to the next as you proceed through the list. The transfer of control could be symbolized by drawing arrows from one page number to the next, but the arrows would have a meaning quite different from the two meanings mentioned previously.” (p. 30).