NLP Book Chapter Preview: Introduction to the Meta Model

(Hi everyone! The Ericksonian Metaphors article will be the next one that I finish. For now, enjoy this preview of the NLP book I'm working on -- a polished version of the early draft article. I think there's a lot more clarity and information. Enjoy!)

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Introduction to the Meta Model

The Meta Model is the early foundation of NLP; it was the starting point for everything that would come after. As we’ll explore, the Meta Model predates the term “Neuro Linguistic Programming”, but is still considered one of its pillars. It is a bit difficult to summarize concisely, but one way of explaining it might be that it is a framework of how to linguistically analyze the communication of other people, find out what they aren’t saying and what they are, and ask the right questions to encourage better understanding of the way they view the world and thus give them the ability to change in some direction. To begin, we’ll dive into a little history about the key players involved and how these intersections of giants were the spark of creating something so extensive, and we’ll discuss the foundations of how NLP views language and processing.

A Brief History

It is the early 1970s at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Richard Bandler is a student, and John Grinder is a professor. Somehow, they cross paths, study therapists, and within the span of five years end up authoring “The Structure of Magic” volumes I and II together -- the very first books on the Meta Model and what will be used for decades as an introduction to NLP. Bandler and Grinder are often cited as NLP’s co-founders, but the reality is that it was born out of group collaboration and a significant number of contributors, including a third, generally unacknowledged co-founder named Frank Pucelik.

Bandler:

• Also worked at Science and Behavior Books, a publishing company focused on therapy and psychology
• Got the job through Dr. Robert Spitzer: company president, soon-to-be integral to developing the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and family friend
• Was told to edit manuscripts of Fritz Perls, legendary therapist and originator of Gestalt therapy
• Was accidentally called “Fritz” a number of times by Spitzer due to his uncanny ability of “modeling” or copying behavior and speech patterns

Pucelik:

• Was an older student; did a stint in the military after a couple years of school, then went back and studied psychology and political science
• Transferred to UCSC and used his background knowledge on therapy to do peer counseling for fellow students
• Met Bandler due to their overlapping interest in psychology -- the two of them ran student seminars on Gestalt therapy together

Grinder:

• Was a “hotshot” linguistics professor at USCS
• Was asked to sit in on Bandler’s therapy seminars so he could lend his perspective
• Asked the group questions about the language patterns that they were using, watched and took note of how they all behaved and offered input

The group grew beyond its simple basis of Gestalt therapy. It became a collaborative effort, and even moreso as they invited more and more students to join and participate in the discussions and learning. Around this time, Spitzer asked Bandler to record audio tapes of Virginia Satir, renowned family therapist, and she would be the second of three “therapeutic wizards,” as NLP affectionately calls them, to form the basis for their development. Bandler’s skill for modeling communication was again utilized as he spoke with her and transcribed her sessions. Satir ended up having an ongoing dialogue with them, the only one of the original three who eagerly collaborated. The student seminars, as they “levelled up”, became known as the “Meta” group.

There was Fritz Perls of Gestalt therapy, and Virginia Satir of family therapy -- as for the third “wizard”? That would be Milton Erickson, whose body of work would introduce them to hypnosis, later. Bandler knew very little about the topic until he heard poured all over Erickson’s case studies, writings, and other books on the subject. But from there, these group sessions often included trance; Pucelik recalls in “The Origins of Neuro Linguistic Programming” (2013) that they would even spend days hypnotically “transformed” into the therapists they were studying to better learn how to model them.

But as things really got going and they had the opportunity to actually meet Erickson, Pucelik was not invited and was mysteriously asked not to return to the group. It continued without him, training multiple generations of students in the techniques they were synthesizing as they all collaborated with each other. Bandler and Grinder moved on to publish their first book together, “The Structure of Magic I: A Book about Language and Therapy” in 1975, which formed the basis for what they called “The Meta Model” -- the very first part of NLP, a culmination of what they had learned from studying Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson, and others in the fields of linguistics and therapy.

Map/Territory Relation and Alfred Korzybski

Understanding that the Meta Model and NLP come from a coalescence of therapeutic techniques and linguistics (among other fields), it makes sense that it is largely focused on the idea of problem-solving and change through a linguistic and philosophical lens. It begins with a basis or model of how to view the world and human interactions and then gives more technical guidance on how to get information, model experts, and achieve different outcomes.

Arguably, the first and foremost part of the Meta Model and NLP is a concept borrowed from scholar Alfred Korzybski, who wrote, paraphrased, “The map is not the territory.” This was meant to illustrate the idea that a model of something does not represent the thing itself. This concept has been expounded on by countless others. One such example is artist René Magritte in his famous painting, titled, “The Treachery of Images,” which depicts a tobacco pipe, captioned, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). This describes the idea that the abstraction of a pipe in the form of a drawing, albeit realistic and recognizable, is not literally a pipe. Philosopher Immanuel Kant describes this idea in transcendental idealism -- we do not experience the world, we experience our impression of it.

NLP (specifically the Meta Model) holds this concept at its core. The way that one views the world is not literally how the world is, and the way that one describes the world is not literally representative of it, either. From a therapeutic standpoint, this is meant to assist therapists in understanding that a) themselves and their client have incomplete and different views of the issues at hand, b) that their job is to understand the client’s “map” and expand upon it to assist them in positive change, and c) they can achieve this through use and analysis of language.

It’s helpful to dig back a little to Korzybski’s work to get a more full understanding of where this idea came from. The full text of the oft-truncated quote is this:

“A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. [...] If we reflect upon our languages, we find that at best they must be considered only as maps. A word is not the object it represents; and languages exhibit also this peculiar self-reflexiveness, that we can analyse languages by linguistic means. This self-reflexiveness of languages introduces serious complexities, which can only be solved by the theory of multi-ordinality. The disregard of these complexities is tragically disastrous in daily life and science.”

This is from his book, “Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems” (1933). In it, Korzybski puts forth a model for therapy and linguistics called “general semantics,” which borrows from other linguistics and places a high focus on his idea of “non-aristotelianism”; essentially, as much as you attempt to truly describe something, you cannot capture its essence and you cannot perfectly represent it. It is very interested in the human experience as viewed through language and over time, and how language can alter that experience through understanding its ambiguity and symbolism. Digging into the specific quote and concept: No representation, word or description or internal model, has the capability to actually represent something, but it becomes useful in guiding ourselves and others through the world when it approaches similarity. The original Meta Model takes from this in certain ways -- Korzybski can easily be viewed as a grandfather to NLP, predating it by nearly 40 years. Later and other versions of the Meta Model take even further from him, and we will dig deeper in later chapters.

Map/Territory In Kink

This is the sort of philosophical basis for the Meta Model: The idea that we are fundamentally starting from an impoverished point in terms of how we understand the world and how we understand each other’s “maps” of it. In kink, it is ideal to think about this when we’re interacting with our partners. For example, in negotiation, how might someone be viewing the idea of a potential activity differently than us? We know how important it is in many partnerships to strive for information as a necessary aspect of consent. NLP gives us a framework for this in the idea that we can delve into what our partner believes is entailed in something. We must recognize that being “informed” about something is not necessarily about what “objective reality” is -- “amnesia,” for example, is a nebulous and ambiguous concept that may require clarity, which we can attempt to achieve through communication.

Even within the context of a scene, this idea of map and territory is relevant. In a really concrete way, perhaps you are doing some sort of guided fantasy; we know intuitively not to assume that the way you describe or view a scenario is replicated one-to-one in the subject’s mind. This knowledge allows us to better work with ambiguity, or search for information about their model, or expand the way that they conceptualize something to better match your representation, or expand the way that you conceptualize something to better match theirs. For another example, you can consider a response part of a subject’s model; if you tell them to act like a bimbo, and they start babbling about wanting to go shopping, you’ve learned something about how they process what a “bimbo” is, and you can make decisions about how to utilize that. NLP gives specific tools and techniques to be able to clarify information that’s being given to you, discover new things, and facilitate change and expansion.

In general, we can talk extensively about the simple value of a person feeling like they are understood. Feeling “seen” or “known” is a key ingredient in someone experiencing good rapport, and especially within the context of an erotic interaction. If the subject has a sense that you are making attempts in understanding them, it can facilitate trust and a high level of responsiveness. Simply using the Meta Model as a framework to display that kind of attention (if coming from a genuine place) is another way that we can benefit from it.

At its very core, this is all about learning how to understand someone’s model of the world, which is a phrase that is oft-repeated in discussions of NLP. Learning about someone, learning about the way that they process concepts, learning about their thoughts, feelings, and personal history gives you an immense way to connect with them and an immense amount to utilize when you are hypnotizing them.

Language as Representation

The Meta Model strives to say that if we each have different maps of the world, we explore and show each other our maps through the language that we use. On a very basic level, we paint pictures for each other through words in order to describe our experiences. We may note different details of our experiences, and the way that we tell stories says a lot about the way that we have processed an event.

For example, if we are talking about our first time doing hypnosis, we draw upon the memory that we have in our heads and have to translate that to words in order to communicate it. The way that we do this varies from person to person, and also likely depends on what we are thinking about that day. We choose different verbiage to talk about the way that we felt, perhaps key things that we saw or heard. In this way, we are attempting to bring someone into our “world” so that they can better understand it.

But even beyond trying to share an experience, whenever we communicate we are somehow presenting our worldview. The act of translating the way that we conceptualize something into speech is always going to be telling about how we process things. The nuances of our language and the way we communicate concepts is always going to represent how we view the world. It is the key medium we have to share ourselves and our internal experiences.

NLP says that language should be the subject of scrutinous study, because of this. The thesis of the Meta Model in particular is all about learning how to understand who someone is based on the language that they use, specifically because it tells us about how they think about events, people, and concepts.

Generalizations, Deletions, Distortions

So far we know that NLP says that language is a representation of our individual worlds, and both the experience itself is incomplete and so is our verbal representation of it. The Meta Model claims to categorize three main ways that this incompleteness manifests: Generalizing, deleting, or distorting experiences or information.

• “Generalization” is when we take one experience and consciously or unconsciously assume or communicate that it represents a whole class of experiences. For a common example, a child has a bad experience going to the doctor’s office and then expects that all further visits are scary.
• “Deletion” happens if we are somehow leaving out a part of an experience so that it becomes incomplete. Perhaps we go to a party, and despite there being some awkward interactions, you remember the experience as overall being pretty fun.
• “Distortion” occurs when we change the quality of something. This could be as simple as misremembering the color of someone’s eyes, or more complicated, like assuming that there is causality between two things (like having the sense that hypnosis is sexual).

Notice that some of these examples could potentially lead to problems, while others are more neutral or even feel like they could be fun to play with. NLP is mainly written from the perspective of therapy -- thus the goal is to identify limits in our processing that are detrimental and help the person overcome those issues. However, it’s important to remember that just because we generalize, delete, or distort information, it doesn’t mean that it’s problematic. This is a natural part of the way that we process information as humans. It can even lead us to positive worldviews (or, as we’ll explore, great opportunities for hypnokink). This is to say that generalization, deletion, and distortion are not inherently good or bad things. It largely relies on the context that the information is being communicated as well as the intent of both the speaker and listener.

Deep Structure/Surface Structure

The Meta Model says that we can look for hints about how we change information through analyzing language. It borrows terms to describe this from renowned linguist Noam Chomsky’s transformational grammar (although does not perfectly copy the concept) in the form of “Deep Structure” and “Surface Structure.” The general idea is an easy one if we boil it down: On the “surface,” people make speech acts that represent (often incompletely) what they are feeling, meaning, or experiencing on a “deeper” level. The Meta Model also makes heavy use of the term “transformation” in discussing language, namely to describe the ways that utterances can be changed in different ways to express different things. For example, how information is transformed in the way that we talk about it, or how experiences are transformed through being generalized, deleted, or distorted.

Someone might say, “We had such a good time.” This would be the Surface Structure -- what is being said. The Deep Structure of this sentence includes information like what they were doing, who was involved, and when they were doing it. For another example, “I really want more brainwashing” might be transformed from the Deep Structure of something like, “I have enjoyed brainwashing in the past with a specific partner that included being conditioned to masturbate about them and I want more of that next time we play.” Clearly, native speakers don’t usually talk like this, as context is an important part of language, but the Surface Structure begs the questions: Why? By who? When? What does “brainwashing” mean?

NLP wants us to look into even the most seemingly obvious statements and see where there might be information hidden or assumed. “I bought lunch” implies that some amount of money was spent and some kind of food was received, but how much and what kind? It may not always be the same level of importance to get those answers, but it’s the mindset and thought process of looking to see how we communicate and how we are transforming our experience into language that matters.

This of course connects with the idea of wanting to understand someone’s model of the world; their model includes the transformed information hidden behind the “surface” words that they are saying. In hypnokink particularly, we can gain a lot of resources by striving to understand the true whole of an utterance, or what that utterance represents. How has someone processed their thoughts or experiences, and how are they communicating it to you? Are there aspects to it that they themselves are not aware of, because of this nuance of language? Can you use any of that to your advantage as a hypnotist?

Meta Model “Violations”/Questions

Finally, the Meta Model provides specific analysis of what language patterns to look for that might imply these transformations of generalizations, deletions, or distortions, and gives examples of ways to “challenge” these; how to dig under the incomplete Surface Structure to glean more information for all parties involved. This is referred to in several different ways based on where you look for it -- sometimes this is referred to as the concept of “Meta Model Violations,” where it describes the specific language acts, and then various examples of questions are given which attempt to specify generalizations, recover deletions, and clarify distortions.

It’s important to remember that in each case, simply hearing these phrases or words does not imply that they’re automatically limiting. We need to use our judgment to discern if the information is incomplete in a way that would benefit from clarity, or if it would simply be useful from a hypnotic perspective. There is not a need to push to clarify on every sentence, nor should they be pushed in the same way -- it is just about what you are trying to achieve by looking for information underneath. While the Meta Model emphasizes an increased awareness on linguistic transformations and limited utterances, it acknowledges that native speakers of a language often rely on presupposition, assumption, and frame.

Sometimes making these pushes on “incomplete” statements is about fixing them, so to speak, but from our perspective as hypnokinksters, it can be valuable and fun simply to discover new things or change someone’s perspective. Getting someone to think about something differently is a key aspect of doing hypnosis -- hypnotizing them is not just about linearly putting them in trance, but changing the way that they are thinking, and NLP would say that that expands their resources (that we as kinksters have to play with). After all, getting new information gives us more ingredients with which to use in our patter. This is one of the key differences between the way that we want to use NLP in erotic hypnosis and how NLP teaches it -- they operate on the assumption that these “violations” are usually implying a negative limitation. We as hypnokinksters want to expand our understanding of this concept to simply find interesting and enjoyable places to push someone.

The templates given for both the examples and clarifying questions are purposefully simplistic as well as spelled out -- regular conversations don’t usually go so rigidly and nor should they. Natural speech can often contain more than one example of each of these, and it’s not so much about going down the list and challenging each word you hear, but more so carefully considering how to be more effectively communicating with them, or what useful things you may unearth by poking and prodding at certain junctures. There are a variety of different situations presented in this list -- some about “fixing” information, and others about more playful interaction.

Generalizations

Universal Quantifiers

Words such as “always,” “never,” “every,” “nothing,” or “all” are the mark of someone generalizing in such a way that they feel or imply that there is no alternative or exception.

Example: “I never seem to get your instructions right.”

Clarifying: Offering contrary examples, such as, “Never? Even when you brought me a glass of water earlier today?” Or taking it literally to the extreme in jest, such as, “Yeah… If I told you to blink your eyes, you’d probably hold them open for the next 20 minutes!”

Modal Operators of Necessity or Probability

Words such as “must,” “can,” “should,” “will,” and their inverses, “mustn’t,” “can’t,” “shouldn’t,” or “won’t” might imply that someone is wrongfully assuming that their actions are limited or restricted.

Example: “I have to go deeper into trance...”

Clarifying: Challenge their sense of surety and discover more about their belief, such as, “How do you know that you have to? What’s giving you that compulsion?” Or try to get them to see that they have more (or, in the case of D/s, less) options, such as, “What would happen if you did or didn’t?”

Deletions

Simple Deletions

Something is missing or being left out.

Example: “It feels so good...”

Clarifying: Try to prompt for what is missing, such as, “What is making you feel so good? What do you feel that lets you know that you’re feeling good?” You might get some interesting information about their experience that you can use against them.

Lack of Referential Index

Any noun which is unspecified, like generalized groupings such as “they” or “people,” or “those” or “that” when what is actually being referred to isn’t clear.

Example: “I really am doing this… Like, it’s really happening...”

Clarifying: Try to dig with questions such as, “What is it exactly that you are doing? What is happening? Can you tell me about it?” This can have the effect of pushing someone more into their internal experience.

Comparative Deletion

Words like “more,” “most,” “better,” or their inverses, “less,” “least,” or “worse” may imply that someone is differentiating between two or more nebulous things, and/or the standard is unclear.

Example: “It’s just so much more intense!”

Clarifying: Recover what the comparison is, such as, “More intense compared to what? Can you think about that more clearly?”

Unspecified Verb

The thing or person making an action or statement is unclear -- a verb that doesn’t describe a solidly measurable action, which could cause confusion or misunderstanding.

Example: “I feel like I’m not improving as a subject.”

Clarifying: Attempt to point out what they are viewing, since their language isn’t clear: “What does it mean to improve? What exact qualities does ‘improving’ have in this situation?”

Nominalization

A nominalization refers to a noun that doesn’t represent a physical “thing” -- often it is a verb that has been “nounified.” It is abstract; it can’t be physically touched, standardized, or measured, and thus can be murky if it is assumed to have a single concrete definition.

Example: “I want evil hypnosis.”

Clarifying: Attempt to dig into their model to understand the actual concrete qualities that they are perceiving, such as, “What does ‘evil hypnosis’ feel like? How does an ‘evil’ person behave?”

Distortions

Mind Reading

An assumption is made about how someone else or a group of people thinks, feels, or will behave.

Example: “I know you want me to be more expressive.”

Clarifying: Challenge their knowledge, such as, “How do you know what I want?” Or try to discern where the assumption came from, such as, “What makes you think that?”

Lost Performative

A judgment about the value of something is made, but the source of that is ambiguous.

Example: “It’s important to have a blank mind in trance.”

Clarifying: Attempt to identify where they got the idea from, like, “Who says that?” You can also challenge the information; “How do you know that the people who say that know it for a fact?”

Cause-Effect

An assumption is made that a particular action or process results in something specific. Words like “if/then,” “because,” “makes,” or “causes” imply that someone is making a correlation that may not be a true connection.

Example: “When my eyes are closed, I go really deep.”

Clarifying: You can try to challenge the association, like, “How do you know those two things are related?” Or you can try to clarify the values involved; “What does it mean for your eyes to be closed? Are there different levels of that, like when they’re just heavy or fluttering? Do you think that translates to any other things your body does, or that we can harness to move that feeling?”

Complex Equivalence

Similar to Cause-Effect, there is a conclusion made that two ideas are invariably connected. Words like “means,” “because,” and “equals” could be signs of someone equating things that don’t necessarily relate to each other.

Example: “I’m really analytical, so I’m not very good at going into trance.”

Clarifying: Attempt to unravel the equivalence: “When did those two things start meaning the same thing? What makes you think that being analytical inhibits your ability to go into trance?”

Presupposition

A statement is constructed in such a way that part of the message has to be assumed to be true in order to parse it. Presuppositions can be very extensive, but one way to identify them is when the Surface Structure obscures the Deep Structure of an utterance.

Example: “I really want to go into trance!”

Clarifying: Identify the true Deep Structure of the sentence and specify based on that: “Why do you assume that you aren’t already in trance? When do you think you will know if we will?”

Applying the Meta Model for Fun

In a therapeutic context, this seems like an obvious approach and it is easy to see how it is useful. The goal of therapy is to assist a client in making positive changes; different therapeutic approaches, including NLP and others, have different theories for how best to make that happen. NLP’s therapeutic practitioners, including its founders, clearly found something interesting and successful in their careful deconstruction of the language of different therapists. They were language nerds through and through, and so their techniques rely on their strengths in challenging what they believed were flawed structures of the language of clients -- and much more, of course, but speaking generally here about the Meta Model, specifically.

But this applies to our erotic hypnosis in a number of ways; the skill of being able to translate a therapeutic model -- or “transform” it, to cheekily steal from NLP -- should be a coveted one. Whether it’s pre-, mid-, or post-scene, we can learn to listen more deeply and acknowledge that there is more than what is at surface value to what both we are saying and our partners are saying. If a subject says, “I’m really fractionated,” what does that mean that they are experiencing? Are they looking for that to change in one direction or another? What useful information can you glean that may help you make the scene even better? Perhaps, to them, being “fractionated” means they’re deeply engrossed and enjoying the experience; maybe it’s a hint that they want more. It could mean something specific about their process, like physical sensations or a change in their thinking. Do they feel slower? What kinds of actions or questions are available to you as the hypnotist here?

This last part is key: what choices are available to you? Whenever you gain information in a hypnotic scene -- information you gain from observing and listening to your partner’s responses -- you are gaining options on how to proceed. We hypnotize others by 1) understanding how someone is processing, and 2) using that knowledge to influence where they go. Naturally, there are a lot of concepts in hypnosis which generally beg for a more broad understanding: the ideas of depth, trance, arousal, excitement, specific tropes and concepts -- all of these are highly individualized and dependent on context. As you learn more about how someone is processing something in a moment, avenues open up for you to lead them down a rich path.

As we explore further into the book, we’ll also discover that sometimes we actually want our partners to generalize, delete, or distort information. The previous examples show some of this, and when we get to talking about the Milton Model, we’ll look more in depth about different techniques and ways to think about this idea. But for now, when you’re analyzing the communications your partner is making, think about what would benefit the scene: Would it be more fun to push against and clarify, or go in the same direction as their thoughts?

Meta Model Questioning as a Hypnotic Practice

You can think of questioning as a way of achieving engagement, as well. Asking questions or clarifying specifically makes someone go internal and process -- a hypnotic act. Let’s look at a theoretical, fictitious interaction to see how the simple act of clarifying and discerning information can be an aspect of a scene.

A subject and hypnotist sit down to do a scene together over video chat. They have negotiated that hypnosis is going to happen and the subject expressed interest in feeling very submissive. The hypnotist confirms that the subject is ready, and the subject agrees.

Hypnotist: So, it’s interesting that you’re focused on wanting to feel so submissive. What’s driving that?

Subject: Um, I’m not really sure… I think I just haven’t gotten deep enough to feel it before.

H: Well, how deep have you gotten? (The hypnotist has learned something based on the subject’s linguistic comparative deletion and complex equivalence -- the subject expects their level of submission connects with their perceived depth of trance. The hypnotist is purposefully shifting focus.)

S: Maybe like… Medium deep? But not REALLY deep. (The subject at this point is recalling previous trance experiences.)

H: What does medium deep feel like? Not really submissive? (Continuing to guide the subject to thinking about what trance feels like, attempting to clarify the value of “submissiveness.”)

S: Um, no, I guess I sometimes feel sort of submissive… Like, kind of floating feelings…

H: What does it mean to feel floaty? (Clarifying linguistically ambiguous information / nominalization, attempting to understand the “map” and use it.)

S: My body feels heavy, but light at the same time? I don’t know if that makes any sense. (Beginning to show signs of trance.)

H: Sure. What parts of your body do you feel it in most? (Directing the experience to an even further internal level and creating anchor points -- see also submodalities.)

S: Maybe my legs? Sort of my eyes, too.

H: Yeah, I get that. Is that also where you feel submission?

S: Um… Maybe? Not really.

H: If I say the word, “Submit,” where do you notice it? (Creating a verbal anchor.)

S: …Between my legs…

H: How does that feeling compare to the floaty one?

S: Well… It feels really different. It feels kind of hot, and tingly…

H: And medium trance doesn’t feel hot and tingly in the same way it does when you submit? (Redirecting back to trance feelings and attempting to get the subject to examine their own complex equivalence.)

S: I mean, maybe it could? But not usually…

H: But you think submitting definitely feels hot and tingly.

S: Yeah…

H: And you feel kind of hot and tingly right now, right? (Moving into more direct language/suggestion.)

S: Yeah…

H: So you must be in deep trance then. Because you said you couldn’t really be in medium trance while feeling like this. (Attempting to clarify/change the map of the experience.)

This is by no means the end of this interaction -- the subject may agree, and the hypnotist could move into identifying what else “deep trance” (a nominalization) feels like, or perhaps the subject disagrees, and the hypnotist further digs into the equivalence and discovers other associations that they can use, or something entirely different could happen. Note that the tone of this is anything but therapeutic -- there is sort of an idea of “diagnosis” in this scenario, but that is simply a flavor and technique; the subject is likely experiencing some sort of trance shift early on.

Also, of course there is a lot more going on here than use of the Meta Model -- you can see things related to modality and submodality, utilization, reframing, mirroring, and much more. But hopefully it illustrates the perspective of the hypnotist who is considering the Meta Model as part of their toolbox. They are listening carefully and attempting to understand and challenge the subject’s statements and beliefs in a mutually beneficial direction. Keen readers (or those familiar with other parts of NLP) may notice interesting things about the hypnotist’s use of language relative to the subject’s -- which we will get to discussing in a further article of this series, on the Milton Model.

Chapter Summary

• NLP was originally just the Meta Model, which was borne from a group of enthusiasts meeting and studying the language of therapy
• “The map is not the territory” is an idea it adopted as foundational: everyone experiences the world differently through their own filters of perceptions
• We represent our worldview or “map” through language -- to ourselves, and to other people
• This representation is often incomplete because of the way that we necessarily generalize, delete, or distort information, and we don’t always see what’s under the “surface”
• The Meta Model aims to codify these through language patterns and offers methods to clarify information
• As hypnokinksters, we’re interested in how our partners represent their world and how we can dig into it so we can use it for hypnosis, or do it in a hypnotic way