L'ESSERE UMANO E LA MAGIA

LE BASI
L'Essere Umano non è una costante!
Te lo scrivo perché così ci capiamo una volta per tutte.
Un Leader questo lo sa.
Cambia il Corpo, cambia la Mente, cambiano le Emozioni.
Poi cambiano i Contesti, cambiano i Tempi, cambiano gli Obiettivi, ecc...
Scrivevo l'altro ieri - qui trovi il post - del primo segreto della padronanza personale e oggi torno sull'argomento perché c'è l'o a quore (uno che scrive facendo questi errori non è più da leggere!) 
In più ci torno in quanto ho ricevuto molte richieste di spiegazione.

MAPPA/TERRITORIO
Esiste una bella differenza tra la Mappa e il Territorio.
La Mappa è la nostra rappresentazione interna, il Territorio quello che c'è là fuori. 
Esempio: il senso di insofferenza, di pregiudizio, di discriminazione verso qualcuno (Mappa) è rappresentato dal frutto della banana (Territorio). 
Ci relazioniamo al Mondo sempre e solo attraverso qualche Modello Cognitivo e l'esperienza di Vita che viviamo dipende dalla qualità delle nostre Mappe. 
Se il Modello è quello dell'esempio e mi vedi mangiare una banana, io sarò automaticamente una scimmia e quindi degno della tua discriminazione... 

CONFUSIONE
Korzybski notò che al centro del pensiero primitivo (tipico dei neonati, dei bambini piccoli, degli animali) vi era l'incapacità di operare distinzioni e quindi di Identificare; per tornare al nostro esempio: la banana è il simbolo della discriminazione.
Se dimentichiamo che il nostro simbolo non è il referente, ma solo un suo simbolo, confondiamo una cosa con l'altra e la trattiamo come se fosse la stessa cosa. Questa è una Magia! 
Ora la domanda diventa: "come vuoi usare la Tua Magia?"

IL RESPONSABILE DELL'EQUIVOCO è...
L'Identificazione risiede nella parola "è"!
Le Mappe linguistiche non sono il Territorio ma solo Mappe del Territorio.
Sono semplicemente rappresentazioni simboliche.
L'Identificazione non esiste nel mondo dei processi dinamici.
Il menù non è il pasto...
La campana (di Pavlov) non è il mangiare del cane...
Un insulto non è la persona a cui si rivolge...
Se identifichiamo cadiamo nell'inganno del non distinguere le differenze e il Mondo, così, ci sembrerà piatto!

Ognuno come può...
Abbi Gioia!
Giannicola

MODELING EXCELLENCE SERIES (by Michael Hall -- Neuro-Semantics)

The last 2 posts in one to let the dust settle... and to let them to take root.

The First one:

THE MODELING THAT DISCOVERED META-STATES

The enrichment of modeling with Meta-States began in 1994 during my very first modeling project— Resilience.  I started the project in 1991when I became really fascinated by the quality of staying with something when set-backs occur.  It did not begin with big set-backs, but actually with little ones.  And with the smallest of set-backs.  Until then I had not even really noticed the phenomenon.

Prior to that if someone quit or gave up on something, I dismissed it with a wave of the hand as, “Well they must not really be interested.”  Or, “It just must not be their thing.”  Or, “They’ve got something else that’s more interesting.”  Then one day during an NLP class I was interviewed someone about some very small thing that the person had started, then there was a set-back, and then the person gave up on.  Using the Meta-Model questions, I probed and probed to understand the mental map of the person.  When we had chased the person’s thinking-and-feeling about that one, he remembered another thing he had started, and a set-back, and a giving that up for something else.  That led to a third memory and, of course, “Do we have a pattern here?”

His pattern was to think of something that he wanted or wanted to achieve, make a visual image of it (V^construct), then amplify it so that it was really compelling (K⁺), and in amplifying it, he would compress the time frame for achieving it so the picture came closer and closer and then he would say things like, “It’s almost here; I’m going to have it” (A^language), and then if anything got in the way of it (a set-back) like a disappointing result from an action or the realization it would take longer, he would then create another picture of it but this one would either be far, far away or a degraded version of it (V^construct) and the more he thought of it, the more it would move over and replace the original picture.  At that point he would say, “Agghh.  I don’treally want it anyway; it’s not worth the effort.”  That would create a momentary sense of dislike and then he would be off to something else.

That got me hooked.  Suddenly, I realized that there could be, for some people, a pattern of non-resilience.  Set-backs of the smallest nature would put them off.  So I started doing the interviews with just about anyone who would let me.  As that continued, I discovered bigger and bigger set-backs— real knock-downs (divorces, bankruptcy, being fired, being mugged, rape, war, accidents, and all sorts of traumas).

Now what really amazed me in the interviews was that it was not the size, magnitude, power, number, or intensity of the set-back that determined the person’s response.  For some people, the smallest set-back would knock them off-course and for others, the largest, most devastating set-back would not.  They would get up, dust themselves off, and go for it again.  Even if multiple set-backs occur at the same time— they would do the same thing.  Get up, shake off the disorientation, examine what was left, figure out something to do, and bounce back!  I was impressed.  And, I wanted that!  I wanted it for myself and I wanted it for every client that I worked with and I wanted it for those who attended every NLP course that I conducted.

“Okay, so what is the strategy of resilience, of bouncing back after a set-back?  How do people think and map out the experience so that they take it as a matter of course, ‘I will be back.’?”  That was my question and it was 1991.  Many years prior to that I had read the book from Elizabeth Kobler-Ross on grief recovery and the stages that she proposed: shock, denial, bargaining, anger, and acceptance.  I had also already read Viktor Frank’s Logo-Therapy and is story of resilience in Man’s Search for Meaning.  So I began a search of the literature to see what else had been written.  In 1991 there was not the category of Resilience as there is today so there was not much.  But there was the study of the Children of Survival from the War in Lebanon.

While I was search out those things and now interview people who “had been to hell and back” I was reading through Korzbyski’s Science and Sanity and Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind.  I was writing and publishing about the language patterns in Korzybski that were not included in the Meta-Model and writing NLP articles about Bateson’s contributions to NLP.

Then in 1994 a call for papers for the NLP Conference in Denver came and I decided to propose a workshop on “Resilience: Going for it — Again!”  I worked out the stages: The set-back (or knock-down), the emotional roller-coaster stage of dealing with the emotional shock of a world falling apart, the accessing of stabilization states and skills to stop the fall, the coping stage of putting one’s world back together, and the mastering stage of recovering a new vision and intention so that one would finally “be back.”  The strategy was straight-forward and linear.  So I gathered my materials and headed to Denver with some friends.

Then it happened.  While interview a man at the training, I asked, “How did you know to go from stage 2 to stage 3?  And he said something like, “Well, I had this larger vision, this higher state about where I was and I knew that it was just a matter of time and that I would get through this.”  Then either I reflected back to him or he said, “It’s like being in a state about my state, in a meta-state ...”  Regardless of who actually said the words, the phrase “meta-state” was an Eureka moment for me as it brought together the meta-levels, logical levels, and levels of abstracting that I had been immersed in for three years.  “Of course, at the same time that you are coping on the primary level you are also accessing your higher level thoughts-and-feelings and it is those meta-states of vision, intention, and determination that you will get through that’s infusing you with this complex state of resilience!"

The fact that we do not just operate at one level, but multiple levels simultaneously brings into focus that we cannot model most subjective experiences without tracking our self-reflexive consciousness as it creates multiple meta-states.  We are multi-layered beings.  We do not just think or feel— we are always and inevitably thinking-and-feeling (a state) about our thoughts-and-feelings and we are also experiencing states about those states.  This comprises the matrix of frames that we have about things: our beliefs, values, identities, memories, imaginations, decisions, models, intentions, and dozens and dozens of other meta-level understandings.  So to model in a full and complete way requires using the Meta-States Model for modeling out the self-reflexivity of the mind-body system.

L.  Michael Hall, Ph. D.

Neuro-Semantics homepage

The Second one:

HOW TO MODEL WITH META-STATES

In the last article I described the modeling that discovered Meta-States, now for an overview of how to model using the Meta-States Model.  This was actually the surprise that I experienced after discovering Meta-States.  While I was absolutely delighted to identify the meta-level structures of resilience(#6), I really had no ideal how extensive the Meta-States Model would apply.  And how extensive does it apply?

In any and every experience where a person’s self-reflexive consciousness is operative.

Now if you are new to Neuro-Semantics and to Neurons, self-reflexive consciousness is the kind of consciousness, the kind of mind that you have, that we humans have.  What does it mean?  It means that you never just think.  You never just feel.  As soon as you think–and–feel (create an emotional state), you think–and–feel about that first state.  You do not just get angry, you get afraid–of–your–anger or you get angry–at–your–anger, or you feel ashamed–of–your anger.  And that’s just the first level.  Then you think–and–feel something else about that first meta-state.  And so it goes.

This explains the complexity of your states.  This explains why it is often very difficult to answer the question, “What do you feel about X?”  When you think about that X, there is your first level thinking–and–feeling, then your second level, third level, and so on.  Up the levels it goes.  Nor do these “levels” stay separate.  It is their nature to combine and integrate.  We call it coalescing in Neuro-Semantics.

So if you meta-state your learning state with joy, fun, or delight and you create the meta-state of joyful learning, if you do that repeatedly, then after awhile the joy and the learning so coalesce that they operate as if they were a single primary state— joyful learning.  Then try as you will to pull the joy out of the learning and you will find it next to impossible.  Why?  Because your mind-body neurology is designed to make–actual (actualize) your thinking–and–feeling and so when you keep meta-stating learning with joy, you generate a new gestalt state so that a new emergent property arises— joyful learning.

For modeling, this is crucial.  It lies at the heart of every complex and dynamic “state” that we humans are able to generate and this goes far beyond the linear modeling of basic NLP.  And if you want to model the rich, robust, powerful, and complex states that characterizes experts— resilience, self-efficacy, seeing and seizing opportunities, entrepreneurship, leadership, etc., then you have to model out the meta-levels within the meta-states of the expert.  Ignore that and you only get the surface first level and you will never tap into the rich layered qualities that lie behind it.

Now years ago I wrote a whole book on Modeling with Meta-States, I gave it the title of NLP: Going Meta (1997) and wrote it after the formatting that Robert Dilts used in Creating NLP: The Study of the Structure of Subjective Experience, Volume I.   So I also titled it, NLP: Going Meta — Advanced Modeling Using Meta-Levels, Volume II.   

So just how do you model using Meta-States?  The answer lies in detecting and identifying the meta-levels that a person has reflexively brought to him or herself that now qualifies the experience and operates as a frame to the experience.  What this means is that as you and I access another thought–and–feeling about our first state, that second state operates dynamically to do several things—

∙           It brings another mind-body state to it and so adds qualities or qualifies the first.

∙           It sets the cognitive ideas within that state as the frame for the first.

∙           It puts the first as a member of a class, the “class” being the classification that the second one creates.

The second bullet point means that all of the so-called logical levels (beliefs, values, identity, mission, spirit, intention, permission, memory, imagination, meaning, etc.) are dynamically inside of the second state (the meta-state) and set the frame of meaning for the first.  Back to the example of “joyful learning.”  Is that a belief?  Do you believe you can joyfully learn?  Is that a value?  Do you value learning for the joy it gives you?  Is that an identity?  Are you a joyful learner?  Do you have memories of joyfully learning?  Do you imagine it in your future?  Do you anticipate, expect, desire, give yourself permission, etc. to learn joyfully?

So what is it?  It is all of those things at the same time.  It is we with our linear thinking who want to separate these things and make them different phenomenon.  Yet are they really?  Could they all be aspects of the same thing?  That’s our position in Neuro-Semantics.  We look at all of these “meta-level phenomena” and view them as facets of the “diamond of consciousness.”

What does this mean for modeling?  It means that when you discover a meta-level that’s qualifying an experience— there are beliefs in it, values in it, identities within it, intentions, permissions, prohibitions, and all of the other 100 logical levels.  Oh yes, there are one hundred logical levels (actually more).  I made a list of 104 of them in the book, Neuro-Semantics (2011).

There’s more to describe about this — especially the third bullet point on classes and categories as well as how to detect and call forth the meta-levels.  I’ll write about that next time.  To your effective modeling!

L.  Michael Hall, Ph. D.

Neuro-Semantics homepage

Everyone as best as he can...

Have Joy!
Giannicola 

MODELING: THE MAGIC OF “HOW” (by Michael Hall -- Neuro-Semantics)

Stone the flamin' crows Dr. Hall!!!

Amazing post on Modeling...

In last week’s post, I highlighted the power of focusing on the how of detailing out what is happening in the now.  For me, this was the most exciting thing when I first discovered NLP Modeling.  By asking questions and by closely observing people, a person could identify how any given person is currently, at this moment, creating his or her sense of reality.  And if we can do that, then we can figure out how that reality came into existence, operates, and can be altered.  Incredible!

Now in NLP Modeling, Wyatt Woodsmall (1990) was the person who first differentiated two dimensions or levels of modeling.  He labeled them Modeling I and Modeling II.  I think that this distinction provides a valuable way to think about the range of the modeling that we can do.

Modeling I refers to pattern detection and transference.  This kind of modeling detects a pattern of behavior that shows up in certain skills, abilities, and expertise.  By explicating the patterns of behavior in the skill or skills—the what that an expert actually does to achieve a result, this modeling focuses on reproducing the products of the expert.  This kind of modeling focuses on learning the sets of distinctions, procedures, and processes which enable a person to reach a desired outcome.

Modeling II refers to modeling the first modeling (Modeling I).  As such, it focuses on the how of an expert—how does the expert actually create and perform the expertise.  It doesn’t focus on the what is produced (that’s the first modeling), it focuses on the background competencies.  Now we focus on the processes which are necessary to generate the patterns that form the content of Modeling I.  In this modeling, we especially pay attention to the beliefs and values that outframe the expert.  Here we attend to the meta-programs, the contexts and frames, the meta-states, etc., all of the higher frames.

I like this distinction because, as Woodsmall points out, the field of NLP itself resulted from Modeling I, but not Modeling II.  Let me explain.  NLP emerged from the joint venture of John Grinder and Richard Bandler as they studied the language patterns of Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir.  First Richard used his gift of mimicking Perls’ and Satir’s speech, tonal, and language patterns.  Though untrained in psychology and psychotherapy, by simply reproducing the “magical” effects of these communication experts, he found that he could get many of the same results as the experts.  Incredible!  How was this possible?

In searching for that answer, John used Transformational Grammar and his unique skills in that field to pull apart the “surface” structures for the purpose of identifying the “deep” structures.  Both of them wanted to discover how this worked.  Frank Pucelik also was a part of all of that, and he created the context and the original group in which all of the discoveries took place.

From the theory of Transformational Grammar, the assumptions of the Cognitive Psychology (Noam Chomsky, George Miller, George Kelly, Alfred Korzybski, Gregory Bateson), and the coping of Perls and Satir, they specified what “the therapeutic wizards” actually did which had the transformative effect upon clients.  That was the original NLP modeling.

This adventure in modeling then gave birth to The Structure of Magic (1975/ 1976) which gave us the first NLP Model.  This was originally called The Meta-Model of Language in Therapy.   Today we just call it, The Meta-Model.  This is a model about the language behavior of Perls and Satir, that is, how they used words in doing change work with clients.  And that then became the central technology of NLP for modeling.

The amazing thing is that with that first model, they were able to model a great deal of the governing structure of a person’s experience.  That enabled them to peek into a person’s model of the world just by listening to the features that linguistically mark out how the person has created his or her map.  While this is not all that’s needed for modeling, it certainly gives us a set of linguistic tools for figuring out how a piece of subjective experience works.  It answers the how questions:

            How does a person depress himself?

            How does a person take “criticism” effective and use it for learning?

            How does another person look out at an audience and freak out?

The Meta-Model gave the original co-developers of NLP numerous tools for both understanding and replicating the person’s original modeling.  Soon thereafter, as they modeled Milton Erickson, they began adding all kinds of non-verbal and non-linguistic distinctions to their model, enriching the modeling process even further.   As NLP started with Modeling I and not Modeling II, the early NLP thinkers and trainers did not have access to the higher level of modeling until some time later.  Nor did they seem aware of it for some time.  Eventually this realization arose as people began asking some basic modeling questions:

What strategy did Perls use in working with clients?

            What strategy enabled Satir to do her “magic” with families?

What strategy describes Erickson’s calibration skills and use of hypnotic language patterns?

How did any one of those wizards make decisions about what to use when?

Even to this day, we do not know.  We know what they produced, but not howthey produced such.  We have the results from their magic, but not the formula that identifies the states and meta-states, the beliefs and higher frames of mind that enabled them to operate as “wizards” in the first place.   Woodsmall (1990) writes:

“In short, if NLP is the by-product of modeling Erickson, Perls, and Satir, then why are we never taught how they did anything?   All we are taught is what they did.  This means that we can imitate the powerful patterns that they used, but we don’t know how they generated and performed them to start with.  From this it is evident that the part of NLP that is the by-product of modeling is a by-product of Modeling I, but not of Modeling II.” (p. 3)

As the product of Modeling I, all that we originally received in NLP was theresult of modeling.  We received the patterns and procedures which the modelers found in Perls, Satir, and Erickson, i.e., reframing, swishing, anchoring, collapsing anchors, etc.  We received the NLP patterns. Bandler and Grinder gave us a legacy of dramatic processes that enable people to change.

Only later was it that Bandler, Grinder, DeLozier, Bandler-Cameron, Dilts, and Gordon begin to wonder about the modeling itself that they started to explore the modeling processes, assumptions, patterns, etc. about modeling.  From that came the commission from Richard and John for Robert Dilts to write the second modeling book, NLP: Volume I.  That volume made Modeling II available.

They also left their theory about change, mind, neurology, language, etc.  Of course, they did not call it “a theory.”  In fact, they pulled off a big “Sleight of Mouth” pattern as they told us that they had no theory, just a description of what worked.  “It’s a model, not a theory.”  With that mind-line, they distracted our attention and offered “the NLP Presuppositions,” telling us that they were not true, could not be proven, but seemed like really nice “lies” that would take us to more resourceful places.  So we just memorized them, only half aware (if that), that within the NLP Presuppositions they had hidden away the theory of neuro-linguistic programming.

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Neuro-Semantics homepage

Everyone as best as he can...

Have Joy!
Giannicola 

"MISERIA" è NOBILTA'...?

Rileggevo questa frase di Michael Jordan: "Avrò segnato undici volte canestri vincenti sulla sirena, e altre diciassette volte a meno di dieci secondi alla fine, ma nella mia carriera ho sbagliato più di novemila tiri. Ho perso quasi trecento partite. Trentasei volte i miei compagni mi hanno affidato il tiro decisivo e l'ho sbagliato. Nella vita ho fallito molte volte. Ed è per questo che alla fine ho vinto tutto", e mi chiedevo: "sarà il caso di cambiare modello mentale nell'assumere nuovo personale (soprattutto quello che dovrà prendere decisioni strategiche) e chiedere quanti Errori (seri!) sono stati già commessi nella vita professionale e partire da lì...?"
Insomma, se il brutto anatroccolo si è trasformato in maestoso cigno, la "miseria-degli-errori" può trasformarsi in Gloriosa Nobiltà?

Da Wikipedia: La teoria degli errori viene applicata in tutti i campi in cui si ha la necessità di fare misure con abbastanza precisione, cercando di minimizzare gli errori. Una materia che fa un largo uso della teoria degli errori è la topografia, dove per scopi pratici (cartografia, rilievi di alta precisione, verifica di cedimenti strutturali in opere di ingegneria civile) si ha la necessità di raggiungere alte precisioni e quindi valutare in che modo le diverse variabili incidono sull'errore complessivo finale.

(La mappa è il territorio?)

Ognuno come può...
Abbi Gioia!
Giannicola

KORZYBSKI AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION (by Michael Hall - Neuro-Semantics)

Another neuro-semantics week-end by Michael "the meta-wizard" Hall.

Everyone as best as he can!

Have Joy

Giannicola

Alfred Korzybski Series #14

We could all be genius, says Korzybski, if only we clarify our symbolism and use it effectively.  Then we could actually use our nervous systems the way they are designed in creating maps that keep us sane and able to create a humane science.  To that end he worked to identify how to use “nervous system abstracting.”  Do that and you can step up to a new level of creativity and actualize your potentials.  And while Korzybski only used the term “genius” a few times, he did hold (as did Maslow) that the average person has much more potential of intelligence, creativity, joy, focus, etc. than he tapped into.  And that’s what we mean by self-actualization.

Korzybski’s work was focused on both the neural processes of the nervous systems and the role that our semantics play in it.  Here’s a bit of what Korzybski (1933/1994) wrote

“One can learn to play with symbols according to rules, but such play has little creative value. If the translation is made into the language of the lower centres— namely into ‘intuitions’, ‘feelings’,’visualizations’ etc.— the higher abstractions gain the character of experience, and so creative activity begins.  Individuals with thoroughly efficient nervous systems become what we call ‘geniuses.’” (p. 307)

Maslow and Rogers would later call that a “fully functioning human being” —a self-actualizing person.

“As a descriptive fact, the present stage of human development is such that with a very few exceptions our nervous systems do not work properly in accordance with their survival structure.  In other words, although we have potentialities for correct functioning in our nervous system, because of the neglect of the physiological control-mechanism of our semantic reactions, we have semantic blockages in our reactions ...” (p. 28)

What stops you and me in accessing our personal genius states are our semantic reactions and semantic blocks (which is the reason for several of the previous articles).  Now in his day, Korzybski did not use the term self-actualization; I’m not even sure if the term existed during his time.  It was Maslow’s studies of self-actualizing people in the 1940s that popularized the term and gave it the meanings that we use today in Neuro-Semantics.  What Korzybski did talk about was creativity, sanity, and proper human adjustment.

“We should avoid the mistake of assuming that the average man, or a moron, does not ‘think’.  His nervous system works continually, as does that of a genius. The difference consist in its working is not productive or efficient. Proper training and understanding of the semantic mechanism must add to efficiency and productiveness.  By the elimination of semantic blockings, as in identification, we release the creative capacities of any individual.” (p. 485)

Long before the Human Potential Movement that grew out of Maslow’s work, Korzybski identified the eliminating of semantic blockings as a key process for the unleashing of a person’s potentials.  So while he did not use the language that Maslow and I have about leashing and unleashing, he certainly knew and described these processes.

For Korzybski, it is the realization that we abstract in different levels that we slowly acquire the most creative structural feeling that human knowledge is inexhaustible.  Then we become increasingly interested in more knowledge, we become more curious and more creative— this is actually the very spirit of NLP (something that I discovered decades later, see The Spirit of NLP, 1997).

Korzybski also did not speak about “peak experiences.”  Yet he did speak about the joy of life—  “the joy of living is considerably increased” with the consciousness of abstracting.  “We grow up to full adulthood” and we become mature “for the taking up of life and its responsibilities.”  “Life becomes fuller,” and semantically balanced (pp. 526-527)

In terms of leashing, he noted that ...

“Semantic ‘emotional pains’ absorb nervous energy and prevent a full development of our capacities.” (p. 528)

And about unleashing, it is when you release the semantic reactions and blocks that you stop fighting “semantic phantoms,” and as you do, then stores of energy is released within you which becomes useful for creative purposes.  How you use your neurology in “abstracting” (map making, meaning-making, semanticizing) determines whether you leash or unleash your highest and best potentials.  And that’s why General Semantics and NLP after it has focused on the mapping or modeling processes.  We do not deal directly with the territory (“reality”), but indirectly through our maps.  So the better and more accurate your mapping, including your framing of the mapping as a tentative and fallible process (so you don’t fall into the trap of believing in your maps), the more likely you will be unleashing more of your potentials.

Alfred Korzybski Series #1
Alfred Korzybski Series #2
Alfred Korzybski Series #3 

Alfred Korzybski Series #4 

Alfred Korzybski Series #5

Alfred Korzybski Series #6

Alfred Korzybski Series #7

Alfred Korzybski Series #8

Alfred Korzybski Series #9

Alfred Korzybski Series #10 

Alfred Korzybski Series #11

Alfred Korzybski Series #12

Alfred Korzybski Series #13

Less than 7 weeks to the First International Neuro-Semantic Conference!

          See details of all of the speakers and workshops at 

      www.neurosemantics.com

          And the Registration form

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS AND THE ART OF MAPPING (by Michael Hall - Neuro-Semantics)

Alfred Korzybski Series #13

When you make a linguistic map, there are numerous cognitive distortions to be aware of and to take into consideration. When Bandler and Grinder launched the field of NLP, they mentioned three mapping or modeling distortions that came with the territory of map-making: deletion, generalization, and distortion. To see these, take any map. Pick up a map of your city or your state or country. Any atlas will do. There are lots and lots and lots of things left out— items deleted from the map. It’s inevitable. To put everything on the map you would have to have a piece of paper almost the size of the territory. So we delete the actual size and offer one “to scale.”

There’s also lots and lots and lots of generalizations. Buildings are marked with a mere dot. That generalizes the building. Rivers are just lines, so are freeways, and boundaries are straight lines on the map. Then there are the things distorted— which is everything. Nothing on the map is exactly like the reality. An old story goes that someone criticized Pablo Picasso for his abstract art. He changed the subject and asked about the person’s wife and children. He pulled out a picture from his wallet. “My she is very tiny” he said, “and flat, 2-dimensional!”

The value and usefulness of a map is not that it has to be exactly the same as the territory it seeks to represent, only that there is a similarity of structure. What does this have to do with cognitive distortions? Namely that the thinking patterns that we use to create our maps shows up in our maps. So the more we recognize the cognitive distortions and catch them, the cleaner we can make our mapping and maps.

In Cognitive Psychology, Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck identified a list of a dozen or more cognitive distortions and used them as a checklist as they worked with people. The point was that above and beyond what a person said (the content) was how they were thinking and their thinking patterns. So when you clean up your cognitive distortions, your thinking content gets cleared as well. In Neuro-Semantics, Meta-Coaches especially use the Ellis–Beck list of cognitive distortions for this very purpose.

Then as they listen to a client present a goal or a challenge, they also listen for the cognitive distortions in the person’s linguistics. This helps them to know where the client may have a frame that creates limitations, even misery. When you improve your mapping clarity, you clear up lots of things.

What does all of this have to do with Korzybski?  Well, believe it or not Science and Sanity begins with two pages of cognitive distortions! Okay, they are not called that. They are called, Corpus Errorum Biologicorum. That certainly sounds a whole lot more important, and serious! Quoting from the writings of H.S. Jennings in a book on heredity and environment, Korzybski quoted a list of fallacies that undermine clear thinking and sound linguistics.

1) The fallacy of Non-Experimental Judgments.

2) The fallacy of One Cause Attribution: Attributing to one cause what’s due to many causes.  The fallacy that’s the greatest affliction of politicians and a common plague of humanity.

3) The fallacy of Exclusion: concluding that because one factor plays a role, another does not.

4) The fallacy of Dichotomy: characteristics are divisible into two distinct classes.

5) The fallacy of Assumptions:  implied / ghostly premises.

6) The fallacy of Either-Or: If by hereditary than not alterable by the environment.

Actually, the rest of Science and Sanity continues this identifying of cognitive distortions especially in language as I mentioned about the additional Meta-Model distinctions which Korzybski identified. 

“Let me again repeat, that the mixing of different languages of different structures is fatal for clear ‘thinking’.” (p. 147)

“In well-balanced persons, all psycho-logical aspects should be represented and should work harmoniously. In a theory of sanity, this semantic balance and co-ordination should be our first aim...” (p. 149)

It is then not only the content of thinking that can be wrong and can misdirect a person, it is how we think. And that’s where these cognitive distortions do their damage. Much of that occurs because in the process of thinking (the way we humans reason, draw conclusions, make meaning, explain things, etc.) we are not even aware of the kind or quality of our thinking. All of that lies outside-of-our-awareness. Yet that is where the leverage for sanity and transformation lies. And that also is why we focus on the semantic meaning-making process more than the content of the stories told.

The bottle line is that to map the territory, to create a plan for what and where and how to get to your desired outcome, it is not just a matter of the content of your map, but the thinking that goes into how you do your mapping.  If the kind of thinking actually creates the problem, the solution will not be at the level of content. It will be in correcting the cognitive distortions.

To ever-higher quality thinking as you map your world!

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L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

FREEDOM FROM SEMANTIC BLOCKAGES (by Michael Hall - Neuro-Semantics)

Alfred Korzybski Series #12

There’s a reason that I’ve been writing about semantic reactions. Namely, if you don’t learn how to transcend your own semantic reactions, then you will end up with a semantic block. And you don’t have to read far in Science and Sanity to know that Korzybski devoted his genius to working against and overcoming semantic disturbances, semantic reactions, and semantic pathologies. So what is a semantic disturbance?

A semantic disturbance is a disturbance in one’s nervous system, emotions, and in thinking that causes a person to be delusional about something, over-emotional about something, reactive or inappropriate in our response to something.

And just as “identifying” creates semantic reactions, so identification also leads to various delusional evaluations and “phantasies of human infancy” (p. 228). Korzybski:

“For thousands of years... humans have used a great deal of their nervous energy in worrying upon delusional questions, forced upon them by the pernicious ‘is’ of identify, such as, “What  is an object?’ What is life? What is hell? What is heaven? What is space? What is time?, and an endless array of such irritants. ... The ‘is’ of identity forces us into semantic disturbances of wrong evaluation.” (Science and Sanity, p. 409)

When you identify, you “ascribe to words an entirely false value and certitude which they cannot have.” You don’t realize that your words will have different meanings to different people. When you ascribe your meanings to the words that others use, your words have become “emotionally over-loaded semantic fetishes” even as it is for the primitive person who believes in the magic of words (Ibid., p. 418).

When you “identity” one thing with another and become confused in your thinking, thinking that X is Y ... you are do not differentiating. And that is the key to sanity and mastery. The key is to differentiate. It is to abstract (classify) and thereby eliminate “allness,” and to learn to be “silent” on the un-speakable objective levels. This introduces a most beneficial neurological “delay” so that the cortex can then perform its natural function. 

“Once we discriminate between the objective and the verbal levels, structure becomes the only link between the two worlds. This results in search for similarity of structure and relations...” (p. 404)

“If we identify, we do not differentiate. If we differentiate, we cannot identify.” (p. 404)

Any and every object that we refer to with our words is not words, but an un-speakable reality outside of our skin.  Words are words—symbols that stand for something else. Terms are linguistic tools. But certain words and phrases are based on the identification of words with something. About these Korzybski noted this—

“[They are]... neither true nor false, but non-sense. We can make noises, but say nothing about the external world. It is easy to see that ‘absolute nothingness’ is a label for a semantic disturbance, for a verbal objectification, for a pathological state inside our skin, for a fancy, but not a symbol...” (p. 228)

Semantic disturbances, for Korzybski, show up in such states and behaviors as the following: confusion, bitterness, hopelessness, depression, infantilism, craziness, dogmatism, finalism, absolutism, hallucinations, fanaticism, regression and any other form of arrested development. Indeed, a semantic disturbance is a semantic maladjustment. It is a misusing of your neuro-semantics: it is orienting yourself by intensional definition rather than extensional. The disturbance could be a semantic havoc that simply arises when you leave out or delete characteristics.

To free yourself from such semantic blocks, here’s what to do. First, distinguish between your words about the world from the external events. This will enable you to stay conscious and mindful that you are using a symbolic tool (language) and that what you say is not the thing itself. As you do this, if a strong emotion arises within you, take a moment to stop. Then be semantically silent. Just observe the trigger and just witness your emotional response. As you allow the emotional reaction, you create a neurological delay inside yourself so that you can process that information at the next highest level in your brain’s functioning. Give yourself time for that processing and reflection. And with this, you can now consciously stop copying animals in how you use your nervous system.

This is how to correct your semantic reactions that create semantic blocks that are animalistic, unconditional responses and which limit your choices. Now you are allowing the information to be processed by the higher cortical levels of your brain.

“We see that by a simple structural re-education of the semantic reactions, which in the great mass of people are still on the level of copying animals in their nervous reactions, we powerfully affect the semantic reactions...” (Ibid., p. 29)

“The most important form of copying of animals was, and is, the copying of the comparative unconditionality of their conditional reflexes, or lower order conditionality; the animalistic identification or confusion of orders of abstractions, and the lack of consciousness of abstracting, which, while natural, normal, and necessary with animals, becomes a source of endless semantic disturbances for humans.” (Ibid., p. 36)

“Only an analysis of structure and semantic reactions, resulting in consciousness of abstracting, can free us from this unconscious copying of animals, which must factor in human nervous and semantic reactions and so vitiates the whole process.”  (Ibid., p. 37)

Here’s to your full semantic awareness, your meta-state mindfulness that puts you are that choice point place where you are able to fully manage the meta-levels of your mind-body system!

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L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

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