Steve: "Quoting others is one thing, but what is your own experience of Emergence, Corrie?
'what is my experience of ... [emergent knowledge, emergence, clean language, symbolic modelling, clean space, ...]?'
'what kind of experience is that experience?' ...
'what emerges as I experience EK/E/CS/SyM/...?'"
Corrie: "What do you imply by asking me this?
I feel no need to report on my own experience in this thread, it is meant to explain.
Please start another thread or send me an e-mail if you have any further comments"
Steve: "I imply that your experience of emergence is at least as valuable as some scientists who explore natural phenomena but who do not know David's work, which you do.
for example, for me, emergence reveals the unconscious, the knowings outside of my momentary consciousness, and similarly for others, giving revelation insight and changed perspective."
My experience would be only one out of some seven billion. My knowledge of David's work is a bit more exclusive.
Jennifer did a workshop on our own 'Aha' Erlebnissen.
I wonder if the 'unconscious revealed' would be equivalent to an emergent phenomenom.
“The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.”
—motto used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (”Seabees”)
during World War II
George Dantzig describes an event when he was a graduate student in his first year of PhD study in mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley:
“I arrived late one day at one of Jerzy Neyman’s classes. On the blackboard there were two problems that I assumed had been assigned for homework. I copied them down. A few days later I apologized to Neyman for taking so long to do the homework; the problems seemed to be a little harder than usual. I asked him if he still wanted it. He told me to throw it on his desk. I did so reluctantly because his desk was covered with such a heap of papers that I feared my homework would be lost there forever.
“About six weeks later, one Sunday morning about eight o’clock, my wife Anne and I were awakened by someone banging on our front door. It was Neyman. He rushed in with papers in hand, all excited: ‘I’ve just written an introduction to one of your papers. Read it so I can send it out right away for publication.’ For a minute I had no idea what he was talking about.
To make a long story short, the problems on the blackboard that I had solved—thinking they were homework—were in fact two famous unsolved problems in statistics. That was the first inkling I had that there was anything special about them.”
College Mathematics Journal, 1986, recounted on Snopes.com
http://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp
When I work with a client who has a problem or a desired outcome, I assume that it has a structure, and that rapid change is possible for them if I can determine what that structure is—in contrast to working with the content of the structure, or the history of the structure. Some problems are much simpler than others, and have structures and solutions that have been described in sufficient detail by NLP that they can be resolved very quickly with “off the shelf” software. For instance, if someone has a phobia, it doesn’t matter what the content is—whether they are afraid of heights, dogs—or of not seeing their feet, or of stuffed olives (my all-time favorites!). What matters is that they are remembering a traumatic event in a particular way. When they learn how to recall it in a different way—something that everyone can easily do—they no longer feel afraid.
A bit over 25 years ago, I cured a woman’s intense phobia of bees on camera in less than 7 minutes—from “Lori, I haven’t spoken to you at all,” to “OK, that’s all there is to it.” A verbatim transcript of this session is available in chapter 7 of our book Heart of the Mind, and a video of the session itself is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtUatMghbHg
A 25-year follow-up interview with Lori can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjjCzhrYJDQ
Of course, sometimes a phobia has a different structure, requiring a different kind of intervention. Once it took me something like 3 hours to cure a man’s phobia, also of bees; the next day he reported comfortably dreaming that he was sleeping with bees in his bed, and that they were like warm fuzzy teddy bears—quite a different response from the somewhat paranoid fear that he had before; he had previously really thought that bees were “out to get him!”
Even when I can’t help a client quickly, I still assume that their problem has a structure, that it is possible to figure out what it is, and that once I know the structure, that knowledge will tell me what I need to do.
Sometimes I can determine the structure of a problem, and I know exactly what to do to resolve it, but the client won’t accept what needs to be done. Some years ago in my book, Transforming Your Self I modeled the structure of paranoia and narcissism, and described appropriate interventions. What I haven’t yet figured out is how to get permission from a paranoid or narcissist to do it. Their self-concept is much too fragile and fearful, and since they see their problems as being a result of others’ actions (not their own) of course they don’t seek help—or accept it when it is offered.
Last year I worked with a woman with “night terrors,” something I had never even heard of. When I searched online, I found that people with night terrors wake up screaming at the top of their lungs, (a real treat for a spouse sleeping with them!) may not awaken fully, and rarely recall what they are screaming about—very different from waking from a nightmare—and that while drugs can reduce their intensity, there is no known treatment or cure. The solution for this woman was actually fairly simple; but I had to dodge several red herrings to find it. One was that she thought she might have had some childhood sexual abuse that she couldn’t remember. One session ended her night terrors, replacing it with comfortable, restful sleep.
One result of working with the structure of a problem is that it doesn’t matter at all how long that structure has been in place. My night terrors client had been experiencing them for 24 years, since before she was 13. “Tons of conventional therapy” over the years, “enough for several trips to Hawaii” had made no change, yet a single session resolved it. (You can watch a sample from this session or purchase this video for immediate download here: http://www.realpeoplepress.com/client-session-resolving-night-terrors-p-70.html.)
Another woman “froze up” during sex because it reminded her of her paranoid schizophrenic father’s repeated sexual abuse from infancy up to the age of 9 years, when it was discovered. Most people would think that resolving this issue would take years of therapy; however a simple intervention in one session freed her to enjoy sex with her partner without freezing. (You can watch a sample clip or purchase this video here: http://www.realpeoplepress.com/client-session-resolving-sexual-inhibition-p-77.html.)
A professional pianist had intense performance anxiety both before and during her performances. After one session, at her next concert, she enjoyed each of the performances that came before hers, and then played comfortably when it was her turn. She only recalled her previous anxiety after someone commented on how calm she looked. She also taught the same process to one of her students to resolve her performance anxiety. (You can watch a sample clip or purchase this video here: http://www.realpeoplepress.com/client-session-resolving-music-performance-anxiety-p-71.html.)
This points out that what is often called “psychotherapy” really should be called psychoeducation—teaching people how to use their minds better. If this were more widely understood, it would remove the stigma that many people now associate with seeking help for personal problems. It is not that any of us are defective, damaged, or bad; it’s just that we have learned mental processes that don’t work well, and we need to learn something more effective. NLP still has a long way to go—and there are plenty of problems we can’t solve quickly—but artfully used, it can resolve many problems in one session.
“The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.”
