The larger context of NLP - article by Lee Eyre

What Box Are We In Anyway?

The Larger Context of NLP

By Lee Eyre, NLP Coach and Trainer

The first in a new series of articles aiming to establish the field of NLP within a wider context of related disciplines.

‘Thinking outside of the box’ is a phrase often bandied around in various circles, yet there often seems to be little or no real understanding of how to actually accomplish it. However, it seems that now Charles Faulkner has begun to elucidate some of the structures and patterns involved in some of his recent work on ‘levels’ of meaning. In his latest article in ReSource magazine - ‘Outcomes, Decisions and ‘levels’ of Meaning’ - Charles points out that radically new understandings are made possible when people are able to see their current knowledge and understanding as just one example in a larger, more inclusive category.

To illustrate this, consider these examples of the leaps of thinking made by particularly effective Business CEO’s:- “We’re not in the pharmaceutical business, we’re in the cost-effective healthcare business” or “We’re not in the pharmacy business, we’re in the convenience store business”  - and now take a moment to imagine how such re-definition of category and meaning might reshape the perceptions, priorities and activities of executives working for them.

Its easy to see how jumping to larger categories in this way can open up whole new areas of thinking and possibilities about a variey of issues, such as  who your customers might be, what kinds of products and services you might offer, and a host of other entailments that would never have arisen from the original understanding (categorisation) of the business.

(For a slighty more tongue in cheek example, Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, once wryly noted that “Television broadcasting companies are not in the business of delivering programming to audiences, they are in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers“– noticing that can certainly shift your perceptions)

In the same spirit, we could get curious about what happens if we apply the same kind of thinking to the field of NLP. What new perspectives and understandings might emerge when we begin to wonder what larger categories NLP itself could be a part of? A question that orientates your attention and thinking in this direction is: ‘What is NLP an example of?’

 There are, of course, many different answers to this  depending on whatever sorting principle you use to come up with your answer. None of these will necessarily be more correct than any other, but as with any categorisation they will all have their own set of implications and entailments.

It’s an interesting exercise to try this and notice what effects re-categorisations have on how you think about NLP. Here’s an example from my own initial experience playing around with this. My first answer to the question ‘What is NLP an example of?’ was that it is an example of ‘human attempts to better understand themselves’.

This was shortly followed by the response - ‘Well, so what?’

Soon though, as the implications started to emerge into awareness, I was quite startled at the rapid shift in my perceptions. In the light of this new categorisation, I began to see how many areas of human endeavour that I had previously thought only loosely related to the field of NLP and to each other were actually examples of this basic human motivation. Art, Religion, Science, Philosophy, Psychology, to name but a few, are all subsumed in this larger category. For me, this gave rise to a new  and tangible felt sense of the field of NLP being part of a much larger, older tradition than I had ever previously thought, and a feeling of connection to a great current of human concern flowing through time. Quite an impact for a simple question.

(If you wish try this out for yourself, you can use the question: ‘What is X an example of?’ to jump to a larger category, where X is the original. If this yields ‘Y’ as the new category, then in order to populate ‘Y’ with other examples use the question: ‘What else is an example of Y?’)

It’s important to emphasise that in the previous example I am not in any way implying that this is a better or more correct way of defining the field of NLP, simply that jumping to a larger category definition will lead to new understandings of the original category. In fact, the only way to evaluate such re-categorisations is with regard to the degree of efficacy and/or relevance they have in relation to an outcome.

With this in mind, it’s time to turn to my particular concern in this series of articles: that is - finding useful ways to distinguish what defines NLP so that we can discover what our closest community of related fields might be. According to Charles Faulkner, in order to do this  we need to be able to see the field of NLP in the context of fields both like and unlike it. Obviously, my previous definition of NLP as an example of human attempts at self-understanding is far too broad a brush for this particular task. Following John Grinders definition of NLP as a higher level operational epistemology, I want to further refine this (if I may be so bold!) and propose that it is an example of an epistemology and a methodology applied to understanding mind and behaviour.

Here we include the original criterion for set membership of ‘understanding’ and further specify the intended subject of understanding, and now additionally introduce further criterion of ‘methodology’ and ‘epistemology’ which I consider vital elements of any description of NLP. If this is a  fairly robust description of a possible larger category into which NLP fits, then I would argue, using the category membership criterion established, that examples of other disciplines and fields that also belong here are modern psychology and cognitive psychology, neuroscience and neuro-psychology, phenomenology, various psychotherapies and Buddhism.

To be sure, the respective methodologies and epistemologies of these disciplines often differ profoundly from each other, and this in itself can make cross disciplinary understanding and dialogue difficult to engage in. However, I am proprosing that they all share the common aim of furthering understanding of mind and behaviour, even if they don’t neccesarily agree what constitutes ‘understanding’. I believe there is much to learn from looking across these different fields, with all of them having something enormously valuable to contribute to an emerging science of mind, brain and behaviour. I further believe that a better understanding of  similarities and differences in each fields respective approaches can and will facilitate cross disciplinary dialogue. With this in mind, in the next article I’ll begin to look into the differing methodologies and epistemologies of NLP and these related areas in more detail.

More NLP articles here