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Clean Language: does it count as 'hypnosis'?
Hi, A friend has directed me here as a great place to find some hypnotists! We'd been discussing whether Clean Language counted as 'hypnosis' or not, and I'm curious to hear your views.
Clean Language is a questioning and listening technique that works with the metaphors a person uses in their own language (and non-verbals), often leading to profound transformation.
The chap who invented it, the late David Grove, was an expert in Ericksonian approaches before he came up with it, and as he travelled round the world presenting it to therapists, it was often grouped with hypnotic techniques. And I understand that it's taught as a module on a couple of hypnosis courses in the UK.
Clients are 'in trance' to the extent that they are usually very much 'inside', paying attention to their own inner worlds. But they are not 'asleep' in any way, and the session remains 'theirs' - Clean Language is 'clean' to the extent it minimises suggestions, presuppositions and metaphors from the facilitator.
So, what do you reckon? What factors qualify a specific technique to be described as 'hypnosis' for you.
Judy
PS. For people wanting more info, I'm not sure how many links I can give without falling foul of the 'no adverts' rule. www.cleanlanguage.co.uk and www.cleanchange.co.uk (my site) have articles and details of various applications. There's a piece on Wikipedia, and Amazon has a book or two.
Clean Language is a questioning and listening technique that works with the metaphors a person uses in their own language (and non-verbals), often leading to profound transformation.
The chap who invented it, the late David Grove, was an expert in Ericksonian approaches before he came up with it, and as he travelled round the world presenting it to therapists, it was often grouped with hypnotic techniques. And I understand that it's taught as a module on a couple of hypnosis courses in the UK.
Clients are 'in trance' to the extent that they are usually very much 'inside', paying attention to their own inner worlds. But they are not 'asleep' in any way, and the session remains 'theirs' - Clean Language is 'clean' to the extent it minimises suggestions, presuppositions and metaphors from the facilitator.
So, what do you reckon? What factors qualify a specific technique to be described as 'hypnosis' for you.
Judy
PS. For people wanting more info, I'm not sure how many links I can give without falling foul of the 'no adverts' rule. www.cleanlanguage.co.uk and www.cleanchange.co.uk (my site) have articles and details of various applications. There's a piece on Wikipedia, and Amazon has a book or two.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Judy Rees on
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Hi Paul, you're the second person this week that's said that. Which is strange, because the two of you are the first in the four years I've been involved! Clean Language is wildly, wildy different to the meta model: chalk and cheese. The only similarity I can think of is that they both involve asking questions.
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Permalink Reply by Jaime Nichols on -
I'm a fan of David Grove's work, and I would say that Clean Language is about as close as any to a content-free intervention. The clean questions typically require a trans-derivational search on behalf of the subject, and as such I'd say they induce trance.
The problem with labeling this sort of work as hypnosis is that it opens up the usual "all communication is hypnosis" can of worms. While I'm happy wriggling and wallowing with this particular bunch of nightcrawlers, there is the usual client-based objection of evidence of hypnosis to deal with. Perhaps a more marketable way of addressing a clean session with a client would be to get them excited about trying a new communication method to help them work through their issue.
As for what factors qualify a specific technique to be described as 'hypnosis' for me, I'd have to say that if it works and my client demonstrated any evidence of trance, the intervention was hypnotic. Because I believe that all hypnosis is ultimately self-hypnosis, I'd say that any jump into these trance phenomena without explicit guidance represents the regular reconnection with the unconscious rather than explicit trancework. Of course, those of us that have been doing this for a while may lapse into our "trance voice" automatically. At which point, who is hypnotizing who?
--Jaime
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Permalink Reply by Gary Lintern on -
And when 'hypnosis', what kind of 'hypnosis' is that?
Got some good footage of Caitlin Walker in December, demonstrating various clean techniques:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GNr1Mgjs6TU
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc5wcVSfefw
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VWc53-NdLBA
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=de3966BJfOo
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xwBgkqKn3dM
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9SpT1LcQbF8
Hope they're of interest,
Gary
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Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on -
Hi Judy,
I believe that Clean Language is an advanced form of hypnotic practice-- in the sense that CL is a persuasive art. I believe that communication/suggestion based approaches are future of hypnotic practice -
When a client improves his or her language, they are automatically changing the way they think which automatically changes their brains and physiology, opening the door to new and hopefully healthier behaviors ...
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Permalink Reply by John Kelly on -
You already know a great deal about hypnosis under other names, or under no name at all. (Grinder & Bandler, (1981)Trance-formations. Moab, Utah: Real People Press.
Secondly, I would like allude to the NLP presupposition that states?" The communication is the response you get and not the meaning you intend." and the other one is "You cannot not coomunicate". Does it matter if the person goes in trance as a result of what we do? or is it more important for us to notice the trances the person is naturally experiencing, in other words if you are are in your own trance you won't see the others unless your trance it to detect theirs trance. Understanding words demands that the listener/reader interpret them in some way in their minds. Thus, it seems comprehended language suggests certain internal structural couplings in the minds of those present. The principal idea behind educational hypnosis is the desire to consistently suggest internal state or representations that lead someone to facilitative states and/or beliefs. value, or capacities. From constructivism perspective, all are social interactions are due to creative interpretation of the individuals in mutually coordinated sense of approximated meanings. What are we creating together? http://www.rdillman.com/HFCL/TUTOR/Relation/relate5.html
Pinker, in his l994 best seller The Language of Instinct, summarizes this power inherent in language use, which we are calling hypnosis: As you are reading these words, you are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world. For you and I belong to a species with a remarkable ability: we can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision. . . . Simply by making noises with our mouths, we can reliably cause precise new combinations of ideas to arise in each other's minds. The ability comes so naturally that we are apt to forget what a miracle it is. (p. 15) Let's not forget the a larger aspect of our communicating is NVB (non verbal) depending on the context... does that constitute clean languaging if the nvb are not aligned?
However. in Clean Languaging, Symbolic Modelling accepts that each of us creates our own experience of reality, which may have little relation to any external world "out there" in space-time. "You can never know another person's experience ... what you can do is build a model which has a corresponding organization (is isomorphic) with their Metaphor Landscape... Symbolic Modelling is a dynamic process and your model of the client's model will require continual revision as each new piece of information emerges..." (p. 46) Lawley, James; Tompkins, Penny. (2000). Metaphors in Mind: Transformation through Symbolic Modelling. Each of us, most of the time, are “making it up as we go along”! We are constrained by our biological and psychological experiences. Mark Johnson says in The Body in the Mind: “Our reality is shaped by the patterns of our bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and the forms of our interations with objects." (p. xix) and Fritjof Capra, in his book "The Web of Life", (p.260),as also quoted in Metaphors in Mind, looks at things slightly differently: “Cognition is not a representation of an independently existing world, but rather a continual bringing forth a world through the process of living.” As suggested by Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana cognition is a requirement for living systems and are structurally coupled with their environments in a unique pattern. Here is THE META-STATES IN SYMBOLIC MODELING by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/meta-states.html in this article he states: "As a tool for achieving this, they recommend "clean language." This is where I find the work weak. They speak of "clean" language as if we can speak and inquire of anyone without influencing the system. Quoting David Grove, they write "... In asking a question we do not impose upon the client any value, construct, or presupposition about what he should answer..." (p. 52). (Metaphors in Mind) Yeah, really. Yet all of the questions do precisely that. In spite of using "the client's words" (thing)-- the rest of the question sets frames for how the person is going to respond. In fact, David Grove, in the same paragraph admits as much: "By asking clean questions we shape the location and direction of the client's search for the answer." That's why the questions are not "clean." They impose." As much as Grove and these authors may want to believe that such questions keep the results "clean," they do not. They cannot. These are the words that invite people to invent all kinds of things that was not there before. Yes, focusing on the person's words and symbols does create a focus on a single event, and to some extent explores the person's mental world, but it also invites creating things by that very focus. The symbolic domain, like all facets of consciousness, changes and transforms by the very accessing of it. All memories are like that. With every re-accessing of a memory, the memory will change." As Ernest Rossi would say: "Every access of a memory seems to be a reframe"
Winston Churchill said we construct our houses and we are shaped by the house we live in!
In this regard then I would like to mentions; Dr. Stephen Wolinsky describes hypnosis trance states in his book "Trances People Live" and "Quantum Consciousness" The guide to experiencing Quantum Psychology. His concept is saying that within the bounds of our everyday experiences we are creating a self induced trance: such as thinking about the future or remembering about the past, waking trances etc...We might say, we are actually all hypnotized (through perception rhythm, intonation, movement and language use and other means) most the time, in our learning states, working states, playful states, and/or mixed up states. Dr. Wolinsky would call these states "trances we live by." Hypnosis as a process can take us from state to state as we change our state of mind. The deep trance normally associated with medical hypnosis, freeze response, or yogic meditation, are but some of these states, which we nevertheless recognize as similar to day-dreaming, driving to work on automatic pilot, and other such states. These self-created realities are what can often result in symptoms or problems and/or solutions to our natural states of states of being. Another person whose work I have not seen much over here is the work of Micheal Halls PH.D on Meta States and Neurosemantics, which talk about not only how a person create their states upon state, and why they work and how to organize them, from Abstract to Concretely in the muscle for Act/I/On..... www.neurosemantics.com
When Milton Erickson was asked by his peers to stop doing hypnosis, he knew by then that his creative trancing was already more competent then theirs and he had plenty of personal proof for himself to make a decision that would go against the consensus of his Medical peers to service others in their trances! Was he cleanly languaging or was he creative or was he both ?
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Permalink Reply by Gary Lintern on
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My understanding of Clean Language is that it shouldn't be persuasive, which would suggest it's operating from the model of the world of the person asking the questions. Hard to be 100% clean, but it's supposed to work within the model of the other person as much as possible.
Thinking about it through the filters of hypnosis isn't particularly Clean, as it's already suggesting the metaphor to work within.
Clean Language elicits all kinds of states in people, some of which may be akin to what one understands as 'hypnosis' or 'trance', but any such interpretation would be projection.
Or at least, that's my interpretation :-)
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Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on
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Hi Gary-
Understanding that Clean Languaging is client centered in theory and practice - I still believe that CL is an unacknowledged persuasive healing art -
I fully understand and agree that in theory "Clean Language" shouldn't be persuasive-- But, in practice CL is very persuasive - at least, in my opinion-
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Permalink Reply by Donna Carter on -
I love this.
What a great..."putting together' of information.
This entire topic has me thinking....
and thinking,
~D.
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Permalink Reply by Gary Lintern on
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Hi Michael,
Nice to hear from you - I may be about to learn something new here!
In what ways have you found Clean Language persuasive? I've only learned it as a method of having someone access, and utilise their metaphors.
Is there a way of Cleanly using it with suggestions, or was that something else you were referring to?
Thanks,
Gary
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Many thanks indeed for all of this.
I certainly don't claim that the Clean Langauge questions don't influence the system - they do. If we're asking questions, at the very least we are influencing, even directing, a person's attention. Phil Swallow, often quoted by Penny and James, says: "The only way two people together can avoid influencing each other is if both of them are dead."
What the questions do attempt to do is minimise the amount of content introduced by the questioner. That makes them particularly effective for keeping the person 'in their stuff', doing the trancey thing and exploring their own thoughts, ideas, metaphors etc.
I think there is a distinction to be drawn between 'clean language' as an NLP term used by Michael Hall etc, and 'Clean Language' as the name of the system devised by David Grove. The NLP 'clean language' means something like 'use the client's words as far as possible'. I'm sure Michael would not claim, nor want to claim, to be doing anything Grovian.
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Hi Paul, this is an interesting question and it has really set me thinking.
Where I am so far is that:
Clean Language is like the Milton Model in that the absence of rich content in the questions allows the client maximum freedom to create their own meaning.
Clean Langauge can be like the Meta Model in that it can be used to help the client get very clear and specific about things. This is the way it is often used in business, but is not usually the way it's used in therapy.
Clean Langauge is unlike the Milton Model (as it is often taught and used) in that its primary purpose is not to persuade the client of anything in particular, such as the suggestions of the therapist
Clean Language is unlike the Meta Model in that it rarely feels harsh, challenging etc.
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