Ideomotor signals - valid communication?

Hi,

I have treated over 5000 clients. The hub of my system is hypnotise, establish ideomotor communication and hook this into parts work. I do other stuff too but this is the hub. The parts work is more akin to six step with a single part than integration with two parts. In pretty much every session I elicit the strongest ideomotor signals I can and hook this into the parts negotiation. This of course helps to verify the hypnosis, acts as a springboard to other phenomena and gives the client a novel experience they can talk about.

I have always behaved like the signal is a valid form of communication.

More recently I have questioned that assumption. Note I am not questioning its effectiveness as a physical metaphor or convincer - it sure looks like a yes signal. But is it? I appreciate the movements feel involuntary. But are we really tapping into some unconscious, all knowing part of the mind which all of a sudden can communicate by muscle twitches?

Is there any evidence for that? Or is it just as daft as dowsing. The signals are suggested are they not?

What are your thoughts on the valiidity of the communication rather than the usefulness of the technique?

Anthony Jacquin

www.headhacking.com

Tags: anthony, communication, erickson, ernest, hacking, head, hypnosis, ideodynamic, ideomotor, jacquin, More…rossi, unconscious

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Permalink Reply by JImmy Hynes on October 2, 2011 at 11:30am

Think about what things would have to be like for it to be 'valid'. there would have to be an answer, for one, and this 'part' would have to somehow have access to it.

"Whats the purpose of this phobia?" can be a wrong question if it is simply a single association - there doesn't have to be some sensible metacognitive structure surrounding it, and no obvious reason for it to be dissociated from awareness.

It's also worth noting that we don't have direct access to how our minds work, and we just try to reverse engineer our own minds based on observed outputs to inputs in the same way we model other people. This is to be expected from the known structure and process that designed our minds, as well as experimentally tested and confirmed. Given this, it takes more evidence to show that any 'part' has any idea of why it does what it does.

It's possible that in some cases of self deception there really is a part that has better introspection that hides its answers from awareness. I'd look to places where the truth is particularly painful to think/express if you want to find genuine 'parts' to talk to - places where the person is clearly motivated by other than what they think they're motivated by and where it would be socially unacceptable to admit their driving motivation.

Just like repressed memories and 'hidden observers', we know that we can create these things by suggestion. Since we know we can suggest them, seeing them is no longer any evidence for them being preexisting. Suggest it in a way to change the kinds of answers the 'part' gives and see if it looks like it was influenced. See if it still works. So far, it looks to me like as long as 'the part is happy', it works, no matter how silly of a cure it really was on other terms. Joe Fobes mentioned humming a song was enough once :P. If it's all invented, you might as well invent a part that makes your job easy :)

Another way to test this would be to put through the kind of heuristic and biases test where they always say "yeah, that probably affects other people, but not me" and seeing if ideomotor can identify the bias before you tell them - I bet they won't.

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Permalink Reply by Joe K Fobes on October 27, 2011 at 12:36pm

Sometimes, yes.

'Body knowledge' certainly exists. We often talk of it. 'I had a hunch', 'It made sense but felt wrong', 'A gut feeling', and so on. Gendlin and his work with the philosophy of the implicit (Focusing) is an excellent source for all that.

And with that said, that along with explicit knowledge we also have implicit 'body knowledge', let the suggestion be don't answer this based on your explicit mental maps, rather wait and let your body answer and let that answer be expressed via that involuntary movement. Another way of doing it is simply shutting up and waiting to see what you feel about something. What your hunch or gut feeling is. But without the 'hypnosis' the chances of contamination are high.

@Jimmy It wasn't just humming. It was nice humming :)

Joe

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Permalink Reply by Carlos Agente on October 27, 2011 at 1:46pm

Hey Anthony,

I already stopped and asked myself exactly the same.

Reading the description of your work, I had a feeling of familiarity. It seems we have this general structure "ideomotor signals + 6 step reframming the whole of the Unconscious" in common.

Here are my thoughts on the validity of the ideomotor signals:

I think that our work as hypnotists is to sell metaphors and present solutions through them.

If our metaphor fits (unconscious answers through ideomotor signals) and the client invests himself into it (believing), it works. I've had very significant experiential/anecdotal evidences for this statement and would definitely share, if it proves relevant.

I believe that we could easily have suggested any other meaning for anything else and it would be perfectly valid: i.e. "X means Y and will do Z if W". (as in "forefinger means 'yes' and will twitch up if it's a positive answer"). Well, nothing new here, anyway. I'm just repeating what Bandler said more than three decades ago (and probably others before him).

To clarify my thoughts on the matter: If it's invested with belief, it's 100% valid.

I somehow don't really love the answer I just gave, as anything that requires belief to work doesn't exist IMO. But belief "exists", and it's the key.

I work on the presupposition and absolute belief that we all (not "our unconscious" but WE) can heal/recreate/change our bodies and minds in any way we want. (Well, another sort of cliché'd sentence that arrived absolutely spontaneously from my thinking about this.) All we need is the belief to make whatever physically possible change happen.

Not quite sure I was even close to answering your question.

When I say this to myself it seems like it's enough of an answer, though I consciously realize something's missing.

I'll end it here before I end up posting another set of clichés.

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Permalink Reply by Anthony Jacquin on October 29, 2011 at 8:24am

Hi,

thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Anthony

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Permalink Reply by Roy Hunter on October 30, 2011 at 6:52pm

When it is not obvious which technique to use in order to discover and release the cause of a client's problem, I use ideomotor response signals...and have done so successfully for 28 years.

While some people may argue against doing so, nothing speaks louder than successful results. That being said, there is more than one way to get from Seattle to New York. The destination is more important than the journey; so if your techniques help most of the people most of the time (with permanent results), then don't change a winning game. However, I believe in fitting the technique to the client rather than vice versa.

I have a free article on my website that explains my approach to finger response questions:
http://www.royhunter.com/articles/ideomotor.htm

Roy Hunter

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Permalink Reply by Brian David Phillips on October 31, 2011 at 5:32am

Ideomotor signals are best when they are genuinely unconscious muscle twitches . . . uh, that doesn't mean you're dealing with an "all knowing" unconscious as sometimes the unconscious doesn't know and has to go on a journey as well . . . and sometimes the unconscious one is communicating with is ready to fabricate same as anyone else and can be led down the wrong path . . . just because it's the unconscious does not make it infallible and the same rules for clean session language and clear process work still apply.

- Brian