From: lady@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Lee Lady)
Subject: The NLP Swish Pattern -- a videotape review (repost)
Followup-To: sci.psychology
Summary: A videotaped NLP demonstration by Connirae Andreas
Keywords:  NLP   NeuroLinguistic Programming
Organization: University of Hawaii (Mathematics Dept)
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 00:52:07 GMT


In behavioral psychology one considers a response to a stimulus.  For
instance Pavlov rang a bell and his dog salivated.  

One can note that what the subject responds to is not the actual thing
that happens in the environment but rather the sensory information
received from that event.  In other words, Pavlov's dog didn't respond to
the bell itself but rather to the *sound* of the bell.  

Although this is a totally obvious observation, I don't know that
behavioral psychology has pursued it very much.  For instance, I have
never read of Pavlov experimenting to see if the dog would respond to the
sight of his hand shaking the bell if the bell was silent, or to a
recording of the bell without the visual stimulus.  If both of these
stimuli produced responses, one could then investigate which of the two
was the most effective.  

With human beings can use an instrument which is not available in
experiments with animals -- namely, one can obtain information from the
subjects awareness by asking questions.  In this way, one can make 
determinations about the precise sensory information that produces
a particular response which are much finer than merely knowing that the
stimulus is primarily visual, auditory, or tactile.  

As far as I know, behavioral therapists haven't made much use of this idea.
But in NLP it's used a lot.  In the videotape reviewed below, the subject's
complaint is that, essentially, "Certain behavior from my daughter
makes me lose control."  Connirae Andreas then devotes a lot of time to
determining precisely what sensory information the subject responds to.
Assuming initially that it is a visual image that is crucial, they
explore the possibility that the image is that of a particular
expression on the daughter's face, or a particular posture.  But
finally they discover that the primary stimulus is not visual at all,
but auditory -- a particular tone of voice used by the daughter is what
pushes the subject's buttons.

In addition, the belief in NLP is that what the subject responds to is
not the original sensory information as received from the external world,
but a transformed version of it produced by the brain.  This is
illustrated in the videotape as Connirae has the subject experiment
with transforming her sensory representations in various ways -- for
instance by "zooming in" on an image -- to see how that changes her
emotional response.


The article that follows was originally posted in Setember, 1989. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------
What follows is a much abridged transcript of a demonstration by Connirae 
Andreas as part of an NLP training seminar.  Since it is a demonstration 
done for teaching purposes, it differs in several respects from work done 
in a more usual client session.  This demonstration is shown on a 
videotape titled "The Swish Pattern," copyright by NLP Comprehensive, 
Boulder CO 80301.  The excerpt here is presented without permission.  

This tape and the Cameron-Bandler tape "Lasting Feelings" show pretty
much the two ends of the broad spectrum of approaches that are called NLP.


Connirae to subject:  "Is there a response you have that you don't like 
in a particular context?"  Subject:  "How my daughter pushes my buttons."

Connirae:  "So teach me what *you* have to do inside your head to get 
your buttons pushed.  A good place to start is to find out *when* it 
happens.  Give me an example."  The subject then identifies a particular 
posture and facial expression of her daughter, and demonstrates it.  

Connirae to audience:  "So we have a general idea, but we still don't 
know specifically what she does to get this response."  Connirae asks the 
subject to imagine somebody in the audience having the same posture & 
facial expression, and the subject agrees that that would not be 
sufficient to push her buttons.  Connirae:  "What we need to know is:  
when she sees her daughter in that posture, what does she do to that 
picture *on the inside* that makes her have that emotional response? ... 
Because you [to subject] could probably see a sculpture of that, and it 
wouldn't get to you.  [Subject agrees.]  So what do you do in your head 
with the statue that's different than what you do when you see your 
daughter?"  Subject:  "It [the statue] is not talking."  

Conn:  "So what if Bob [in audience] does this and he talks...  Is the 
voice tone different?"  Subj:  "It may be the voice tone that does it."  

Conn:  [to audience, after some initial exploration]:  "... This is the 
sort of thing we humans do.  That's what makes it interesting.  It's like 
a whole new world in there when we finally discover:  'Oh, so *that's* 
how I get my buttons pushed.'   It's not just the stimulus, it's what the 
person does with it."

Subj:  "I zoom in on her face & her voice.  Because [in that situation] 
she has this horrible sounding voice."  (Demonstrates the voice.)  

After having the subject imagine various things, they discover that in 
fact zooming in is only partly effective without the voice.  They then 
try other visual changes (in brightness, distance, focus), but none of 
these produces the given response.  

Connirae then begins exploring the auditory mode, which the subject 
asserts is very powerful.  Raising the pitch strongly intensifies the 
response.  Loudness seems to automatically increase along with pitch, but 
not vice-versa.  I.e. pitch is a "driver."  ("Raising the pitch drives 
the whole ball of wax.")  Distance and tempo seem to have little effect. 

As a test, Connirae has the client imagine doing the same thing with some 
other person:  By raising the voice pitch and zooming in on the same 
unpleasant facial expression, the subject gets the problem response. 

Now Connirae begins to design the intervention, instructing the subject:
"Imagine a quality of your own voice representing the you that you would 
be if you did not have this difficulty."  (It's not the words but the 
voice quality that's at issue here.)  "Experiment by raising the pitch, 
changing the volume, changing the distance, to see what makes this voice 
more attractive to you (i.e. causes it to draw you more)."  (Connirae 
writes the results of all this exploration on the blackboard.)  
One quality that turns out to draw the subject strongly is having the 
voice be "all around," as opposed to coming from a single point.  

They then experiment more with the daughter's voice, and find that "all 
around" makes the subject's response more intense.  Connirae decides that 
it will be more convenient to work with that quality rather than pitch.  
To audience:  "So now we have to figure out how to get her to move from 
the cue [for the problem response] to the voice representing the desired 
state, in a way that's easy for her brain to do.  And to make that 
connection wired in."  

The intervention now is very fast.  (In fact, it is essential that it be 
done fast in order to be effective.)  The subject imagines her daughter's 
voice loud and high pitched and "all around," and then quickly has that 
voice shrink down to a single point and then to nothingness, at the same 
time that the subject's own ideal voice expands from one point in space 
to be all surrounding.  When she has finished doing this in her head, the 
subject is visibly pleased.  She then repeats the process about ten 
times, faster and faster.  At this point, the subject finds it difficult 
to get the original unpleasant voice back again.  

Connirae then tests ("future paces") by having the subject imagine/recall 
various extremely unpleasant situations with her daugher:  the new 
response is compelling.  Further testing shows that the subject is also 
now unable to get the old undesired response from the visual trigger.  

Follow-up interviews were done after two weeks and after six months.  The 
subject stated that her response was 100% different in situations where 
her daughter's voice used to drive her up the wall.  She could now 
respond calmly and with choices instead of losing control.  However, she 
discovered that there was yet another visual cue that sometimes occurred 
when her daughter was silent, and that this would initially cause her to 
respond in the old way, losing control.  But now she could stop and 
realize that she had other choices and then do something to work things 
out.  


The piece of work discussed here is a real tour de force, illustrating 
some of the basic ideas underlying the NLP submodalities approach.  In 
most cases, though, the Swish Pattern is a quite straightforward 
technique, easy to learn and easy to use.  It is discussed in Richard 
Bandler's book  USING YOUR BRAIN -- FOR A CHANGE  and also in  CHANGE 
YOUR MIND AND KEEP THE CHANGE  by Steve and Connirae Andreas.  (I wish 
to hell they'd drop these new age titles, and the new age covers they put 
on these books.  It makes it really hard to get therapists and academics 
to take them seriously.)  

--
It is a poor sort of skepticism which merely delights in challenging
those claims which conflict with one's own belief system.  
                                                          --Bogus quote 
lady@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu         lady@uhunix.bitnet
Newsgroups: sci.psychology