From: exudeb@exu.ericsson.se (Dave Breeding, xt-dGR,)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: NLP
Date: 10 Sep 92 13:43:10 GMT
Reply-To: exudeb@exu.ericsson.se
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Richardson TX

Sorry if this is a (near) repeat of a reply I posted yesterday, but I
never saw that one appear, so I'm guessing I did something wrong. Dave

dab@ism.isc.com (David A. Butterfield) writes:

>My wife seems to have a strongly developed visual sense.  She seems
>to somhow index her memories visually.  When asked to recall a
>particular detail about an event, in her mind she "looks at a video"
>of the events surrounding the detail, until she "finds" the particular
>scene she's "looking for" and then looks at it to "see" the answer.

>One thing she seems to be able to do, that I don't seem to be able to
>do, is to use these visual memories to "look" again at what she saw
>when she was experiencing the event in person, in order to see some
>visual detail that she hadn't noticed the first time.  I do not know
>how to remember something visual that I didn't notice the first time.

The words that you have "quoted" above are all visual predicates.  If
these words are typical of the words your wife uses, they would
indicate that she is certainly accessing and aware of visual
information.  On the other hand, in previous messages you have used
mostly kinesthetic predicates.  Such words are just one of the
indicators or "cues" that can give information about what a person is
doing internally.  People also typically look upward, or defocus their
eyes, when accessing visual information, and they typically look
downward when accessing kinesthetic information.  Breathing is
shallower and more rapid for visual access, deeper and slower for
kinesthetic.  Voice tempo is more rapid for visual access, slower for
kinesthetic.  Voice pitch is higher for visual access, lower for
kinesthetic.  And there are other such cues.

These cues can also be used as aids to accessing the kind of
information you want.  So if you want to access visually, change your
breathing, your eye position, your voice, and talk about what you are
doing in visual predicates.  The idea is that a whole body physiology
goes with each kind of access.  You can notice very carefully what your
wife does as she accesses visual information, and then copy her as
closely as you can.  Copying someone's external behavior can make it
easier to copy their internal behavior (recall the Mind Reading message
that appeared here recently).

...

>I can imagine moving a building to another location.  However, I
>don't imagine color.  I *might* be able to remember if something
>was generally light or dark, but that's iffy.  I know my car is
>blue-green, because it's the color my wife picked, and we discussed
>it.  

"we discussed it" - This seems to indicate that you can remember
auditory information without translating it into feelings.  And this
would compensate for the visual information that you don't translate.

>...However, strange as it may seem, I don't know what color my
>house is, since I've never noted what the color was while I was
>looking at it.  I think it's a light color, maybe with dark trim.

"never noted" - Does "noted" mean something like "talked to myself
about?"  Perhaps you usually translate visual information into either
kinesthetic or auditory information, and together they have allowed you
to get by without developing your visual capabilities.  See our
previous comments below.

>>For this person, sights, sounds, tastes,
>>and smells all had a unique "feel".  The best explanation I know for
>>this is that the original experiences have been translated into
>>feelings, apparently without loss of information.

>I agree that some of those things have a "feel".

>It's hard to imagine how one could translate a visual into a
>feeling without losing information.  I *do* have a general
>feel for some aspects of what I see, for example, I think light
>colors feel different than dark ones, but the fine visual
>details escape my memory unless I examine them while in person,
>and then remember what I learned from that examination.

"examine" and "remember what I learned" - Are these also indications of
the translations that need to take place?

Some further thoughts:

There are many reasons why we may choose to rely on one (or two)
representational systems (or other skills), to the exclusion of
another.  These decisions are frequently made in early childhood, for
what seem like good reasons at the time.  From the perspective of
adulthood, however, it may be worth reconsidering some of those early
ideas.  This is an area where some NLP change work might be helpful.

It will probably always be true that we can never be as good at a skill
developed in adulthood, as we are at skills practiced for a whole
lifetime.  But a basic presupposition of NLP is that if one person can
do a specific thing, then others can learn to do it too.  It will
certainly be worth your while to work at developing your visual
skills.  There are different things that each representational system
does best.  You will probably find that many things become easier for
you as you develop that missing skill.

And some thoughts for others that may be following this exchange:

I think this whole exchange began when someone asked about why a
particular technique taken from a book did not work for them.  As you
can see from this conversation, each of us is unique.  We each have
specific skills, and not others.  Dave has kinesthetic skills that I
don't have, his wife has visual skills he doesn't have.  There is no
single technique that will work for everyone, because everyone is
different.

I'm reminded of that old story about the plumber who was called in to
fix a heating system in a large building.  He looked at things and he
listened to things, he crawled over things and he felt things, until
finally he walked over to a pipe against the wall, took out his
ballpeen hammer, and tapped the pipe just once.  Immediately, the
heating system sprang to life.  When he was asked for the bill, the
plumber said, "That will be $1000, please."  The building owner was
shocked, and he argued that the plumber had only tapped on a pipe, and
how could that cost a $1000?  The plumber replied, "Oh, the tap only
cost $1, the other $999 is for knowing where to tap."

A technique out of a book can tell you "how to tap."  Only training,
practice, and experience can tell you "where to tap."

Dave (too)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology