Woman: Well, when I did it, I went "da da da DUM," you know, and I looked at the spatial interval. I wasn't seeing the notes.
Those of you who had partners who had this kind of experience, check with them. I will guarantee the following was going on. They searched and found a visual image which somehow represented the experience they were looking for. From that image, by simply imitating the image or stepping into it, they then had the feelings or sounds which were appropriate for that particular visual experience.
We've got to make a distinction now. The predicates, the words a person chooses to describe their situation—when they are specified by representational system—let you know what their consciousness is. The predicates indicate what portion of this complex internal cognitive process they bring into awareness. The visual accessing cues, eye-scanning patterns, will tell you literally the whole sequence of accessing, which we call a strategy. What we call the "leadsystem" is the system that you use to go after some information. The "representational system" is what's in consciousness, indicated by predicates. The "reference system" is how you decide whether what you now know—having already accessed it and knowing it in consciousness—is true or not. For example. What's your name?
Ted: Ted.
Ted. How do you know that? Now, he's already answered the question, non-verbally. It's an absurd question. Ted understands this, but he also answered it. Do you know how you know? Right now, sitting in this room, if I call you "Jim," you don't respond. If I call you "Ted," you do respond. That's a kinesthetic response. Now, without me supplying any stimuli from the outside, when I simply ask you the question "Do you know what your name is?" do you have an answer?
Ted: Yes, I have.
Do you know what to say before you actually say it?
Ted: No, I don't.
So if I say "What's your name?" and you don't answer, you don't know what your name is?
Ted: I know what my name is because when someone says "Ted" I have a certain feeling, a response because that's me.
Are you saying "Ted" on the inside and getting that feeling as a way of verifying when I ask you that question? Ted: Yeah.
So you have a strategy to let you know, when supplied input from the outside, which is an appropriate response to which, right? "Ted" but not "Bob." But when I ask you "What's your name?" how do you know what to say to me?
Ted: I don't think of it.
So you have no consciousness of any process that you use at that point?... OK. Now, did anybody else notice a cue that would tell you the answer to the question even though Ted at this point doesn't have a conscious answer to the question we asked him?... Each time we asked the question, his eyes went down to his left and came back. He heard his name. I don't know whose tonality he heard it in, but it was there. And he knows that the name "Ted" is correct because it feels right. So in this case his lead system is auditory: that's how he goes after the information, even though he's not aware of it. He becomes conscious of his name auditorily; in this case his representational system is the same as his lead system.
His reference system is kinesthetic: when he hears the name "Ted" either outside or inside, it feels right.
One of the things that some people do when you ask them questions is to repeat them with words inside their head. Lots of people here are doing that. I say "Lots of people repeat words" and they go inside and say to themselves "Yeah, people repeat words."
Have any of you had the experience of being around somebody whose second language is the one you're speaking? Typically the first eye movement they will make as they hear something is to translate it internally, and you'll see that same auditory cue.
Some people take forever to answer a question. What they usually have is a complex strategy in consciousness. For example, one guy had a fascinating strategy. I asked him "When was the first time you met John?" And he went inside and said "When was the first time I met John? Hmmm. Let's see," and his eyes went up and he made a constructed picture of John. Then he looked over to his left and visually flipped through all the possible places he remembered, until he found one that gave him a feeling of familiarity. Then he named the place auditorily, and then he saw himself telling me the name of that place, and imagined how he would look when he did that. He had the feeling that it would be safe to go ahead and do it, so he told himself "Go ahead and do it."
There's a whole set of advanced patterns we call streamlining which you can use to examine the structure of a strategy and streamline it so that all the unnecessary or redundant steps are taken out. It involves examining strategies for loops and other kinds of restrictions and problems, and then streamlining those out so that you have efficient programs to get you the outcomes you want.
Let's take an example from therapy. Somebody comes in with the problem that they're very jealous. They say "Well, you know, I just... (looking up and to his right) well, I just (looking down and to his right) really feel jealous and (looking down and to his left) I tell myself it's crazy and I have no reason to, but I just have these feelings." He starts leading visually; he constructs an image of his wife doing something nasty and enjoyable with someone else. Then he feels the way he would feel if he were standing there actually observing it occurring in the room. He has the feelings that he would have if he were there. That's usually all he is aware of. Those feelings have the name "jealousy" and that's the representational system, kinesthetic. He leads visually, represents kinesthetically, and then he has an auditory reference system check which tells him that his feelings are invalid. So all three different systems are used in different ways.
Woman: So in that situation you're suggesting that if you were working with that person you would tie in with the feeling system, the representational system?
It depends on what outcome you want. Our claim is that there are no mistakes in communication; there are only outcomes. In order for us to respond to your question you have to specify what outcome you want. If you want to establish rapport, then it would be useful to match the representational system, indicated by the predicates. The client comes in and says "Well, I feel really jealous, man, you know, and it's hard on me and I don't know what to do." You can say "Well, I'm going to try to help you get a handle on it because I feel you are entitled to that. Let's come to grips with this and really work to have some solid understanding about this." That would be a first step which would help you to establish rapport. If instead you said to that person "Well, I'm going to try to help you get a perspective on your feelings," you would not get conscious rapport. You might or might not get unconscious rapport, which is the most important one anyway.
When this man comes in with his jealousy problem and you can see the accessing cues, you have all the information you need to understand the process he goes through. Even when people begin to get an idea that this kind of stuff is going on, they don't teach people new ways to do it. If your therapist just tries to assist you in making more realistic pictures, he's working with content, and still leaving the structure intact. Most of the time people don't try to change the actual structure of the process. They try to make it "more realistic" or workable. This means that as long as the revised content remains the same they'll be fine, but when they switch content they will get into trouble again.