Woman: You said we'd see when reframing doesn't work.
I certainly did as I walked around the room! You will try it and it won't work. However that's not a comment on the method. That's a comment about not being creative enough in the application of it, and not having enough sensory experience to accept all the cues that are there. If you take its "not working"—instead of a comment about how dumb and stupid and inadequate you are—as a comment about what's there for you to learn and begin to explore, then therapy will become a real opportunity to expand yourself, instead of an opportunity for self-criticism.
This is one of the things I've discovered teaching hypnosis. I think it's one of the main reasons that hypnosis has not proliferated in this society. As a hypnotist you put somebody into a trance and present them with some kind of a challenge such as "You will be unable to open your eyes." Most people are unwilling to put themselves to that kind of test. People say this to me all the time in hypnosis training seminars: "What happens if I give them the suggestion and they don't carry it out?" And I say "You give them another one!" If they don't get exactly what they intended, they think they must have failed, instead of taking that as an opportunity for responding creatively.
There's a really huge trap there. If you decide before you begin a communication what will constitute a "valid" response, then the probability that you'll get it is reduced severely. If, however, you make a maneuver, some intervention, and then simply come to your senses and notice what response you get, you'll realize that all responses are utilizable. There's no particularly good or bad response. Any response is a good response when it's utilized, and it's the next step in the process of change. The only way you can fail is by quitting, and deciding you are not willing to spend any more time with it. Of course you can just continue to do the same thing over and over again, which means you'll have the same failure for a longer period of time!
There was a research project that I think you all are entitled to know about. Out of a group of people, one third of them went into therapy, one third of them were put on a waiting list, and one third of them were shown movies of therapy. The people on the waiting list had the same rate of improvement! That is a comment about that research project, and that's all it's a comment about. That finding was presented to me as if it were a statement about the world. When I made a comment that the only thing I could discern is that it was a statement about the incompetency of the people doing therapy in the project, it struck them as a novel idea that actually that might be a possibility.
I came to psychology from mathematics. The first thing that made sense to me as I entered the field of psychology is that what they were doing was not working, at least with the people who were still in the hospitals and still in the offices—the other people had gone home! So the only thing that made sense to me is that what they were doing with their clients was what I didn't want to do. The only things not worth learning were what they were already doing that wasn't working.
The first client that I saw was in somebody's private office. I went in and watched this therapist work with a young man for an hour. She was very warm, very empathetic, very sympathetic with this guy as he talked about what a terrible home life he had. He said "You know, my wife and I really haven't been able to get together, and it got so bad that I really felt I had strong needs and I went out and had this affair," and she said "I understand how you could do that." And they went on and on like this for a full hour.
At the end of the hour she turned to me and she said "Well, is there anything that you would like to add?" I stood up and looked at the guy and said "I want to tell you that I think you're the biggest punk I have ever met! Going out and screwing around behind your wife's back, and coming here and crying on this woman's shoulder. That's going to get you nothing, since you aren't going to change, and you're going to be as miserable as you are now for the rest of your life unless you grab yourself by the bootheels, give yourself a good kick in the butt, and go tell your wife how you want her to act with you. Tell her in explicit enough words so that she will know exactly what you want her to do. If you don't do that, you're going to be as miserable as you are now forever and no one will be able to help you." That was the exact opposite of what that therapist had done. He was devastated, just devastated. He left the office and went home and worked it all out with his wife. He did all of the things I'd told him to do, and then he called me up on the telephone and told me it was the most important experience of his life.
However, during the time he did that, that therapist utterly convinced me that what I had done was wrong! She explained to me all these concepts about therapy and about how this wouldn't be helpful, and convinced me that what I had done was the wrong thing.
Man: But she didn't stop you from doing it.
She couldn't! She was paralyzed! But she was right. It wouldn't have worked with her. However, it was perfect for him. If nothing else, it was just the opposite of what she had been doing all that time. It wasn't that what I did was more powerful than what she did, it was just more appropriate for him, given that all those other things hadn't worked. That therapist didn't have that flexibility in her behavior. She did the only thing that she could do. She couldn't do gestalt therapy because she couldn't yell at anybody. It wasn't a choice for her. She was so nice. I'm sure there were some people who had never had anybody be nice to them, and that hanging around her was such a new experience that it had some influence on them. However, that would still not help them make the specific changes that they came to therapy for.
Woman: What we did was to ask the conscious mind of the partner "Will you agree not to sabotage, not to try to—"
Oh, there's a presupposition there that the conscious mind can sabotage! You can ignore the conscious mind. It can't sabotage the unconscious. It couldn't sabotage the original choice that it didn't want, and it's not going to be able to sabotage the new ones either.
What you're doing with reframing is giving requisite variety to the unconscious. The unconscious previously had only one choice about how to get what it wants. Now it's got at leas four choices—three new ones and the old one. The conscious mind still hasn't got any new choices. So given the law of requisite variety, which is going to be in control? The same one that was in control before you got here, and that is not your conscious mind.
It's important for some people to have the illusion that their conscious mind controls their behavior. It's a particularly virulent form of insanity among college professors, psychiatrists, and lawyers. They believe that consciousness is the way they run their lives. If you believe that, there is an experiment you can try. The next time somebody extends their hand to shake hands with you, I want you to consciously not lift your hand, and find out whether your hand goes up or not. My guess is that your conscious mind won't even discover that it is time to interrupt the behavior until your hand is at least half-way up. And that's just a comment about who's in control.
Man: How about the use of this method in groups?
I hope you notice how we have used it here! While you are doing reframing, you spend about seventy to eighty percent of the time alone, waiting for the person to get a response. While you are doing that you can start with someone else. Each of us used to do ten or fifteen people at a time. The only limitation on how many people you can do at one time is how much sensory experience you are able to respond to. You set your limitations by the refinement of your sensory apparatus.
