Do you need to pay attention to the representational systems that clients use? I was asked this by a newbie the other evening. He had recently finished a hypnosis training course, and was full of enthusiasm about NLP, wordplay, and the scientific approach to hypnosis.

Representational systems theory

What he was talking about was the old NLP belief that people tend to represent the world using one dominant representational system. These are generally known as VAK, standing for visual, auditory and kinaesthetic (feeling).
I was rather surprised that this is still being taught, or rather that it was being given so much importance. Even the founders of NLP have said publicly that is perhaps a little overdone.

Representational systems reality

When I started my hypnosis practice I was fully convinced that VAK was important to success. I used to start every session by asking the client to close their eyes and imagine a horse. Then I would ask them to describe their horse and note the type of words they use to describe it. I did this hundreds of times. Eventually I concluded that it was a waste of time. I could find no evidence for consistent VAK.  Dominant primary representational systems do not exist.

I did get some very interesting answers. One woman told me that her representation was in fact auditory. What she was getting was something like a race caller's patter "and now the leader is rounding the bend, and the second favourite is coming up the outside…". Another woman told me that she could feel the horse. I said so you can feel what? Its back, its legs? "No, I can feel this much". And she demonstrated with her hands that she could feel about two palms width on any part of the horse she chose to. Another told me that what she got was patches of random colour in her mind.

Now these were all very interesting, in fact fascinating, but not really useful in therapy.
What I found much more useful was listening carefully for the metaphors that the client uses. In my opinion, these give a much more accurate representation of how the client is feeling and where their problems lie. And unlike VAK, they also give you a very good idea of where to direct your therapy.

Organ Language in the treatment of pain

I was asked recently about the use of organ language for the treatment of pain. This is something I had heard of but never used. The person asking had no idea what it was.

Theory of organ language

Organ language is a concept introduced by Leslie LeCron in his writings in the 1920s. The basic idea is that the language that you use, the words that you say, can affect the organs you talk about. NLP uses similar ideas about the power of words to influence feeling.
According to LeCron, if you repeatedly use a phrase such as "this guy is a pain in the neck" then saying the phrase over and over will actually give you a pain in the neck.

The theory is that constantly mentioning the organ in everyday phrases focuses attention on that organ. That causes it to malfunction. If your illness is being caused by the overuse of a metaphor such as "I'm sick of seeing my team lose every Saturday" then the answer is to stop saying it. If you change your language to something different such as "I'm really looking forward to our next win" then that will keep you healthy.

Overused Metaphors

Personally, I just don't believe this simplistic logic. Most of us use metaphors all the time, and we don't know the origins of them. These are known as lost metaphors and are basically a lazy way of speaking. These metaphors used to be bright and fresh and colourful but overuse has dulled them to the point where they lose all their force. Telling someone "I was taken aback" nowadays simply means that the speaker was surprised.

The phrase "taken aback" originally referred to a sailing ship. Sailing ships are designed to take the wind from behind. If the wind suddenly 'backs' to come over the bow then the masts get pressed backwards instead of forwards. Masts are not designed for that. They can snap. Being "taken aback" is very dangerous. The image is of immediate panic and the crew running around to save the ship. But that original colourful meaning of the phrase has been lost through time.  

 I suspect that someone saying "it's a pain in the neck" really is not thinking about the neck or anything else. All they're doing is substituting an overused phrase in place of original thinking. To suggest that someone using the phrase "I was taken aback" has in mind an image of a sailing ship suddenly plunged into danger is just not believable. Our minds are not as literal LeCron suggests.

Treatment

I think the truth is more straightforward. When someone says "I feel stabbed in the back", then they probably do feel that. It's not the metaphor that is causing the pain, is the pain that is causing the metaphor. And therefore the correct course is to use the metaphor to alert you to their pain.

Simply telling the person not to use the phrase again is not going to work.

Hypnosis aversion works.

All psychotherapy is aimed at changing behaviour.  Hypnosis aversion is a very powerful technique for changing behaviour.

The basic theory of behaviour change is that people will stop doing things they get punished for but will do things they get rewarded for. This is the basis of behavioural therapy.

However, behaviour can only be changed while it's happening. For example, suppose you have a situation where a child is constantly interrupting adults while they talk. If your response is to remove the child from the room, then the behaviour is no longer happening. Problem solved.

But the child is learning nothing. The child may in fact be learning resentment or hatred towards you, which is not actually what you want. The child may in fact be reinforced by the bad behaviour. There might be things to do outside the room which are just as enjoyable. What the child is not getting is any instruction on how to behave while adults are speaking. You can only change behaviour during the behaviour.

External punishment doesn't work

That is why punishment seldom works. The first response to any kind of unwanted behaviour is to punish the person doing it. If that doesn't work then you punish them some more. If that doesn't work punish harder. However the basic problem with that approach is that the punishment is applied after the behaviour has finished. It is too late then. In the criminal justice system people are often punished long after the crime. The criminal may in fact have forgotten the crime by the time they get to court. It is the time difference between the behaviour and the punishment which is crucial. If your finger broke every time you stole something there would be a lot less theft. If your car refused to start after being illegally parked, illegal parking would soon die out. 
It is the immediate link between the behaviour and the punishment which is critical. And the punishment has to happen at the exact time that the behaviour is happening.
That is the critical difference between hypnosis and behavioural approaches. When a bad habit is treated with Hypnosis Aversion a link is formed in the unconscious mind between the behaviour and a feeling. The feeling is usually disgust or fear or some other negative thing. The critical difference is that as soon as the behaviour starts the unconscious mind brings out that horrible taste or fear or whatever it is immediately. There is no delay. There is no gap between the behaviour and the punishment.

And that is why hypnosis aversion works.