About this document

This document contains information about characterlogical adjectives. Background and application information in this document comes from my browsing the NLPU Master Practitioner Manual, but I learned about characterlogical adjectives elsewhere, from older material about the NLP New Code developed by Delozier and Grinder. The exercises are my own common-sense creation. I hope they’re of interest, and prompt you to share your own exercises for developing facility with characterlogical adjectives.

About characterlogical adjectives

Adjectives that, in a word, describe the behavior of someone else and myself relating in a way that I consider “stuck”. Examples of characterlogical adjectives include: “arrogant”, “withdrawn”, “aggressive”, “picky”, “mean”. Assigning characterlogical adjectives from a 3rd perceptual position is part of New Code.

Value of characterlogical adjectives

Labeling you and another person with adjectives that describe you in an interaction allow you to take an observer position on both you and the other person, and give you a reference point for changing the interaction, from a resourceful observer position.

Relationships between communication behaviors include:

Complementary (e.g., “aggressive”, “defensive”) complementary behaviors are different from each other, but also elicit each other.
Symmetrical (e.g., “self-absorbed”,”withdrawn”) symmetrical behaviors are different from each other in interpretation, but have a similar or identical description
Asymmetrical (e.g., “calm”, “panicked”) asymmetrical behaviors are different from each other in both interpretation and description.

Application:

1.  see and hear the person, doing what they’re doing, and label it with a characterlogical adjective.
2.  next see and hear yourself and the person, you both doing what you’re doing, and label what you in particular are doing during that interaction.

Exercise 1 (observing strangers outside):

1.  Observe two or more people communicating
2.  Label each two-person interaction “symmetrical”, “complementary”, “assymmetrical”.
3.  Label each participant with a characterlogical adjective wrt an interaction.

Exercise 2 (groups of 3):

1.  Person A models a behavior that bothers them when others do it, but without offering a characterlogical adjective for the behavior.
2.  Person B playacts 3 different responses, a symmetrical one, a complementary one, and an assymmetrical one, again without offering a characterlogical adjective.
3.  Person C privately labels each of the two participants with one or more characterlogical adjectives.
4.  After Person B’s playacting ends, Person C reports adjectives for each of Person B’s behaviors.
5.  rotate the roles taken by each person.

Exercise 3 (groups of 3):

1.  Person A chooses a complementary interaction from their history, labeling their own behavior and the other person’s behavior for the benefit of Persons B and C.
2.  Person A and person B playact the interaction, with Person A coaching Person B as necessary.
3.  Person C suggests incremental changes to Person A’s behavior with the intention to change the interaction from complementary to asymmetrical.
NOTE: Person B does their best to continue acting according to the same label as Person A’s behavior changes.
4.  When Persons A,B, and C all agree that the behavior is asymmetrical, Person A labels their new behavior in the interaction.
5.  rotate the roles taken by each person.

Exercise 4 (groups of 3):
Prop: 3 copies of a list of characterlogical adjective pairs
1.  Each person records a relationship type next to each of the adjective pairs in the list.
2.  When each list copy has all its adjective pairs classified, Person A reads their choices to Persons B and C.
3.  Persons B and C listen, and put an ‘x’ or other mark next to their own choices if it disagrees with Person A’s choices.
4.  For each difference in Person B or C’s lists, Persons B and C explain their choice to Person A.
5.  rotate the roles taken by each person.

Characterlogical adjective pair examples:

ADJECTIVE 1   |  ADJECTIVE 2   |  RELATIONSHIP TYPE
panicked       |  calm           |  asymmetrical
blaming         |  placating       |  complementary
bored           |  dreaming       |  symmetrical
bullying         |  wimpy         |  symmetrical
contemptful     |  compassionate   |  asymmetrical
deceiving       |  gullible         |  complementary
compassionate |  ashamed         |  asymmetrical
aggressive     |  defensive       |  complementary

I wonder whether anyone would be kind enough to review the following exercise I’ve been experimenting with and offer any suggestions, feedback, or advice… It arose as I thought around how I could utilise characterlogical adjectives, multiple description and perceptual positions…

Thanks

Gareth

Characterlogical Adjective Exploration Process

This exercise can be used for any demanding interpersonal situation or experience where you experience yourself as unresourceful and lacking a variety of choice in relation to the other person (or persons) involved. In preparation, mark out 3 spaces on the floor (or use 3 chairs) for each of the 3 Perceptual Positions…

i. In Position 1, choose an adjective to describe how you see the other person(s) in this situation, e.g. aggressive, defensive, controlling, apologetic, anxious, uncertain, demanding, needy, etc
ii. Choose an adjective to describe how you are in response to this
iii. Utilise Perceptual Positions to explore your representations/perceptions of the adjectives chosen and your own and the other person’s position in this situation: Use the Frames and Questions of the Outcome, Intention, Consequence Model and Description, Evaluation, Interpretation Model within the context of the Perceptual Positions Exercise (exploring Outcome, Intent & Consequences and asking yourself questions about the way you are describing, evaluating and interpreting such) – starting in Position 1 and then stepping into Position 2 to enhance your learnings about self and other. 
iv. Re-integrate the learnings from Positions 1 & 2 into 1st Position
v. Move to Position 3 and use the Frames & Questions as outlined above in step iii to explore the wider systemic Outcomes, Intents and Consequences from an Observer position (Utilise your skills with unconscious signals and cues to gain access to intuitions and sense-experiences to understand such) and secondly to increase the number of possible descriptions and adjectives that could be used to describe the situation under review (multiple description).
vi. Re-integrate the wider systemic learnings from Position 3 into 1st Position and acknowledge there will be contexts where this information could be very useful to you (without consciously over-specifying what they may be so as to cue the unconscious to review the ecology and contexts so framed)…
vii. Sleep on it…

Additional Elements and Ideas that could be incorporated:

- In step i access a Know Nothing State first (i.e. deepen breathing, relax foveal vision, increase peripheral vision, loosen jaw and open mouth slightly to quieten down internal dialogue, etc) and then commence Process
- After Step ii decide whether the interaction can best be coded as Symmetrical, Complimentary or Asymmetrical and then after step vi utilise an N Step Reframe Process to request of the Unconscious the generation of new behavioural choices with regard to usefully responding to the interaction pattern identified in step ii, within the context under review
- And/Or after Step vi use a New Code Game (or equivalent) to access a high performance state and step back into 1st Position…

I’m posting this query in the hope that someone can help me clarify something from my reading of ‘Whispering’... It’s about 1st and 2nd order change and I have 2 specific questions:

The first is to do with the choices John and Carmen made about addiction, physical symptoms and issues associated with significant 2ndry gain being the members of the class of 2nd order change… I can understand that all 3 are behaviours, etc that serve a purpose, e.g. addiction serving the possible purpose of supplying relaxation at a higher logical level, or physical symptoms serving the purpose of being within the class of unconscious signals that signify that something is out of equilibrium within the body system, etc, etc… My question is: Does anyone know the rules/criteria John and Carmen used to select these 3 and not other potential ‘behaviours’?

My thinking as I work around this one is that anxiety could be such a context for 2nd order change - after all it too might serve a purpose, i.e. signalling concerns around safety and security, etc… (although perhaps because it signals often through physical symptoms or is associated with 2ndry gain (i.e. the securing of reassurance or proximity seeking with important others) it fits within the membership of the class of all behaviours associated with 2nd order change???)...

If anyone can help me think this through some more then I would really value this - perhaps even suggest some alternative frames from which I can begin my enquiry…

My 2nd question is linked to whether anyone knows how John’s use of 1st and 2nd order change (i.e. bounded and unbounded) fits with more typical notions of these concepts within the field of therapy and specifically systemic/strategic therapy…

My understanding of these terms comes from my training in systemic models where 1st order change relates to changes within a given system/context, i.e. a change in behaviour, thoughts, feelings, cycles of interaction, etc (changes amongst the variety of moves one can play in a given game) whilst 2nd order change relates to a change to the governing frames of reference that set the scene for such behaving, thinking, feeling, interacting, etc… (i.e. a change to the rules for how the game is played)... E.g. Watzlawick et al (1974) “Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution”... Often the use of 2nd order change (as far as I’ve so far understood this from my supervisor; a systemic psychotherapist) is linked to changes (reframing) in beliefs, presuppositions and rules at the level of the system so that those within it come to a set of new meanings and understandings about what it is that they do together such that the original problem situation is re-evaluated and re-interpreted (Noah’s posts on Description, Interpretation and Evaluation have really helped me think more broadly about such things). This seems to me different to the description in ‘Whispering’ where such things as beliefs, etc could conceivably fit into the class of 1st order change if they were not associated with 2ndry gain, etc…

Phew!

Any thoughts, suggestions, help, guidance, questions, reflections, stories, metaphors and so on would be gratefully received.

Thanks and all the best for the New Year,

Gareth

I heard whispers recently on the Linkedin site that John is releasing a “New Code Source Book” soon. Does anyone know if this is correct, and if so, when this might be available? And aside from “Whispering” and “Turtles” does anyone know of any other New Code books that might have been written by others in the New Code Community?

Many thanks

Gareth

My steps for building the first draft of the index include:
1. read pages from Whispering In The Wind.
2. note the presence of significant words on those pages.
3. note the page (and the word(s), if it is not already present) in either the person, place, or subject indices.
4. once the process is complete, decide, for each word, whether it’s presence on the pages is or is not significant.

My goal for these indexes is to have at least one page reference for every person mentioned by name in the book. In addition, I would like at least 200 subject terms properly indexed in the book.

I am including just the word lists below. If anyone takes issue with or has additions to the content of the lists, let me know. At a later time, I may include two indexes, the first a complete index, the second my own version including only page numbers that I consider useful for searching the book by that term.

Person index (page 61):
Bandler, Richard, 1,
Grinder, John
St. Clair, Carmen Bostic
Marx, Karl
Erickson, Milton
Free, Michael L.
Avery, Nancy
Korzybski, Alfred
Huxley, Aldous
Einstein, Albert
Bateson, Gregory
Hoffman, D. (Visual Intelligence Author)
Bohr, Neils
Bickerton, Derek
Wienberg, Steven
Fechner, Gustav
Tsunoda (Japanese Brain author)
Rosenthal, Robert ()
Dilts, Robert
Jesus
Chomsky, Noam
Shapin, Steven
Feynman, Richard
Aristotle
Masi, Charles
Descartes, Rene
Watson (Behaviorism founder)
Skinner (Behaviorist)
Bloomfield, Leonard
Masi,Charlie
Langacker, R.
Harris,Zeilig
Beethoven, ludwig van
Severs, Thomas
Klima, Edward
Lashley, Tolman, and Broadbent
Russell, Bertrand
Turing, Alan
Godel, Kurt
Schultz, Peter (fnendly at eunet dot at)
EANLP
Robbie, Eric (author, NLP World, 2000)
Horrock (author, Generative Grammar)
Postal, Paul
Fauconnier
Langacker

Place index (page 61):
Siberia
Santa Cruz
Oregon
Mexico
Vienna
Vienna - Cafe Landtmann
Switzerland
CERN
Bosnia
Northern Ireland
Afghanistan
Rwanda
Los Angeles
Japan
Polynesia
Greece
Arizona
Pennsylvania
Berlin
London
Rockefeller university
America
Palo Alto
Mental research institute
Austria
Switzerland

Subject index (page 1):
NLP
epistemology

1) A friend had had a headache for three weeks. N step reframe and it went
2) A friend did not know whether to continue seeing someone but her unconscious said yes and it was a good decision
3) A friend had an issue with shyness especially when it came to women (none of this speed seduction I hasten to add). N step reframe and he asked his personal trainer to come out on his thirtieth birthday - she said yes. Now I have known him for 13 years, he has never done anything like that before. The whole process took approximately 4 minutes
4) I was going to go abroad next year. Some UC detective work and a master prac was a better idea
5) I am close to shifting a veruca I have had for ages but that is work in progress
6) When I was anxious the other night I did some UC work and channeled the anxiety into some other state which then saw me being more alert playing cards paying attention in a way I hadn’t previously
7) Now this one didn’t work but its amusing. I was in a chip shop and couldn’t remember whether my friend liked a battered sausage or a normal sausage. My UC went for a normal sausage - it was wrong. She likes a battered sausage (puns ahoy )

Selecting choice points for desirable consequences
Selecting choice points for desirable consequences involves:
1.  finding at least one path of behaviors that leads from the present state to the desired state
2.  for each available path, choosing the path that maximizes/minimizes/meets criteria (e.g., how long it will take, how much energy it uses)

List of criteria for choice point selection
The list of criteria for choice point selection includes:
* 

About behavior selection according to outcomes, intentions, and consequences

Select behaviors that you expect will have intended consequences (outcomes). Outcomes satisfy the intentions behind your behaviors. People do not know of, or do not necessarily create, or have, intentions behind all their behaviors.

About logical types of intention

During an ordinary conversation, intentions can be described as:
1.  the behavior itself (to run)
2.  the expected outcome of the behavior (to win a foot race)
3.  a consequence of the expected outcome of the behavior (to gain fame through winning a foot race)

In case 1, if the desired behavior is performed, its intentions are satisfied and therefore the outcome is selected appropriately.
In case 2, if the outcome succeeds, the behavior’s intentions are satisfied and therefore the outcome is selected appropriately.
In case 3, if the desired consequences of the successful outcome occur, the behaviors intentions are satisfied and therefore the outcome is selected appropriately.

In all 3 cases, the instrument of intentions (outcomes) of behaviors are also consequences of behaviors.

Application: evaluating the congruency of a behavioral choice
1.  Answer the question, “What less than ideal behavior do you perform?”
2.  Answer the question, “What consequences do you intend?” or “What is the intended outcome?”
3.  Answer the question, “What consequences do you achieve?” or “What is the actual outcome?”
3.  Answer the question, “What consequences that you achieve do you not want?” or “What are the undesirable actual outcomes?”
4.  Answer the question, “Do you achieve your intended outcome?”

Application: evaluating whether to revise a behavior
1.  Answer the question, “Does the behavior fail to achieve its intended outcome?”
2.  Answer the question, “Does the behavior have less desirable outcomes?”
Revise a behavior for which you answer “Yes” to at least one of those two questions.

About scheduling and preparation for different activities with NLP
You can choose behaviors for a context with the intention of preparing for a different context or the intention of participating fully in the context.  If you consider a context, for example, brushing your teeth, as not deserving full participation, you might watch TV or listen to the radio while you brush. If most of your day is filled with forgettable or instrumental tasks meant to prepare for interspersed times of much shorter duration, check whether you apply principles of self-care or congruity development to your experience during that preparation time. I wonder whether NLP principles of preparing state, monitoring physiology, or guiding communication are practiced by you during those preparation times.  In my own behavior, time whose value is contingent on achieving something later does not get the same quality of attention as time that I value for the sake of itself.

Application: Preparing or preparedness
1.  Ask yourself, “How much time each day is spent in a context A, preparing for another context B?”
2.  Ask yourself, “What proportion of time is spent in context A compared with context B?”
3.  Spend an hour evaluating the congruency of the behaviors you perform in each context. Spend the same proportions of time during that hour on each context as you spend in real life on Context A and Context B.

Questions sort into logical levels according to their utility in gathering information of a particular kind.
Sorts of questions used in NLP include:
* deletion, distortion, generalization
* test, operate, exit
* formats, subjects, evaluations, references, cause-effects
* description, interpretation, evaluation
* observation, interpretation, explanation

In the book “Whispering In The Wind”, the word “evaluation” is sometimes used in a different sense, or has a different logical type, than what I consider when I talk about description, interpretation, and evaluation. To evaluate a behavior or event can mean to determine whether the behavior or event meets a set of criteria. For me, to “evaluate” an interpretation is to experience a feeling wrt the conditions (outcome or consequences) that it implies.

It is true that implicit in a feeling or preference is an emergent set of criteria for making evaluations.  For example, after experiencing a a newly anchored response, a person can create a narrative and reasons for feeling as they do, or an interpretation of other stimuli accompanying the anchor that “explains” their response to the anchor (their evaluation). Once a person has narrative or reasons for their evaluation, questions that gather information about evaluation criteria will get answers. However, the narrative, reasons, or interpretations of events related to the anchor have little value beyond their association with the anchored response that prompted creation of the interpretation. Rather than elicit evaluation criteria, you can enrich the descriptions available to the anchored person, including descriptions that exclude the anchor, and leave it to the person to create their evaluations.

In fact, particular combinations of questions that gather description, interpretation, or evaluation information can elicit TOTE’s or Emprint Method formats. For the purposes of eliciting TOTE’s or TEM formats, evaluations are not necessarily feelings based on interpretations. Of course, because you elicit behavior models for different reasons than you (re)activate descriptions from which to learn. More generally, eliciting decisions, including preferences based on criteria, appears in the New Code to use the intention,outcome,consequences model, another application area for the questions that fall under the meta-model umbrella.

Lists of meta-model questions that (re)activate FA descriptions

Rather than use the old sort of meta-model patterns into questions that recover deletions, remove distortions, and clarify generalizations, lets use a sort that serves to (re)activate descriptions of FA.  Lets use the description, interpretation, evaluation sort.

The list of meta-model questions that enrich a description includes:
* modal operators
* universal generalization
* lost performative
* deletions
* unspecified comparatives

The list of meta-model questions that recover descriptions underlying interpretations includes:
* mind-reading
* cause-effect
* complex-equivalence
* nominalizations

The list of meta-model questions that gather information about evaluations includes:
* meta-feelings.

Due to the general definition of “description”, these three logical types of questions fit into a two-tier logical level hierarchy:

questions that enrich descriptions
    |                    |                                   
    |              questions that recover interpreted descriptions
    |
  questions that gather information about evaluations

WARNING: The presuppositions and entailments of a question requesting information about something (for example, a description), are included in answers to the question.

Exercise 1 (one person watching strangers)
1.  watch and listen to a few moments (10-15 seconds) of strangers walking by,
    focusing on groups that are interacting with each other.
2.  Put yourself in their shoes, in your imagination.
    Record what you think the strangers were doing, thinking, or experiencing.
    This is your first interpretation.
3.  Record the feeling(s) you have about what you think they were doing, thinking, or experiencing.
4.  Record your answer to the question “How do you know ____ was doing/thinking/experiencing _____”?
    Record descriptions of what you saw and heard, or record your answer to the question
    “What did you see and hear that leads you to think that ______ was doing/thinking/experiencing ______?”
    This is your first description. Answer as fully as possible.
5.  Answer the question “What else might ______ have been doing/thinking/experiencing instead of ____?”
    Record additional interpretations based on the first description you recorded,
    creating as many alternative interpretations as you can.
    Variation (evaluations): Instead of answering the question in step 5, record other feelings you have had in the past about closely similar events as what you recorded in your first description.
      Variation (descriptions): Instead of answering the question in step 5, get someone else to join you in watching and listening to strangers, and then compare your descriptions with theirs.

Exercise 2 (groups of 3)
1.  Person A imitates an unusual behavior that they have seen someone else do,
      with the goal of choosing a behavior that Persons B and C will not interpret correctly.
2.  Person B suggests what Person A is doing,thinking, or experiencing.
3.  Person C suggests another interpretation of Person A’s behavior.
4.  Person A supplies their interpretation of the behavior.
5.  Rotate the roles of each person.

About the overlap of interpretation between “description, interpretation, evaluation” and “observation, interpretation, explanation” logical levels

WITW contains at least 2 logical types of “interpretation”, creating different logical levels of questions, for the sorts:
* description, interpretation, evaluation
* observation, interpretation, explanation

Critical thinking skills, evidence procedures, and epistemological grounding determine the utility of interpretations of events for making explanations or evaluations. For example, if I interpret meteor falls as signs of anger from gods and stay home, that has less utility for me than if I go looking for melted sand or other interesting remains at the impact site.

In human relationships, interpretations are what we think about behavior, evaluations are how we feel about or judge behaviors, and descriptions are what we observe of behavior. The meta-model’s original purpose of recovering information lost to different kinds of filters is served by :

* adding new descriptions
* distinguishing interpretations from descriptions
* distinguishing evaluations from descriptions
* distinguishing evaluations from interpretations
* recovering descriptions from interpretations

Assuming the steps of learning:
1. gather descriptions
2. create interpretations
3. experience evaluations

are fully-ordered, then an ethical approach to helping a client change their evaluations (their subjective experience of events) or their interpretations (the meaning they assign to events), is to add to the collection of descriptions from which the client builds interpretations and evaluations.

There’s a difference between evaluation of an interpretation and awareness of the consequences of a behavior or event.

Consider two frames.

1. the outcome of an evaluation frame (What can I do to allow me/he/she to experience ____?)
1a. the evaluation frame (how might I/he/she experience _____? )

2. the consequences of an interpretation frame (What interpretation has consequence Y?)
2a. the interpretation frame (What interpretation gives me the consequences of description X? )

The combinatorial possibilities of (intention,outcome,consequences) and (description,interpretation,evaluation) supply a large set of frames or relevance standards for information-gathering when the two sets are joined with various function words (e.g., what is the intention of the interpretation of that first access event). These frames supply meta-analysis, information, about f1 and f2 transforms, these frames establish the significance of (and possibly signify) f1 and f2 transforms.

Bibliography:

The Emprint Method, by Leslie Cameron, David Gordon, and Michael Lebeau
Whispering In The Wind, by John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St. Clair
The Description, Interpretation, Evaluation exercise
Description, Interpretation, or Evaluation?
Critical Reading: Using Description, Interpretation, Evaluations

Edited: I now realise that I ought to have posted this in the NLP Forum, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to move it. Sorry!

I’ve recently finished my premier practitioner with the Academy and have been experimenting on the N-step reframe. So more or less, I’ve been working on unconscious signals, both of my own and with other people who do want some change in their lives. It’s been going amazing and the results are fantastic! In my experience, some strange things did happen and some mysteries showed themselves and I’d really appreciate any help with this!

A common technique we were taught during our practitioner was when working with pain, or other signals, would be to ask the conscious if the signal was for something that it wanted us to do, or change (e.g. for pain, changing the way we sit, etc.). I was doing some self-application of this and I asked my unconscious to bring into my conscious awareness what it wanted me to do. It said yes and I was waiting for quite some time for the sudden eureka moment but it didn’t come. Then I decided to get more creative and I asked if it had the resources available to bring whatever it is, intention, a task for me, or what not, into my conscious awareness and it said No. I asked it again if it could obtain the resources by itself and once again I got a No. I asked it if there was a way and it said Yes. Now, as to how I would discover what way this is, I am at a loss for the unconscious to bring it into conscious awareness was not an option as when I asked, it said it still couldn’t bring this into my awareness.

So how exactly would you work with an obstacle like this? What process can we do to increase choice in this matter?

Cheers!

- Bym