Drilled to
be someone else
Lucas Derks
In the first
article of this series of three, identification was said to result from two
personifications sharing the same location in the social panorama. The second
article related identification to the experience of authority. It was explained
how personifications in dominant positions can overrule the experience of self.
As a result one may loose self determination with submission as its end product.
The quality and position of the self image is very crucial for the amount of
influence dominant personifications may have over a person. What this means in
education is the central topic of this third article. If identification
learning is as effective as most educational scientist belief, what conditions
must be fulfilled to make it work?
Trainers in
tears
Imagine you
are a NLP trainer, and you just gave a superb demonstration of `negotiations
between parts'. What you did had a dramatic impact on the demonstration client,
who solved a conflict dating from his childhood. He seemed delighted and
overflowing with tears of bliss and inner piece... You as a trainer showed all
the steps in the right order, and also explained their function and use. In short:
an excellent job.
Aided with
your accurate handout, your students are sending to exercise. And after having coffee
it is time for you to see how they succeed.
The first
pair you observe say they did not yet start the exercise, because they have
fist to talk about something `private'. Next you witness a couple doing the exercise,
but it is hard to understand what step they are on. `We do it in our own way'
they explain, and proceed without taking any notice of you. To your surprise
you find another pair involved in what they call `energy work'; because they
did consider it more appropriate for the problem. Luckily, you find some relief
with a duo who indeed are using two seats as spatial anchors for the parts.
However, the NLP-er is arguing with the parts, and trying to persuade them to
comply. You try to intervene, but it seems that the students have only a
fragmented recollection of what you just demonstrated. It seems useless to
refer to your demo.
In the bar
you meet the remainder of the group, they discuss whether NLP in fact is suited
to treat `real' problems like smoking or aids... Than you weep! How in the
world is it possible that the great behavioural example you just offered gone
up in smoke?
Identification
with parents
An embryo
shares its location with his mother; and several psychologists have argued that
the womb is the cradle of identification skills. However, not all mammals are
as good in identification as humans are; what proves that a stay in the womb is
not a sufficient condition to obtain identification skills. And also, among
humans we see a great variation in the mastery of stepping in each others
shoes. Some urang utans out perform autistic children when it comes to guessing
what others feel and desire. That is why identification is still a great
challenge for child psychology.
In some
modern theories of social learning (identification learning) it is suggested
that `joint attention' is the precursor of identification. When this is true,
parents need first to catch and direct their baby's attention. Once the baby
can be focussed, the parents may join them in paying attention to the same
thing. Joint attention will include talking to the child and at the same time
gazing at a toy until the child too looks at it. In this way the child will
learn to realize that it sees, hears and feels the same thing as its parents
do. Close physical contact will ensure that the baby experiences some of the
parents emotions as well, which will be further promoted by the parents
frequent adjustments to the moods of his child.
The next
stage will be the internalisation of this process; the child knows that the
parent is thinking about the same things and does have related feelings. After
having experienced this regularly and for some period of time, the child will
become more independent in enjoying joint attention; and even when the parent
in fact looks elsewhere it may experience their unity. The step towards the
sensing of a shared location with the parent may arise from the child having a
flaw in self boundaries.
Such a flaw
is nothing special, since the definition of the self is not always so strict;
and especially during relaxed episodes it may have vague contours in everyone
at any age. When we are dreamy and drowsy, all our concept boundaries become
more fluid, and in such a state the blending of self and other is probably not
so far off.
Within
relaxed state mentation, the child will learn to unite its self concept with
the parent personification at the same spot in mental space. This learning
process may finally turn into the skill of identification; that will enable the
child to shift back and forth into the second perceptual position.
However,
this view on the onset of identification skills is not shared by all. The developmental
researcher Tomasello, who in fact developed the concept of `joint attention',
beliefs identification to be an innate faculty of humans, and he believes joint
attention in its turn to be a product of already existing identification
skills. His reasoning is based on detailed comparative primate research;
however I see it the other way around. In my view identification is learned,
and may start of with the communication with parents at close proximity. On
mothers lap you will experience almost the same as she does; especially when
you take little naps in between her joining attention with you. To identify
with her is just a small cognitive step; once mastered you can share locations
with any personification in your social panorama. So, this sharing, may just
start with the simple inability to keep ones own and ones mothers experience separate
during drowsiness. That this blending of the two experiential
spheres has proven to be easier for girls than for boys shows the involvement
of some genetic components. Some blame this on hormonal differences, a position
that is easy to defend: Girls share their mothers (sex) hormones and are much
similar than boys while in the womb. However significant this may be, we can be
sure that boys are in general great objectifications while girls excel in personification
skills. These little champions will become superior in guessing right what
others think and feel.
In later
stages of development it is very probable that children with weak self
images will identify more frequent. Because they will automatically identify
with all dominating personifications (because of `the law of the dominant
personification,' as written about in the second article of this series).
When you are
an infant, your family consist of a number of people with power over you. Since
it may be difficult to keep your self boundaries upright in such an
environment, you will automatically identify a lot with your next of kin. This
results in identification learning that largely helps you to build your personality.
You will unconsciously absorb the examples offered by your close relatives
during a process of prologued and repeated
exposure.
Stages in
identification learning
To summarize
the above, we can say, that the identification with parents will be largely
automatic. And learning to copy behaviour from them will happen without the
child choosing to do so. At the start it may take intimacy; later on it goes
without; and a child will be able to learn from just observing its parents or
anybody else. To be effective, it needs to mentally store the observed
examples, and can identify with them immediately or some time later. So this is
a twofold process in which once an example is memorized, it can be used to step
into at any time.
Often a
child will be forced to apply one of its previously stored behavioural examples
when life challenges it to do so; in reality or in play.
The
distinction between the moment of storage and the moment of identification is
very helpful to understand what is critical in identification learning. In real
life it may be difficult to see the difference between these stages, especially
when someone identifies with a model at the same time the behavioural example
is provided. Like when you step into your music teacher at the moment she plays
for you.
Learning
modes in training
In the
trainers training at the IEP-institute in the
The two
other modes involve (3) `the restructuring of earlier experience' and (4)
`identification learning'.
When
students listen to the teacher, this only makes sense if the words are
connected to experiences; otherwise it is just an exchange of meaningless
sounds. This semantic process necessarily involves the activation of experience
that the students previously stored in mind. The students build on their own
experience while the teacher talks.
Categories
of resources
In everyday
NLP we recognize four (again four!) categories of inner sources (resources)
from which a person may tap to resolve behavioural problems. These sources
overlap with the `restructuring of earlier experience' (mode 3) of learning and
the (mode 4) of `identification learning'. So two of the four modes from above
are related to the categories of sources below. These categories are:
1) I have
done it myself: actual memories of oneself
2) I can
imagine myself do it: fantasies about oneself?
3) I saw
others do it: memories of observing the others
4) I can
imagine others do it: fantasies about the others
In the categories
1) and 2) a person is tapping from his own experience, be it, that 1) has been
done in reality while 2) is a product of imagination. In the categories 3) and
4) behavioural examples are drawn from observing others. In which category 3)
consist of actual observations while 4) contains imaginary observations.
Category 3)
is prototypical identification learning. The imaginary examples in category 4)
may work quite similar, but it just takes a lot more creativity to learn that
way. This matrix consist of the classical variables `remembered &
constructed' and `self & other'.
In
identification learning content from the categories 4) or 3) is transferred to
the category 2) to finally become category 1).
In sum, to
enable a person to learn by means of identification he must first store the
example and next step into it. The storage is the easy part of the process. We
must assume from NLP practice that people store a multitude of behavioural
examples, to only identify with a limited number of them. We all house a
massive potential of not yet used behavioural examples.
We may state
that both parts, the storage and the identification, depend on the relationship
with the model.
For the
storage to happen one must at least pay attention to the role model. But in the
act of identification there is more mental effort involved; and consequently
the motivation level needs to be a lot higher to accomplish it.
In the
remainder of this article we will analyse the relational factors that seem to
determine whether a person will just store or also identify. And these critical
relational variables will be described with the aid of the social panorama model.
Teachers in
the social panorama
In most NLP
trainer trainings the making and keeping of rapport with the participants is
recognized as very important. The emphasis on the relationship in NLP trainings
is based on some logical assumptions. Most NLP-ers assume that if a trainer
fails to make rapport no one will pay attention to what he says and as a
consequence no learning will take place.
Historically, the
important role of the relation between student and teacher is largely neglected
within the field of education. Given only the fact that in most school systems
it is pretty normal to have students stay with teachers they don't like. Many
people seem to believe that whether the student likes his teacher or not is
immaterial for the learning results. Some even belief that a harsh approach by
an authoritarian teacher works best. For the learning modes 1 and 2 this may be
correct, but for learning by identification it is not. Because a student will
hardly identify with a teacher he doesn’t like. When the teacher as a person is
rejected, identification will be impossible; and the entire mode of
identification learning will be useless.
To be more
systematic about this, I will describe the student teacher relationship in
(again!!) four basic dimensions:
1) The
emotional attitude from student towards teacher.
Variables:
positive or negative
2) The
dominance of the teacher personification in the social panorama of the student.
Variables:
dominant or insignificant
3) Strength of
the students self experience in the teaching situation.
Variables:
strong or weak
4) Distance
between student and his teacher-personification.
Variables:
near or far away
The eight
variables result in a matrix that of course over simplifies psychological
reality. However, this simplicity will enable us to understand some very
crucial thing about education. It will help us NLP trainers and educators in
general to weep less.
Emotional
attitude
When a student
loves his teacher, nothing will be in the way to identify with his examples. An
NLP-trainer who is liked by the participants will see his demo's immediately
reproduced in the way they do an exercise. But if the students don't like their
teacher, they will not follow his example. They don't want to be like him or
her, and they will defend themselves against his behavioural examples. They
even may counter identify with this trainer. In an NLP training context the
trainer will observe that the participants do exercises `in their own way', if
at all. Some will show much creativity in inventing counterexamples and reasons
why the teacher’s ideas are wrong.
Dominance of
the teacher personification
The status
of a person may result from many `power sources'. Celebrity status, dominant
behaviour and the power to reward or punish are among the most common of these
sources. Of course, how a teacher is represented in the social panorama of a
student is primarily depending on what the student considers important. So even
if the teacher is a superstar or owns a licence to kill, it is still the
student that must be impressed with that to put him on a dominant location in
his social panorama.
When de
teacher is seen as large by the student, this will enhance the chances the
student will identify with the teacher. In NLP training we see trainers who are
generally represented in a dominant fashion; as long as the participants
sympathize with them they may have a great impact as behavioural models. Than
everyone wants to be like the trainer; wear his close, drive his type of car,
eat his type of food and even do the exercises just like he did.
Dominance
combined with a negative emotional attitude, will provoke the student to resist
identification. For that the student may weapon himself with a very strong self
image. If this self image overpowers the image of the teacher, the student is
safe. He will act with great self confidence, and to the teacher this will be
`stupid arrogance'. Power struggles between student and teacher will ensure
dynamic teaching sessions.
Strength of
the students self experience
If a student
has self confidence, his self image will be positive, stable and prominent. In
that case he will not automatically be overpowered by dominant teacher personifications.
The student can choose with what behaviour he wants to identify or not. We may
expect a delay between the storage of the behavioural examples and the moment
of identification. Such a delay will be absent with students with weak self
images. If they happen to like the teacher, they will be immediately
influenced. They also will pick up the teachers irrelevant behavioural patterns
and may be quite dogmatic in following the teacher’s examples.
Trainers and
teachers have a great impact on the strength of their participants self esteem.
And if they have made them insecure and uncertain, they will have more
influence as a role model, especially when they still are liked. A
confrontational trainer, who raises uncertainty in his participants, may of
course loose some of their sympathy. The latter will reduce the tendency of the
participants to identify with him. The trainer will see little effect of his
demonstration examples. This may raise an even more confrontational style in
him that may decrease identification even more.
Distance to
the teacher personification
We have
reason to believe that the mental effort it takes to identify increases with
the distance at which a personification is experienced. Thus if the teacher is
seen close, identification is easy. The student will hop in and out of the
teacher, with small hops. For the student identification may happen in one flow
and totally unconsciously.
We already
mentioned the tendency to protect once own integrity by means of placing
dominating personifications at great distance. In the same way, students with
small, negative or disrupted self images may put dominant teachers at great
distance in their social panorama to avoid submission.
Some
charismatic teachers (guru's), are admired, are represented very dominant, are
supporting their students self esteem, but are however too holy or mighty to be
represented at close range. When such a guru is seen very far away
identification is impossible. Still the observation and storage of the
behavioural examples will be great. Also the uptake of information (learning
mode 1) will be optimal. Students may memorize every utterance and expression
of such a guru. However, they will only be able to reproduce this knowledge in
the form of citations: `What he said was... And than he looked like that... He
responded by saying...' Never the student will reproduce this wisdom as were he
the owner. At the time the guru loses face, and is pulled down from his
pedestal, can be at once forgotten.
Charismatic
trainers that are to far away to identify with will do very good business.
Their students will never fully learn what they teach, because of the lack of
identification. So they always have to be back for more.
Peer
learning
Trainers
often underestimate the power of peers in training. This may change when they
are confronted with groups that demonstrate their skill in a testing, and show
systematic aberrations. When all students make the same mistakes, these are
often the result of peers who were strong identification models. The influence
of `the near peer' is great because he is easy to identify with.
When a peer
is represented as insignificant in someone’s social panorama (small and far
off) identification learning will be absent, even if he is a great performer.
Conclusion
With the aid
of the distinctions that were made in this
Article, an
NLP trainer can understand why his demonstrations work. The interaction between
trainer and trainee has an ongoing influence on how the trainee puts the
trainer in his social panorama. Being aware of the relational effect of your
interventions, will add something very powerful to you work. On the one hand it
becomes easy to understand why a certain trainee does not learn by
identification, on the other it will not be so hard to invent a response to
that to improve on that. We as trainers may ask ourselves: What did I do that
caused counter-identification? What can I do to reverse that?
If a student
cannot identify with his teacher, this can have many reasons: among them are
cultural, racial, age, gender or status defences that a student is not able to
bridge. Often this difficulty works in both directions; the teacher cannot
identify with the student either.
When we
believe that identification learning is important, and even the most important
learning mode, we will need to intervene when the teacher and the student don't
match. Have the student choose his teacher at any time!
If this
choice is not an option, it must be the teacher who must bridge the gab. Maybe
the teacher still finds a way to identify with his students.
Take some
time to explore second perceptual position with your trainees before you start
is my general advice.
For the
rest: Draw your own conclusions!
For background
information about the theories in this article you can visit
www.socialpanorama.com or read the book `Sociale Denkpatronen'
Lucas A.C.
Derks is a social psychologist who fell in love with Bandler and Ginder's work
in 1977. He is an internationally active NLP trainer who developed the social
panorama model.