What is Suggestion- What is Hypnosis

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What Is Suggestion?

What Is Hypnosis?

What Is Neuro-Linguistic Programming?

Lawrence CampbellAdelaide, 1997.

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Preface

I was first introduced to the internet - The Internet - four years ago, when I startedmy linguistics degree at Newcastle University; it actually took a few months for meto cautiously approach the computer room with anything other than word

processing in mind, but after a little while I began to click on whatever icons I couldlay my mouse pointer on with what I have no shame in describing as a recklesssense of abandon.

I spent nights in that computer room, often only emerging the next day to thesounds of bird chorus in the quadrangle; words such as 'vi', 'jpeg', 'dos', 'pkunzip'and 'ftp' entered my conversations, much to the bewilderment of my flatmates.Several parties expressed concern that I may have been taking drugs; if this wastrue, how much did I pay, and what could I get hold of?But no, I wasn't on drugs. I was caught in another web of intrigue - TheWeb.At that time, I had been interested in hypnosis for approximately four years. In thatfour years I had read everything I could find in the local bookshops and libraries -an amount of books which could probably be counted on the hands of at least acouple of people, perhaps a farmer and his wife from Shropshire. I had readnumerous old and out-of-date 'How To Hypnotise' books; I had read a few modern'How Hypnotherapy Can Help You' books; I had read the university's four volumesof The Collected Papers Of Milton H. Erickson On Hypnosis; and I had read a few ofthe Bandler & Grinder/Grinder & Bandler books on Neuro-Linguistic Programming.I was, of course, firmly hooked by then.So there I was with my interest in hypnosis in one hand and my computer in theother (figuratively speaking, of course); it was time to search the net for themultitude of sites out there dealing with hypnosis and related issues. Search,locate, bookmark! SEARCH, LOCATE, BOOKMARK! I was like an insane cyberdalekon speed.But, alas, I didn't find very much, so I became a slightly disgruntled cyberdalek. As

usual with hypnosis, too much of the little I didfind was either ethically dubious (HiRoss!), tasteless, badly constructed or 'unscientific' (whatever that means).So, of course, I decided to try to add to the amount of decent stuff out there (HiWeaver, Stark, etc!) by authoring my own pages on the subject. I hope I'm doingok; chances are that whenever you're reading this, I'm still less than halfwaythrough writing it - whether this is because I'll be working very slowly or because itwill be of infinite length I'm unsure.I hope somebody out there finds it useful, or failing that at least ethically okay,remotely tasteful, well constructed and vaguely scientific! If you have anycomments or suggestions/spot any mistakes/fancy a chat, email me [email protected] let me know. Happy reading!

Lawrence Campbell

Adelaide, 1997.

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Introduction

What Is Suggestion?

What Is Hypnosis?

What Is Neuro-Linguistic Programming?

Another field ofA large part of the criticism of psychological/philosophical texts seems to concernitself with locating two instances in the text where the author has used a particularword to mean different things, however slight, then dragging him over hot coals forit ('Herehe's used 'unconscious' to refer to a thing, and herehe's used it to refer toa process! The fool doesn't know what he's talking about!'). This I discovered whenI was being taught about Chomsky in university, and it looked very much to me likeblaming the author for the pitfalls of the language he or she was born to acquire,and nothing at all like trying to understand what he or she was trying to

communicate. A good example of this is the strikingly vague word 'hypnosis', whichhas - whether rightly or wrongly - come to mean nothing much more than 'a specialstate of concentrated attention'. In the books of Richard Bandler and John Grinder,co-developers of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, the authors are very fond ofarguing between themselves whether all communication is hypnosis or whetherthere is no such thing as hypnosis at all. Of course, it depends on how you look atit; ie, how you want to define it.It seems to me that there are two ways to overcome the problem of 'vague'terminology in writing - one is to enclose every word, or perhaps every morpheme,in quotation marks (in effect saying 'whatever this word means'); and the other isto include in your introduction a list of the likely-to-be-queried words and thenexplain what you intend to mean by them.I opt for the latter, and present:A Short Dictionary Of Misunderstood Words

What Is Suggestion?

I had to think very carefully about what to call this thing I will refer to henceforthas a book. The books I own on the subject(s) I will be addressing have words likehypnosis, neurolinguistic programming, therapy,pragmaticsand communicationintheir titles; why, then, did I choose the word suggestion to describe my subjectmatter?The word 'suggestion' normally refers to a proposal, to an offering of advice; andthis everyday definition and use of the the word 'suggestion' may turn out to be a

very helpful one. I can suggest you take your umbrella if you are going out in therain, and in doing so I am putting an idea into your head, suggesting it. In a sense,I am 'manipulating' (see below) you; if you pick up your umbrella and say, 'That's agood idea', then I have changed your behaviour in accordance with my suggestion.Also, in a sense, I am simply adding to your choices of responding to the situation.In hypnosis, the word 'suggestion' has lost this meaning, and now seems to mean asort of command given while the person is 'in' a 'trance';

What Is Hypnosis?

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The short answer is, nobody's quite sure. However, if somebody were to pretend toknow, then their answer would probably go something like this:Hypnosis isYou May Be Surprised To Learn That......Hypnosis Is Not SleepThe word 'hypnosis' comes from the name of the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos.

Originally it was thought that since hypnosis resembled sleep in some ways, thetwo must be related. noticed that this was not in fact the case, and instead tried tosubstitute the word 'Monoideism' (signifying concentrated attention), but it was toolate by then....You Have Already Experienced Being In Hypnosis...You Cannot Become 'Stuck' In Hypnosis...Everybody Has The Ability To Be HypnotisedThroughout the rather short history of the scientific study of hypnosis, opinion onwhat percentage of the population could be hypnotised has varied rather wildly.

Ambiguity

'He would throw a styrofoam rock at a patient and exclaim,"Don't take anything for granite!"'

- C. Lankton on Milton H. EricksonSyntactic AmbiguityPhonological AmbiguitySemantic Ambiguity'solve many of your present problems'Punctuation Ambiguity

Analogue Marking

The notion of analogue marking is taken from the field of Neuro-LinguisticProgramming, about which it seems appropriate to say a word or two here. NLP(not to be confused with natural language processing, which uses the sameacronym) was created in the seventies by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.Bandler and Grinder took a close look at how certain successful therapists (FritzPerls, Virginia Satir, and of course Milton H. Erickson to name a few) achieved whatthey did. After studying each person's approach, and amalgamating the results,NLP was born.Essentially, analogue marking is a way of setting an embedded word or phrase

apart from the rest of your utterance using some analogue non-verbal behaviour.This could consist of a change in tone or volume of voice, a gesture, a pause beforethe directive, etc; indeed any form of behaviour that is perceptible to the otherperson. On the written page, a line break may be used in the appropriate place to,or a picture or photograph inserted immediately before the directive. It is notnecessary for this noticing to be accomplished on a conscious level; indeed, it isgenerally held that it is more effective if it does not intrude into consciousness, assuch an intrusion usually provokes resistance.Analogue marking is a meta-pattern, in that it is used in conjunction with the otherverbal patterns mentioned. It is a way of coding verbal behaviour. For a bit moreon this, I'd highly recommend 'Steps to an Ecology of Mind' by Gregory Bateson.

Metaphor

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Traditional discussions of metaphor

Negation

Don't think of an elephant.

There, thought of an elephant, didn't you?!Negation only exists in language; it does not exist in experience.

Presupposition

There are many different types of presupposition, many different ways ofpresupposing. Below are some of the major types/ways.1. Referring Expressions.Referring expressions occur more frequently than other types of presupposition, infact in every sentence there is, by virtue of the fact that every sentence must havea subject. Let's take the sentence"God loves you"

. Now, this sentence gives rise to what is called an 'existential presupposition' inthat it presupposes that there is a god doing the loving. He cannot do the loving ifhe does not exist in the first place; therefore his existence is presupposed. Thegreat debates that have centred around the famous"The King of France is bald"hinge on the fact that the existence of a King of France is presupposed due to itsbeing in subject position. The only sentences which are not considered to haveexistential presuppositions are sentences such as"God exists"- this is because a sentence cannot assert and presuppose the same thingsimultaneously.Referring expressions can be quite complex, such as:

"The confidence with which you have approached this problem is amazing", where it is presupposed that "the confidence with which you have approached thisproblem" exists. To become adept in spotting and creating referring expressions inlanguage, one must fully understand what a grammatical subject is, and what agrammatical object is. In the above example, the subject is "the confidence withwhich you have approached this problem", just as the subject is merely "God" inthe first example. There are simple tests to tell what constitutes the subject, forinstance asking questions such as "Who loves you?" to which the answer is "God",and so "God" is the subject. With "What is amazing?" we get the answer, "theconfidence with which you have approached this problem", again the subject.For a little exercise, how many referring expressions are there in the sentence"Why does God tolerate man's wickedness?"?

Answer: A) God B) Man C) Man's WickednessReferring expressions, then, are noun phrases.Every noun phrase presupposes the existence of something.Nominalizations, such as "toleration", for example, presuppose not only that thereis something being tolerated, but also that there is a being carrying out thetoleration. And of course, if we are being pedantic, that the concept of "toleration"exists...So we can further and further embed these things, as in:"Does God's toleration of man's wickedness justify our belief in him?",which presupposes through its referring expressions alone that all of the followingexist:God Man Wickedness Man's wickedness Toleration God's toleration God's tolerationof man's wickedness Our belief in GodALL of these are ASSUMED to be true in the asking of this question, and whetherone answers yes or no, they remain unchallenged; it requires metacomment to

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challenge any of them. Metacomment is of a differing logical type than thecomment itself; it is a communication concerning the communication, and is hencemore "difficult" to introduce, especially for the child or hypnotised subject. 2.Factives.3. Aspectual Verbs.Aspectual verbs are verbs such as "Stop", "Start", "Give Up", "Continue",

"Renounce", "Finish", and other similar verbs which involve the starting or stoppingof an action. The famous example "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"affords us a good view of the aspectual verb in action - we can see that if the poorinterviewee answers "Yes" then he seemingly admits to having beaten his wife atsome point, and if he answers "No", then he admits that he is still beating her!'Keep Britain Tidy', similarly, presupposes that Britain is already tidy.4. Cleft and Pseudo-cleft Clauses.5. Certain Lexical Items."Too" -"Even" -"Just" -"Until" -

6. Adverbial Clauses.7. Others.

Quotes

Sven Garley, the famous Dutch writer and hypnotist extraordinaire, writes:"The use of reported speech in suggestion allows you to deliver a comment withoutresponsibility, since the comment is of a different logical type than direct speech.For instance, you can talk about another hypnotist's induction, and tell of how healways used to say, straight out, 'You're going to sleep!' and of how that personusually did within a few minutes. This technique can of course be used to goodeffect with analogue marking.

Alternatively, one can perhaps write of a time you hypnotised a client by giving himan induction to read, which said basically 'As you begin to read this, feeling youreyes concentrating on these words to the exclusion of all else, you may begin tonotice just how easy it is, just how pleasant it is, to let your mind slowly, slowlyrelax, relax so that actually you become aware that you'd rather just drift off intoyour own little world to think about what you're learning, and to think about whatyou're really understanding, because that's so much easier and more pleasant thancontinuing to read...'And of course there's no reason why you should stop there..."This technique is also sometimes referred to as stacking realities.

Behaviour Patterns

Binddouble bind theory --- illusion of alternativesImplied DirectivePolarity ResponseReframingRapportSymptom Prescription

The Bind

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"A crack on the head is what you get for not asking, and a crack on the head iswhat you get for asking..."- The SmithsIn Towards A Theory Of Schizophrenia, a paper printed in Behavioral Science in1956, the authors Gregory Bateson (son of the famous geneticist William Bateson),Don Jackson, Jay Haley and John Weakland put forward a theory of schizophrenia

which has come to be known as the Double Bind Theory. The hypothesis putforward, which has its roots in Bertrand Russell's Theory Of Logical Types(amongstother things), suggests that the aetiology of schizophrenia lies not in genes orchemical imbalances, but in certain pathogenic patterns of communication.Bateson et algo on to list the requirements for a double bind situation:Two or more persons.Repeated experience.A primary negative injunction.A secondary injunction conflicting with the first at a more abstract level, and likethe first enforced by punishments or signals which threaten survival.A tertiary negative injunction prohibiting the victim from escaping the field.One of the best examples of this is that where the irritated parent says to the child,

'Go to bed, you're very tired and I want you to get your sleep'. This is, on theverbal level, a statement of caring; 'I want you to get your sleep, I care about you'.However, the child will be quite astute enough to pick up the non-verbal signals tothe contrary - 'I'm irritated, I don't want you near me'. Thus the child is put in amost undesirable situation, having the following two choices:Accept not only that the parent does not care about him, but is prepared to lieabout it in such a manner, orDeny the non-verbal messages which convey this essentially life-threateninginformation.So here we have two conflicting messages; one on a verbal level, one on a moreabstract level. The victim cannot escape the field - a child cannot 'escape' itsparents.

So, a person caught in this type of situation again and again - systematicallydistorting vital metacommunicative messages - is, so the authors say, likely todevelop symptoms of schizophrenia.

In essence, the double bind provides an illusory freedom of choice between twopossible alternatives, neither of which is really consciously desired but one of whichis necessary in some way.A simple example is afforded by a child's reluctance to go to bed; instructed thatthey must go to bed at 8.00pm, they have the feeling of being coerced, and hencewill resist. If the same children are asked 'Do you want to go to bed at quarter toeight or eight o'clock?', the vast majority respond by selecting of their own 'freewill' the latter. It will be noticed that the primary advantage of a bind such as this isthat it effectively channels and discharges resistance; whereas previously the childwas resistant to the idea of going to bed, now he is resisting the idea of going tobed at eight o'clock.The following sections discuss various types of bind in greater detail.1. Illusion of Alternatives.A fundamental characteristic of all binds is that there is free choice on a primary orobject level that is recognized by the subject, but that behaviour is structured on asecondary or metalevel so that it goes unrecognized. This metalevel is structuredby the hypnotherapist so that all responses on the lower primary level arebeneficial, whichever are chosen, and so that there is some type of motivation forthe subject to keep within the boundaries of the primary level and not question themetalevel. If a man is asked, "Would you like a punch in the face or a kick in theknee?", he will respond, "Neither", jumping up a level because there is no reason at

all why he should accept either of the primary level choices. But a child must go tobed at some point, and similarly for other binds to be effective there must be some

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kind of acceptable limitation on the metalevel, although this limitation can be fordifferent reasons.When Milton H. Erickson was a little boy, his father would offer him the choice offeeding either the hogs or the chickens first; of course, Milton always opted for theeasiest of the two, and no doubt felt good that he was able to postpone the moredifficult task until later. We can represent this kind of illusion of alternatives by the

following diagram:

2. The Conscious/Unconscious Double Bind.E.G. "You don't even have to listen to me, because your unconscious is here andcan hear what it needs to in order to respond in just the right way".3. The Time Double Bind.The example given at the top of this page is a good example of a double bindinvolving time. Another example: "Do you want to get over this habit this week ornext week? That may seem too soon - perhaps you'd like a longer period of threeor four weeks." .4. The Reverse Set Double Bind.5. The Non Sequitur Double Bind.E.G. "Do you want to take a bath before going to bed, or would you rather put your

pyjamas on in the bathroom?". The metalevel here makes no sense whatsoever,but tends to be accepted in some cases because the subject just assumes it makessense and gives up trying to process it fully.6. The Schizogenic Double Bind.

The Implied Directive

A label proposed by Erickson et al in 1976, the Implied Directive refers to a fairlycommon type of indirect suggestion which usually has three parts:a time-binding introductionan implied/assumed suggestiona behavioral response to signal completion of the suggestionAn example of an implied directive used by Ernest Rossi to terminate trance is asfollows:"As soon as your unconscious knows (a time-binding introduction) it can returnagain to this state comfortably and easily to do constructive work the next time weare together (an implied/assumed suggestion), you will find yourself awakeningfeeling refreshed and alert (a behavioral response to signal completion of thesuggestion)."Contingency in suggestion also presents itself in another form very much related tothe implied directive; consider'People of above average intelligence tend to respond very well to suggestions'.A variation on 'Every schoolboy knows'.This is a matter of definition; you are giving the subject the opportunity to define

himself as intelligent by responding to the subsequent suggestions. Clearly there

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are infinite variations on this theme, depending upon your knowledge of howsubject would like tosee himself; a particularly moral individual might be told'People with high morals tend to enter trance very easily'.

Miscellany

The Placebo ParadoxLanguage ChangeMetalinguistic NegationMilton H. Erickson: The Handshake InductionThe Sapir-Whorf HypothesisPrinciples of Neuro-Linguistic ProgrammingOne of the best things Neuro-Linguistic Programming has bequeathed to the worldis its underlying experimentalist philosophy; this philosophy has been coded intoseveral maxims which in NLP circles are referred to as the 'presuppositions' of NLP,but since 'presupposition' is a linguistic term, I shall use the word 'principle' for thesake of clarity. These principles, then, are:The ability to change the process by which we experience reality is often morevaluable than changing the content of our experience of reality.The meaning of the communication is the response you get.All distinctions human beings are able to make concerning our environment and ourbehaviour can be usefully represented through the visual, auditory, kinaesthetic,olfactory, and gustatory senses.The resources an individual needs in order to effect a change are already withinthem.The map is not the territory.The positive worth of the individual is held constant, while the value andappropriateness of internal and/or external behaviour is questioned.There is a positive intention motivating every behaviour, and a context in whichevery behaviour has value.

Feedback vs. Failure - All results and behaviours are achievements, whether theyare desired outcomes for a given task/context or not.Is Hypnosis Compliance?Is Hypnosis Manipulation?On reading Erickson & Rossi's Experiencing Hypnosis, one cannot help but be struckby the editor's wish to rephrase many of the terms that would have been quiteacceptable to Erickson: 'manipulate' has been replaced by 'utilize'; 'direct' has alsobeen replaced by 'utilize'; even 'technique' is cast aside in favour of the infinitelymore pc 'approach'! The reason for this?I am not writing about therapy, either, though I may quote examples of therapeuticinterventions. Suggestion is a tool, and it can be used for whatever you like. A knifecan be used to stab a man, or to cut the rope that binds his hands - exactly which

is the business of the man wielding the knife, not the knife itself. This is animportant distinction to make. So, this is a book about how to wield a knife,regardless of what or why you want to cut.I quote Jeffrey K. Zeig, with whom I am in agreement:'"Manipulation" has a negative connotation. However, as communication analystssuch as Watzlawick point out, it is impossible not to manipulate. Interpersonalexchange is predicated on manipulation. Manipulation is unavoidable; the issue ishow to manipulate constructively and therapeutically.'I think that the above comment hits the nail on the head (but remember - justbecause a hammer is good for knocking nails in doesn't mean it's the tool for every

job! :) ).All Hypnosis is Self-Hypnosis

Pick up any popular book on hypnosis written between the twenties and the presentday, and it is likely you will find this legend confidently emblazoned somewherewithin the first few pages. TheAll hypnosis is self hypnosisaphorism's success has

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its roots in two things: firstly, it has the desirable consequence of allaying thepatient's/subject's/client's fears about surrender of will (Does the end justify themeans?), and secondly it's a very easyway to conceive of things. In truth, though,it's not exactly right; even Milton H. Erickson, pioneer of the now popular patient's-unconscious-as-healing-agent ideology, used the words 'manipulate' and 'seduce' torefer to the hypnotic process.

It is, alas, too often done in science to look at isolated parts of a system ratherthan the whole system - as was done with schizophrenia before the double bindtheory came along. In linguistics there is a current trend to follow Noam Chomskyand look at language as a mental state rather than a form of behaviour, whichalways seemed to me like looking at a game of tennis as if it were a mental state:possible, perhaps, but not exactly the best way of looking at things - what aboutthe player's body, the court, the ball? Surely these things are all parts of a system,and surely this system itself should be the object of study, rather than isolated ballmovements or player movements?Saying that all hypnosis is self hypnosis is akin to saying all massage is self-massage, because it's your skin that's doing the moving around.There is another reason why the hypnotist is necessary: what is unconscious is

unconscious for a reason, and will do its best to stop itself from becomingconscious. What this means is, In this respect also, then, hypnosis is a bit like amassage; there are bits you just can't reach yourself.Freudian Ego-Defence Mechanisms

Language Change

Poetry has personification, psychoanalysis has projection, and those of neither anartistic nor therapeutic bent can refer to 'the pathetic fallacy' - defined as 'theattribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things'. Given thepenchant of the human mind for the attribution of its own thoughts, feelings andmotives to others - whether human or not - we should not be surprised to learn

that the view of a language as a living, autonomous entity is nothing new.References to 'living' and 'dead' languages are commonplace, and languages aresaid to 'evolve' as if they were alive.In keeping with this metaphorical view of things, accounts of language change havetraditionally been system-based; that is, social factors and contexts have largelybeen disregarded in favour of descriptive accounts of change focusing on language-internal histories. The speaker's role in language change has often been ignored, orrelegated to that of a 'host', enjoying a mutually profitable symbiotic relationshipwith the language.Are speakers of any particular language, then, to be reduced to the status of'carriers' in any explanations of language evolution? Is this view justified, even as aheuristic? Some think that the 'living language' is more than a mere faon de

parler. Richard Dawkins, in his book 'The Selfish Gene', put forward a theory ofreplicating entities which he termed 'memes'. An enthusiastic proponent ofDarwinism, Dawkins considers natural selection 'too big a theory to be confined tothe narrow context of the gene', and applies the principle to units of culturaltransmission such as 'tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions and ways ofmaking pots or building arches' amongst other things. He goes on to say, 'Just asgenes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body viasperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping frombrain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If ascientist hears or reads about a good idea, he passes it onto his colleagues andstudents. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, itcan be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain'. Dawkins regards a

hen as an egg's way of making another egg, a view which is certainly thought-provoking. The philosopher Daniel Dennett makes a crucial move, taking thisdictum beyond the genetic level, and even beyond the memetic: 'A scholar is a

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the reader (Strictly speaking, this is not true. Propositions do not exist.), and are'made of' neural networks. Dennett, of course, as Dawkins has since pointed out,makes the mistake in having as self-replicating entities libraries, which of courseare unlike memes in that memes are self-replicating entities which are directlycontingent upon otherself-replicating entities (genes). Without genes, there are nomemes. This is the crucial respect in which Dawkin's theory is more viable than

Dennett's or Popper's.Language is an activity of mind, or one may say perhaps less accurately a stateofmind. I believe that Mentalism is as harmless a viewpoint as we are going to get.When we talk of language change, we are talking of a change in the linguisticbehaviour of - and hence the neurology of - many individuals. The lacuna betweenspeaker innovation and language change, as distinguished by Milroy, does not seemso great when one thinks of things this way.To summarise, then: I do not believe that I am a 'carrier' of my language any morethan I believe I am a 'carrier' of the chess moves I know. Books contain no moreobjective knowledge than do accounts of chess games written in the appropriatenotation. The world would do well to understand the errors in thought thatlanguage surreptitiously brings about; Wittgenstein was right. If we are to speak of

languages changing, then we must realise that it is the speakers that change them.This is not to imply that the innovation of any particular speaker is conscious,although it might be. Language is a form of behaviour; language change is achange in linguistic behaviour. As Joan Beal, talking of the great vowel shift, put it:'It's not the vowels doing it themselves, of course; it's the speakers that are doingit'.

BibliographyCarr, P.1990. 'Linguistic Realities'. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Dawkins, R.1976. 'The Selfish Gene'. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Dennett, D.1991. 'Consciousness Explained'. Allen Laine: The Penguin Press.Grace, G.1990. 'The "Aberrant"; Melanesian Languages'. in Baldi,P.(ed)

'Linguistic Change And Reconstruction Methodology'. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.Katz, J.J.1981. 'Language And Other Abstract Objects'. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Lass, R.1980. 'On Explaining Language Change'. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.'What Are Language Histories Histories Of?'.in Lieb,H.1992 (ed.) 'Prospects For ANew Structuralism'. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.Milroy,J.1992. 'Linguistic Variation And Change'.Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Popper,K.1972. 'Objective Knowledge'.Oxford: Clarendon Press. Metalinguistic

Negation

I will base this essay around the examination of thirteen utterances, which are as

follows:(1) John doesn't have three children, he has four.(2) Irrational numbers aren't possible, they're necessary.(3) I'm not happy, I'm ecstatic!(4) We don't like cricket, we love it.(5) Max is not not very tall, he's a dwarf.(6) I didn't read the paper and get up, I got up and read the paper.(7) The bottle isn't half-empty, it's half-full.(8) Our dog doesn't crap, it defecates.(9) It's not stewed rabbit, it's fricassee de lapin.(10) I'm not his daughter, he's my father.(11) We don't eat /temaydoze/, we eat /tomahtoes/.

(12) I didn't trap two mongeese, I trapped two mongooses.(13) The film isn't e`soteric , it's eso`teric.

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All of the above utterances contain instances of what is nowadays commonly calledmetalinguistic (or sometimes 'paradoxical') negation.Laurence R. Horn, of Yale University, has defined this type of negation as 'ametalinguistic device for registering objection to a previous utterance (notproposition) on any grounds whatever'. Metalinguistic negation does not operateupon the semantic content of the sentence, but upon the manner in which the

sentence was expressed, the utterance.And we can verify that this negation can indeed operate on any aspect of theutterance. In example (12), for instance, we see that what is being negated is notthe proposition that the speaker trapped two small flesh-eating civet-like mammalsof the family Viverridae; this is not the matter in question. What the response 'Ididn't trap two mongeese, I trapped two mongooses.' is objecting to is the form ofthe plural. This objection, somewhat curiously, takes the form of a negation of theoriginal proposition.The above example objects to the utterance on grounds of the morphology.Objections may also be made on phonological grounds, as in (11), where thespeaker clearly wishes to draw attention to the actual pronunciation of the word'tomatoes'; since the two pronunciations have the same semantic referent, it

cannot possibly be the semantic content that is being negated.So we see that objections may be made on grounds of various aspects ofmorphology or phonology. Also, as we see in example (18), suprasegmentalaspects of the utterance may be called into question; the speaker uttering (13)utters the same word twice, so again, since the two utterances have exactly thesame referent, we would be forced to view this as a straightforward contradictionwere it not for the suprasegmental difference. So here, although the negationwould seem to logically negate the proposition that the film is esoteric, it actuallyacts upon the stress of the initial speaker's utterance, which is of a differing logicaltype.The nature of the scalar relationship between word pairs such as "like " and "love",and "happy " and "ecstatic", enables utterances such as (3) and (4) to be included

in any respectable list of metalinguistic negations. Two different interpretations ofthis relationship have been forwarded by Lehrer and Lehrer: the 'hyponymy'interpretation, and the 'incompatible' interpretation. Under the hyponymyinterpretation," good" and "excellent " would be viewed as mutually compatible;something would be able to be "good" and "excellent" simultaneously, and therelationship between the two seen as a hyponymous one. Under the incompatibleinterpretation, as might be expected, the two adjectives would be viewed asmutually incompatible; something would either have to be described as one or theother, but not both. Evidence has been put forward which supports both of theseinterpretations:(3a) We're happy - we're even ecstatic!(3b) We're not happy - we're ecstatic!...both of which are perfectly acceptable utterances.Of course utterance (5) fits into this bracket. 'Max is not not very tall, he's a dwarf'.Instinctively we want to put quotation marks around 'not very tall' - 'Max is not "notvery tall" - he's a dwarf'; we do this to show that the quoted item is "mentioned"rather than "used". The instinct to do this also derives from the recognition that two'not's occurring in sequence in a sentence would not occur in patterns other thanthis; any 'not not' in a sentence of English would be otiose unless it was used for

just the purpose of metalinguistic negation. 'Short' would be used instead of 'notnot tall'. And we can see that if we cancel out these negatives, as would be doneautomatically were the negation not metalinguistic, then we would end up with:(5a) Max is not not very tall - he's a dwarf.(5b) Max is very tall - he's a dwarf.What we have done is to split the quoted (mentioned, negated) material, 'not very

tall'. The result is a straightforward semantic contradiction, not making any sense

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at all. In fact, we find that any alteration of the quoted material results in similarnonsense. Consider:(2a) Irrational numbers are not possible, they're necessary.(2b) Irrational numbers are impossible, they're necessary.Lexical incorporation of the negation renders (2b) contradictory. In any ordinarysense, where only one level is in use, 'not possible' and 'impossible' are

synonymous. But here we find that while (2) is perfectly acceptable, (2b) is again astraightforward contradiction from a semantic viewpoint. This is because there is ashift of logical type, between the used and the mentioned, after the word 'not' in(2). This difference between 'use' and 'mention' is best shown as follows:Mark is my favourite brother'Mark' is my favourite nameWe can see that in the first case the proper noun "Mark " has a referent, namelythe speaker's brother. In the second, the name is not being used to refer to anyindividual, the thing in question is the word itself. In the first instance the word isbeing used, in the second it is being mentioned. The shift of level from the used tothe mentioned can of course be (and usually would be, in written language)indicated in most instances with the use of quotation marks, as with the 'Mark'

example above. Thus:I'm not 'happy', I'm ecstatic!Our dog doesn't 'crap', it defecates.I didn't trap two 'mongeese', I trapped two mongooses.In these cases we can see that what is being objected to is the actual form of theutterance; the speaker wishes the term he objects to to be replaced with a more orless synonymous word with differing connotations. This paraphrasing can be have adifferent phonology, morphology, or even be in a different language altogether((14)). In all these cases it is possible to represent the change of level with the useof quotation marks. There are instances, though, in which quotation marks will notindicate the shift of level, because the objection is not towards a particular word orphrase, but a more subtle aspect of the utterance. Thus in (10), we see an example

of where what is being negated is not any aspect of the actual words used, butrather the focus of the original statement. The same is the case with example (7);"half-full" and "half-empty" are not synonymous in the way that "crap" and"defecate" are. To writeI'm not his 'daughter', he's my father,with quotation marks, would not clarify the issue as it would with the casesmentioned above. Of course this also goes for example (1), which is quite a specialcase. In (1), what is being negated is the conversational implicature of an utterancesomehow proposing that John has "only" three children.Of course we must ask at this point whether (1) is actually contradictory; it couldbe claimed that 'three' is ambiguous, or that it means 'at least three', oralternatively 'three and no more than three'. It has also been claimed that threeactually means simply 'three', no more and no less; although this viewpoint is notat the moment terribly fashionable. Horn explains this in terms of H. P. Grice'sconversational maxim of quantity, which states that as much information must begiven as is relevant. Thus the speaker's saying that John has three children whenhe has four violates this maxim; something true has been said but the implication -that he has no more than three - was misleading. So, in the utteranceJohn doesn't have three children, he has four, the first proposition semantically is true, but it conversationally implicates thatJohn has three children and no more, which is untrue; hence the metalinguisticnegation in this case is acting upon a conversational implicature. We see that sincewhat is being negated is not an actual word or phrase, the use of quotation marksdoes little to help us make sense of this utterance:John doesn't have 'three' children, he has four.

Horn puts the relationship between the scalar operators "three" and "four" in thesame category as the relationship between "like" and "love", "possible" and

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"necessary", and "happy" and "ecstatic". A difference must exist, though; this wecan see through the application of the quotation mark test. 'I'm not "happy", I'mecstatic!' is fine, whereas 'I don't have "three" children, I have four' is not. Is it thecase, then, that with 'We don't like cricket, we love it', what is being negated is theconversational implicature that we just "like" cricket and no more? This would seemto be the case.

So although the semantics of the utterance are plainly contradictory, the utterancemakes sense on a pragmatic level. It has been argued that the word itself may beambiguous, such as has with example (6); does the word 'and' have differentmeanings in the following cases? :(11) I didn't read the paper and get up, I got up and read the paper.(11b) I bought a pen and I bought a pencil.In other words, is there an 'and' which means something like 'and then', as in (6),and an 'and' which just plainly conjoins things without 'hinting at' a temporalrelationship? It would seem a better analysis to say that the word has the samemeaning in both cases, but there is a differing implication.As for(a) Certainly I finished some of my sausages, I finished them all!

(b) I certainly didn't finish some of my sausages, I finished them all!,we can immediately see that they are semantically contradictory, like others thathave been mentioned. The "some"/"all " relationship" is a scalar one, like"possible"/"necessary" and "like"/"love"; and in denying that I finished someof thesausages I am not denying the semantics of it, but the conversational implicaturethat I finished some and not all.BibliographyChapman, S. (1993) Metalinguistic Negation, Sentences And Utterances.Newcastle And Durham Working Papers In Linguistics: 74-94.Burton-Roberts, N. (1989) On Horn's Dilemma: Presupposition And Negation.Journal Of Linguistics 25: 95-125.Burton-Roberts, N. (1990) Trivalence, Gapped Bivalence And Ambiguity Of

Negation: A Reply To Seuren. Journal Of Linguistics 26: 455-470.Grice, P.(1989) Studies In The Way Of Words. Harvard: Harvard University Press.Horn, L. (1985) Metalinguistic Negation And Pragmatic Ambiguity. Language 61:121-174.Horn, L.(1989)A Natural History Of Negation. Chicago: The University Of ChicagoPress.Seuren, P. (1990) Burton-Roberts On Presupposition And Negation. Journal OfLinguistics 26: 425-453.

Milton H. Erickson:The Handshake Induction

Dynamics OfThe Handshake Induction

The handshake induction is one of the most fascinating and effective proceduresdeveloped by Erickson for initiating trance. Is is essentially a surprise thatinterrupts a subject's habitual framework to initiate a momentary confusion. Areceptivity for clarifying suggestions is thus initiated with an expectancy for furtherstimuli and direction. In a letter in Weitzenhoffer in 1061 Erickson described hisapproach to the handshake induction as a means of initiating catalepsy. When hereleased the subject's hand, it would remain fixed in a cataleptic position or wouldkeep moving in any direction he initiated. He used this approach as a test to assesshypnotic susceptibility and as an induction procedure. The prerequisites for asuccessful handshake induction are a willingness on the part of the subject to be

approached, an appropriate situation, and the suitability of the situation for acontinuation of the experience. An edited version of his outline of the whole processand some variations is as follows:

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The Handshake InductionInitiation: When I begin by shaking hands, I do so normally. The "hypnotic touch"then begins when I let loose. The letting loose becomes transformed from a firmgrip into a gentle touch by the thumb, a lingering drawing away of the little finger,a faint brushing of the subject's hand with the middle finger - just enough vaguesensation to attract the attention. As the subject gives attention to the touch of

your thumb, you shift to a touch with your little finger. As your subject's attentionfollows that, you shift to a touch with your middle finger and then again to thethumb.This arousal of attention is merely an arousal without constituting a stimulus for aresponse.The subject's withdrawal from the handshake is arrested by this attention arousal,which establishes a waiting set, and expectancy.Then almost, but not quite simultaneously (to ensure separate neural recognition),you touch the undersurface of the hand (wrist) so gently that it barely suggests anupward push. This is followed by a similar utterly slight downward touch, and then Isever contact so gently that the subject does not know exactly when - and thesubject's hand is left going neither up nor down, but cataleptic.

Termination: If you don't want your subject to know what you are doing, yousimply distract their attention, usually by some appropriate remark, and casuallyterminate. Sometimes they remark, "What did you say? I got absentminded therefor moment and wasn't paying attention to anything." This is slightly distressing tothe subjects and indicative of the fact that their attention was so focused andfixated on the peculiar hand stimuli that they were momentarily entranced so theydid not hear what was said.Utilisation: Any utilisation leads to increasing trance depth. All utilisation shouldproceed as a continuation of extension of the initial procedure. Much can be donenonverbally; for example, if any subjects are just looking blankly at me, I mayslowly shift my gaze downward, causing them to look at their hand, which I touchand say "look at this spot.". This intensifies the trance state. Then, whether the

subjects are looking at you or at their hand or just staring blankly, you can useyour left hand to touch their elevated right hand from above or the side - so long asyou merely give the suggestion of downward movement. Occasionally a downwardnudge or push is required. If a strong push or nudge is required, check foranaesthesia.There are several colleagues who won't shake hands with me unless I reassurethem first, because they developed a profound glove anaesthesia when I used thisprocedure on them. I shook hands with them, looked them in the eyes, slowly yetrapidly immobilised my facial expression, and then focused my eyes on a spot farbehind them. I then slowly and imperceptibly removed my hand from theirs andslowly moved to one side out of their direct line of vision. I have had it describedvariously, but the following is one of the most graphic. "I had heard about you andI wanted to meet you and you looked so interested and you shook hands sowarmly. All of a sudden my arm was gone and your face changed and got so faraway. Then the left side of your face, until that slowly vanished also.". At thatmoment the subject's eyes were fixed straight ahead, so that when I moved to theleft out to his line of vision, the left side of my face "disappeared" first and then theright side also. "Your face slowly came back, you came close and smiled and saidyou would like to use me Saturday afternoon. Then I noticed my hand and askedyou about it because I couldn't feel my whole arm... you just said to keep it thatway just a little while for the experience."You give the elevated right hand (now cataleptic in the handshake position) thesuggestion of a downward movement with a light touch. At the same time, withyour other hand, you give a gentle touch indicating an upward movement for thesubject's left hand. Then you have his left hand lifting, right hand lowering. When

right hand reaches the lap, it will stop. The upward course of the left hand maystop or it may continue. I am likely to give it another touch and direct it toward the

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face so that some part will touch one eye. That effects eye closure and is veryeffective in inducing a deep trance without a single word having been spoken.There are other nonverbal suggestions. for example, what if my subject make noresponse to my efforts with his right hand and the situation looks hopeless? If he isnot looking at my face, my slow, gentle out-of-keeping-with-the-situationmovements (remember: out-of-keeping) compel him to look at my face. I freeze

my expression, refocus my gaze, and by slow head movements direct his gaze tohis left hand, toward which my right hand is slowly, apparently purposelesslymoving. As my right hand touches his left with a slight, gentle, upward movement,my left hand with very gentle firmness, just barely enough, presses down on hisright hand for a moment until it moves. Thus, I confirm and reaffirm the downwardmovement of his right hand, a suggestion he accepts along with the tactilesuggestion of left hand levitation. This upward movement is augmented by the factthat he has been breathing in time with me and that my right hand gives his lefthand that upward touch at the moment when he is beginning an inspiration. This isfurther reinforced by whatever peripheral vision he has that notes the upwardmovement of my body as I inhale and as I slowly lift my body and head up andbackward, when I give his left hand that upward touch."

Erickson's description of his handshake induction is s bit breathtaking to thebeginner. How does one keep all of that in mind? How does one develop such agentle touch and such skill? Above all, how does one learn to utilise whateverhappens in the situation as a means of further focusing the subject's attention andinner involvement so that trance develops? Obviously a certain amount ofdedication and patience are required to develop such skill. It is much more than amatter of simply shaking hands in a certain way. Shaking hands is simply a contextin which Erickson makes contact with a person. He then utilises this context to fixattention inward and so set the situation for that possible development of trance.As he shakes hands, Erickson is himself fully focused on where the subject'sattention is. Initially the subjects' attention is on a conventional social encounter,then, with the unexpected touches as their hand is released, there is a momentary

confusion and their attention is rapidly focused on his hand. At this point "resistant"subjects might rapidly withdraw their hand and end the situation. Subjects who areready to experience trance will be curious about what is happening. Their attentionis fixed and they remain open and ready for further directing stimuli. The directingtouches are so gentle and unusual that subjects' cognition has no way of evaluatingthem; the subjects have been given a rapid series of nonverbal cues to keep theirhand fixed in one position (see last paragraph of the initiation), but they are notaware of it. Their hand responds to the directing touches for immobility, but theydo not know why. It is simply a case of an automatic response on the kinestheticlevel that initially defies conscious analysis because the subjects have had noprevious experience with it. The directing touches for movement are responded toon the same level, with a similar gap in awareness and understanding.The subjects find themselves responding in an unusual way without knowing why.Their attention is now directed inward in an intense search for an answer or forsome orientation. This inner direction and search is the basic nature of "trance".Subjects may become so preoccupied in their inner search that the usual sensory-perceptual processes of our normal reality orientation are momentarily suspended.The subjects may then experience an anaesthesia, a lacuna in vision or audition, atime distortion, a deja vu, a sense of disorientation or vertigo, and so on. At thismoment the subjects are open for further verbal or nonverbal suggestions that canintensify the inner search (trance) in one direction or another.[From Erickson M.H., Rossi E. & Rossi S. Hypnotic Realities. New York:Irvington, 1976.]

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

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'He gave man speech, and speech created thought,Which is the measure of the universe'

- Prometheus Unbound,Shelley

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as we know it today can be broken down into two basicprinciples: linguistic determinismand linguistic relativity.

Linguistic Determinism: A DefinitionLinguistic Determinism refers to the idea that the language we use to some extentdetermines the way in which we view and think about the world around us. Theconcept has generally been divided into two separate groups - 'strong' determinismand 'weak' determinism. Strong determinism is the extreme version of the theory,stating that language actually determinesthought, that language and thought areidentical. Although this version of the theory would attract few followers today -since it has strong evidence against it, including the possibility of translationbetween languages - we will see that in the past this has not always been the case.Weak determinism, however, holds that thought is merely affected by or influencedby our language, whatever that language may be. This version of determinism iswidely accepted today.

Wilhelm von Humboldt: The 'Weltanschauung' Hypothesis.Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) was the first European to combine a knowledgeof various languages with a philosophical background; he equated language andthought exactly in a hypothesis we now call the 'Weltanschauung' (world-view)hypothesis, in fact a version of the extreme form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.Humboldt maintained that language actually determined thought:Der mensch lebt mit den Gegenstnden hauptschlich, ja...sogar ausschliesslich so,wie die Sprache sie ihm zufhrt."Humboldt viewed thought as being impossible without language, language ascompletely determining thought. On closer inspection, we can see that this extremehypothesis leads to a question: how, if there was no thought before language, didlanguage arise in the first place? Humboldt answers this by adhering to the theory

that language is a platonic object, comparable to a living organism which justsuddenly evolved one day entirely of its own accord.Linguistic Relativity: A DefinitionLinguistic relativity states that distinctions encoded in one language are unique tothat language alone, and that "there is no limit to the structural diversity oflanguages". If one imagines the colour spectrum, it is a continuum, each colourgradually blending into the next; there are no sharp boundaries. But we imposeboundaries; we talk of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. It takeslittle thought to realise that these discriminations are arbitrary - and indeed in otherlanguages the boundaries are different. In neither Spanish, Italian nor Russian isthere a word that corresponds to the English meaning of 'blue', and likewise inSpanish there are two words 'esquina' and 'rincon', meaning an inside and anoutside corner, which necessitate the use of more than one word in English toconvey the same concept. These examples show that the language we use,whichever it happens to be, divides not only the colour spectrum, but indeed ourwhole reality, which is a 'kaleidoscopic flux of impressions', into completelyarbitrary compartments.The Notion of CodabilityCodability has been defined by Peter Herriot as 'the ease with which a language tagcan be used to distinguish one item from another'. Something is codable if it fallswithin the scope of readily available terms used in whatever particular language.Degrees of codability vary, in that while one language may be capable ofexpressing a concept with just one word, in another may be necessary to use awhole phrase to get across the same notion; a famous example of this is the factthat in Eskimo there are many different words for snow, depending on which kind of

snow one is talking about.

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If we are looking for evidence to prove the weak version of linguistic determinism,then we need look no further than various experiments that have been conductedaround codability. For example, monolingual speakers of an American-Indianlanguage called Zuni - a language which does not recognise any difference betweenyellow and orange - had more difficulty in re-identifying objects of such coloursafter a period of time. With monolingual English speakers, this difficulty is absent,

since we make a verbal distinction.This only offers support for the weak version of the hypothesis, though, because itwould be wrong to say that the Zuni speakers did not actuallyperceivea difference.So the more highly codable a concept is, the easier it is to retrieve from theunconscious. This we will come back to later when considering the relationshipbetween a Freudian theory and linguistic determinism.The Notion of TranslatabilityClosely related to the notion of codability is the notion of translatability. Althoughdifferent languages may have different ways of dividing up their spectra ofexperience into verbal forms, we find it is still quite possible to translate from onelanguage into another. Although someone translating from one language intoanother may find it necessary to use a whole phrase in the target language to

communicate the concept expressed in the original language with only a singleword, this is achievable. In the Australian aboriginal language Pinupti, the word'katarta' refers to the hole left by a goanna when it has broken the surface of itsburrow after hibernation. It takes seventeen words to translate that concept intoEnglish, but the result is fine, lacking perhaps some of the conciseness but none ofthe subtlety of the Pinupti word.Of course inter-language translatability again offers evidence against the strongversion of determinism. The differences between the lexicons of individuals wouldcarry great import. I know the meaning of the word 'saltatoria'; the person sittingnext to me word-processing a dissertation on paediatrics would probably not knowthe meaning of it. This does not, of course, mean that I would be unable to explainto him what it meant. Of course another thing to bear in mind is the fact that words

are often borrowed from one language into another, for instance the Frenchborrowing 'le weekend' from English. This sort of borrowing would be impossible iflanguage determined thought completely. And if we look just a little further, itbecomes obvious that if it was true that language dictated thought, and thatconcepts were untranslatable, then children would be incapable of learninglanguage at all; for how would a child learn its first word?Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf'Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of

social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of theparticular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.

It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without theuse of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific

problems of communication and reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "realworld" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of thegroup.'This famous passage from the American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir(1884-1936)'s 'The Status Of Linguistics As A Science', written in 1929,demonstrates the dominating thought of what has come to be called by all sorts ofnames including the 'Sapir-Whorf hypothesis', the 'Whorfian hypothesis' and moreplainly the 'Linguistic Relativity hypothesis'. We can see the reason for the varietyof titles for the hypothesis - as well as the influence Sapir must have had on hispupil Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) - if we look at the following passage fromWhorf himself, which propounds much the same viewpoint:'We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories

and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there

because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world ispresented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organised by our

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minds - and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cutnature up, organise it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largelybecause we are parties to an agreement that holds throughout our speechcommunity and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, ofcourse, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; wecannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organisation and classification of data

which the agreement decrees.'Surprisingly, though, neither Sapir or Whorf made it very clear whether they werearguing for strong or weak determinism. At times we are "at the mercy of"whatever language we speak, while at others our linguistic habits simply"predispose certain choices of interpretation".Whorf, originally a 'fire prevention engineer' by trade, spent a lot of his timestudying the language of the Hopi Indians of Arizona, who make no distinction intheir language between past, present and future tenses; where in English it seemsnatural to distinguish between 'I see the girl', 'I saw the girl' and 'I will see the girl',this is not an option in Hopi. This apparently made quite an impression on Whorf,who imagined that the scientists of the day and the Hopi must see the world verydifferently...although the philosopher Max Black considers that 'they may be

expected to have pretty much the same concept of time that we have' in spite ofthis. And Whorf himself notices, 'The Hopi language is capable of accounting for anddescribing correctly all observable phenomena of the universe'. Anothercharacteristic of the Hopi tongue is that there is just a single word - 'masa'ytaka' -for everything that flies, including insects, aeroplanes and pilots.Freud'The question 'How does a thing become conscious?' could be put moreadvantageously thus: 'How does a thing become pre-conscious?'. And the answerwould be: 'By coming into connexion with the verbal images that correspond to it'.This quotation from Freud's book 'The Ego and the Id' helps us make what Iconsider to be a helpful distinction when talking about the influence of language onthought: whether we are talking about conscious or unconscious thought. I have

suspected for a long time that language actually gives rise to consciousness, tothought that is available to conscious introspection; thought of an unconsciousnature takes place, I believe, from the day we are born, as the cognitive facultiesexercise themselves upon the world of the child. But it is only when the child learnsthe meaning of words, learns to associate them with concepts, that he or shebecomes 'conscious', in the sense of becoming aware of his/her existence as theobject of other's thoughts and judgements, and exercising upon him/herself theinternalised critic Freud calls the Superego. The child learns the words 'good' and'bad'; thought processes become their own objects for the first time.I think perhaps the answer might be that conscious thought is thought that hasbeen given a verbal symbol to coexist alongside it. Thus thought that occurs belowa conscious level, both the 'simple' thought of cognitive processes and the complexthought of say, repressed ideas and affects, remains unconscious until verbalcorrespondences are found. More importantly, conscious thought may be thought ofas unconscious thought that has been given access to consciousness through theuse of verbal symbolia; thus words bring concepts from the conscious mind into theunconscious. But there is a price to be paid: what I believe to be an unlimitedvariety of concepts that could be brought to consciousness have but a limitednumber of words in which to clothe themselves.This, of course, relates to the question of whether language determines thought. Ithink it fair to say in the light of Freud's theory, which seems to me to beundoubtedly correct, that yes, language does determine conscious thought, forconscious thought is by Freud's definition thought that has been made consciousthroughlanguage; but since the majority of thought is unquestionably unconscious,we cannot say that language determines thought wholly.

Conclusion

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Noam ChomskyPresuppositionProjectionA Freudian ego defence mechanism. When Tom Waits sings, 'The Piano Has BeenDrinking', we know he is not talking about the piano...Reframing

Although in NLP circles this word refers to a specificResistanceA Freudian ego defence mechanism whereby an unconscious idea, memory ordesire is kept from emerging into consciousness. In a broader sense the term'resistance' also refers to a person's conscious opposition to an idea, memory ordesire.Zeigarnik Effect

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What is Suggestion- What is Hypnosis