THE STRUCTURE OF BULLSH*T
The Structure of Magic II – John Grinder and Richard Bandler
I’ve been staring at the screen of my laptop for some time wondering how to write this post… I’m still reeling, you see, from how utterly boring and charmless this book is.
Published in 1976, it is, of course, part two of John Grinder and Richard Bandler’s The Structure of Magic I – together, the seminal works on communications and change at the heart of what became The Church of NLP.
I finished rereading the book just as Kev finished up work and came downstairs for his dinner. He found me livid – livid! – about the closing ‘formal notation’ chapter. I had a rant to him about Grinder and Bandler’s deranged attempts to reduce the human condition down to a load of fucking triangle diagrams and some algebraic nonsense. I explained I’d become so, so painfully bored I’d been forced to drink two beers already.
“Yeah, they soon fixed that, didn’t they?”, he quipped about the boringness.
Because, yes, in the epilogue (the only compelling part of the book) they state that they didn’t intend to start a new school of therapy, but perhaps they have. And, while I am dreading the tedium that surely awaits in the next two source books – Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton Erickson I and II – the book gives us a glimpse into the live seminars that were creating such a buzz. (As in, most examples of NLP successes cited are from seminars – just sayin’.) By the time we get to Frogs into Princes, the fun, punch and apparent efficacy of NLP shine through. But not in The Structure of Magic II.
Why does this matter? Well, this is where NLP’ers want to have their cake and eat it. Question its origins, or point out that science tested the original claims and found it didn’t work, and you’re referred to the present. But what, then, is NLP? A Tony Robbins book? That seminar where Paul McKenna made you feel a bit better with havening? Your X years of experience as a hypnotherapist doing ‘Fast Phobia Cure’? Question the present, and you’re referred to the past – the source books.
But most of this book is nonsensical jargon? For instance: “Here the therapist uses all his input channels to represent the paramessages the client is presenting”. It is unpleasant to read. I set out to properly understand concepts such as input channels and representational systems as the authors conveyed them at the time. But I felt like I was reading instructions for how to programme a 90s VCR.
I note that Grinder gets top billing, whilst Bandler is billed first in Volume I. I do wonder how much Grinder’s interests in linguistics versus Bandler’s flair for storytelling and showmanship featured in their acrimonious split. Give me a Bandler tale of crucifying a psychiatric patient who believes they’re Jesus any day over these fucking triangles.
The back cover of Volume I is packed with compliments; there’s a reason this book’s backside is blank!
There are glimpses into the future of NLP, though.
The introduction states that volume one began the task of making “the magician skills of other potent psychotherapists available to other practitioners in learnable and explicit form.” Bandler and Grinder democratise ‘people helping’, and, in the epilogue, the call-to-action to tackle America’s looming mental health crisis is prescient and inspiring.
But this is flavoured by the ‘chicken or egg’ nature of their seminars, which served as both experiments on and training for ‘people helpers’. Concepts such as the meta-question (“I’m angry about losing my job.” / “And how do you feel about being angry?” – gleaned from Virginia Satir’s wisdom), and insights such as a feeling therapist at odds with a visual client, must have been very potent. They were therapising therapists.
My hunch is that, at this stage, they genuinely did believe they had cracked some sort of code. But that, in training seminar attendees, particularly in representational systems, at least Bandler spotted that they were suggesting (and, therefore, creating) a way to understand ourselves and each other rather than revealing an innate truth.
So, in summary, we have a tedious, nonsensical book coupled with an electrifying movement of people, and the giving and receiving of miracles and cures – all under the auspices of two wizards. Now what does that remind me of..? Oh, yeah – religions and cults.
