On an Introduction to the Meta Model (Article)

The Meta Model is the early foundation of Neuro Linguistic Programming; it was the starting point for everything that would come after. To understand NLP (and by extension, much of our hypnosis, as the community utilizes many parts of it), we must first understand the Meta Model. It is a bit difficult to summarize concisely, but one way of explaining it might be that it is a framework of how to linguistically analyze the communication of other people, find out what they aren’t saying and what they are, and ask the right questions to encourage better understanding of the way they view the world and thus give them the ability to change in some direction. But what exactly does that entail?

As always, let’s explore with some cultural and historical context to give us more information about where these ideas came from, how they connect with more well-researched principles, and how we can best use them in our kinky play.

NLP: An Early History

NLP includes a collection of concepts that have evolved over time which may or may not intersect with each other; it could be defined as a kind of philosophy towards human communication that focuses on language as a way to broaden our understanding of others and create different outcomes through hypnosis and other methods. It is complicated deeply by the fact that there is no “standard” for the practice; anyone may claim to be certified, anyone may give a certification, and there is no body that regulates use of the term or contents. NLP practitioners come out with new books all the time, often contradicting previous literature, even by the same author. Thus, talking about what NLP actually “is” becomes difficult, but learning the history of how it was founded along with the key players involved helps to shed some light on the topic. There is a large cast of “characters,” all who contributed something different in their own way, so let’s meet some of them.

Richard Bandler and John Grinder are often cited as NLP’s co-founders, but we’ll also be recognizing a third, generally uncredited co-founder named Frank Pucelik. Bandler was a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was very interested in Gestalt therapy, having worked for the publishing company Science and Behavior Books to help edit a manuscript by Fritz Perls himself (the originator of Gestalt therapy, who we discussed in the “Representational Systems” article). Purely through his uncanny ability to “model” or copy behavior and his intimacy with Perls' work, Bandler’s interest and proficiency in Gestalt therapy grew to the point that he ended up running a seminar on it for fellow students. Pucelik was an older student, already having been doing peer counseling in Gestalt therapy and teaching it to other students. Around 1971, he ended up joining Bandler in running these group seminars, and approved when Bandler suggested they invite a new “hotshot” linguistics professor, John Grinder, to sit in and see what he had to say from a different perspective. While Bandler had learned how to model Gestalt therapy from transcribing tapes of Perls’ sessions, and Pucelik had studied it earlier at a different college, they had no linguistic context for it until Grinder offered analysis; thus, their friendship and working relationship blossomed.

Around the same time, the president of Science and Behavior Books, Dr. Robert Spitzer (who was a friend of Bandler’s and was soon-to-be integral to developing the third edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) asked Bandler to record audio tapes of Virginia Satir, renowned family therapist. Bandler’s skill for modeling communication was again utilized as he spoke with her and transcribed her sessions. Satir ended up having an ongoing dialogue with them, the only original therapeutic "wizard," as the Meta Model cheekily calls them, who collaborated eagerly. 

Finding themselves fascinated by Perls’ and Satir’s abilities to create profound change in clients and spurred by the synthesis of their own areas of knowledge, Bandler, Grinder, and Pucelik created a study group in the university to practice techniques on each other and model therapeutic masters. It was here that they began developing their own model for communication and therapy.

The three of them did not start NLP (or their Meta group, as they called it at first) from a framework that included hypnosis; Bandler knew very little about the topic until he heard of famed hypnotherapist Milton Erickson a little later and poured over all of his case studies, writings, and other books on the subject. But from there, these groups often included trance; Pucelik recalls in “The Origins of Neuro Linguistic Programming” (2013) that they would even spend days hypnotically transformed into the therapists they were studying to better learn how to model them.

But when they had the opportunity to actually meet Erickson, Pucelik was not invited and was mysteriously asked not to return to the group. It continued without him, training multiple generations of students in the techniques they were synthesizing as they all collaborated with each other. Bandler and Grinder moved on to publish their first book together, “The Structure of Magic I: A Book about Language and Therapy” in 1975, which formed the basis for what they called “The Meta Model” -- the very first part of NLP, predating the term, a culmination of what they had learned from studying Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson, and others in the fields of linguistics and therapy.

Map/Territory Relation and Alfred Korzybski

Understanding that the Meta Model and NLP come from a coalescence of therapeutic techniques and linguistics (among other fields), it makes sense that it is largely focused on the idea of problem-solving and change through a linguistic and philosophical lens. It begins with a basis or model of how to view the world and human interactions and then gives more technical guidance on how to get information, model experts, and achieve different outcomes.

Arguably, the first and foremost part of the Meta Model and NLP is a concept borrowed from scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski, who said, paraphrased, “The map is not the territory.” This was meant to illustrate the idea that a model of something does not represent the thing itself. This concept has been expounded on by countless others. One such example is artist René Magritte in his famous painting, titled, “The Treachery of Images,” which depicts a tobacco pipe, captioned, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). This describes the idea that the abstraction of a pipe in the form of a drawing, albeit realistic and recognizable, is not literally a pipe. 

NLP (specifically the Meta Model) holds this concept at its core. The way that one views the world is not literally how the world is, and the way that one describes the world is not literally representative of it, either. From a therapeutic standpoint, this is meant to assist therapists in understanding that a) themselves and their client have incomplete and different views of the issues at hand, b) that their job is to understand the client’s “map” and expand upon it to assist them in positive change, and c) they can achieve this through use and analysis of language.

It’s helpful to dig back a little to Korzybski’s work to get a more full understanding of where this idea came from. The full text of the oft-truncated quote is this:

“A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. ... If we reflect upon our languages, we find that at best they must be considered only as maps. A word is not the object it represents; and languages exhibit also this peculiar self-reflexiveness, that we can analyse languages by linguistic means. This self-reflexiveness of languages introduces serious complexities, which can only be solved by the theory of multi-ordinality. The disregard of these complexities is tragically disastrous in daily life and science.”

This is from his book, “Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems” (1933). In it, Korzybski puts forth a model for therapy and linguistics called “general semantics,” which borrows from other linguistics and places a high focus on the idea of “non-aristotelianism”; essentially, as much as you attempt to truly describe something, you cannot capture its essence and you cannot perfectly represent it. It is very interested in the human experience as viewed through language and over time, and how language can alter that experience through understanding its ambiguity and symbolism. Digging into the specific quote and concept: No representation, word or description or internal model, has the capability to actually represent something, but it becomes useful in guiding ourselves and others through the world when it approaches similarity. The original Meta Model takes from this in certain ways -- Korzybski can easily be viewed as a grandfather to NLP, predating it by nearly 40 years. Later and other versions of the Meta Model take even further from him.

Map/Territory In Kink

This is the sort of philosophical basis for the Meta Model: The idea that we are fundamentally starting from an impoverished point in terms of how we understand the world and how we understand each other’s “maps” of it. In kink, it is ideal to think about this when we’re interacting with our partners. For example, in negotiation, how might someone be viewing the idea of a potential activity differently than us? We know how important it is for both partners to be as fully informed as possible to consent to something. NLP gives us a framework for this in the idea that we should strive to delve into what our partner believes is entailed in something. We must recognize that being “informed” about something is not necessarily representational to what “reality” is -- “amnesia,” for example, is a nebulous and ambiguous concept that may require clarity, which we can attempt to achieve through communication.

Even within the context of a scene, this idea of map and territory is relevant. In a really concrete way, perhaps you are doing some sort of guided fantasy; we know intuitively not to assume that the way you describe or view a scenario is replicated one-to-one in the subject’s mind. This knowledge allows us to better work with ambiguity, or search for information about their model, or expand the way that they conceptualize something to better match your representation, or expand the way that you conceptualize something to better match theirs. For another example, you can consider a response part of a subject’s model; if you tell them to act like a bimbo, and they start babbling about wanting to go shopping, you’ve learned something about how they process that, and you can make decisions about how to utilize that. NLP gives specific tools and techniques to be able to clarify information that’s being given to you, discover new things, and facilitate change and expansion.

In general, we can talk extensively about the simple value of a person feeling like they are understood. Feeling “seen” or “known” is a key ingredient in someone experiencing good rapport, and especially within the context of an erotic interaction. If the subject has a sense that you are making attempts in understanding them, it can facilitate trust and a high level of responsiveness. Simply using the Meta Model as a framework to display that kind of attention (if coming from a genuine place) is another way that we can benefit from it.

Generalizations, Deletions, Distortions

NLP expands on the idea that our maps of the world are incomplete by offering a potential method of detecting or dissecting inconsistencies. The Meta Model identifies three main ways that we might run into problems in viewing or processing reality: Generalizing, deleting, or distorting experiences or information, especially through language (which the Meta Model says is a representation of our “maps”).

“Generalization” is when we take one experience and consciously or unconsciously assume or communicate that it represents a whole class of experiences. For a common example, a child has a bad experience going to the doctor’s office and then expects that even a routine check-up is uncomfortable. In kink, perhaps we really like an activity at one point and assume we like it in all cases, but when we try it again down the line in a different situation, we find it to be unenjoyable, which becomes surprising and distressing.

“Deletion” happens if we are somehow leaving out a part of an experience so that it becomes incomplete. For example, perhaps we feel like a partner isn’t as interested in us as they used to be. But we are missing information from that -- what, concretely, has happened that is making us feel that way? Or, maybe we talk about an experience so fondly that we forget how complex it was, like a runner on a high after a difficult marathon.

“Distortion” occurs when we accidentally change the quality of something in our map. This could be as simple as misremembering the color of someone’s eyes, or more complicated, like assuming that there is causality between two things (like having the sense that trance makes you fall asleep).

Deep Structure/Surface Structure

The Meta Model says that we can look for these issues through analyzing language. It borrows terms to describe this from renowned linguist Noam Chomsky’s transformational grammar (although does not perfectly copy the concept) in the form of “Deep Structure” and “Surface Structure.” The general idea is an easy one if we boil it down: On the “surface,” people make speech acts that represent (often incompletely) what they are feeling, meaning, or experiencing on a “deeper” level. The Meta Model also makes heavy use of the term “transformation” in discussing language, namely to describe the ways that utterances can be changed in different ways to express different things.

Someone might say, “We had such a good time.” This would be the Surface Structure -- what is being said. The Deep Structure of this sentence includes information like what they were doing, who was involved, and when they were doing it. For another example, “I really want more brainwashing” might be transformed from the Deep Structure of something like, “I have enjoyed brainwashing in the past with a specific partner that included being conditioned to masturbate about them and I want more of that next time we play.” Clearly, native speakers don’t usually talk like this, as context is an important part of language, but the Surface Structure begs the questions: Why? By who? When? What does “brainwashing” mean?

NLP wants us to look into even the most seemingly obvious statements and see where there might be information hidden or assumed. “I bought lunch” implies that some amount of money was spent and some kind of food was received, but how much and what kind? It may not always be the same level of importance to get those answers, but it’s the mindset and thought process of looking to see how we communicate and how we are transforming our experience into language that matters.

Meta Model Violations/Questions

Finally, the Meta Model provides specific analysis of what language patterns to look for that might imply generalizations, deletions, or distortions, and gives examples of ways to challenge these; how to dig under the incomplete Surface Structure to glean more information for all parties involved. This is referred to in several different ways based on where you look for it -- sometimes this is referred to as the concept of “Meta Model Violations,” where it describes the specific language acts, and then various examples of questions are given which attempt to specify generalizations, recover deletions, and clarify distortions.

It’s important to remember that in each case, simply hearing these phrases or words does not imply that they’re automatically limiting. We need to use our best judgment to discern if the information is incomplete or inaccurate in a way that would benefit from clarity. There is not a need to push to clarify on every sentence, nor should they be pushed in the same way. While the Meta Model emphasizes an increased awareness on linguistic transformations and limited utterances, it acknowledges that native speakers of a language often rely on presupposition, assumption, and frame, and this is not necessarily an issue. However, learning to unify the philosophy of map/territory discrepancy with identifying scenarios where this becomes problematic through careful listening is the main goal.

The examples given for both the violations and clarifying questions are purposefully simplistic as well as spelled out -- regular conversations don’t usually go so rigidly and nor should they. Sentences can often contain more than one example of each of these, and it’s not so much about going down the list and challenging each word you hear, but more so carefully considering how to be more effectively communicating with them.

Generalizations

Universal Quantifiers

Words such as “always,” “never,” “every,” “nothing,” or “all” are the mark of someone generalizing in such a way that they feel or imply that there is no alternative or exception.

Example: “I never seem to get your instructions right.”

Clarifying: Offering contrary examples, such as, “Never? Even when you brought me a glass of water earlier today?” Or taking it literally to the extreme in jest, such as, “Yeah… If I told you to blink your eyes, you’d probably hold them open for the next 20 minutes!”

Modal Operators of Necessity or Probability

Words such as “must,” “can,” “should,” “will,” and their inverses, “mustn’t,” “can’t,” “shouldn’t,” or “won’t” might imply that someone is wrongfully assuming that their actions are limited or restricted.

Example: “I have to take this spanking...”

Clarifying: Challenge their sense of surety, such as, “How do you know that you have to take the spanking?” Or try to get them to see that they have more options, such as, “What would happen if you did or didn’t take it?

Deletions

Simple Deletions

Something is missing or being left out.

Example: “I feel so good!”

Clarifying: Try to prompt for what is missing, such as, “What is making you feel so good? What do you feel that lets you know that you’re feeling good?”

Lack of Referential Index

Generalized groupings such as “they” or “people” signal that the subject is unclear in a phrase or sentence.

Example: “Hypnotists find me hard to work with.”

Clarifying: Try to specify with questions such as, “Which hypnotists? All hypnotists? Do you think I will find that?”

Comparative Deletion

Words like “more,” “most,” “better,” or their inverses, “less,” “least,” or “worse” may imply that someone is differentiating between two or more nebulous things, and/or the standard is unclear.

Example: “I’m just not as good of a subject.”

Clarifying: Recover what the comparison is, such as, “Not as good compared to whom?”

Unspecified Verb

The thing or person making an action or statement is unclear -- a verb that doesn’t describe a solidly measurable action, which could cause confusion or misunderstanding.

Example: “I feel like I’m not learning.”

Clarifying: Attempt to point out what they are viewing, since their language isn’t clear: “What does it mean to ‘learn’ this? What exact qualities does ‘learning’ have in this situation?”

Nominalization

A nominalization refers to a noun that doesn’t represent a physical “thing” -- often it is a verb that has been “nounified.” It is abstract; it can’t be physically touched, standardized, or measured, and thus can be murky if it is assumed to have a single concrete definition.

Example: “I want evil hypnosis.”

Clarifying: Attempt to dig into their model to understand the actual concrete qualities that they are perceiving, such as, “What does ‘evil hypnosis’ feel like? How does an ‘evil’ person behave?”

Distortions

Mind Reading

An assumption is made about how someone else or a group of people thinks, feels, or will behave.

Example: “I know you want me to be more expressive.”

Clarifying: Challenge their knowledge, such as, “How do you know what I want?” Or try to discern where the assumption came from, such as, “What makes you think that?”

Lost Performative

A judgment about the value of something is made, but the source of that is ambiguous.

Example: “It’s important to have a blank mind in trance.”

Clarifying: Attempt to identify where they got the idea from, like, “Who says that?” You can also challenge the information; “How do you know that the people who say that know it for a fact?”

Cause-Effect

An assumption is made that a particular action or process results in something specific. Words like “if/then,” “because,” “makes,” or “causes” imply that someone is making a correlation that may not be a true connection.

Example: “When my eyes stay open, I can’t go really deep.”

Clarifying: You can try to challenge the association, like, “How do you know those two things are related?” Or you can try to clarify the values involved; “What does it mean for your eyes to be open? Are there different levels of that? Why do you assume that means you’re not in a really deep trance?”

Complex Equivalence

Similar to Cause-Effect, there is a conclusion made that two ideas are invariably connected. Words like “means,” “because,” and “equals” could be signs of someone equating things that don’t necessarily relate to each other.

Example: “I’m really analytical, so I’m not very good at going into trance.”

Clarifying: Attempt to unravel the equivalence: “When did those two things start meaning the same thing? What makes you think that being analytical inhibits your ability to go into trance?”

Presupposition

A statement is constructed in such a way that part of the message has to be assumed to be true in order to parse it. Presuppositions can be very extensive, but one way to identify them is when the Surface Structure obscures the Deep Structure of an utterance.

Example: “When are we going to start doing trance?”

Clarifying: Identify the true Deep Structure of the sentence and specify based on that: “Why do you assume that we haven’t started? When do you think you will know if we will?”

Applying the Meta Model for Fun

In a therapeutic context, this seems like an obvious approach and it is easy to see how it is useful. The goal of therapy is to assist a client in making positive changes; different therapeutic approaches, including NLP and others, have different theories for how best to make that happen. NLP’s therapeutic practitioners, including its founders, clearly found something interesting and successful in their careful deconstruction of the language of different therapists. They were language nerds through and through, and so their techniques rely on their strengths in challenging what they believed were flawed structures of the language of clients -- and much more, of course, but speaking generally here about the Meta Model, specifically.

But this applies to our erotic hypnosis in a number of ways; the skill of being able to translate a therapeutic model -- or “transform” it, to cheekily steal from NLP -- should be a coveted one. Whether it’s pre-, mid-, or post-scene, we can learn to listen more deeply and acknowledge that there is more than what is at surface value to what both we are saying and our partners are saying. If a subject says, “I’m really fractionated,” what does that mean that they are experiencing? Are they looking for that to change in one direction or another? What useful information can you glean that may help you make the scene even better? Perhaps, to them, being “fractionated” means they’re deeply engrossed and enjoying the experience; maybe it’s a hint that they want more. It could mean something specific about their process, like physical sensations or a change in their thinking. Do they feel slower? What kinds of actions or questions are available to you as the hypnotist here?

Meta Model Questioning as a Hypnotic Practice

You can use questioning as a way of achieving engagement, as well. Asking questions or clarifying specifically makes someone go internal and process -- a hypnotic act. Let’s look at a theoretical, fictitious interaction to see how the simple act of clarifying and discerning information can be an aspect of a scene.

A subject and hypnotist sit down to do a scene together over video chat. They have negotiated that hypnosis is going to happen and the subject expressed interest in feeling very submissive. The hypnotist confirms that the subject is ready, and the subject agrees.

Hypnotist: So, it’s interesting that you’re focused on wanting to feel so submissive. What’s driving that?

Subject: Um, I’m not really sure… I think I just haven’t gotten deep enough to feel it before.

H: Well, how deep have you gotten? (The hypnotist has learned something based on the subject’s linguistic comparative deletion and complex equivalence -- the subject expects their level of submission connects with their perceived depth of trance. The hypnotist is purposefully shifting focus.)

S: Maybe like… Medium deep? But not REALLY deep. (The subject at this point is recalling previous trance experiences.)

H: What does medium deep feel like? Not really submissive? (Continuing to guide the subject to thinking about what trance feels like, attempting to clarify the value of “submissiveness.”)

S: Um, no, I guess I sometimes feel sort of submissive… Like, kind of floating feelings…

H: What does it mean to feel floaty? (Clarifying linguistically ambiguous information / nominalization, attempting to understand the “map” and use it.)

S: My body feels heavy, but light at the same time? I don’t know if that makes any sense. (Beginning to show signs of trance.)

H: Sure. What parts of your body do you feel it in most? (Directing the experience to an even further internal level and creating anchor points -- see also submodalities.)

S: Maybe my legs? Sort of my eyes, too.

H: Yeah, I get that. Is that also where you feel submission?

S: Um… Maybe? Not really.

H: If I say the word, “Submit,” where do you notice it? (Creating a verbal anchor.)

S: …Between my legs… 

H: How does that feeling compare to the floaty one?

S: Well… It feels really different. It feels kind of hot, and tingly…

H: And medium trance doesn’t feel hot and tingly in the same way it does when you submit? (Redirecting back to trance feelings and attempting to get the subject to examine their own complex equivalence.)

S: I mean, maybe it could? But not usually… 

H: But you think submitting definitely feels hot and tingly.

S: Yeah… 

H: And you feel kind of hot and tingly right now, right? (Moving into more direct language/suggestion.)

S: Yeah… 

H: So you must be in deep trance then. Because you said you couldn’t really be in medium trance while feeling like this. (Attempting to clarify/change the map of the experience.)

This is by no means the end of this interaction -- the subject may agree, and the hypnotist could move into identifying what else “deep trance” (a nominalization) feels like, or perhaps the subject disagrees, and the hypnotist further digs into the equivalence and discovers other associations that they can use, or something entirely different could happen. Note that the tone of this is anything but therapeutic -- there is sort of an idea of “diagnosis” in this scenario, but that is simply a flavor and technique; the subject is likely experiencing some sort of trance shift early on.

Also, of course there is a lot more going on here than use of the Meta Model -- you can see things related to modality and submodality, utilization, reframing, mirroring, and much more. But hopefully it illustrates the perspective of the hypnotist who is considering the Meta Model as part of their toolbox. They are listening carefully and attempting to understand and challenge the subject’s statements and beliefs in a mutually beneficial direction. Keen readers (or those familiar with other parts of NLP) may notice interesting things about the hypnotist’s use of language relative to the subject’s -- which we will get to discussing in a further article of this series, on the Milton Model.

In Conclusion

Really, the Meta Model is only one possible perspective and piece of the encompassing practice of hypnosis, but it may be best viewed as a way to bolster other techniques and practice. It is important to consider all approaches to hypnosis as merely potential tools -- on their own, it may be fair to say that no one tool is more valuable or effective than another, and effectiveness is not guaranteed based on claims or even more concrete studies, more so on how it is applied.

It is useful in hypnotic practice to have a large variety of knowledge of different models to best fit the situation at hand. The Meta Model is a “model of models” and attempts to be one-size-fits-all, but of course, even according to itself, it is a representation of something that cannot be fully expressed in essence.

There is much, much more to learn about NLP, including more about the Meta Model itself and other ways it can be parsed, updated, and used more effectively. As a practice, individual pieces of it make less sense if they are removed from the whole; a more complete understanding makes everything more clear. But see what you think about how these parts of the Meta Model might apply in different scenarios, and whether you can shift your own perspective to include it at certain times.

Bibliography

Bandler, R., & Grinder, J. (1975). The Structure of Magic I: A Book about Language and Therapy. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books.

Bandler, R. (2008). Richard Bandler’s Guide to Trance-formation: How to Harness the Power of Hypnosis to Ignite Effortless and Lasting Change. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc.

Grinder, J., & Pucelik, R. F. (2013). The Origins of Neuro Linguistic Programming. Carmarthen: Crown House Pub.

Hall, L. M. (2016, August 8). Korzybski's Contributions to NLP. Retrieved from https://www.nlp.ch/pdfdocs/Historie_Korzybskis_Contributions_to_NLP.pdf

Hall, L. M. (2010, September 9). The History of the Beginning. Retrieved from https://www.neurosemantics.com/the-history-of-the-beginning/