Steve Andreas > Books Authored > Six Blind Elephants > Chapter 12

Introduction

A chicken and a pig are passing a restaurant
where they see a sign in the window that says,
�Ham and eggs; donations wanted.�
The chicken says to the pig,
�Let�s go in and make a donation.�
The pig says,
�Look, for you, it�s a donation; for me it�s a total commitment!�

In the science-fiction novel Babel 17, the protagonist is a linguist who is fluent in over 80 very different languages. When she is faced with a problem that she can�t solve, she translates her understanding of the situation into another language, and then another, and another, ... until she finds a language in which the description makes a solution apparent.

Mathematicians do much the same kind of thing when they transform a mathematical expression in a variety of ways, according to established rules and procedures, until it is in a form in which it is easier to solve or understand, or yields insights into other problems.

Earlier we explored how a scope change alone (smaller, larger, overlapping, or different) can result in a recategorization. Changing scope is a content-free intervention, because any recategorization emerges completely out of that person�s values, criteria, assumptions, etc. This avoids the possibility of imposing someone else�s values, criteria, or assumptions.

You can also directly or indirectly suggest a recategorization that you think might be more useful. This is not a content-free intervention, because any recategorization comes from outside the person, and always carries some values, criteria, or assumptions with it. This can often be very useful, because the client might never think of a useful recategorization on their own. However, when offering a recategorization, you need to be very careful to check that the client finds it appropriate and useful.

Since most words refer to categories, simply changing the words that you use to describe or define an experience is one way to change how it�s categorized. Usually it is most effective to redescribe problem events in ways that emphasize strengths rather than weaknesses. �Stubbornness� can be described as �a strong ability to stand firm on things;� �Passive� can be redescribed as �being respectful of others� needs,� etc. This process was prominent in the work of Virginia Satir, and is a major focus of Strengths Based, or Solution Focused approaches.

However, sometimes a client doesn�t realize that something that they think of as a good solution is actually a serious problem that causes them a lot of difficulties. In that case, redescribing it as a problem can be useful in motivating them to change it. An authoritarian parent who is always telling their kids what to do may be chagrined to realize that they are teaching their kids to obey outside authority, rather than developing the kinds of stable internal values that the parent believes are so important.

You can recategorize an experience in a variety of different ways, and these are some additional categories of what have been called �refraining,� or the NLP �sleight-of-mouth� patterns. (14, 42, 25, pp. 1226-1246, 26)

Logical levels can help us understand how these patterns differ in how they work. In this chapter we will explore how you can re-categorize an event at the same logical level, you can go inside a category and describe a subcategory at a more specific logical level, or you can go even deeper to a specific example of a category. In the following chapter we will explore how to recategorize at a more general logical level, one of the most flexible and powerful kinds of recategorization.