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

Redescription

Redescription is the most commonly used reframing pattern, replacing an existing categorization with a new one at the same logical level. When an experience is recategorized, your response to it often changes. For instance, the next time you introduce your partner to someone, try saying, �This is my bride (or groom)� and notice the response in both your partner and the person you are introducing him/her to.

When someone has a problem, they often describe their feelings as �bad.� It can be very useful to point out that these unpleasant feelings are actually useful and good, because they signal a problem that needs to be attended to; if they didn�t have the unpleasant feelings to warn them, they might ignore the problem, and suffer the consequences. Changing the description from �bad� to �unpleasant� can redirect their attention from simply trying to eliminate the feelings, to solving the problem that causes the feelings.

In a couple therapy session, the husband described his wife as having been �promiscuous� before they were married, a description that she found objectionable, wrinkling her nose and shaking her head. I said to her, �I can see that you don�t like the word �promiscuous�; would it be better to say that you were �active�?� She mouthed the word �active� silently to herself, as if tasting it, and then nodded and said, �Yes, �active.��

When we would call to our youngest son in the morning to wake him up for school, he was understandably a bit annoyed at having to get up when he would rather sleep. Once a friend of his was visiting and somehow it came up that we would call to him in the morning to wake him up. She said with great enthusiasm, �Wow, you have a personal human alarm clock! That�s so much nicer than being awakened by a machine.� That redirected his attention from the fact of being awakened to how it was done�a change in scope, as well as category�and he was much more cheerful in the morning after that redescription.

For many years, doctors, parents, and hypnotherapists have offered children money in order to buy their warts, and very often the warts fall off soon afterward. The offer to buy a wart implicitly recategorizes it from being an �abnormal growth,� or �disease� or �part of the body� to being something that can be exchanged for money and transferred to someone else. Without knowing how this happens physiologically, it apparently works as a result of this recategorization. I have often wondered if redescribing cancer and other diseases as a �temporary cellular imbalances� might have similar useful effects.

Whenever people attempt to lose weight, they have to use up fat reserves, and this inevitably causes feelings of hunger, which are inherently unpleasant sensations. Far more important is how someone categorizes those sensations. If they think of it as �starvation� or �denying themselves the pleasure of eating,� or as �punishment for eating too much in the past,� that kind of categorization adds unpleasantness to the already unpleasant sensations of hunger, making it much harder to lose weight.

However, feelings of hunger can also be categorized in many other ways that make losing weight much easier. Hunger results from low blood sugar, so it is a sign that you are actually losing weight now, already succeeding in using up fat reserves, already making progress in becoming more healthy and fit. Hunger is a dependable sign that your �abs� are getting flatter, your waist is a bit slimmer, and that you have a little more energy because you have less weight to carry around. Every bit of hunger that you feel is also an indication of your strength and �willpower,� your tenacity in staying with an unpleasant task in order to reach future benefits. Using any one of these pleasant categorizations make it much easier to continue to lose weight. And using them all, as I have just done, creates a more powerful new category with an aggregate categorical scope.

Years ago, when abortion was illegal, and as a result quite dangerous, Milton Erickson counseled a young couple who were planning to have an abortion. He tried many ways to persuade them not to, but they were adamant. Just as they left his office, he said to them, �Whatever you do, don�t name your unborn child!� and as a result they decided against abortion. Why did this work, when all Erick-son�s previous attempts had failed? ...

�Baby� is defined in my dictionary as a human being from birth to one year, but �child� is defined as from birth to puberty. �Naming a child� creates an image of an individual human being, and the scope of that image could go into the future as far as puberty. Since Erickson and the couple had been in opposition throughout the counseling, he could expect that they would also oppose his last statement (a negative command), and name the child.

Thinking of the pregnancy in this way made it much more likely that they would keep the child, and of course that is why opponents of abortion always speak of killing a �baby� or an �unborn child.� Since �pregnancy� includes a scope of time from conception to birth, and �fetus� is defined as from two months to birth, proponents of a woman�s right to choose abortion would be wise to avoid those words, and instead speak of ending a �zygote,� �morala,� �blastula,� or �gastrula,� medically and scientifically specific terms for different stages of very early pregnancy.

Many problems exist because all involved are staying within a certain kind of description that makes a solution difficult; the problem can be solved much more easily when it is described differently. For instance, Salvador Minuchin was seeing a family in which a 10-year-old boy was sniffing gasoline. Minuchin said,

�I understand you like to sniff gasoline. What do you think you are, an automobile?� The whole family relaxed a little at this joking recategorization of the boy as a machine, and the serious problem became a bit less serious, and easier to solve.

Less obvious is that Minuchin recategorized the boy�s behavior as a result of the boys likes (�you like to�), rather than as a mysterious compulsion or other deviant motive. Then Minuchin goes on to say, �Which do you prefer�unleaded or regular?� amplifying his categorization of the behavior as resulting from his preferences. Then Minuchin smells and takes a sip of the herb tea he has been holding and says, �I wonder what kind of tea this is?� Then he turns to the boy, holds out his cup and says, �Since you have a good nose, tell me what kind of tea this is.�

Minuchin put the boy in a position of having a �good nose,� able to determine what kind of tea it was better than Minuchin could. This changed the categorization of his behavior from �deviance� to �competence,� at the same time that it reversed the typical presumed categorical roles of the superior therapist and inferior client.� (11, pp. 142-143)

At other times Minuchin would redescribe deviance as being incompetence. Another boy had been repeatedly caught selling and using drugs at school. After making a long list of the many different times that the boy had been caught, Minuchin said, �I�m very worried about you, because you don�t seem to be very good at this. You are very likely to go to prison for a long time, and it is very rough in there; I don�t think you will survive that.�

The boy responded by looking quite startled; clearly he had not thought of this aspect of his behavior. He had probably expected a lecture about how bad drugs are, but Minuchin instead focused on the boy�s incompetence, and the probable results of that in the future, as a reason for perhaps considering some other profession. The long list of times that the boy had been caught created an aggregate scope that supported the recategorization, which was followed by considering the consequences, a change in scope.

Carl Whitaker, one of the developers of family therapy, once demonstrated family therapy with a divorced couple with a teenage son who lived with the mother. The mother was very animated and sexy as she spoke at some length about how wonderful the son was, how she confided in him, and talked to him about her problems, and what a good relationship she had with him. Just after she had mentioned yet another way in which she and her son got along so well, Whitaker said to the mother, as he gestured first toward the mother and then to the son, �So your second marriage worked out much better than your first one,� gesturing toward the father.

The mother looked as if her brain had completely stopped working for several seconds. Clearly she had never thought of her relationship with her son as a �marriage,� and from now on it will be impossible for her not to. When the mother vehemently disagreed with the idea of her relationship with her son as a �marriage,� Whitaker replied, �Yes, well, I�m not available either,� a very interesting communication that at first glance seems to be irrelevant and completely �off the wall.� Before reading on, stop and see if you can discover the very relevant meanings in Whitaker�s response

By saying, �Yes,� he is apparently agreeing with her that her relationship with her son isn�t a marriage. �I�m not available� in the context presumably means �not available for marriage��he isn�t going to argue with her the way a husband might. �Either� indicates that someone else is also unavailable, and in the context, this can only be the son. To summarize, Whitaker is agreeing with the mother that her relationship with her son isn�t a marriage, but only because the son isn�t �available.� (11, p. 140)

In the normal flow of conversation, few of these meanings are likely to become explicitly conscious, yet they are there, and will be processed unconsciously. This recategorization will force the mother to review all aspects of her �good� relationship with her son, and consider whether or not they are appropriate. This recategorization was particularly effective because it was mostly presupposed, rather than stated. Curiously, Whitaker�s presuppositions were always directed toward past events, rather than toward the future�perhaps as a result of his traditional psychodynamic training. In contrast, Milton Erickson�s presuppositions were primarily directed toward the future, opening up new possibilities.