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

Reversing presuppositions

Whitaker�s recategorization is an example of a more general pattern, reversing someone�s presuppositions about an event from good to bad or vice versa. For example, one of Connirae Andreas� clients was not getting what she wanted sexually from her husband. Her reason for not telling him what she wanted was that she thought that would be �limiting� him and taking away his choice. Connirae said, �Have you ever had the pleasure of giving someone a gift that you knew they wanted to receive? Did you realize that you�ve been taking that choice away from your husband? You haven�t told him clearly what you want, so you�re limiting him from giving it to you, even if he wants to. If you tell him what you want, then at least he has the choice of giving it to you if he wants to.� This reverses the equivalence, �telling = forcing or limiting� to �not telling = forcing or limiting.�

Peter Fraenkel described a young client, Richie, who kept getting into fights in school:

The other kids pick on me�I�m try in� a mind my own business, and then they say something like �Your mama ...� and I can�t let �em insult my mama,� Richie said. �So I start poundin� �em, and then the recess monitors come and I get in trouble, just �cause I�m always on top, winnin�! It ain�t fair! But I gotta show �em whose boss!� I told Richie I could understand his wanting to protect his mother�s honor and teach the kids not to mess with him. Then I tried the first reframe of my career.

�There�s just one problem: when they get you to fight by teasing and insulting you and your family, it seems to me they�re the boss, not you,� I told him. �It�s like you�re wearing a big dart board, and kids can easily hit the bulls-eye, and get you fighting and into trouble by saying what?�

Richie didn�t miss a beat: �Your mama.� He looked away silently, as if imagining the playground scene, and then looked at me with a softened expression and simply said, �Hell, I never thought of it that way.�

We talked abut how he could �take off the bulls�-eye� and he decided to give it a try. To my astonishment and that of his mother and teachers, Richie never fought at school again. His schoolwork improved, and by the time we ended therapy at the end of the year, he was doing well and helping out more at home. (30, pp. 34-35)

In case it isn�t obvious, the meaning of fighting reversed from being �his showing them who�s boss� to �their showing him who�s boss,� so it was no longer something he wanted to do.

Often it can be useful to ask the client to do the work of finding how what they think is true is backwards. Another client of Connirae�s complained that she couldn�t have a relationship with a man because she had personal flaws, which would eventually cause a relationship to fall apart anyway, so there was no hope. Her belief could be stated, �The fact that I have personal flaws will always cause any relationship with a man to fail.�

Connirae responded, �In what ways, now that you think about it, will the fact that you have personal flaws and you know it, actually support your developing a better relationship, than if you had no personal flaws at all?� In essence this is a hypnotic communication asking the client to �think about it, now,� and discover ways (presupposed, and plural) that having personal flaws�and you know it (an increase in scope)�will support a good relationship (rather than prevent it).

When someone describes a problem and you hear a troublesome presupposition that you think you have a good chance of reversing, it can be useful to begin your response with �Thank God!� �Great!� or �That�s wonderful!� something that Carl Whitaker often did. Unexpectedness elicits confusion, and an automatic and unconscious search for how this response could possibly make sense. That will often start them thinking about the possible advantages in what they have been thinking of as a problem. While they are thinking about it, that also gives you some time to think about what you can say next to help reverse their presupposition.

Reversing presuppositions is particularly effective when the presupposition has not been stated overtly, and the reversal is unexpected and presupposed. A therapist in supervision complained that his clients always had objections to proposed solutions, �For instance, I have a client who comes in and says he wants to have a good relationship with his wife. I�ve pointed him in a direction, and he gives me every reason in the world not to do it.�

Connirae responded cheerfully and enthusiastically, �Oh! Does he help you in other ways, too?�

A client�s typical response to experiencing this kind of reversal is to grin, flush, and show other nonverbal unconscious responses indicating congruent full-body processing of the recategorization.