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

Summary

We can recategorize an event at the same logical level using a redescription that emphasizes different aspects of the event. A redescription will have a different deduced categorical scope and a different aggregate categorical scope, and often elicit a different response.

For instance, redescribing �deviant� behavior as �competence� or �incompetence� can make it easier to change, because those words have different connotations and consequences.

Reversing a troublesome presupposition about an event reverses the client�s response to it. Objections to a change are often seen as resistance to change, when they actually provide information that makes it easier to design an appropriate change that will last.

Redescribing failure as, feedback presupposes that mistakes can be learned from in order to respond more resourcefully in the future.

Since many people think of their problem, or themselves, as weird or pathological, recategorizing them as normal can often be useful in allowing them to refocus on the problem and what can be done to resolve it. Exaggerating a problem can make their actual problem seem normal by comparison.

Alternatively, we can go within a category to a more specific included subcategory, at a lower logical level, or we can go even deeper into a category to find a specific example, and work with that. A specific example will have the most detailed information, making it much easier to understand the problem, and easier to know what changes would be useful.

Counterexamples to a problem simplify our search for the pattern of a problem, providing ways to pinpoint exactly what needs to be changed.

Distinguishing between someone�s self and a specific behavior or set of behaviors is a widely useful way to simplify a problem and make it easier to solve. Nesting a new category inside an existing problematic one accepts it, instead of having to challenge it or revise it.

All these different ways of changing a categorization at the same logical level, or at a more specific one, offer many alternative ways to change someone�s experience. In the next chapter, we will explore how to recategorize at a more general level, so that the existing categorization is included in a category at a higher logical level. This kind of recategorization is one that allows you maximum freedom to choose a new category, and is one of the most powerful kinds of recategorization.

�The early bird gets the worm.
But the second mouse gets the cheese.�