9. Gestalt: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. ↑

metanymous 22 октября 2016, 15:40 в посте Metapractice (оригинал в ЖЖ)

9. Gestalt: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

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This is one that can have such misleading connotations as ‘big is better’. In my work with gangs, dysfunctional teams and organisations it is clear that the opposite is the case - the whole is less than the sum of the parts. I’m a little embarrassed to think how many years it took me to work this out (however I am somewhat consoled by the fact that no one else I have met has realised it until I tell them!). The accurate conclusion is that the whole is different from the sum of its parts.

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I hope that this is enough to stimulate for now. The others will be clarified in future articles.

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In this article I have outlined some of the beginnings of ‘re-modelling’ NLP to make it more effective, efficient and elegant. In future articles I will go into more depth on each of the main elements of practitioner and master practitioner level NLP. I hope that this will encourage an open and developmental approach to NLP through constructive criticism. Only if this happens can NLP continue as a field of study rather than becoming a dead technology. By demonstrating openness to learning and development in our own thinking and behaviour we offer our clients a deeper pattern of successful behaviour, one that will benefit them beyond the range of any particular technique.

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Since the introduction of sub-modalities in the early 80’s there has been little in the way of major developments of the NLP model. There have been many developments beyond NLP; chaos theory, fractal structures, fuzzy logic to name a few. As Bateson said in the introduction to Magic I “But, indeed, much that was so difficult to say in 1955 is strikingly easier to say in 1975" p xi. We have moved on a lot since 1975.

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Part two of this series will be “Re-Modelling the Meta and Milton models” and include a simple model of conversational belief change that is also a basis for constructive questioning of NLP.