On Modalities and Representational Systems (Article)

On Modality and Representational Systems by sleepingirl

Many hypnokinksters are familiar with the idea that is colloquially known as “modality” -- the concept that we experience the world in a way that can be described through our senses. Sometimes this is called a VAKOG model: Visual (sight), Auditory (sound), Kinesthetic (touch), Olfactory (smell), and Gustatory (taste). Hypnotists assert all sorts of things about modalities and how to utilize them, like taking advantage of a person’s “primary modality” to induce trance or other phenomena, changing the way someone processes an experience, or that the language someone is using directly indicates which sense they are using. But where did this idea come from, how accurate are these applications, and what’s the most effective way to take advantage of it?

Like many other hypnotic artifacts, it’s valuable to understand the history behind this concept to understand the current culture and use around it. And, like many other ideas in hypnosis, it became widespread practice because of NLP. But where did NLP get it from? And of course, we must understand that anything we learn from NLP, hypnosis, or any other source should be subject to scrutiny, so we will break everything down here.

Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy

If much of current hypnokink comes from NLP, where does NLP come from? “The Structure of Magic” volumes I and II were Richard Bandler and John Grinder’s first tomes on NLP, released in 1975 and 1976, respectively. Both are written from the perspective of giving therapists new tools to succeed in helping their clients. In fact, NLP is often described as being the result of “modeling” or studying three highly influential therapists from the time: Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erickson. Here, we will be discussing the former of the three.

Fritz Perls is the originator of Gestalt therapy, a practice which places emphasis on how the patient is feeling, thinking, and experiencing in the moment, as opposed to events in the past or future. It shares similarities to the concept of mindfulness, and the main goal of Gestalt therapy is to teach the client “awareness” skills to better unblock them from anything hindering their ability to lead a fulfilling life. This is of course a very simplified explanation, but what’s important to understand is that Gestalt therapy essentially is very focused on the therapist-client relationship, particularly for the therapist to guide the client in becoming aware of their own feelings as a mechanism for positive change.

While they never met, Richard Bandler was hired by a publishing company to help edit manuscripts of Perls’ in 1973 and also began creating and studying transcripts and listening to tapes of his sessions. The therapy study group at University of California, Santa Cruz that ended up being the meeting of giants and early formation of NLP was specifically grounded in Perls’ work. While he never formally studied Gestalt therapy, Bandler very effectively modeled Perls from his careful research and practice -- it was said that he picked up his mannerisms, spoke in his tones, and used his language. Both this idea of modeling and Gestalt therapy itself became foundational to what would be NLP. Hypnokink gets this idea of “modalities” from NLP, and NLP pieced it together from Gestalt therapy and other sources.

As Gestalt therapy emphasizes the importance of one’s own awareness of oneself, Fritz Perls outlined a great deal to do with how the various senses play into this in the seminal work on the topic, “Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality” (1951). Sensory perception was stated as one of the primary ways that animals (including humans) process -- Perls writes, “Every contacting act is a whole of awareness, motor response, and feeling -- a cooperation of the sensory, muscular, and vegetative systems…” This idea of “contact” is essential to Gestalt therapy -- the idea that various aspects of oneself are in or out of contact with other aspects, both physical and psychological (such as physical contact with skin or air, or mentally being detached from an idea), and that these boundaries are one of the primary ways that Gestalt therapists view their clients’ worlds.

Representational Systems

NLP sort of simplifies this into the idea that experiences are processed and catalogued in the mind through many different channels, and terms this “Representational Systems.” The five senses are one form of this. One of the major tenets of NLP is that each person sees their world in a certain way based on how they perceive experiences and information filtered through various things, like our personal history and our senses. Thus, they were termed “Representational Systems” because they were considered ways that humans create representations of the world. “The Structure of Magic II” (1976) asserted several things about this model and its correspondence with language and therapy. A lot of attention is given to discussing how the verbal and nonverbal language people use directly corresponds to how they perceive the world. Bandler and Grinder also wrote that everyone has one (or more) sense that they primarily process through, and that the direction that a person is looking can inform which input channel (sense) is being accessed.

While these ideas became pervasive in the hypnosis community and continues to be so in some modern NLP and hypnokink, Bandler himself actually moved away from some of these claims, especially after heavy research refuting them. For example, while there may be some truth about the direction a person is looking being an indicator of certain mental activity, it was easily and clearly proven not to be what Bandler and Grinder first claimed about a person’s internal sensory experience.

The more prevalent claim is about humans having a primary modality, for example someone may be primarily visual if they tended to process through images or speak using visual sensory predicates (“I ‘see’ what you mean”). This has been refuted by research time and time again, seen in studies about NLP as well as things like learning styles. It is not a terribly useful process to diagnose someone’s primary modality or “Preferred Representational System.” There is no such simplistic thing, in reality, and although it can be a helpful model in some cases, it may hinder how we approach our partners with trance. In hypnosis, we make choices all the time about how to engage someone’s brain in different ways, but the idea of relying on a single sense because we somehow decided they are “better” at it is quite limiting. It also pigeonholes the five senses in a way that is not useful -- perhaps we may say that a swinging pocketwatch is clearly a “visual” induction, but we are discounting the kinesthetic aspects of the eyes or head moving back and forth, the spacial elements involved, and of course the sounds.

However, though some of this information is easily debunked, there is still knowledge to be gleaned from some aspects of how both Gestalt therapy and NLP look at sensory input. Let’s explore.

Sensory Predicates

NLP says that the words we use carry an implication of the modality we are processing with. For example, describing something using predicates (verbs, adverbs, or adjectives) implying sight is an indication of visual modality being used in that situation: “The car is shiny and red,” for example, may be telling that the person describing it is processing that visually. Words like “sounds,” “loud,” and “ringing” might be examples of auditory words, and “rough,” “feels,” and “solid” might be examples of kinesthetic words. NLP asserts that listening carefully for these sensory predicates can help to diagnose a person’s primary modality, which we now know is not so legitimate. But to some degree, this is valuable knowledge -- the person using those words at that time may in fact be thinking about those qualities or accessing the memory using that sense. A subject saying that they love the way your eyes look is certainly giving you useful information -- you know that on some level, they are processing visually, and specifically in regards to eye contact.

Where this breaks down a little might be in the assertion that someone stating, “I hear what you’re saying” or, “He has a sunny personality” is always the same thing (implying auditory and visual modalities, respectively). It is vitally important to remember that the use of language has many different influences; consider that perhaps that is simply a turn of phrase that they picked up from a partner or a parent, or culture. In fact, this is something to keep in mind whenever we are listening for sensory markers -- why might a person be using the words that they’re using? Also, consider that language is an incomplete picture -- just because someone is talking about the way your voice sounds doesn’t mean that they also aren’t processing other aspects of the situation. Don’t assume that simply listening for sensory predicates is enough to a) understand how they are processing a memory or experience, or b) that they are telling you everything that is going on inside their head.

Matching Modal Language

Within the context of a hypnotic scene, it’s not so much about diagnosing someone’s “primary modality,” but it might be about gaining rapport through use of similar language. Matching tone and word choice is often cited as a good way to get on the same page with someone, and listening for sensory predicates is a decent way to look for things that you might be able to meet them on. It might not necessarily be because they are thinking in one representational system, but at least in terms of pure word choice. After all, we are all familiar with having shared grammar with those we have strong interpersonal relationships with. Of course, being terribly over the top about this in a new partnership often comes off as unnatural and skeevy, so it’s about finding a good balance.

Additionally, understanding how a person might be viewing something is a step to being able to utilize that. If your partner reports that “being brainwashed” feels a certain way, you can take advantage of that information and expand upon it or change it. For example, they may say that the feeling of being under your control is like a buzz, maybe something that is hard to describe. You can match their modal language by going in a direction like, “We both know that my power over you transcends words, like there just isn’t the right way to say it in our language, but it’s something that your body knows innately, like a high…” It’s not necessarily about matching words exactly (although it certainly can be), but trying to be active in working with the subject’s processes and responses.

Encouraging your partner to be oriented towards feedback and verbal responsiveness both inside and outside of trance allows you more broad use of all of this. It can be in moments that are explicitly related to hypnosis, or even outside of those contexts, like understanding how they processed a movie that they enjoyed or a fond memory. Perhaps that informs how you can create strong memories for them, yourself. 

Be Extensive

In “Richard Bandler’s Guide to Trance-formation” (2008), Bandler says that “[I]t’s important to match primary representational systems at first, and then to overlap into all the other systems. This way, you expand the person’s ability to take in and process information.” While based on an outdated concept, this falls in line with a good hypnotic principle -- sometimes it’s best to create as rich of an experience as you can. For example, if you’re trying to encourage your subject to hallucinate something, perhaps the experience of being trapped in a sexy cage, you can talk about how the metal feels, what they see looking out of the bars, the sound of it rattling when they move or struggle. It’s not always necessary to be explicit about this, as in, you don’t need to always have one or more from each modality to be effective in a single suggestion, but it is helpful to consider when striving to build diverse experiences. NLP sometimes refers to this as “4-tuple,” referring to the “4” sensory channels (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and olfactory/gustatory, which are sometimes combined).

Another way you can apply this is when a subject is having difficulty fully realizing a suggestion. Perhaps your partner can’t quite get to the point of having a physical orgasm on command. Instead of focusing purely on the specific feeling of orgasm, think about what else accompanies this. The sounds that they may make, how their vision may change or become dim and unimportant, the emotional or mental climax they experience. Even different aspects of the physical experience, perhaps a tensing up or intense pleasure.

Switching (Not Like That!)

One of the ways that NLP uses modalities is specifically changing the way a person processes something. In a therapeutic example, a client may feel trapped by the difficult experience of being rejected for a job. The therapist may note or intuit that they are talking about the “feeling” of rejection rather exclusively, and may choose at that point to try to have them process the event in a different modality -- perhaps the therapist talks about how the client may visualize that rejection, and then take steps to make that visual fade, or some other way to handle it.

There’s a little bit to unpack here, and to some degree this (and other parts of this article) touch upon a concept called “submodalities,” referring to the different broken-down aspects of sensory experience, which we will cover in another article. However, let’s focus on this idea of purposefully changing the representational system that someone is using. Let’s look at an erotic example: Your partner is deep in trance and you are conditioning them to be more submissive and responsive to you. They’ve shyly said that they love your voice, so you have a good idea that they often are focusing on how you sound. You can purposefully play this up to ensure you are working on the same level -- “Hearing my voice to the exclusion of all else, something you love so much…” And then purposefully you can switch the modality they are working with: “It’s almost like my voice is a physical sensation, going into your ears, making your brain melt away with word after word after word…”

NLP says that changing the representational system you are processing with is a way to give yourself new options and choices, and perhaps there is something to that. You are not necessarily taking away the auditory aspects of your voice, but you are opening their capabilities to experience it in different ways. In the above example, you are purposefully giving the subject new tools to work with while they trance -- you can even explicitly frame it as such: “The more you are able to fully experience me and my voice in as many ways as your brain can, the easier it is to fall under my spell, as this is just another way to let me into your head and influence the way you think and process when I hypnotize you…” This is a way to use this idea to build upon something that is already happening.

You can also use this switch as an ingredient to create contrast or mark a shift to a different tone for the scene. For example, you may be trancing someone in a very serious way, doing some darker-toned brainwashing about how helpless they are to you. Perhaps you are saying things like, “You can so easily visualize yourself on your knees before me, looking up at me as though I completely control you…” Then, you want to turn them into a bimbo to prove that control; you have a couple of options. You could continue with the visual modality: “You notice everything fuzzing around the corners like when you’re a little drunk, watching your brain fizzle out a little, a pink hue tinting your thoughts and your eyes…” And/or, you could switch to something else: “You feel your entire sense of self shift focus to what your body is feeling, like your sex drive is taking over everything, noticing exactly how that feels in your head and what it does to your mind to be so totally aroused, how that’s tied in to your IQ dropping…” Using a shift in sensory processing can help emphasize the shift in what you’re doing. It’s important to remember that there are no hard and fast rules here; it’s all about making choices that make sense for your situation.

A Gestalt Approach

Let’s go back to Fritz Perls for a moment here to examine a little bit of what he had to say on sensory modalities from the lens of Gestalt therapy:

“Experience occurs at the boundary between the organism and its environment, primarily the skin surface and the other organs of sensory and motor response. [. . .] We speak of the organism contacting the environment, but it is the contact that is the simplest and first reality. You may feel this at once if, instead of merely looking at the objects before you, you also become aware of the fact that they are objects in your oval field of vision, and if you feel how this oval of vision is, so to speak, close up against your eyes — indeed, it is the seeing of your eyes. Notice, then, how in this oval field the objects begin to have aesthetic relations, of space and color-value. And so you may experience it with the sounds “out there”: their root of reality is at the boundary of contact, and at that boundary they are experienced in unified structures. And so motorically, if you are aware of throwing a ball, the distance comes close and your motor impulse has, so to speak, rushed to the surface to meet it.”

Gestalt therapy has an interesting perspective on this idea of “contact”; it is one of its core concepts in almost a philosophical way. It can be tangible or abstract. Contact exists between the self and others, between oneself and one’s past or present, between your fingers and your phone. The “contact boundary” is the space where that contact exists, like the exact space where your skin is touching the air, or a more nebulous example, like the perceived distance or closeness between lovers. In a therapeutic setting, a therapist might be concerned if they feel like the client is out of contact with parts of themselves and their current experience; for example, “out of touch” with their feelings about a difficult event.

In this excerpt, Perls breaks down “experience” from the lens of the senses, and he discusses the various aspects and contact boundaries involved therein. There is some emphasis put on the idea that the idea of experience necessarily involves many different forms of contact, between many different things, and that the senses must be considered parts of this.

We can apply some Gestalt thinking to our erotic hypnosis by shifting our perspective to more broadly include this idea of contact. For example, how you can encourage contact between the things that you want: “You have a concept in your head that encompasses your attraction to others and your sexuality, all the different ways that makes you feel, with all the different parts of yourself that feel those things.” Here we’ve used some patter to define an abstract concept and give the subject a way to experience it -- a little nebulously and using kinesthetic senses here, but you could get much more specific. You can consider this acting as creating contact between their awareness of their sexuality and their self. You can also shift this contact, for example: “You can so distinctly feel that concept becoming closer to me, as I become inevitably entwined with the way that you experience attraction…” You are creating contact between their abstract idea of their own sexuality and their abstract idea of you. This is, of course, a rather brainwashy example, but you could be more light and fluffy with it if you like, perhaps contact between their brain and your words, and talking about what that boundary feels like as the thing that defines their experience.

In Conclusion

“Modalities” are a useful concept in many ways, and delving into their origins is a great exercise to broaden our knowledge as hypnokinksters. There is a lot to learn from where our community gets its practices, and a difficult balance to perfect between keeping an open mind and being suitably skeptical.

To some degree, our community must explore through anecdotes -- what we do does not lend itself easily to scientific study or large sample sizes. Explore new things, broaden your horizons, and try new things!

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Bibliography

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