Pseudo Cleft Sentences are similar in function to cleft sentences, but they are formed with the pronoun “what.” They also have a clause that substitutes a noun phrase and acts as the subject of the whole sentence. What I like about them is how they emphasize selected parts.

What John took Mary to was a concert.

She said that what was great about visiting Doug O’Brien’s blog was how much you learn.

What is important is integrity.

Cleft means divided in two. A cleft sentence, then, is a sentence in which information which could be given in one clause is divided into two parts. This allows the speaker to give added emphasis to certain bits of information. Cleft sentences typically begin with “it” or “it was.”

So the sentence “John took Mary to the concert last week,” could be made into a cleft sentence in a few different ways and each would emphasize different pieces of information.

It was John who took Mary to the concert last week.

It was Mary that John took to the concert last week.

It was to the concert that John took Mary last week.

It was last week that John took Mary to the concert.

As you know from reading previous posts, presuppositions are sentences - or in recent examples, questions - that require the listener to accept certain facts or ways of thinking in order to make sense of the communication. Like if I asked you “what color is the car?”  it would require you to accept that there is a car in the first place.

In today’s category we present “the Spurious Not.” (Don’t you just love that title? Who thinks of these things? Sounds like a novelty rock band.) In this presupposition you toss in a “not” that is opposite to the idea you are attempting to convey. For those of you who grew up in the 20th century, spurious means not true or not from the claimed source.

Aren’t the posts in Doug OBrien’s blog not just wonderful?

Do you really not think it’s wrong to steal other people’s intellectual property without so much as a thank you?

I wonder if you are not already far ahead of the curve?

NOTE: In Ericksonian Hypnotic Language patterns, sometimes we are purposely vague in order to be more hypnotically communicative. When we do that we are “reversing the meta model.”

Today we present you with THREE Presupposition categories, each regarding Questions. In each category you presuppose through the asking of a question

Questions

Who learned the most?

When did you stop beating your wife? (I haven’t done that!)

Negative Questions

Aren’t you interested in taking your skills to the next level?

So you say you haven’t stopped beating your wife?

Rhetorical Questions

Who cares whether you work out or not?

What can we really do to make our lives better?

By the way some of you politically astute readers will recognize this use of questions from what is know in politics as “push polling.” This is where a “pollster” (who is really a campaigner) asks questions that are actually delivering information that will influence the voter. Sometimes the information supplied would be slanderous in any other context because it is flatly untrue.

Kave Rove was famous for using this tactic in the 2000 GOP primaries with George W Bush against John McCain. McCain was winning in the run for the Republican nomination at this point in the campaign, so before the South Carolina primary “pollsters” working for the Bush campaign called voters and asked “Does it bother you that John McCain fathered a black child out of wedlock? Do you think such a person would be a good President?” (McCain and his wife had adopted a girl from a Bangladeshi orphanage run by Mother Teresa.)  Many consider Bush’s defeat of  McCain in South Carolina to be the  turning point of the campaign.

Reminder: The meta model is a way of questioning a speaker about their communications to us to retrieve more specific information. People will always be distorting information, deleting information or generalizing about it. The Meta Model helps us to clear that up.

In Ericksonian Hypnotic Language patterns, sometimes we do that distorting, deleting or generalizing on purpose in order to be more hypnotically communicative. When we do that we are purposely “reversing the meta model.” Presuppositions are a big part of that.

Another Presupposition category is the Selection Restriction. In these sentences what is being presupposed is the restricted group that you can select from. In the following sentence, the selected group is females.

If my professor gets pregnant, I’ll be disappointed.

You’d assume that I’m presuming that my professor can not be a male. You’d be right.

The kicker split the uprights in the final seconds to win the game.

The athlete was not a baseball player. (or soccer either)

Another category of presupposition, “Contrary to Expectation” is using the word “should” (or a similar conditional) to express that the outcome mentioned is not what we expect.

If you should happen to not get this the first time, you can join the club. It took me several goes to get it.

If you do happen to lose your place in line, I’ll buy your popcorn for you.

By the way - I failed to label the last language pattern I had up here as being a presupposition. For those of you keeping track, Counterfactual Conditional Clauses from the Jan. 9th post here at dougobriensblog.com is also a Reverse Meta Model: Presupposition.

Herbert Spiegel, Doctor Who Popularized Hypnosis, Dies at 95

The following is an excerpt from the January 10, 2010 NY Times obituary by BENEDICT CAREY

Dr. Herbert Spiegel treated pain, anxiety and addictions by putting people into a trance. Broadway actors sought his help to overcome stage fright, singers to quit smoking, politicians to overcome fear of flying. For years he had a regular table at Elaine’s, as well as his own place on the national stage.

A New York psychiatrist, Dr. Spiegel, who died on Dec. 15 at the age of 95, was far and away the country’s most visible and persuasive advocate for therapeutic hypnosis, having established it as a mainstream medical technique.

Beginning in the 1950s, he described the technique, both its uses and misuses, in magazine articles and in courtrooms. In the 1960s, he developed the first quick and practical test for individual susceptibility to hypnosis; it is still widely used. In later decades he appeared on television programs like “60 Minutes” and he helped treat the woman known as Sybil, whose controversial case became the subject of a book and inspired two television movies.

In a famous course at Columbia University, Dr. Spiegel taught generations of doctors the art and science of hypnosis — how concentrated relaxation and suggestion can have a powerful effect on thinking and behavior.

His son, Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford University, said his father had died in his sleep at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, not far from Elaine’s, where Dr. Herbert Spiegel’s regular table was near Woody Allen’s at what was a fixture of the New York intellectual and creative scene in the 1960s and ’70s.

A trained Freudian analyst, Dr. Spiegel came to see traditional, open-ended psychoanalysis as too costly and meandering for many patients — and hypnosis as a way to accelerate healing, effecting change in some people even in a single session. As Dr. Spiegel’s reputation grew, performers and politicians in New York and prominent people from around the world made their way to his office in Manhattan.

It was in the early ’60s that he filled in for Dr. Cornelia B. Wilbur, the therapist who had been treating a troubled woman named Shirley Mason, who appeared to communicate through several distinct personalities. Her case became the basis for the popular 1973 book “Sybil,” by Flora Rheta Schreiber, and two television adaptations, one in 1976 with Joanne Woodward and Sally Field and the other in 2008 with Jessica Lange.

Critics later challenged Dr. Wilbur’s methods, saying they had encouraged the woman’s behavior.

Dr. Spiegel agreed. He argued that Sybil had disassociation disorder, not multiple personalities, and he voiced his reservations when the book became part of a debate in recent years over the causes of such disorders.

Yet more than anything, it was Dr. Spiegel’s rigorous studies of hypnosis, as well as his easygoing, matter-of-fact presence, that most impressed other doctors and patients.

“He wasn’t Svengali-like; he didn’t have this Mesmer voice,” said Dr. Philip R. Muskin, a psychiatrist at Columbia. “He was a regular guy with this Midwestern accent who explained in a very straightforward way that hypnosis was something you could learn that’s useful. He really took the techniques out of the dark alleys, out of Hollywood and the world of the circus, and moved them into mainstream medicine.”

We would do well to honor and appreciate the great work by pioneers like Dr. Spiegel who, like Dr. Erickson, blazed the trail that lets us do our work today.

Pueblo Colorado Sign

Traveling Hypnosis Road Show

and

OPEN-ENDED SUGGESTIONS

Every year for the past several years I have enjoyed the privilege of working for John Morgan Seminars. Right now, from early January until sometime around early spring, I’m on the road presenting Hypnosis seminars for Smoking Cessation and Weight Loss. As I mentioned in a post from September 2008, these seminars are a very effective means for people to accomplish their goals in these two areas. This even when participants face the challenge of the seminars being presented to groups that average about 50 people at a time. Last week in Colorado Springs we had 110 or so in the Smoking class. This is not exactly an ideal scenario for an Neo-Ericksonian approach that emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual.

How can it work then?

Soon to be ex-smokers in Wheeling West Virginia

I think one of the way it works is through the use of open-ended suggestions. Open-ended Suggestions are ones that are so general purpose that they’d apply to virtually any one. Statements like Coue’s famous “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better…” could be true for anybody.

You’ll hear Milton Erickson use a lot of open ended suggestions in the second half of his video-taped session with Monde and Nick. In the second half of the video Erickson’s primary patient is Nick, about whom Erickson has very little information. Since Milton doesn’t know Nick or his presenting problem he can be nothing but open ended with Nick.

As an example, Erickson says to Nick,

It’s always a pleasure to do good work

and to do good work with good material

It’s a pleasure

Pikes Peak from Colorado Springs

Another example of open ended suggestions are used in what is referred to as “cold readings.” You’ll see this in psychic readings where the “psychic” simply makes statements that could be true for anyone.

I remember reading about an experiment done by the amazing Randi where he took a room full of college students and told them he was going to do a computerized astrological reading for all of them. He gathered all their birth times and locations and loaded it into a computer. Soon the computer spit out individualized horoscopes for each student.

They were amazed at how accurate these readings were. They felt the readings uncannily fit them to a “T”. They became convinced that there must really be something to that astrology thing after all. They felt that way, at least, until they exchanged papers and discovered that ALL of the horoscopes were exactly the same! The descriptions were universal enough to fit anyone. Statements like, “you have wide ranging interests and your true potential is not being fully realized.”

So, in these seminars, when I say to people that they have many patterns that are subconscious and now they can begin to outgrow the old way and grow into a new way, it really is true for everyone in the room.

If you had taken our Neo-Ericksonian Hypnosis class before, you might be in a class by yourself.

A conditional clause is one that starts with “if.” A counterfactual presupposes the negation of the antecedent proposition and strongly suggests the negation of the consequent proposition.

In our example it is presupposed that you have not taken the class previously. It says “If you had…” then things might be different, but as they are, it suggests that you failed to distinguish yourself.

Here’s another example:

If you had worn your tie, they wouldn’t have asked you to leave.