Background Information :

About NLP

Choosing a provider

Features :

Competitions
NLP Articles
NLP Exercises
Newsletters
Top Tips
Podcasts

Learner's Resources :

Members discussion forum

NLP Practitioner Quizzes

NLP Master Practitioner Quizzes

Poetry and Metaphor

NLP Book Reviews

Useful links

James Lawley and Penny Tompkins
Review by Peta Ackerley

Target audience: Anyone who is interested/involved in assisting others through problems or issues. Although students of NLP will recognise familiar components as they read the book, NLP experience is not essential. What would be important before using the concepts within the book to enable others, is an understanding of the role of a good communicator/counsellor/therapist/guide when assisting others.

Summary of content: A detailed description of the concepts of symbolism and metaphor and how they function within the human system. The authors then explain how metaphor can be used to reveal and recognise patterns and processes occurring within the system, which is being explored. They then describe the process by which a guide can assist another to explore their metaphorical landscape, placing great importance on the requirement of the guide to remain clean and not to contaminate or influence either the explorers landscape or their interpretation of it. In order to assist this cleanness, they firstly describe the use of clean interventions, which are a limited number of tried and tested words and phrases, which in conjunction with the reflection of the explorers own words, phrases and metaphors can prompt responses from the explorer without influencing the content. They then explain how the clean interventions can be used within a framework of exploration from entry with an explorer to the moment when change in their metaphorical landscape is emergent. Because metaphors in the mind are so intrinsically linked to the patterns and systems within the body, any development, enlightenment, understanding or change within the metaphorical landscape, leads to a change in the system and a different outlook on the problem or issues under examination.

They explain that whilst the processes they describe were originally designed as a therapeutic process they can be used in any context to explore issues within a person's system.

Recommended features: The book is constructed in such a way that it moves from simple to complex in a very fluid motion. Starting with the background to the processes, followed by the theory, and always providing wonderful examples of each new point as it is made. Throughout the book the authors are careful to openly acknowledge the work of others in the context of their own work. All the composite pieces are gradually placed together culminating in transcripts of sessions with clients. They do however recognise different learning styles and the book is able to be used by those who prefer to start with the transcripts, thereby obtaining a gestalt of the process and then dip into the theory at the start.

Personal impressions: As a lazy reader (of factual books) I read and reread certain parts of the book in order to gain as much of the accumulating knowledge and understanding as I could, I didn't want to miss anything out, as somehow the authors have made what is potentially a hugely complex subject appear so simple. Having been on a 1 days introduction to Clean Language a couple of years ago, and having incorporated the odd interventions into my communication repertoire, it was interesting that when a question was prompted by parts of the dialogue which referred to my own experiences, the next few words, without fail produced an answer to the question in my mind. What really makes the book for me is the obvious wealth of practical experience possessed by the authors and for me subjects like this need to live by being used, so onwards to the follow on seminar……………

Peta Ackerley
November 2004