Why Too Much Standardization of Practice in Psychoneurology is a Dead End

 
 

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The reason why standardization of process and procedure does not apply in the field of human work like psychology or psychoneurology, more so is because the human factor is too multi dimensional.

You know, it could perhaps work with very high ethical standards being applied to some, for example, chemical agencies, medicines, medicinals.  Now we all know from the FDA that doesn’t happen – unfortunately, because the human factors come into realm as well, and change and skew studies, and leave out information.  And if any of you saw the Dallas Buyers Club that just came out, that’s a good example. However, that’s even more so. There’s something we used to say in the ancient seminaries and Yeshiva in Israel – they’d say it’s a call to homer.  Even more so this principle applies when it comes to the work of some genius like, for example, Virginia Satir.

VirginiaSatirLet’s say she has a specific method that used often in NLP for a cure for a phobia.  If she applies that process, then when you put her in front of one client or patient, she’s going to do specific things to build rapport with them that are unique to that patient and only unique to that patient.  She’ll not act the same way to the next person you bring in.  She’ll do specific things to kind of connect to them, to calibrate, to build rapport and they will often be gut or instinctual, which is another way of saying that they’re unconsciously competent in what they do. She’s unconsciously competent. She’s calibrated and guided, into her gut – which is the way we teach at BU.

To kind of get learnings on the deeper unconscious level, so that you naturally will be able to pull these things out in way more efficient and more powerful and more rapid and elegantly than you could ever do trying to just break down the factors in your mind. People have tried to take what Virginia Satir or Milton Erickson did naturally because they had those resources integrated and tried to, with their mind, produce the same results, and virtually no one ever has even come close when they’ve gone about it that way. That’s why the founder of NLP Richard Bandler (one of the main founders or cofounder) will generally really favor what we call large chunk learning.  Which is another way of saying he teaches you by basically working on giving you skills that are on the unconscious level. A lot of people that go to Richard’s seminars will often say, oh, I can’t really repeat what I learned, I can’t really reproduce it the same way.  He does give materials, but the reason that is, is because he was there with those geniuses himself and he saw the way to produce those results was not in his head. There are students of Richard Bandler that have become very what we call small chunk – very linear and structured, instead of saying, okay, you do all these processes now get them in your head, memorize them, here’s a structure – and literally their students are not generally even close in terms of the results they produce.  Because Richard was there and saw how these geniuses worked. Going back to the example of Virginia Satir, yourichardbandler give her three different clients or patients, she will do three different – even if she’s doing the same procedure – she will do three different methods of talking to them, connecting.  Some people shall sit closer to some people she’ll sit further away.  Some people she’ll speak more, some people shall touch more.

Therefore, the concept of trying to create a standardized model for practice that you can kind of measurement double-blind placebo studies is absurd.  Because the human factor is too complex to actually submit itself to the type of compliance and control that is usually applied to these standardized test.  These standardized tests come from this process of saying, “I don’t trust the human,” “I don’t care what the person says,” “what can we produce regardless of what they say, every time repeatedly over and over?”  And that is just not what the genius of psychoneurology is about.  Every human being is precious. Every human being is different. We are going to constantly, if we’re skillful, if we’re being masterful in what were doing, we’re going to move with each and every child or each and every adult and do what we need to do to create the bond to create the bridge so that they, with their unique special configuration, can take in the information we wish to share with them on the conscious level, and on the level of the heart, emotions, the unconscious level.  That is why standardization of process will never accurately be applied to psychology or psychoneurology, despite the best efforts to do so.

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