The Milton Model: Part One (article)

The Milton Model: Part One by sleepingirl

Neurolinguistic Programming has a certain connotation, especially within the hypnokink community. We think of a particularly conversational or sneaky method of inducing trance, dependent on certain linguistic patterns and potentially relying on some form of coercion. It should be clear that this concept of NLP is a distorted one (further distorted by some NLP practitioners themselves who have gone the route of emphasizing sales and persuasion), but it does come from some basis in reality. The Milton Model of NLP is all about considering the words that we use and how they represent models specifically for the purpose of doing effective hypnosis and changework. While it has some of the most obviously interesting content, the way that it is presented by various sources is steeped in questionable theory. Let’s see what we can glean from this convoluted framework and try to think critically about which things are the most useful, and why.

History: Why the Milton Model?

All of NLP has fascinating, interwoven history, but what surrounds the creation of the Milton Model might be the richest, and we will only be scratching the surface here. The Milton Model was the result of Bandler and Grinder meeting one Milton Erickson shortly after they developed the Meta Model (before the term “NLP” even existed). Milton Erickson, of course, is one of the most well-known hypnotherapists in the history of the practice, famously surviving polio as a teen and partially crediting his recovery to self-trance. He developed an effective hypnotic style based on indirect suggestion and observation which has been the subject of extensive, scrutinous study by NLP practitioners, psychologists, and hypnotherapists alike.

Gregory Bateson, known in hypnokink/NLP for his work on “double binds” in schizophrenia among his many other prolific academic contributions over a variety of disciplines, was a long-time friend of Erickson. He was integral to NLP -- he wrote the Foreword to “The Structure of Magic” and reportedly convinced the publisher to take on the project. As his relationship to the Meta Model and Bandler and Grinder progressed, he arranged a meeting between several of the early “Meta” practitioners and the renowned hypnotherapist.

What the group had theorized and formulated about their Meta Model was turned on its head upon their study of Erickson’s practice. During this time, modeling him and collaborating with their Meta group, Bandler and Grinder wrote volumes I and II of “Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson” which would become the formalized basis for the Milton Model. Michael Hall, the later contributor to NLP and the Meta Model, says that studying and talking to people from that time, he got the impression that things “changed radically” after this meeting and study. Stephen Gilligan, an original member of the group, remembers:

“Actually, Erickson so skillfully and consistently violated virtually every Meta-Model rule that it required the development of the ‘Milton Model,’ a sort of inverted pattern of the former.”

He continues,

“Secure in my early NLP belief that all consciousness could be reduced to sequences of three representational systems (visual, auditory, kinesthetic), I asked Erickson if I could inquire about his working state.

‘Go right ahead,’ he said.

‘Do you have internal dialogue when you’re working?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he straightforwardly answered. I checked that category off on the list.

‘Well, then,’ I continued, ‘do you make a lot of visual pictures?’

‘No,’ he responded again. And I crossed off another category.

‘Well, you must have a lot of kinesthetic sensations then,’ I insisted, growing a bit worried in my Carlos Castaneda role.

‘No,’ he answered with equal measure. I was at the end of my known world, like a sailor ready to sail off the flat earth.

‘Well, then, what do you do when you’re working?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, with a soft intensity.

‘All I know is that I have an unconscious mind and they have an unconscious mind, and we’re both sitting in the same room together. And therefore, trance is inevitable!’

I began slowly to write down those last three words, but somehow before I could finish, I was too deeply entranced.

‘I don’t know HOW trance will happen. I don’t know WHEN trance will happen. I don’t know WHY trance will happen. And so I’m very curious to discover just how, when, and why it does happen now!

‘Now I know that sounds ridiculous,’ he continued, ‘but it works!’

I slowly wrote down on my notepad, ‘IT WORKS!’”

From here, it’s easy to see a pattern forming in NLP’s history: formulation of a model, and then contradiction of it, requiring some sort of “update.” Thus we can understand why it becomes such a convoluted practice -- it is constantly evolving, sometimes in progressive ways and sometimes in perplexing ones. Strangely enough, a lot of the material asserts each new update to be definitive, or at least appears to; the principles of NLP itself would frown on that sort of inflexibility.

Introduction

The Milton Model is NLP’s approach to creating a model for hypnosis. While the Meta Model is all about clarifying and reducing generalizations, deletions, and distortions to improve communication, the Milton Model explicitly aims to create them for the purpose of inducing trance, as Bandler and Grinder saw Erickson do so frequently. As many have noted, it is sort of the opposite of the Meta Model, but it also is far more expansive than just flipping the language patterns around. It attempts to codify hypnosis -- and specifically the “artfully vague” style of hypnosis that Erickson is famous for.

One of the tricky things about the Milton Model -- and every formalized model of hypnosis -- is that it is one thing to talk about techniques that work, but it is another to try to detail how or why they work in an objective sense. Because we rely on theories and models of the mind to explain our techniques, they should never be taken as definitive or universal. We really don’t know how the mind actually works; we just try to describe it in ways that make sense to us based on what we’ve observed. We know a little about it, and we have some good hypotheses, and we have some good practical stuff. Where we need to be cautious is how much of these models we take literally -- something that will hopefully be clear in this article and future ones.

So, if the Milton Model is in fact a study of Ericksonian hypnosis, it is necessarily going to be a step removed from how he actually views and perceives trance, and often in NLP literature, they talk about his techniques objectively, as though these are his perspectives. Moreso, they are an interpretation through the lens and model that NLP uses. This is not to say that it is right or wrong, and it’s also not meant to imply that Erickson’s direct ideas are somehow flawless. Just something to bear in mind as we explore various aspects of hypnosis through learning.

The Milton Model is about utilization, ambiguity, pacing and leading, interspersion, “the” unconscious, the nature of trance, and, due to NLP’s focus on language, what words have to do with all of that. In this article, we’ll also be trying to put a little more “Milton” in the Milton Model by discussing some of his direct techniques and theories. In this section, we’ll be exploring some of the foundational theories of “why” this stuff might work.

Conscious/Unconscious Model and Criticism

There is a concept that the Milton Model relies heavily on which we may refer to as the “conscious/unconscious split.” This may seem familiar, as it comes up in hypnosis as well -- the idea that our minds are bifurcated into two sections: what we are consciously aware of and thinking, and what is happening somehow “under the surface.”

The idea of the unconscious mind permeates both the history and current body of knowledge of psychology in general as well as hypnosis. Hypnotists will sometimes assert that they are doing work which influences the unconscious mind and is therefore effective at producing change. They may also say that the unconscious mind or part of it acts as a “hidden observer,” which is purported to have all sorts of power by different sources, even including keeping a person safe while they are engaging in trance. (Fun fact: this idea came from a specific psychologist by the name of Ernest Hilgard in the 1970s, who in the 80s wrote a paper comparing Erickson’s method of therapy to being a playwright and director -- and detailed several of Erickson’s more unsavory case studies.) NLP, drawing heavily from aspects of hypnosis and especially Erickson, continues these lines of thinking -- the idea of inducing trance, to an NLP practitioner, is largely about using language patterns which bypass conscious thinking, whether through the use of ambiguity that is processed unconsciously or trance itself being seen as an unconscious, patterned phenomenon.

The pervasiveness of this idea in modern hypnosis may be largely due to Erickson himself. Erickson was known for talking about the unconscious mind as collaborative, creative, and autonomous on some level. While he wasn’t the first or the only one to popularize this idea (neither in general psychology nor within hypnosis), Erickson’s style and the writing about it was prolific.

However, this idea is something we have to think critically about, and we can even do so through the lens of NLP. The Meta Model gives us a particular pattern to look for called “Delusional Verbal Splits” where we need to be cautious of separating “parts” of an idea from the whole because it can obscure reality (separating the “mind” into “conscious mind” and “unconscious mind”). While the “unconscious” model can be very useful as a metaphor, and is indeed widely drawn upon, the mind is not literally separated into two distinct, personified parts, and it is easy to debunk the idea that there is some unknowable aspect of us that watches and keeps us safe during trance or any other time. This can be summed up by a quote from Erich Fromm, a German psychologist from the 1900s:

“The term 'the unconscious' is actually a mystification (even though one might use it for reasons of convenience, as I am guilty of doing in these pages). There is no such thing as the unconscious; there are only experiences of which we are aware, and others of which we are not aware, that is, of which we are unconscious. If I hate a man because I am afraid of him, and if I am aware of my hate but not of my fear, we may say that my hate is conscious and that my fear is unconscious; still my fear does not lie in that mysterious place: 'the' unconscious.”

Similarly, hypnokink educator MrDream wrote once, lightheartedly,

“Every time I hear a hypnotist say 'your subconscious is the part of you that protects you' I am like '[I]f I am not paying conscious attention I bash my toe into things.[’] You know what protects you? Boots.”

We can draw upon the conscious/unconscious model when it suits our needs, and we can even use it as a way to conceptualize how trance works. But, we need to be very cautious about believing this as objective fact. To be as effective as possible, we must be flexible in what models we are able to apply. Perhaps it is one way to think about how trance works, but there are many other metaphors we should be open to.

Pacing

One of the foremost parts of the Milton Model is the idea of “pacing.” Of this, in “Patterns I”, Bandler and Grinder wrote:

“A hypnotist has successfully paced a client verbally when the hypnotist’s verbalizations are accepted by the client as an accurate description of the client’s ongoing experience.”

Pacing is when a hypnotist is able to follow along with a subject, understand their responses, and over some amount of time and using a variety of techniques, become able to be confident that the subject is parsing their statements as true on some level. Note that this quote is in regards to “verbal” pacing, but that we know that communication happens nonverbally, as well. This is of course ideal, as it allows us a kind of magical flow to our hypnosis, but how can we conceptualize bringing this about? The Milton Model has some ideas. We can connect this to a variety of ideas we might already be familiar with in hypnosis: notably, utilization and “yes sets.” 

Utilization

Utilization is one of the most important parts of effective hypnosis. It is an Ericksonian concept that refers to when a hypnotist is both a) observing for all of the subject’s messages and nuances and b) acknowledging and using them to facilitate flow of the scene. An example of utilization might be that the hypnotist sees the subject is listening attentively and remarks, “I can tell that you’re focusing deeply on me, which is perfect, because that’s just what we need to create the intense experience of trance for you.” Perhaps at that point, the hypnotist notices a shift in the subject’s response, like a small flutter of the eyes, and continues, “Oh yes, just like that.”

Both of those examples -- the explicit, suggestive, verbal use of the subject’s responses as well as the simple acknowledgement -- are important uses of utilization. But utilization can go beyond that to include using the subject’s personal history, as well. If the hypnotist knows things about their “map of the world” (their history, likes, dislikes, everything that makes their experience theirs), those are up for “use” as well. Maybe the hypnotist has knowledge of how the subject adores eye contact -- “Isn’t it just perfect to be able to stare so deeply into my eyes and be able to feel all the things you feel about that so extensively?” And beyond, as well, such as knowing that the subject really enjoys music, so then using language centered around musical metaphors (“The melodic, rhythmic aspects of my voice hit the part of you that gets stimulated just like when you’re listening to someone sing…”).

Bandler and Grinder talk about a concept that is recognizing what is important to the subject. If you’re utilizing information that has value to the other person, your suggestions around it gain similar value. Clinical accounts and analysis of hypnotherapy that we often see, especially in Erickson’s work, contain a lot of background about who the subject is and the information that they’ve given to the hypnotist, because those aspects of what they’ve revealed are often used to facilitate change and trance in this way. For a kink example, if you’re playing with someone and you know that they sexualize hypnosis in an extremely visceral way, you can talk about that to add impact (“Doing this with you, hypnotizing you, actually starting and doing it, is such an intense thing for your mind and body to handle, it makes it easy for me to slip in and soothe your brain to let me even further in…”).

On a logical level, utilizing parts of a person’s world tells them that you’re paying attention and that you care about their experience and what they have to say. There is an element of showing trust involved: they are giving you information, and you are listening. Being “known” or even “caught” can be a way to shift someone’s focus in a positive way for trance.

Yes Sets

A “yes set” in the hypnosis community is often referred to as a specific technique where the hypnotist will ask the subject a series of questions where the answer is already known to be “yes.” The idea is that continuing to get agreement (usually verbal) will increase the likelihood of getting more agreement, even when the hypnotist starts asking suggestive questions. For example, the hypnotist may begin asking questions like, “Are you comfortable sitting in your chair?” and lead into questions like, “Are you starting to feel yourself sinking down into a trance?”

The efficacy of this particular, specific interpretation is questionable. It is fine as an induction technique, especially among hypnokinksters who have some idea of what to expect both from leading questions and possibly even yes sets themselves. There also is something to be said for the idea that generally, people don’t like saying “no” to direct questions like this, because they feel it is rude.

But to get real use out of the idea of yes sets, we need to expand our idea of what they are and can be. Firstly, we should eschew the idea that the “yes” that we seek needs to be a verbal one. Georg Barkas, a rope educator and author of “Archaeology of Personalities: A Linguistic Approach to Erotic Rope Bondage”, is known for discussing rope scenes as a series of questions and answers, i.e., an “interview.” Again, these “questions” and “answers” are not usually verbal in this model. The “question” might be laying the rope on the person’s body in a certain way, and your nonverbal communication, including facial expression and body language. One can see different kinds of “answers” based on how a person responds -- do they curl into themselves, or open themselves up?

In this vein, the “questions” that we ask in a hypnosis scene to get yeses do not need to be explicit questions, either. It is just as much a “question” to suggest to someone, “Maybe you can feel that sense of heaviness sinking into your muscles…” and it is just as much an answer to hear them sigh or see the way their shoulders slump.

The basic hypothesis of a yes set -- agreement begets agreement -- can be a useful one when we broaden our expectations and definitions. Generally, in hypnosis, you want your suggestions and verbalizations to elicit some sort of non-negative response from the subject. You can think about how subjects usually perform some sort of internal check (whether consciously or unconsciously) to look for congruence between what the hypnotist is saying and their internal experience. Depending on how suggestions are given, getting to the point that Bandler and Grinder speak of where the subject experiences this “yes” response is easy if you take the basic principle of observing what is happening with your subject and making informed statements along those lines. (In the next article, we will expand and discuss specific linguistic ways to do this through ambiguity and other avenues, as well.)

Pacing… and Leading

In this sense, these broadened ideas of “yes sets” and utilization are essentially a different way of framing pacing. Utilize the knowledge and observations that you have about what your subject is experiencing in order to make statements that are somehow consistent with their internal process in order to facilitate these affirmative “answers.”

The idea of “leading” comes in when we begin shifting our statements to be more suggestive. Exactly when we start to make this shift is reliant on examination and intuition. There is no specific number of yeses or signs that show this, but we can look for signs of trance and participation. Additionally, when we begin interspersing leading suggestions, noticing the subject’s continued positive responses can give us a good idea about their state.

It is not so much that pacing shifts solidly into leading; moreso that pacing and leading are natural patterns to continue through the trance as a whole. This is where eschewing the idea that a concrete “induction” gives way to “suggestions” can help -- it is more practical to think of a hypnotic scene as a long string of suggestion, both verbal and nonverbal, and continue to use effective language throughout.

Bandler and Grinder say that pacing can transform the hypnotist into “a sophisticated bio-feedback mechanism,” and this may be a helpful way to think about it. You are trying to give descriptions of the subject’s ongoing observable and non-observable experiences verbally. Less verbally, you can use techniques like matching tone, posture, and body language (in socially acceptable, subtle ways) to further this metaphor as well -- thus, you can also lead nonverbally, perhaps by lowering your voice, softening facial muscles, or anything else that has you signalling what the subject should be feeling. It’s important to remember that humans are not literally mechanistic, so you don’t want to assume that your partner is going to respond like one or that you should fall into the trap of sounding and looking too much like a caricature of an NLP practitioner.

In Conclusion

These are some of the first, introductory principles of the Milton Model and they give us a foundation of what to think about as we explore some of the more linguistically-focused nuances that are to come. They are a little bit of attempting to codify the intangible parts of “being a good hypnotist” and we should always remember that they are not hard and fast principles grounded in objective science, but moreso a potential way to look at what we do and think about it from different perspectives. Take the opportunity to try conceptualizing hypnosis in many different ways and expand your interpretation of how hypnosis can work!

Bibliography

Bandler, R., & Grinder, J. (1975). Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M.D. (Vol. I). Cupertino, CA: Meta Publications.

Barkas, G. (2017). Archaeology of Personalities: A Linguistic Approach to Erotic Rope Bondage. Middletown, DE.

Fromm, E., & Funk, R. (1980). Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud (p. 93). London, UK: Sphere Books.

Hall, M. (2016). The History of NLP, part 5: Erickson's Contributions to NLP. Retrieved July 31, 2020, from https://www.thecoachingroom.com.au/blog/the-history-of-nlp-part-5-ericksons-contributions-to-nlp

Hall, M. (2016). The History of NLP, part 7: Bateson's Contributions to NLP. Retrieved July 31, 2020, from https://www.thecoachingroom.com.au/blog/the-history-of-nlp-part-7-batesons-contributions-to-nlp

Mrdaviddream. (2019, October 9). Seriously. Every time I hear a hypnotist say 'your subconscious is the part of you that protects you' I am like 'if I am not paying conscious attention I bash my toe into things. You know what protects you? Boots. [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/mrdaviddream/status/1182102651309367296

Pucelik, F., & Grinder, J. (2013). The Origins of Neuro Linguistic Programming. Carmarthen, UK: Crown House Pub.