This book is the inverse of The Structure of Magic. That book was about how to be relentlessly specific, which functions as a BS filter. For example, "my wife doesn't love me anymore" requires mind-reading, so you could ask "how do you know she doesn't love you anymore?". That question doesn't call the original statement into question, but asks for the evidence for the claim, based in sensory experience. Usually the answer is something like "she doesn't look at me in some particular way that I never told her I liked", which gives you something to work with.
As for THIS book, this is the opposite--essentially how to BS for constructive purposes. You can use it to catch on to a politician's game, or--should your own thinking begin to sound a bit too much like what this book shows you how to do--to catch your OWN BS and knock it off. This book is about how a brilliant hypnotist talked, which is actually pretty simple in theory. He would mention things to shift your attention. Like this: did you notice just how much of your weight is going into your chair? You probably didn't before, now you do. You do that with enough things and in a certain way, you have people in a different state of mind. If you're good (and trying to help) you can talk them into not actively thinking/feeling bad about their problems, and have them in a state of mind where they can see things differently.
Then you can say things that don't have any actual meaning to help them. Like this: there was an experience some time in your past, where you learned a very valuable lesson, and your subconscious knows the one, and I want you revisit that experience as you remember all you have learned since, because there is something very, very important that you have yet to learn from that experience. I don't know if your subconscious will prefer to tell you about it in consciousness, or to keep it to itself as a secret, but it will help you in the upcoming weeks and months as you go about your daily life in a new way you didn't know was possible.
See? No meaning whatsoever, but it can still be life changing, because--and this is what this book shows you--it takes advantage of the fact that we all need things to make sense, so that if nothing is really being said, we'll invent the meaning ourselves. By saying meaningless things that suggest categories of having a better life, people rummage through their brains and find wonderful things pretty easily. It's a particularly respectful way of doing therapy, because you can help the person without imposing your own "stuff" on them. They just go in and find whatever they need themselves.
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Top reviews from other countries
- Joseph AugustineReviewed in the United Kingdom on August 18, 2017
A remarkable book
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