Structure of Magic Presuppositions

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I have a question about Presuppositions in the Structure of Magic Vol. 1 on pages 52-53. The client says "I realize that my wife doesn't love me" (Bandler Grinder 52). Then it says the presupposition is "her husband doesn't love her" (Bandler Grinder 53).I guess the presupposition is if he realizes she doesn't love him then he will not love her.. Don't quite understand that one. Then it goes on to say there's a test for presuppositions; The therapist takes the original sentence's surface structure and adds a negative in front of the verb. The book says "I don't realize that my husband doesn't love me" (Bandler Grinder 53). But the word husband wasn't in the first sentence. Maybe I'm not understanding this. The two new sentences that the therapist comes up with are confusing me. I'd appreciate if someone could help clear the confusion.

[Poodle]

read the language --

Husband says: I realize that my wife doesn't love me.

We know SOMEONE believes they are unloved by spouse soooo

questions go: Mmmm, curious here. What exactly makes you believe that?
or
How do you know?

The different way of asking the questions will chunk up or down, depending upon where you want to go with the client.

Pages 92 on give better examples.

Now Richard had a little fun in writing that book - it was a university thesis. The only part of the book that is really real is Chapter 4 and it needs to be read backwards to understand it. It will give you The Meta Model. Carmine Baffa has written some on it carmine.net/articles I'm sure it will all make much more sense to you reading the book the way it was intended and then having Carmine's great explanation.

NLP was never meant to be difficult and one should find it quite easy except for "jargon" words. This is one reason live trainings are soooo much better than attempting to pull information out of a book.

Now just see if the above doesn't straighten things out in your mind a lot!

[skip]

figure,

"I realize that my wife doesn't love me"

IMO there are several presuppositions, two of which are ...

1. that his wife actually doesnt love him.
2. that he is capable of realizing it.

Given the analysis in the book, my presupposition is that the first sentence has a misprint, and substituted 'wife' where 'husband' should have been.

If my presupposition is correct, then the initial sentence should read, "I realize that my husband doesn't love me"; and the rest of the analysis makes sense.

BUT that doesnt necessarily mean I am right.

skip

[Terry]

Not having read the book, I can only reply based on what I read in a single post. Perhaps I am not replying to the real question, I don;t know, but what I do know is that one therapist is not using common sense.
Any therapist who asks, "how do you know" is painting themselves into a corner by accepting without question that statement as true, with no wriggle room... The one who asks, "what makes you think that?" is allowing for change, and planting doubt in the mind of the client in preparation for a change in belief if such is found to be possible.
Since a non present third party is involved, probing is a requirement, hence the second method is predisposed to such probing.
Husband....She told me so!

[Terry]

Sorry, I cut myself off in mid stream...:)
Q. Did she tell you why?
Now the therapist is probing for details required to render assistance to that client, based on knowledge not belief....

[Nigel H]

Hia ... just to answer a comment of yours Terry - in the hope of adding some clarity ....

The question 'How do you know?' is asking someone for their evidence strategy on a particular belief and aimed at getting beyond the surface structure of the problem to find the deep structure of what is really going on. It is part of the NLP Meta Model and can be asking in relation to the Distortions present in their statement.

i.e "You don't like me"

Qu. "How do you know I don't like you?" - aimed to get past their 'mind read' and establish what criteria they have applied to the logic of making that statement. To gain further information.

Or - "It's bad to be dishonest"

Qu. "How do you know it's bad?" is one possible response. [Along with "who says it's bad?" .... or "According to whom?" as other possible responses]

Cheers

Nig

[Poodle]

there is another presup in that there is a wife/husband combination. What Bandler is writing is that people (generalization) do not speak/write well and leave room for lots and lots of confusion for the listener/reader and it is information that needs to be recovered.

May I suggest reading Training Trances first so you can actually read the Meta Questions and Meta Answers. It will actually give you a "taste" of what a live training is like.

Pood