Neuro Linguistic Programming

Chapter 15: Getting to the Heart of the Matter: The Meta Model 239

Figure 15-1 illustrates the NLP model of how you experience the real world

through your senses – visual (pictures), auditory (sounds), kinaesthetic

(touch and feelings), olfactory (smell), and gustatory (taste). You filter or

check your perception of reality against what you already know through the

processes of deletion, generalisation, and distortion. In this way, you create

your personal map or mental model of the real world.

By watching and analysing two different, highly experienced therapists – at

work talking to their clients – Bandler and Grinder came up with the NLP

Meta Model as a way to explain the link between language and experience.

Bandler and Grinder were interested in finding the rules that determine how

humans use language in order to help others develop similar skills. They

were influenced by their own work in the field of linguistics, especially of

transformational grammar (which seeks to explain the relationship between

the deep structure of experience and the surface structure of language), and

set out ideas on how people describe their experiences in language. They

were also strongly influenced by modelling two exceptional therapists with

outstanding communication skills – Virginia Satir and Fritz Perls – and they

published the results in 1975 in The Structure of Magic.

Figure 15-1:
The NLP
model of
experi-
encing
the world
around you.

Map

Deletion

Generalisation

Distortion

Visual

Auditory

Gustatory

Filters

Olfactory

Kinaesthetic