NLP Approaches to Addiction - (part 6)
In the early history of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder made several suggestions about the treatment of addiction. In Reframing (1972), they suggest that addictions could be treated by providing the client with a response option that was more powerful, more accessible and more immediate than the drug itself.
Steve Andreas suggests using the compulsion blow-out to solve the immediate problem of craving. He also suggests using the guilt resolution process and other techniques used for clean up of motivations and secondary gain (Andreas and Andreas, 1979, 2002).
One of the early applications of NLP to the treatment of addictions was the six step reframe (Bandler and Grinder 1979, 1982). This technique was promulgated specifically for use in addictions by Shelly Sternman in her 1990 book, Neuro Linguistic Programming in Alcoholism Treatment.
Another, more elegant approach to addictions was provided by Connirae and Tamara Andreas in their 1994 book, Core Transformations. This approach looked to uncover a series of outcome sequiturs from the problem behavior that would eventually lead to deep, core-level values and experiences. These core values could be understood as the ultimate positive intent of the behavior. Once conscious, the core value could become the active outcome towards which organismic energies would be directed.
From a Jungian and generative perspective, both of these approaches reach down to access an archetypal level of experience that can be used to redirect conscious and unconscious energies in a direction that is much more aligned with archetype of the deep Self—the center and goal towards which each life tends to grow (Gray, 1996, 1997).
Both interventions, however, because of their starting point in pathology, are stuck with the relatively incomplete instantiation of unity and several layers of objections from parts that must be dealt with in order to finalize the process. In light of this, the Brooklyn Program, which drew inspiration from Core Transformations, asked: “How can we uncover the unitary Self, the deep personal direction that Core Transformation successfully uncovers and how can we make it the defining context of behavior without beginning with the problem state?”
Eventually, the Program was designed so as to structure a complex anchor that would awaken (or ‘constellate,’ in Jungian terms) a sense of the deep Self consistent with the ideas of personal growth set forth by C. G. Jung and Abraham Maslow. This resource would serve to provide a state that would not only serve to outframe the addictive process but would also center the individual in a life that he or she would find meaningful in a continuing manner over time (Gray, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005; Hillman, 1996; Jung, 1979, 1984; Maslow, 1970).
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