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The Structure of Magic II: A Book About Communication and Change

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If you are interested in knowing how psychiatrists effect life altering change, then this book is for you. As you may know, the authors modeled the life altering strategies of successful psychiatrists, such as Milton Erickson, Fritz Perls, and Virginia Satir. These models became the basis of what we now know as nlp.

I was rather intrigued, when reading this book to notice a strategy of Virginia Satir. In one of her dialogues with a patient, when the patient explains a perceived issue with another person, she repeatedly challenges his thinking by asking 'Are you a mind reader?'

I now ask myself the same question on a regular basis. Sometimes, I ask other people that question too. If you think about it, that is a very good perception changing question unless, of course, you are a mind reader.

Another book I recommend in this field is Mind-lines: Lines For Changing Mindsby L Michael Hall, which has an extensive list of change patterns, and My voice will go with you, which is a book of the therapeutic teaching tales of Milton Erickson. I hope you find this review helpful.

Though not an ease read, The Structure of Magic II as well as The Sturcture of Magic I are a must read for anyone interested in the healing magic that is done by therapists. This book takes the foundation created in book I and demonstrates how it is used in therapy. Bandler and Grinder have truly studied the masters of therapy and added their own unique and brilliant skills to create a very useful guide to doing therapy.

This series is for the serious in depth learner and student of NLP. These are not self help books for the casual reader they are the kind of book most of us read a chapter of and then have to digest, read again, as these are text books..real text books.

That said, if you want to really understand communication then you want to read them, these boys are the big guns. You want to sell more real estate, read Tony Robbins, you want to be a great therapist, start here.

I found this book even more difficult than the already challenging "Structure of Magic" but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The detail and precision that is gone into describing the unlimited power of words and communication is just what is needed in the wishy-washy world of self-help. Consider it more of a text book than a fun/easy read like Tony Robbins, and definitely start with "Structure of Magic" before going into this one.

To even hope to understand and competently apply the teachings of Volume 2,as a prerequisite the reader would need to first: 1) study Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson, Noam Chomsky, Structure of Magic Volume 1 and the authors' own two volume set on Milton Erickson 2) take a course in NLP-based psychotherapy from a good instructor.

Here Bandler and Grinder put it all together and demonstrate their model of psychotherapy. Volume 1 is about listening techniques; how to parse and analyze the client's speech to guide the therapeutic dialogue. Volume 2 builds on this in ambitious breadth, intending to formalize a method of psychotherapy that models the excellence of certain psychotherapists, and is reproducible and comprehensible. Staying with the mathematical approach first presented in Volume 1, the authors classify and group sentence fragments and words to find patterns, thus understand the client's internal psychology and then determine how to reply to the client, almost reflexively, based on these linguistic impressions.

Reading this is tough going. This could be a textbook in an advanced psychology course from an academic degree program. It is really the fourth book in a series, with the two volumes of "Patterns of Hypnotic Techniques of Milton Erickson", written the year before, being prerequisites. Many new concepts are presented in rapid sequence.

Part 1 builds further on the "Representational Systems" of Volume 1 to prepare the reader for Part 2.

Part 2 "Incongruity" and Part 3 "Fuzzy Functions" put the last pieces in place for the authors' method, and then demonstrate its application with examples. The authors have their own terminology and this makes their ideas all the more abstruse. References to Virginia Satir's methodology, which they incorporate into their own, are incomplete and assume prior knowledge. Annoyingly, the authors continue to use "insure" for the word "ensure".

Part 4 "Family Therapy" takes the methodology and, with a nod to Virginia Satir's work in this field, uses the family as the vehicle to show how their modus works in interpersonal cases.

Part 5 "Formal Notation" reflects Bandler's background in mathematics. Bandler and Grinder have used set theory to create a shorthand notation for describing the client's psychodynamics with their linguistic approach. It's unique but highly recondite. I wonder if this is really used by anyone anymore, including the inventors. It does suggest Bandler wanted to computerize psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and here is the notation for creating the algorithm. But it just makes understanding their novel approach all the more difficult.

Compared to Volume 1, Volume 2 offers more insight into the role of interpreting non-verbal communication (body language and verbal prosody) in the context of psychotherapy but is not rigorous about this. The student will need to study this elsewhere.

This all looks very difficult to apply. It would require great concentration and discipline, even with taking notes during therapy, to execute all the steps and arrive at the correct Bandler-Grinder patterns whilst in the office interviewing a client. Lots of practice is necessary. Like card-counting in blackjack, an error with this mathematical model could end up with the wrong conclusions and possibly result in bad therapy.

The comments on mind-reading in this book are ironic. As a co-author, Bandler asks the psychotherapist to see mind-reading as a sign of discordance between the Surface Structure and the Deep Structure. A shortcoming. But in 2011 with his seminar "Design Human Engineering" Bandler is now asking his students to explore mental telepathy as a new skill to adopt!

In theory, the master of this style of psychoanalytical psychotherapy could engage in standardized high-performance practice with confidence, with an (albeit complex) algorithm of where best to direct the therapy. Better than the sometimes discursive style of many psychotherapists.

I would like to see peer-reviewed articles from well-regarded journals that support the use of NLP psychotherapy. That would help convince me the investment of time, effort and money to learn this particular approach is worthwhile.

If you want to learn the linguistics of NLP, this is the book for you. Make sure you have your highlighter ready. Don't be afraid to mark the book with your notes.

This book is the book that when wanting to learn about NLP this is the text book to learn. If you have never done anything in NLP I suggest that you take some lighter material about the topic before you pick up this book. This book is in depth and the heart of NLP. Get the first volume too, as this one covers more on the first volume.

Structure 1 is well written, clear and concise, but Structure 2 is subtle and intense like a slow moving train that gets fast and fun at the pace you like. Both are informative books, don't get me wrong. But Structure 2 shows that communication and movement within communication is thwe basis of life. Whether its commuincating to your muscles to walk or do whatever, talk to another person, whatever requires communication at any level. In fact these books, I'll say are the spirit-voice of what it takes to live efffectively or the beginnings thereof of understanding that. Structure 1 tells you the map is not the territory, structure 2 tells you how to use the territory with the directions if you have the basic understanding given in 1 of what maps and territories are really for. The questions are asked in 1, the queastions are answered in 2. Anyhow, as Arthur C. Clarke said, technology only seems magical, when you haven't developed up to its level yet. That's what it all comes down to, development and The Structure of Magic Books show that. Step by step, understanding by understanding until you can put it together yourself in its proper order within the territory, and not just on a "silly" map. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. more than that, that's my understanding and I'm growing past it to understand and undertake ever more and ever better. Hats off to Bandler and Grinder and all of their associates, I'm not saying they're the end or the beginnings, but they are an important part of that grand puzzle being solved called "existence and life". But eah person must put it all together for themselves, that's what The Map is Not The Territory means, I know. All right, happy reading if you buy em'!

Captain Josh/Joshua Clayton