Customer Reviews

Therapeutic Metaphors: Helping Others Through the Looking Glass

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I was going to buy the book by George Burns who wrote 101 healing metaphors. I read portions of that book, and the stories I read were excellent.

More recently I was listening to a conference call with Kenrick Cleveland, an NLP sales pioneer. During this call they mentioned Therapeutic Metaphors by David A. Gordon, and how good this book was, a must read. Then they said something that made me decide to buy this book.

When you tell a story, the listener identifies with the lead character in the story, in essence believing the character is them. Can you imagine how powerful a story you can tell, knowing the listener is identifying with the main character, and how this can be applied either to sales or relationships.

I remember telling a female friend a story about how a friend of mine made a judgmental comment about woman who was overweight. She said she felt terrible because if that's what happens to this woman, then what does that say about peoples perception of her. I said this story is not about you, and jokingly said why does everything have to be about you? She laughed and agreed. Another example is fairy tales where girls identify with the princess, and boys identify with the Prince.

So, when I heard this conference call this was an ah ha moment for me. There is much instruction in this book about how to construct healing metaphors, and some examples.

I read one story in this book, and it had such visual impact that as I read it I felt I was there as this story was unfolding. That is how strong the imagery is. I do strongly recommend this book for any aspiring writer or storyteller. After all, good storytelling is all about getting and sustaining the listener or reader's attention, and giving them a memorable experience, while getting your message across.

My first foray into this field was the Erickson story book, My voice will go with you, which I highly recommend. If you have an interest in this field this book is a must, because these are case studies from the master himself.

The Gordon book breaks down the technique in more detail, teaching you how to use metaphor powerfully.

Hope this was useful.

Virginia satir and Milton Erickson were great story telles. Using NLP technology, David analyzed these skills and combined the results in this book.

David Gordon was around in Santa Cruz when NLP was "invented" by Bandler & Grinder, yet he choose to focus on a different aspect, thus giving us some more material to learn from. This book is about building metaphors, improving upon them using elements that come from early NLP-research, and using them. In short,it is a complete guide to become another Milton Erickson or Virginia Satir yourself, or at least as far as story telling will bring you. You'll learn to use representation systems, submodalities and Satir categories to enhance your story.

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Humans process information in story form much more accurately and deeply than they do facts, figures and speicifications.

And jsut telling someone what to do meets with incredible resistance. David Gordon does a good job of explaining how to deconstruct a situation and identify the crucial aspects, and then shows how to construct a valuable metaphor (story) to provide the desired result.

Bravo, David Gordon, I would love to see you write a similar book related to constructing stories for selling.

I've read a few books that touched on NLP and I've
been to seminars... so I have done some of the exercises
common to NLP.

I read "unlimited Power" by Tony Robbins and a few other
things, but I really didn't understand the structure of
"submodalities" and how these things work to create change
in people.

This book by David Gordon lays it out in a fairly technical,
dry fashion. I still don't understand NLP very well. It's
still something you would have to be pretty darn interested
in to be motivated to read and understand this stuff.

I bought this book because it was recommended by a copywriter
who is an NLP practitioner as the best single book to read.
Interestingly Gordon never refers to NLP - I think he was around
when Bandler and Grinder were formulating their brand of
therapy and selling it to the army, but Gordon seems primarily
concerned with psychotherapeutic applications rather than
optimum performance coaching for winning at business and war.

Very good text on the development of metaphors for use in changework, therapy and hypnosis. Closely allied to the teachings of Bandler and Grinder, Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson. This book has met my expectation.

I've read many NLP books and yet this book covers many interesting areas I've always wondered about in NLP. Simply a great great NLP book. You really get the feeling how good understanding this guy has and how you might learn to do it! Richard Bandler wrote foreword in this book and he obviously recommends it aswell.