Kinds of Representation

From Whispering in the Wind, by Carmen Bostic St Clair and John Grinder:

"The implication is that there are essential characteristics of each of the modes of representation and communication (the representational systems) that distinguish them from one another in deep and fundamental ways. For example, kinesthetic representations have characteristics for which there are no corresponding counterparts in visual representations and vice versa. More specifically, for example, visual representations may contain contradictory representations (or better, representations of contradictory information) in a stable form (and without any spontaneous movement to integrate) while kinesthetic representations when containing contradictory representations will be unstable and the contradictory representations will (except under conditions of extreme disassociation such as long established multiple personalities or sequential incongruity) spontaneously integrate. This spontaneous movement to integrate simultaneously presented kinesthetic representations (different feeling states) is the basis of all of the integration patterning in all NLP’s anchoring formats.

"In other words, a well trained agent of change will choose to put the contradictory representations in the kinesthetic system through the judicious use of anchors just in case he or she wants their clients to spontaneously integrate the contradictory parts of themselves. That same agent of change will select a simultaneous display of contradictory parts in the visual representational system just in case he or she does NOT want the parts to spontaneously integrate. " --Bostic St. Clair & Grinder (2001, p. ?)

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"A third issue that arises with respect to coding is the following, in any coding exercise, it rapidly becomes clear that there are an arbitrarily large number of different representations of complex behavior that could potentially serve as a possible description. A classic example of this is the set of three representations immediately below--a binary number, a decimal number and a phrase in English:

1011101011010010000
186,000
the velocity of light

"In fact these three representations are equivalent--they are simply three distinct codes for the same information [relationship]. Note that the example makes explicit that information is independent of the code selected for the expression."

--Bostic St. Clair & Grinder (2001, p. 272)