F. Pucelik "The Mirror"

Imagine two people communicating. Each of them has live and experiences of their own. Their incredibly precious map. The whole experience of each person is recorded in images, sounds and sensations. Any momentary experience comprises a huge amount of sensory information. But to communicate with each other, these two people use symbols - words. Had one of them a necessity to transfer to the other one evanescent experience ENTIRELY, he would have to talk for hours and is unlikely to come even close to any full description of the rich sensory characteristics of his inner experience. Moreover, the more the person explaining would tell, the less the listener will understand!

What exactly happens when humans communicate? We want to express some part of our experience. We found it in our deep structure. To express it by means of symbol - word - we need to move it to the surface structures. For this purpose, a person uses meta-model "generalization", "distortion" and "deletion". In the surface structure people find about 50 words for this experience and deliver them.

What does the interlocutor do on receiving these 50 words? He needs to interpret them - "to understand". He searches for equivalents of these words in HIS (!) deep structure, in HIS experience. Once he finds in his experience the most "appropriate" in his understanding words, he says to himself - "Aha!"… Again, he "generalizes", "distorts", "deletes" his experience to create a new surface structure and say something in response.

And now the first party of conversation is in a difficult position - he needs to look for analogues of the words heard in HIS experience...etc.

Thus, both conversation partners communicate with a "mirror". People must interpret any incoming symbols (words) through THEIR experience. And communicating with anyone, we actually communicate with ourselves.

Interview to portal www.treko.ru

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