Re: labels
Hyrum Knudsen eloquently wrote the following:
> Here is an metaphor for labels. Look at the thing in from of you that
>sometimes shows letters and sometimes shows pictures and sometimes is blank.
> If you didn't have the general label of monitor in your knowledge base you
>would not be able to use it. Every time you ran into one you would have to
>relearn everything about it.
<BIG SNIP>
> Labels are not evil, they are not the end all be all. People get hung up
>on the fact that the person is not the label and they are right. When a
>proper diagnosis is made the person has certain characteristics and/or
>behaviors that point to them having a specific problem. Some people put way
>to much importance into labels and choose to belive that once you have a
>label you are stuck with it for life. Both ends of the spectrum do nobody
>any good
You know Hyrum, this is correct, except that the problem that I am getting
at is the innate nature of the human being to get faster and faster at
making a "diagnosis" about the world around us. When this happens we rely
more and more on the models (and labels are a substantial part of these)
that we know. We try to fit things into our already existing schemas
instead of searching for new knowledge and/or new ways of handling things.
An extreme would be the "medical model" of psychology that is being taught
here in Australia at the moment. It is all about classification (through
DSM IV> than about anything else.
Actually, NLP does label! It labels every client who walks the face of this
earth as a fully functional human being. It is just a question of finding
out which one of the myriad combinations of "functions" this human being is
excellently using to cause themselves, or others, unhappiness.
Kind Regards,
John B.