Third and fourth positions are dissociated: you are thinking about experience. If you recall a memory and see the whole thing, including yourself, as if from a fly-on-the-wall position, or as if you are watching a movie in your mind, then that memory is dissociated.
Being dissociated from an experience you can act more objectively because you are not involved in those events in the same way. There are two essentially different dissociated points of view: third and fourth positions. These positions are about interpreting and responding to what is happening. In third position you are evaluating or judging the entire event or conversation. This invokes your system of values, and moral outlook. In fourth position you observe, witness, and explore the situation in terms of metaphors, connections, ramifications and possible consequences.
Third position
Third position is about evaluating and judging what is going on. Imagine that you are being a critic of the movie you are watching. How does it make you respond? Ask yourself, “How do I feel about this conversation; how am I judging my own performance?” You are able to notice your emotional response, but as long as you can see yourself “over there” you will not get too caught up in it. You have that particular emotion, but you can also watch it change. Whereas (for most people) first position intensifies the feelings, third position diminishes the feelings because you can distance yourself from the memory.
Another aspect of third position relates to social or peer pressures to conform. You know that you are influenced by what other people say, do, think, and so on. Third position includes understanding the larger systems (family, cultural, institutional, business) that influence you and all of the people in your social groupings. Because “No man is an island …” you need to think about your relationship to others in terms of moral values, and social norms. Many of your “oughts” and “shoulds” come from thinking about how society will judge your actions. (As these may be unrealistic it would pay you to check them out.) In order to remain a member of a group, to retain their approval, you need to take into consideration the needs of the group or society. You should consider: “If we consider our common goals …” and find ways of conforming to the agreed norms of that group.
Note: I am putting what is referred to in traditional NLP as the system position in third position rather than in fourth, because it has the same function of judging and evaluating. This revised understanding is explained in the work of Peter Young (2004).
Fourth position
Fourth position also has several aspects. In fourth position you think about what is happening from a story point of view and consider likely outcomes: “What happens next?” You use your imagination to foresee probable scenarios and explore the likely consequences of each one. You are also able to see things from a multiple perspective, knowing that everyone has their own story, their own understanding of what is happening, their own way of explaining and making meaning of the situation. A question to ask is, “What is the story? What does this mean to you?”
Fourth position allows the PWS to take an ironic view of their situation. That is, they begin to see the funny side of what they are doing in stuttering and blocking. Several PWS have told me that as they came to understand that most blocking and stuttering has its roots in childhood, they laugh at how they were using a behavior that served them in childhood but did the opposite in adulthood. Looked at in this way, the stuttering behavior appears crazy, and the PWS can ask themselves, “Am I bored with doing this? Do I need to go on doing this for the rest of my life?”
Alternatively, the PWS can see their stuttering as part of the story they are telling themselves, and that means they are able to edit or rewrite that story, to give it a better outcome. The story in this case includes the inciting incident (usually in childhood), the stuttering behavior itself, and the way they respond to it. At any point, the PWS can intervene and change things.
Consider how Susan in Chapter One changed the story of her relationship with her parents. When she started the therapy, she was angry, very angry, at her parents, and especially her mother for taking her for “treatment” when there was really nothing wrong with her. She just was having difficulty forming some words. As Susan grew in understanding she changed the story from anger to understanding and forgiveness.
Fifth position
In fifth position you imagine that you are “above all that”, having a “God’s eye view” of the universe. This fifth position has been described by Marilyn Atkinson (1997) in an unpublished manuscript entitled Five Central Ideas, and the idea has been further explored by Peter Young (2004, Chapter 11). This over-arching or spiritual perceptual position offers a universal point of view in which everything is considered. You could see fifth position as having access to all the resources of the universe. Obviously, this provides the widest and most far-reaching perspective of all. Adopting different points of view
An essential aspect of each perceptual position is its function, its way of working with experience. In fact, you are continually adopting these different points of view. By shifting from one position to another you can step out of an emotionally conflicted situation, you can pay attention to different aspects of your experience. None of these positions offers a superior position to any other. Each position has its own function. The wise communicator knows how to move at will from one position to the other. Whatever is happening, you always have sufficient resources for getting some distance on it, and for finding other ways of intervening to change things.
Therefore, when the PWS
