Orientations to Living The Good Life …

Digging Into The Distinctions:

There is a clear distinction between the MythoSelf Process, which was founded on the technology or NLP as applied in the unique work of Roye Fraser’s “Generative Imprint” model, and NLP as a standalone model of work. Since the early 1990s as the MythoSelf Process model was originally emerging it has been significantly further developed and transformed into something less like either NLP or the Generative Imprint models than it appeared to be at first.

The most obvious distinction, and the one I’ll focus on here, is in regard to the differences between a subjective and inter-subjective model of work.

NLP speaks directly to the subjective, but wants to ignore the inter-subjective for the most part. It does this by representation and representational processing at the core of individual experience, wholly within the individual and their capacities as an individual.

The Generative Imprint model also starts with fundamental assumptions that are largely subjective in nature, which include an assumption about the assault on the essential subjective experience of the individual in relation to their interactions with others, something Roye Fraser referred to as “sensitizing imprints.”

In both, the NLP and the Generative Imprint models, we can identify a primary assumption that the individual can take control of their experience uniquely and solely in terms of the subjective nature of reality.

Distinctions of The NLP Model:

NLP proposes that the experience of reality is held in the sensorial representations experienced and manipulated by the individual, referred to as modalities, including the sub-distinctions of those representations, referred to within the NLP model as submodalites. The modalities address by NLP are the five sensory channels of perception, sight, sound, feeling (which they refer to as kinesthetics), taste and smell. Access to the modalities held by and being manipulated by the individual that form their subjective experience, and knowledge of what “reality” is for them, can happen by observing their non-verbal expressions such as eye movement patterns or body movements, including breathing patterns. The modalities that are present for an individual are also observable in their language use and the patterns of linguistic expressions they employ.

NLP places a large emphasis on language and its internal structure, and also the way language creates results and outcomes in the world, for the language user and those they interact with as well. An example of this is how language can be wellformed or ill-formed, meaning internally consistent and in alignment with the external reality being represented by the language used.

A specific case might be the distinction within the NLP model of associated or disassociated representation in language, “When I went to the party …” versus “When you go to a party …” when the individual is expressing their own experience of going to a party. If the individual knows they are referencing their own experience, and use the dissociated form to describe it we might say within the NLP model that they expressing their experience in an ill-formed way.

A component of NLP is also their use of hypnotic protocols, including direct “conversational” hypnosis based on the patterns of Milton Erickson, or what has become known as Ericksonian hypnosis. NLP also uses metaphor as another kind of hypnotic protocol, where hypnosis refers to an altered perception of reality that creates the possibility for hypersensitivity to suggestion.

Another particular aspect of NLP is that as one of the co-developers of the model, John Grinder puts it, the model is primarily epistemological, meaning it is about how we know what we know about our assumptions about reality. NLP seeks to access and modify the internal organization of the way we hold and process subjective experience epistemologically, via the tools and techniques described above, as well as others beyond the scope or necessity of what I’m presenting here and now.

Distinctions of The Generative Imprint Model:

The Generative Imprint model uses all of the above mentioned components of NLP and has some additional, unique ways to approach accessing and modifying individual subjective experience. There are two aspects of the Generative Imprint model that stand out in this regard, the attention to and use of idiomatic expressions and idiosyncratic behaviors. These two aspects of attention and use within the Generative Imprint model are aimed at capturing the unique ways in which an individual represents, holds and relates to their personal experience and conceptions of reality.

Using the technology of NLP and some of the unique ways developed by Roye Fraser to get the subjective representation of reality, the Generative Imprint model aims at getting to the personal “iconic, symbolic representation” of being alive and well that Roye referred to as the “generative imprint.” This is a specific wholeform internal configuration of sensory representations in all of the sensory modalities of sight, sound, feeling, taste and smell, although the individual may or may not be simultaneously aware of the entire wholeform configuration.

When the generative imprint is elicited and accessed there are also specific idiomatic and idiosyncratic forms that emerge in simultaneity with the wholeform iconic, symbolic representation. The effect of accessing the generative imprint is an acknowledgement of being alive in relation to an orientation towards possibility and a pervasive sense of wellbeing.

For the individual who experiences this work the affect is very powerful for them in resetting themselves ontologically. In this way Roye’s Generative Imprint model differs from the NLP model, in that it’s ontologically organized, and seeks to shift the individual’s relationship to the quality of their experience of being. In my opinion this is a fundamental distinction, and the most significant distinction between the NLP and Generative Imprint models.

Distinctions of The MythoSelf Process Model:

A specific distinction of the MythoSelf Process model is that sense of being at one’s best, and the directionality it generates, is accessed somatically though the elicitation and identification of a very precise micro-muscular configuration, and the sensorial form that arises from that configuration as it’s held in narrative form.

The MythoSelf model shares many of the aspects found in both the NLP and Generative Imprint models. The original MythoSelf Process model, at the time referred to as the Mythogenic Self Process, was a unique presentation and delivery of the Generative Imprint model, with an emphasis on functionality or praxis. The intention of the Mythogenic Self Process was to align the individual who experienced the Process to gain access to the way of being that becomes possible using the technology of the Generative Imprint model in the application of living their lives. The effect of experiencing the Process was an instantaneous dropping away of all worry or concern and an accompanying sense of compelling directionality about a positively organized future.

While the original descriptions of the MythoSelf Process model stated it was also an ontologically organized model, due to the orientation to shifting the sense of how the individual experienced their way of being, and how that reoriented them towards a new sensational way of living their life, later descriptions began to recognize the more aesthetic orientation of the model. The Process is primarily organized aesthetically, integrating the sensorial experience of delight in discovering unique micro-muscular movement patterns that are somatically held, and aligning them with the unique personal semantic configuration of the individual’s autobiographical narrative.

What makes the MythoSelf Process unique is that it places the individual directly in the stream of the human narrative where assumptions about reality are formed, and then provides the tools to subjectively examine the inter-subjective assumptions held there. Experiencing the Process moves the assumptions about reality outside of the medium of language, and places them in the domain of direct sensorial experience. Then the model continues beyond that, seeking to integrate the personal, subjective narrative with the interpersonal, inter-subjective narrative, which largely holds these assumptions about reality in place in the social context.

Of course, beyond the social narrative, there are also tradition and ritual, and other cultural artifacts, e.g.: art, that hold the assumptions about reality intact socially, until they change. The totality of the impact of the subjective and inter-subjective assumptions about reality on the individual are held within the context of the MythoSelf Process model to be the basis of their ontological awareness, or what we could more commonly, or familiarly, call their consciousness. Within the MythoSelf Process model the individual’s sense of ontological awareness, or consciousness, is held to be a specific aesthetic orientation towards how they know themselves to be alive and well.

In it’s most current form, the MythoSelf Process model gives rise to a very powerful sense of well-being, or being at one’s best, and a strong orientation to a positively held future, as in the Generative Imprint model. The Process provides this access to the subjective and inter-subjective assumptions about reality in relation to the ontological, aesthetic orientation that is the foundation of the MythoSelf Process model.

A specific distinction of the MythoSelf Process model is that sense of being at one’s best, and the directionality it generates, is accessed somatically though the elicitation and identification of a very precise micro-muscular configuration, and the sensorial form that arises from that configuration as it’s held in narrative form.

Accessing The Narrative Form Within The MythoSelf Process Model:

Therefore the authoring process, while essentially subjective, cannot leave behind the inter-subjective artifacts assimilated and incorporated as function of being and living as a human among other humans in the unique and specific, place and time, of their being.

The narrative form that becomes a specific distinction of experiencing the MythoSelf Process is autobiographical in nature, but continues into the future where one’s life is presumed known, but hasn’t happened yet. This projection of possibility and directionality that forms the structure of the future oriented autobiographical narrative that arises from experiencing the Process is referred to as one’s Life Story, or the “story of your life” within the model. The sensation of a known future that just hasn’t happened yet, held in autobiographical narrative form, is a particular application of personal adumbration.

Another specific distinction of the MythoSelf Process is that it address the inter-subjective quality of authoring the autobiographical narrative that is one’s own life story. There is a recognition that the subjective and the inter-subjective aspects of consciousness cannot be separated or fragmented, because we all are formed and exist in relation to a cultural/social context. Much of this context is shared and embodied in language and it’s form, as they arise temporally and spatially in the here and now of the individual’s subjective experience.

Therefore the authoring process, while essentially subjective, cannot leave behind the inter-subjective artifacts assimilated and incorporated as function of being and living as a human among other humans in the unique and specific, place and time, of their being.

The Experience Of Aesthetic Phenomenography As Expansion:

In part what the MythoSelf Process model seeks to impart is a fully realized conscious awareness of the phenomenographic assumptions about reality that are present for the individual, and to expand the conceptual space they can and do access as a result of that burgeoning awareness.

Accessing and authoring one’s own Life Story shifts the phenomenological and phenomenographic awareness for the individual experiencing the Process. There is an explicit, specific awareness of consciousness that becomes possible and present as a function of what happens when the specific micro-muscular configuration of being at one’s best is accessed and organized. The subjective and inter-subjective phenomenological experience then becomes embodied as a result of experiencing the Process with someone trained to facilitate it.

When one becomes aware of their own embodied phenomenological experience, as somatic response and allows themselves to acknowledge the impact and relationship of their body-based responses to sensorial data, the hold on them of linguistic and cultural artifacts loosens so they can examine them with some degree of perspective. This naturally repositions them both ontologically and aesthetically in relation to their subjective and inter-subjective assumptions about reality. It is the aspect of awareness of the inter-subjective phenomenological assumptions that makes the model phenomenographic as well as phenomenological.

In part what the MythoSelf Process model seeks to impart is a fully realized conscious awareness of the phenomenographic assumptions about reality that are present for the individual, and to expand the conceptual space they can and do access as a result of that burgeoning awareness.

This expansion of conceptual space gives them more room to play with the assumptions they make about their Life Story, and especially how they choose to adumbrate what is possible, and even likely, for them in their future. 

As the individual becomes more familiar with accessing their own state of perfection, the specific soma-semantic configuration of how they are at their best, they become more capable and interested in authoring their own Life Story. As a function of authoring their Life Story, the individual who has experienced and assimilated the work of the MythoSelf Process begins to author themselves, by taking control of how they shape their future before they arrive in it … an adumbrative act that is aesthetically organized.

The idea of becoming aethetically phenomenologically and phenomenographically organized as the preferential lens of one’s own being, at the subjective and inter-subjective level, and from that authoring the self narrative that is one’s own autobiographical life story is the fundamental distinction of the MythoSelf Process.

The experience of the MythoSelf Process with a trained facilitator is essentially an aesthetically organized, phenomenographic exploration and resetting of one’s life as they know themselves, others and the world they share, to be in the here and now … expanding the breadth, depth and range of the conceptual space of being and becoming they are able to occupy and play in … and from that, how they may choose to author their own future, on their own and in relation to others.

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics

P.S. – I love reading and responding to your comments, and I’d especially love to hear what you think about my descriptions and distinctions of the models in this particular post …