Dirty Clean Language

How to Use Your Client’s Personal Symbols and Metaphors in Clinical and Hypnotic Changework

Would you like to speak the language of your client’s unconscious mind?

Symbols and metaphors are among the most important ways the unconscious mind communicates. Most therapists try to interpret those messages. David Grove did something different. Instead of trying to understand the meaning of his clients’ symbols, he used those symbols to bring about change. The model of his work is called “Clean Language”, as the therapist’s influence is minimal.

This presentation is about my way of using Clean Language in hypnosis – something I jokingly call “Dirty” Clean Language. I will teach you how to elicit your client’s personal symbols and metaphors, how to use them to enhance resource states, and how to use them to help the clients solve their problems. You will also learn my simple method of using symbols as a homework assignment to generalize the change outside the therapy room.

The methods you will learn may be used to enrich your hypnotic way of working or as a system on its own. As always, my presentation will be all meat, no fat (yes, that was a metaphor ;)), with a demo to show how those techniques work.

I am an MD, a psychiatrist, an NLP Trainer certified by Richard Bandler, Chris Hall and John Overdurf. I have been using hypnosis and NLP in my clinical practice since 1998 and teaching it since 2000. I specialize mostly in Ericksonian and Conversational Hypnosis.