When we talk about surface structure and deep structure, we are referring to the way we communicate with the world about us.
We have seen previously that in 1956, George Miller came up with the notion of the human being only being able to handle 7 pieces of information at any time plus or minus 2. (click here).
It is my belief from my working with hypnosis and PhotoReading that all experiences we are exposed to will be placed in the brain.
We have the concept of two brains. The first is the conscious brain, that part of the brain that we are aware of, our thinking brain, the one we talk to ourselves with, see and hear with, the one that we have feelings with. The second brain is our subconscious brain, this is the brain we are not aware of. It is the pat of us that does things for us without us consciously thinking about it, like waking up at the correct time in the morning, multiplying 2 x 2, talking, walking.
It is my belief that Miller’s 7+/-2 concept is for the conscious mind, as with hypnosis it is possible to access information not available in the “waking” state, things we did not realised we had noticed.
With PhotoReading we can absorb vast amounts of information, 20,000 – 30,000 words per minute, a page a second. This information goes into our inner mind, and is available to us, but we have to activate it, get it from our inner mind, our subconscious mind.
If we understand the above and accept the understanding now, we can liken the brain as an iceberg floating in the sea. Two thirds of an iceberg is bolow the surface, only a third is visable. And so it is with the human brain. Information that is consciously available to us is that of the iceberg above water, the surface structure, yet below the waterline the subconscious is even more information, the deep structure.
![The iceberg effect The iceberg effect](<BlogInfo:URL />/images/71606-62901/iceberg.gif)
When we use communication, talk to people, pass on information, we delete a lot of information, we give surface structure information. The cat sat on the branch of the tree with Peter. (NLP Now – Peter and the Wolf).
The statement given does not say which cat, how it sat, on which branch, how high was it, how long had it been there, etc, etc. This information is at the deep structure, and as NLPer’s it is our job to help our clients get to this information should it be appropriate, to enrich their world.
We will use such method and tools as those in the Meta Model.
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