2. Experience (receiver): The receiver is now faced with the task of understanding the communication presented by the communicator — a set of messages which do not match, do not fit together. Typically, the receiver will selectively pay attention to the messages arriving through one of his input channels and disregard the others. More accurately, in our experience, the receiver will be aware of the messages arriving in one of his input channels, while the remaining messages are received and accepted outside of his awareness. Again, which messages the receiver is aware of is closely connected with his most used representational system. The important point here is that, when a receiver is presented with incongruent communication from the communicator, he represents all of the conflicting messages, some within his consciousness, some outside. If the receiver is aware that some of the messages conflict, he, typically, will consciously regard the communicator as insincere or deceitful. If the receiver is aware only of the messages which fit together — the messages which conflict being received and accepted at the unconscious level — then, typically, he will initially become uncomfortable, and, if he continues to receive incongruent communication, after some time he himself will become incongruent in his responses. This description contains the essential elements of the process by which children become incongruent — a natural learning from well-meaning parents. In addition, people who focus on the content rather than the process are vulnerable to incongruity. This process, by the way, is the basis for much of the discomfort experienced by people-helpers who are faced daily with the task of communicating with incongruent people with whom they are working. Some patterns of miscommunication — the processes by which family members create pain for themselves — show up in the systems created between therapists and those with whom they work. This is one of the reasons that therapists themselves frequently feel drained at the end of the day and sometimes have difficulties in their own lives.

3. Conclusion (receiver): Faced with the task of making meaning out of a conflicting set of messages, the receiver, typically, ends up having one of two experiences:

(a) If, in Step (2), Experience (receiver), the receiver has organized his reception of the conflicting messages so that he is aware of only the consistent messages, he will reach the conscious conclusion that the communicator intends only the messages of which he is aware. As mentioned previously, he will receive and accept the conflicting messages at the unconscious level, and, typically, will reach the conclusion (at the unconscious level) that the communicator intends the messages received outside of awareness. The outcome of this process is that the receiver creates within himself conflicting models of this experience and usually feels confused.

(b) If, in Step (2), Experience (receiver), the receiver has organized his reception of the conflicting messages so that he is aware that they do not match, he will regard the communicator as insincere or manipulative, or even as evil and malicious.

4. Generalization (receiver): Often, in the context of incongruent communication, previous experiences (especially from the receiver's family of origin) are activated or triggered by the conflicting messages. It may be, for example, that the particular combination of incongruent messages in the specific sensory channels parallels a pattern of incongruent communication from one of the parents of the receiver. Or, it may be that the feelings of confusion experienced by the receiver trigger the recall of experiences from the past in which he also felt confused. If, for example, two people have a history of inter-communication and one of them, when expressing anger, has, in the past, consistently extended her finger, pointing at the second person, then, when she is incongruent in a way which specifically includes pointing her finger, the second person will respond only to the pointing-finger portion of the incongruent communication — that is, for the second person:

finger pointing = other person angry

no matter what other messages might accompany the pointing finger. This type of generalization — taking a portion of a complex experience and accepting it as representative of the whole experience — is, again, an example of what we call Complex Equivalence. Furthermore, when the second person decides that the meaning of the pointing finger is that the first person is angry, he presents us with a typical example of the pattern which we call Mind Reading. One distinctive characteristic of the types of generalization called Complex Equivalence and Mind Reading is their rigidity [ heir inflexibility. The person making these types of generalizations has no tools for checking to find out whether or not they are accurate. His conclusions are fixed and operate automatically, often independently of the context in which they occurred. We emphasize that generalizations are a tool, an important way of organizing our experience. This book is, in itself, a series of generalizations about our experience in family therapy. It is only when generalizations become fixed and rigid, deeply embedded in the person's perception of inter-communication messages, that he experiences no choice in responding. These generalizations are, literally, presuppositions — a filter of generalizations from his previous experience. They are so deeply embedded in the person's behavior that he will distort the messages he is receiving to fit his generalizations, rather than to come to his senses and directly experience the world. These patterns are powerful examples of self-fulfilling prophecies — they keep the person who operates with them from experiencing the world in the present time and place. They distort fresh experience to fit their previously determined concepts and the world becomes a monotonous rerun of the past. These two patterns — Complex Equivalence and Mind Reading — form the basis of the calibrated communication cycles which create pain in family systems.

5. (Response Behavior (receiver): As mentioned previously, the response can be regarded as the beginning of a new cycle of communication. In addition, unless the receiver of the original incongruent communication is himself congruent, he will respond incongruently and another calibrated communication cycle begins. Therapists need to carefully avoid developing, without their being aware of it, calibrated communication with those with whom they are working in therapy, and themselves reinforcing the destructive patterns rather than developing new choices with the family members. An example of this is the situation in which the therapist responds to an attack by one family member on another member as though he (the therapist) were the one being attacked.

Typically, calibrated communication cycles between members of a family will become more and more abbreviated until merely the raising of an eyebrow will trigger pain and rage in other family members.

We now present an example of a highly calibrated, pain-producing communication cycle from a family therapy session.

The family in this session consists of three members:

Henry — the husband/father: placating, with a kinesthetic representational system as primary;

Michele — the wife/mother: blaming, with a visual representational system as primary;

Carol — the daughter (age 16): super-reasonable, with an auditory representational system as primary.

Earlier in the transcript, each of the family members identified the name of what he/she wanted for himself/ herself (their nominalizations) as follows: