negate
reframing
alter the meaning or value of something, by altering its context or description
negative thinking > achieving negative goals > reframing

Reframing eliminates by redescribing or recategorizing. Problems either disappear in the process of being redescribed, or they cease to be problematical. A reframe that has almost become a cliché is that all problems can be thought of as opportunities.

Reframing is an exercise in dialectic: "As Marx himself and other dialecticians have shown, significant and lasting change ultimately depends on an ability to reframe the primary oppositions within which the other surface opposites are set." [Morgan]

Clinical hypnosis uses stratagems of replacing or reframing.  Bandler & Grinder, the founders of NLP, identify two forms of reframing: meaning and context. Context reframing takes an undesired attribute and finds a different situation where it would be valuable. In meaning reframing, you take an undesired attribute and find a description where the attribute takes on a positive value.

creative dimensions: meaning, fact, value and relevance

Creative Dimensions (after Kolb)

Kolb describes the four basic creative dimensions as Meaning, Value, Relevance and Fact. This is summarized in the diagram above. In these terms, reframing is altering Meaning, Value, Relevance or Fact by altering context or perspective.

A classic example of a reframe by Virginia Satir concerns a father who complains at the stubbornness of his daughter. This results in a double reframe, in which Satir points out two things to the father:

  1. There are situations where she will need stubbornness, to protect herself or achieve something. Reframing switches to a context that makes the stubbornness relevant.
  2. It is from the father himself that she has learned to be stubborn. By forcing the father to equate his own stubbornness with hers, this creates a context in which he either has to recognize the value of her stubbornness, or deny the value of his own.
Reframing is a powerful change stratagem. It changes our perceptions, and this may then affect our actions. But does changing our symbolic representation of the real world actually change anything in the real world itself?
 
Redescribing If we see the physical world as entirely non-mental, then it will be difficult to find examples of recollecting or reframing stratagems at the physical level.

However, our behaviour towards the physical world is definitely open to reframing. If we describe a particular plant as a weed, or a particular animal as a pest, we have already decided to eliminate it. This decision is embedded in the description. We may wish to eliminate blemishes on fruit, or the effects of weather from our city lives. In all these cases, instead of changing the environment (in the belief that we can do this without changing ourselves), we change the way we look at the environment (and it changes magically as a result).

Relationships The well-known lateral thinker Edward de Bono apparently thinks of a wife as a problem, and a mistress as an opportunity. (He often refers in his books to the nagged or hen-pecked husband.) I am sure this is not intended to reveal to the reader how de Bono applies creative or ‘lateral’ thinking to his own private life, of which I have no knowledge. However, as de Bono surely doesn’t need to be reminded, problems can always be reframed into opportunities.
Leaving home One of the common challenges of family therapy is to help the parents to let their children go. Independence is of course a negative goal. The parents have to gradually stop supporting their children, and the children have to gradually stop relying on their parents.

Milton Erikson often used the approach of creating an alternative goal for the parents: of preparing themselves to be grandparents. In a typical case, a young woman consulted him; her parents had used their life savings to build an extension to their house, where she was to live, when she got married (At this time, she was away at college, and had no steady boyfriend.) Erikson met the parents, and congratulated them for their willingness to participate so actively in the rearing of their (hypothetical) grandchildren, having babies crying through the night, toddlers crawling through the living rooms, toys strewn across the house, babysitting. He thus created a powerful positive image of the joys of grandparenthood; yet for some reason, the couple decided to rent the extra rooms out to mature lodgers instead, and save the money to support their grandchildren’s education. When the daughter subsequently got married, she lived in a city some distance away with husband and baby, and the grandparents visited frequently, but not too frequently.

Why does this example count as reframing, rather than replacement? The alternative goal created by Erikson was not an alternative activity for the parents; it was an alternative description of the same activity. This alternative description enabled the parents to rethink their goals for themselves.

The end  of 
psychoanalysis
The first instance of psychoanalytical treatment was that of the hysteric Bertha Pappenheim, whom Breuer and Freud code-named ‘Anna O’. It has been argued that she herself invented psychoanalysis, by insisting on the form of treatment that later became known as psychoanalysis. Forrester describes how Freud himself denied responsibility for inventing psychoanalysis.  

During the twentieth century, a range of other psychological disturbances have been investigated - such as paranoia, obsession and various forms of psychosis - and psychoanalytical cures have been attempted for these disturbances.

A hundred years after Anna O, Lacanian psychoanalysts seem to believe that we are all necessarily disturbed in one way or another, that hysteria is actually the least disturbed state, and that therefore psychoanalysis should be trying to turn all of us into hysterics.  This is an interesting reframe, not of an individual disturbance but of the human species.

Sales talk In business, every cheap huckster salesman uses reframing (and visualization) when he says "Picture yourself owning this, the envy of your neighbours." In other words, the goal is no longer merely to cut the grass efficiently.

How does the ‘visionary’ leader impart her strategic vision to the organization? 

Strategic
management
Giving a new value to a product by finding a new market/context

Changing the mission statement (transport, not railroads)

A certain computer manufacturer [IBM] would have been vulnerable to accusations of monopoly power (leading to trust-busting measures) had it announced its dominant share of the computer mainframe market. Instead, it claimed a smaller share of the total office equipment market. (Note: the sequel.)

Social envy Elitists such as Fernández de la Mora rightly dislike the social prevalence of envy. Ability should be openly admired; emulation of talent and virtue as the highest road to social stability. Negative envy reframed into positive incentive. It doesn't follow that superior ability should be rewarded financially, or with social status and other privilege for the individual and his/her loved ones. Virtue should be its own reward.

But if wealth is undeserved, negative envy should be reframed, not into a desire to join the undeserving rich, but into righteous indignation, reframed in its turn into a positive incentive to reform an unjust system.

Christianity switched the emphasis from the envied to the envier. And instead of merely trying to eliminate envy by characterizing it as evil and self-destructive, early Church fathers such as Cyprian presented the new virtues of Christianity - simplicity of mind, humility, fraternity, love and charity - as positive alternatives to envy. Obviously if you love your neighbour as yourself, envy becomes impossible. An early example of Positive Thinking.

Later Christian societies used this principle to sustain high levels of socio-economic inequality with surprisingly low levels of envy. Reformers hoping to arouse indignation against socio-economic injustice found themselves confronted with Christian inhibitions against envy.

Sign of the Cross Jesus performed a wonderful feat of reframing: making the weakest appear the strongest.  The cross is converted from a symbol of humiliation (which Romans inflicted upon Jews) into a symbol of triumph and redemption.

Turning the other cheek is also an act of reframing - an interesting one because it doesn't involve speech.  In an angry exchange, each gesture triggers an aggressive or pacifying response. Turning the other cheek is a deliberate alteration to the instinctive reponse - neither aggressive nor passive but assertive - and thus changes the topology of the interaction. The aggressor can continue striking you - but it's now on your terms.

Lost sheep If you read the New Testament, you will find many passages where Jesus surprises his followers, particularly in the way he scopes his audience or his message.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, it is clear that the audience do not expect such good deeds to be done by a man from Samaria, especially after local citizens have shown themselves so uncaring. Among other things, Jesus is telling us to value people by their deeds, not by their town of origin.

In this parable and throughout his teaching, Jesus values the weak: the lost sheep, the prodigal son, the fallen women, the sick, the untouchables. He identifies with them and calls them his brothers. ‘Whatever you do unto the least of my brethren, you do unto me.’ Gandhi was perhaps influenced by this aspect of Christianity, when he invented the name ‘Harijan’ (close-to-God) for the Hindu caste of Untouchables. These are powerful spiritual reframes.

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Page last updated on December 15th, 2000
Copyright © 2000, Richard Veryard