Virginia Satir was one of the pioneers of family therapy, and probably the greatest family therapist who ever lived. She was also a major source of NLP patterns and distinctions. In 1985 she presented a morning and afternoon keynote address to the National Association for NLP in Denver, Colorado. At the end of her afternoon talk, a man asked for help in applying her approach to his mental health work in a rural community, where he was encountering strong opposition from conservatives. In response, Virginia enacted a series of brief role-plays in which she demonstrated a wide variety of ways that he could respond in this situation.
Many people think that Satir had only one approach to working with people, but in these two videos we are treated to a rare display of Virginia’s flexibility, and her willingness to do anything to evoke a powerful response, knowing that all responses can be utilized as a way to connect with someone and initiate a process of change. This is based on a key principle of Virginia’s:
“Anybody on the outside of me — let’s put it like that — is someone whom I can respond to. They are never the definers of me. They can only be the definers of me if I have handed over my charge of myself to them. And you can do that in many ways. ‘How could I think differently from somebody?” “They will be mad if I don’t.’ ‘They will be hurt if I don’t.’ ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ you know. Can you fill in the ‘blah blah’s’? OK. All right.”
A verbatim transcript of these Virginia Satir videos can be found at the following link:
Virginia Satir Video Transcript
To order videos (DVD or download) of both of Virginia’s keynote talks—3 delightful hours with one of the finest therapists the world has ever known—click here:
