Everyone is self-centred

In 1966 Joseph Weisenbaum wrote a primitive computer programme called Eliza.
He named it after the lead character in Shaw’s play ‘Pygmalion’.
About a simple girl who learns to speak English correctly.
Because that’s what his programme did.
It learned to speak very basic English.
He wrote a script called ‘Doctor’.
This was named for the psychologist Carl Rogers.
Rogers had introduced a therapy which depended on listening.
To encourage the patient to talk by asking questions.
It was called non-directive therapy:
Doctor: 'How are you today?'
Patient: 'Not bad thank you.'
Doctor: 'Not bad compared to what?'
Patient: 'Compared to last week.'
Doctor: 'You think last week was a bad week?'
Patient: 'Well there were one or two rough patches?'
Doctor: 'And why do you think you had rough patches?'
Patient: 'Oh, a couple of things happened.'
Doctor: 'And what were those things?'
Patient: 'Well first off there was...'
And at that point the patient is usually off and running.
All the doctor has to do is ask a few questions along the way.
And that was how Weisenbaum’s programme ran.
It made pre-programmed, pattern-matching replies to statements.
The replies were always questions.
To Weisenbaum’s shock, people began opening their hearts to his programme.
Even the people who had helped construct it, spent hours talking to it.
Once the programme began asking questions they couldn’t stop.
Weisenbaum shouldn’t have been surprised, it’s a basic response.
All we can ever know about the world is the world as we perceive it.
And the questions help us uncover it by encouraging us to talk.
To learn what’s going on, who we are and where we fit in.
Rogers was rated second only to Freud as the twentieth century’s leading clinical psychologist.
Nearly all therapy is now conducted according to his principles.
That’s how important his work was.
But it was actually based on the earlier work of Snygg and Combs.
The founders of ‘Phenomenal Field Theory’.
Phenomenal, in this case, doesn’t mean ‘amazing’; it means that which we can experience: phenomena.
And their fi nding was that anyone can only live at the centre of their own experience or phenomena.
They put it as follows:
'Learning takes place through differentiation:
extracting some meaningful detail from the confusion that surrounds us.'
So everything starts with recognising that everyone is the centre of their own universe.
Everyone experiences the world primarily in terms of themselves.
Once we understand that, we can begin to talk to more successfully to people.
We can talk to them about something they care about.
Something they actively want to participate in.
We can talk to them about themselves.
Instead of just talking to them about whatever we want to say.
Most advertising is ignored because the majority of all communication is ignored.
If we want to be heard we must come off broadcast and go on receive.

This article was taken from the January 2014 issue of Market Leader. Browse the archive here.

Read more from Dave Trott in our Clubhouse.