David:        Well, yes, although, we didn't call it that.
You know, it was nothing explicit at that time. But, in fact, that is what we were doing. You know, it wasn't till at some point later, gosh, oh, I don't quite know where in the process. You know, these things are quite organic. And also, it wasn't just one person, it wasn't me or one person doing it, it was going through the process, it was a group that was interacting.

And, so, it's really hard for me to say exactly when the notion of modeling, explicit notion of modeling, kind of came to the surface. I don't really know when I would say that happened. But, I can tell you, in those early days, it was certainly, nothing that was ever talked about or recognized explicitly, at least by any of us participating. But, we certainly, were doing that, we were doing it in an informal way, but we were certainly doing it. We were trying to figure out, you know, what's the structure?

That's what NLP is about, what's the structure of experience here? And, we were trying to figure out what is the structure here and how could we describe it? And, that is the enterprise of modeling.

Doug:        So, where does that term, "modeling," come from, as far as you know?

David:        Well, it certainly, doesn't come from NLP. I mean, it pre-dates NLP, certainly.

Doug:        How did it come into NLP?

David:        I don't know. You know, Doug, I really don't know. It kind of appeared one day.

Doug:        Prior to it being formalized as NLP? Or, was it after that?

David:        Let me think. Formalized as NLP...I think it was, I think it did come in before it got formally named as NLP. But, I don't really know. Probably... I'll bet the person who could answer that question would be Robert Dilts.

Doug:        OK, we'll have to ask him, then.

David:        Yes.

Doug:        For me, when I learned NLP years ago, and this was, you know, a good 15 years after you started with Richard, nobody really taught modeling. Everybody talked about modeling, used the term pretty loosely, actually. There were models of this and models of that, Milton models, meta models, all kinds of models and people talked about models. Tony Robbins changed it, ultimately, to role modeling, or something like that, I'm not sure. But, nobody really taught it. I mean, what is it, and how do you come to be doing it now? I mean, you've just released a wonderful new book called, "Expanding Your World." It's all about modeling. Is it sort of explicitly what you did back then, or what...?

David:        No, no, it's explicitly what I do now.

Doug:        OK.

David:        Of course, it is an explication or, I guess you would say, it's a model of a lot of what, at least, I was doing then. But, I think one needs to be careful in talking about modeling and be clear about kind of what level you're talking about modeling. You know, there is the underlying process or enterprise of modeling, right? Let's call it the enterprise of modeling, which really, you know, I think is the same, no matter what approach you¹re taking or who's doing it. And, that is, you are constructing some kind of description of the structure of someone else's experience, with the intention of having that structure operate in you or in somebody else, be useful in you or somebody else.

Now, the form that that description takes could be very different. You know, the description could exist completely as nothing but body sensation and could have no language attached to it, whatsoever. Although, of course, you can't talk about it, then. Or, you know, the description could exist in content, as a content description, which much of the model that I do does. But, the nub of it, I think, to me, somebody's doing modeling when they are identifying in some way, pulling out in some way, this structure that is significant or essential to manifesting or producing a particular experience or behavior. That's modeling.

Doug:        OK.

David:        And then, you know, different people have different approaches for doing that. So...