THE READER'S JOURNEY: DOES IT FEEL THE SAME?

In the last post we pointed out how ABBA's "The winner takes it all" is a wonderful constellation of hypnotic patterns. We want now to analyse the best hypnotic verse of the song together with some other non verbal and para-verbal communication nuggets.

After having led us through the introduction, the first verse and after having put us into a light trance thanks to the many Milton Model's hypnotic patterns, she ushers us into the third verse, the innermost cave, and that's where she unleashes her lovely masterpiece:

Agnetha Fältskog in 1979
(Wikipedia)

But tell me does she kiss,

Like I used to kiss you?

Does it feel the same,

When she calls your name?

Somewhere deep inside,

You must know I miss you

But what can I say,

Rules must be obeyed

Why is this verse worth to be considered a wonderful hypnotic trance in itself?

First of all, because of its indirect communication, Milton favourite way of sending suggestions, as he himself states in the preface to Richard Bandler and John Grinder book Patterns of Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M.D. (Meta Publications, 1975): "It has been a pleasure and privilege to write the Preface to this book. I say this, not because it centers around my hypnotic techniques, but because long overdue is the fulfillment of the need to recognize that meaningful communication should replace repetitious verbigerations, direct suggestions, and authoritarian commands.".

The woman wants to say in essence: "I MISS YOU". But saying it directly is not the best way to make her ex-lover actually feel it. She needs to prepare the ground where the seed is planted, nurtured and will finally blossom. Milton was in favour of indirect communication because it's so much more effective. Let's look at the verse more in detail.

"But": it separates what came before to what is coming next, it's a sign that she will now communicate something different or differently.

"Tell me": in this case it's a rethorical device, a conversational postulate, it's a other way to make an indirect suggestion that will follow immediately afterwards.

Romeo and Juliet kissing in
a painting by Sir Frank Dicksee.
(Wikipedia)

"Does she kiss like I used to kiss you": what does he have to do in order to make sense of the statement? He has to compare how he feels (K) when he remembers the two different kisses (K) and to do that he has to go inside of himself (transderivational search) to search his memory and his remembered feelings. Implicitly he will have to remember her kisses and how he felt (K) when she kissed him. By doing this he has to feel (K) it now as well :-)

Then to enrich the sensory experience she the goes to another representational system, the auditory:

The spectrogram of the human voice
reveals its rich harmonic content.
(Wikipedia)

"Does it feel the same, when she calls your name?" once again he has to go inside of himself and compare the two voices (A) with his two remembered feelings (K). Again, implicitly he has to remember the way she called his name (A) and feel it (K). By the way, you surely have noticed that she doesn't mention his actual name and so each one of us can do the same process with our own name. The sentence is also lacking a referential index.

Now the listener is in a light altered state, more receptive to suggestions and fully remembering how he felt with her, and then, and only then, she shoots her best:

"Somewhere deep inside,
You must know I MISS YOU"

Somewhere: unspecified referential index
Deep inside: embedded comand (= go deep inside, with deep being a commentary adjective)
You must: modal operator of necessity
You know: awareness predicate
I MISS YOU: the real emotional message

Five Milton Model patterns in one sentence!!!! Wow. (I know, I know, it's by chance).

I do now realize that my post is a bit longer than what I know my 25 readers think it should be. :-)

So let's discuss the non-verbal and paraverbal communication of the song next time.