The Phone Book by Zarro and Blum

Title: The Phone Book: Breakthrough Neurolinguistic Phone Skills for Profit and Enlightenment
Author: Richard A. Zarro and Peter Blum
Format: book
Source: http://www.soundsforhealing.com/Products.html#phonebook or Amazon (link below)
Price: varies
Rating: Excellent



When I requested that author Peter Blum send a copy of his 1989 classic The Phone Book for review, he graciously agreed, but added a caveat, which I will paraphrase: The book was written 22 years ago, with an intent "to counterbalance the overly wordy, academic, and intellectualized works that were out at that time explaining NLP." The author, looking back at it, explains that some parts strike him as childish and possibly condescending, and he adds, a bit apologetically, that he hopes he has learned some humility since then.

Well, primed as I was to read a book I wouldn't like, I have to say that I detected none of that condescension or arrogance. It just goes to show that even a long-time NLPer like Blum is still his own worst critic, drawing up a map that is far more dire than the actual territory. There's a lesson in that for all of us, I think.

Anyway, on to the review:

Cleverly titled, The Phone Book is written in the form of a novel, wisely employing the Ericksonian technique of encapsulating information in a narrative format. Our hero, Bob O'Ryan, is a former liberal arts major turned struggling salesman who simply detests cold calling and virtually any other use of the telephone. By a stroke of luck, Bob meets John Deltone, a highly capable salesman and communication expert who takes Bob under his wing, helping him re-discover the magic of the telephone.

Admittedly, it's not the Great American Novel, but it is engaging enough to avoid the trap of being dry and academic. More importantly, it cuts to the quick, briefly but effectively teaching a number of basic NLP concepts: reframing, the meta model, submodalities, and anchoring peak performance, to name a few. One particularly good part of the book describes the three primary representational systems in catchy terms: the eye-phoner, the ear-phoner, and the feel-phoner. Each one even comes with a caricature, for the visual learners—um, I mean, eye-phoners—in the readership.

During a visit with an extremely Ericksonian hypnotist, the main character even learns to look at the phone as a metaphor for our spiritual connection to the Divine, thus tying sales and spirituality together in a neat package. (As an aside, I want to thank the authors for helping re-frame hypnosis in the public eye.)

Of course, one problem with presenting information in a narrative format is that it can be difficult to review, but the authors cleverly took that into account: Protagonist Bob O'Ryan keeps a set of "phone notes" that are conveniently shared at the end of each chapter. I find that placing the book near my toilet for a quick glance through a few phone notes is a great way to internalize the information.

(By the way, readers should know that mentioning that I keep a book in my bathroom is possibly the highest praise I can give it.)

Is there anything to complain about in The Phone Book? Perhaps it's a bit dated, considering how much communication technology, the book's central metaphor, has changed over the last 22 years. That said, the basic ideas still apply even with today's technology. I found myself using them to great effect in a business email just yesterday.

While The Phone Book may not contain much that is new to someone thoroughly steeped in NLP, it is definitely a work I would recommend to anyone new to the subject, and especially anyone going into sales. In fact, I did recommend it to my nephew for just that purpose.

Many thanks to my online friend Michael Ellner for recommending The Phone Book to me.

Inductions and Deepeners by Richard K. Nongard

Title: Inductions and Deepeners: Styles & Approaches for Effective Hypnosis
Author: Richard K. Nongard
Format: book
Source: www.amazon.com
Price: $22.45
Rating: mixed

Disclaimer: Richard Nongard is a friend of mine, and his magnanimous advice and encouragement has made him one of the hypnotists I truly admire. Of course, as a reviewer, I have to set that aside and approach every work I review with a critical eye. I feel that I have successfully done that in this case, and I hope my readers will agree that I am unbiased by the end of this review.


As I've stated other times, I'm a bit of an induction collector. There are thousands of varied ways to induce trance, and I love looking at as many as I can, partly so that I can take them apart and figure out what makes them tick. So when I was attending Nongard's two-day basic hypnosis course and he offered me a couple of books to review, I was delighted that Inductions and Deepeners was one of them.

As an aside, I should mention that I thought Nongard's basic course was excellent. It was aimed at counselors and other health-care professionals who need CEUs. In two days, he took them through the basics of intake, pretalk, induction, deepeners, suggestions, and returns, in addition to addressing safety and professionalism issues. The course was very well put-together. When discussing it with Nongard, he mentioned that many instructors want to impress their fellow hypnotists, so they teach lots of fancy inductions instead of serving their students with good, solid, simple inductions. He certainly does a good job in his course of providing counselors with exactly what they need to start helping their clients with hypnosis.

But back to the review at hand. When viewed as an adjunct or extension of Nongard's basic course, the book shines, serving well to expand on the induction and deepeners he teaches his basic students. The techniques are simple and easy to use, making this an ideal book for that niche: counselors who are going to learn enough about hypnosis to use it as a tool while counseling, but who are not necessarily interested in devoting their lives to being hypnotists.

That said, for a dedicated professional hypnotist, the book left me disappointed. All of the inductions are in pretty much the same vein: a combination of progressive muscle relaxation, eye fixation, and visualization. Now there's nothing wrong with those approaches, and I have to admit that they are probably the best ones for counselors and therapists to use. But in terms of a book on the art of induction, the range seems very narrow.

The same problem occurs with the deepeners. They're pretty much all variations of counting down and fractionation. Before I was done, I kept having the feeling that I'd read the same passage more than once. Even the addition of the "reverse hypnosis" script—in which the trancer keeps his or her eyes open while imagining going up—does not present a radical departure from the rest of the book, educational as it may be to the novice hypnotist.

I was similarly disappointed to find little discussion of why the techniques work. Again, this may be simply a matter of me not being the ideal reader for this work.

All in all, if I'm right about the intended audience and purpose of this book, then I can certainly recommend it to those who attend Nongard's basic and advanced training courses, or for therapists who want simple methods for incorporating hypnosis into their practices. Those readers will definitely benefit, and their money will be well spent.