Clean Language: a doorway into mental space

One of the most interesting things for me about Clean Language questions is the insights they can offer into the world of mental space.

On the face of it, that might not sound super practical. But it really is useful!

When you start to understand how someone’s mental space is arranged, you are understanding them at quite a profound level. And when you reflect back what you know about their mental space, they will feel deeply understood – which in turn has a powerful impact on the relationship between them.

Dig too deep into this, and it can be so powerful that it starts to feel as if you are tricking or manipulating people, which you’ll know is pretty much the opposite of “being Clean”.

That’s a quality problem to have! Most people, of course, are unaware of what mental space is, how to explore it, or how they might already be using it to influence people.

What’s mental space?

Humans are not disembodied brains in jars. We live in the real world. When we see, hear or feel things, we see, hear or feel them somewhere.

In the same way, we organise our thoughts spatially: the things we are thinking about have specific locations inside us, and in the space around us. 

This habit is reflected in the rich spatial metaphors in our language: for example, “You are in my heart”, “Hold your friends close”, “Go ahead”, etc.

David Grove, the creator of Clean Language, noticed all of this, and used Clean Language questions in his therapy work to find out how his clients laid out their “metaphorical landscapes”. (Later, David did a bunch of other interesting things involving space, including creating Clean Space and Emergent Knowledge processes.)

How to Cleanly explore mental space

The Clean Language questions “Where is X?” and “Whereabouts is X?” (or “that X?”) can be used to ask about the location of anything someone has mentioned.

For example, if someone mentions they are building a wall, you could Cleanly ask, “Where is that wall?” and they might reply, “At the bottom of my garden.”

But what if it’s a metaphorical wall? Asking straight out, “Where is that wall?” is likely to cause a bit of a double-take. “What kind of wall?” or “Is there anything else about that wall?” are likely to be easier for them to answer. But once they’ve described, for example, a “Chinese wall” between their department and a rival’s, you could certainly ask the same question, “Whereabouts is that wall?”

Asking these location questions can often help a person to sort out a jumble of thoughts and feelings. By getting things laid out spatially, it’s much easier to understand how things relate to each other. (That’s why group facilitators love free-form room layouts with movable chairs, piles of colourful post-it notes, and why tech companies have lots of big whiteboards in their meeting rooms.)

Respecting Mental Space

“You would never dream of moving someone’s physical belongings around in their office or home – and in a Clean Language session we extend the same respect to the location of the client’s symbols in their imaginative space.” That’s how Wendy Sullivan and I put it in our 2008 book, Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds.

Or, to quote a training participant from a few years ago, “It’s like we all agree to treat each others’ imaginary friends as real.”

You don’t need to ask lots of Clean Language questions to do this.

Instead, watch people’s gestures as they talk about stuff. Often, they’ll indicate specific locations clearly and repeatedly – as long as you’re paying attention.

• What questions do you have about this? Shall I run a live Q+A session about it? let me know if you’re interested.