Questions Containing Presuppositions of Judgement

Richard Bolstad

Communication Skills and their Basic Presupposition

In our course Transforming Communication, we teach essentially two sets of skills for dealing with problem situations: 1) skills for listening to someone else when they are unhappy about things, called “Reflective listening skills” or “Coaching skills”:  (e.g. “So the way you experience it is …”) and 2) skills for explaining my own problem when I am the one who is unhappy, called Assertive skills or “I Messages”: (e.g. “So the way I experience it is …”). These two sets of skills need to be used together when both people are unhappy, such as in a conflict (e.g. “So in your experience … and in my experience …”).

These two sets of skills are based on the core assumption that what is important in a relationship is helping each person to feel happy, not determining what is “right” or “wrong”. Furthermore, determining what is “right” or “wrong” is actually viewed, in this model, as a way of avoiding admitting what I am unhappy about, or for avoiding hearing what the other person is unhappy about. “Right” and “wrong” are thus what NLP calls “Lost Performatives” in that they obscure who is performing the value judgement – according to whom is it “right” or “wrong”. This NLP understanding points out that judgements of “good” and “bad”, “right” and “wrong” are linguistic distortions of statements about what someone likes or doesn’t like, wants or doesn’t want. “It’s wrong not to tidy up your clothes after having a shower.” actually means “I don’t like it when you don’t tidy up your clothes after having a shower.”

Questions are of course really useful language patterns also, and in the area where both people feel OK, they can help create deeper understanding, problem solving and creativity. In that sense, Open Questions are a third powerful set of communication skills and can be genuinely useful for gathering information to help each of us continue meeting our needs and getting what we want.

Judgemental Presuppositional Questions

In the area of the relationship where a person is upset, however, Questions run the risk of making it unclear whose problem the speaker is aiming to solve. If a person, early in life, learns that they are not supposed to state their own opinions and desires, they will learn to disguise these as questions about the other person’s intentions. Instead of saying “I don’t like it when you tidy up your clothes after having a shower.” they learn to ask “Aren’t you going to tidy up your clothes now?” or “Did you want me to tidy up your clothes?”

When a person is actually unhappy with what has happened, such questions become presuppositional questions, and the presupposition is the value judgement or command contained in them. By answering such questions, the person the question is directed to is required to either follow the person’s implied command, or openly disagree with the implied value (in which case they appear to be the one who is making a judgement).

The simplest example of a presuppositional question in the NLP Milton Model is the question “Can you shut the door?” This question is also called a Conversational Postulate because it appears not to be an instruction, but rather an innocent and curious question, postulating a possible response. Milton Erickson would often have an entire therapeutic conversation using such questions intentionally, aiming to direct the other person without appearing consciously to have told them what they should do: “Can you close your eyes? … Can you notice your breathing slowing down? … Can you begin to relax even more?” If the person said “Why should I?” then of course Milton would be able to explain “I didn’t say you should: I was merely curious about whether you could.”

Such questions represent a Counter-communication Skills model, designed to avoid discussion about what each person wants and to blame the other person for being judgmental. Consider some common examples: “Aren’t you going to do your share?”, “Don’t you think that needs fixing now?”, “Did you just forget to help me with my tasks?”, “Have you decided to ignore me?”

Getting Beyond Judgemental Questions

It’s my belief that people don’t use blaming presuppositional questions just to be mean to you. They actually often have a lifetime of experience in being blamed and forbidden to acknowledge their own needs. They often have had the same skill modelled in their own upbringing. But just understanding all that, doesn’t mean that you can “ignore” someone’s use of blaming-based questions. Those questions do actually require you to obey the other person, to accept that you are “wrong”, to respond judgmentally yourself, OR to challenge the underlying presuppositions of their question.

If you want a long term relationship with the person, eventually you probably want to be able to challenge the underlying presuppositions and get back to talking about what each of you really wants. At this point, remember, their most logical move is simply to deny that the question “means” what you think it means: they can say that you are free to respond however you like.

The tangle that you risk getting into then is what Eric Berne used to call a psychological “game”. According to Berne, Games are “sets of ulterior transactions, repetitive in nature, with a well-defined psychological payoff.” The term “ulterior transactions” mean that there is a hidden level to the communication: “Can you shut the door” appears to be a question but at the ulterior level is a command. Such communications become a habit; hence the “repetitive in nature” claim. The “well-defined psychological payoff” is what NLP would call the “higher intention” of the communication, which in this case is to have the questioner avoid stating their need or desire, and having someone else seem to be the judgemental one, if that person refuses to meet that need or desire. Beyond that, the higher positive intention is usually to be loved and cared for, of course. Their highest intention isn’t to make you feel blamed and guilty. If it happens, that’s largely an unintended side effect of the strategy.

The reality is that some people will not be willing to give up this pattern, even if you explain it gently and empathically. Their childhood experience may tell them that to give it up is life threatening: their fear is that is they change, they will never find love. Because it is a repetitive pattern, it is not so simple to change and there may be times when they slip into the pattern again of course. But a slip is not a fall. And perhaps the most important thing is for you to understand what is your own best choice, to get the things you actually need and want from a relationship, for yourself.

Bibliography:

• Berne, E., 1964, Games People Play, Grove Press, New York
• Bolstad, R., 2025, Transforming Communication, Transformations, Auckland