Harlan Where do you get the idea that Erickson was resistant to the idea that he could be modeled" The nut and shell metaphor has a ton of intrepretations - my favorite being the one posted on an earlier thread by some worthy whose name presently escapes me: of course, we got the shell (the form) as that is precisely what we went after and not the nut (the content - that is, his own beliefs and values). I never had any communication from Erickson that indicated that he ever had any difficulty with the idea that we would model him. I supose that in the midst of this speculation it is perfectly natural to pass over the one unambiguous statement he publicly made about the work Bandler and I did in favor of hallucinating your favorite response from a man you never met. All the best, John