Hello, Dr. Grinder. 1.  You wrote, "I suggest that one amplification of the terminology might proceed by treating the predicate 'disassociate' like the verb 'transfer'." I'd like to agree with your statement, and also propose additional ways to treat the predicate "disociate".  In addition to treating the predicate "disociate" like the predicate "transfer", the predicate "disociate" can be treated like : - the three-place predicate "shift". - the two-place predicate "modify". 2.  You wrote, "'Disassociation, to me, has often meant 'not associated' or 'lack of/minimal kinesthetics.' I think that this is the common usage - but I'll be damned if I will roll over for people attempting to hijack a perfectly good predicate." The term "disociated" should be treatable as an adjective in everyday speech. You can know that someone is disociated from a particular state without specifying what state he is disociated from when you describe his state, because the state disociated from is assumed by conversational implicature.    To end use of the atomic predicate "disociated" will disallow a person with incomplete and relevant information from expressing his incomplete and relevant information briefly.  For example: Speaker: "Is the client out of first position?" Hearer: "Yes, he's disociated." Speaker: "I mean, what position is he in?" (a) Hearer: "He's in second position." (b) Hearer: "I don't know." (c) Hearer: "I don't know how to describe it." Just to say that a client is in one of the compliment states of first position is to make a significant statement.  The Hearer might know that the client is not in first position but not know what state the client is in.  The Hearer might not know what words could describe the client's state.  Imagine if the Hearer thought that the only way to answer the Speaker was to give the name of a perceptual position! Dr. Grinder, I wonder if you'd check your therapy experience for me.  Can circumstances occur in the therapy context where just the therapist's knowledge of the absence of a client's (un)desired state is useful to the therapist? Don't some circumstances occur during therapy in which you test for the absence of a state, because: - the ongoing absence of a particular state requires you to continue work toward the same result? - the sudden absence of a particular state requires you to begin work toward a new result? As you know, in the English language, statements that describe an occurence of relocation may not include a description of the relocation's target.   Consider your own uses of the predicates: - remove - separate - part from - exit - take away - take off - take out - withdraw - disturb - doff Each term can be used to mean an act of relocating. If you require yourself to distinguish the target of every relocation event that you want to verbally describe when you verbally describe the event, will you hinder your ability to communicate effectively or efficiently or appropriately? If your answer is "No", then can you think of any instances in which you might still use one of the above predicates without specifying the target of the relocation event it refers to?  Maybe for lack of knowledge of the target of the relocation act, or for lack of means to describe it in English? 3. You wrote, "I suspect that the origin of the negative connotations associated with the term 'disassociation' was its sloppy use in psychiatry where I believe it was used as an atomic predicate and represented a pathological diagnostic category. God save from the linguistics of psychiatry!" To use the multi-place predicate "disociated" as an atomic predicate is not equivalent to using the predicate "disociate" to define a person's pathology.  I agree that the psychiatric communities use of the term "disociated" is sloppy.  Psychiatrists' use of the term "disociated" is probably inconsistent within the psychiatric community. You could say that trying to remove the term "disociate" from the NLP lexicon will improve the quality of NLP worker reports.  But couldn't you achieve the same results by supplying one or more new terms to describe a change in a state, stipulative terms, precising terms, or lexical terms that have neutral associations?  You could also create precising definitions specifically to clarify for others your own (written) use of the terms "disociate" and "associate", whenever your logical type for the term is different than your readers or listeners expect from you. The advantage of leaving the term "disociate" in the NLP lexicon is that doing so will enable NLP workers to communicate in contexts in which they have: - incomplete information - a need to make a brief description - a lack of means to describe what a person's state is - a lack of need to describe what a person's state is. -nj Definitions: target (noun): A participant in a relocating of an object from one place or state to another.  The destination or end_location or end_state of a relocating behavior. stipulative definition (noun): A definition proposed for use during a communication; a definiens whose definiendum may have a different definiens given for it in a dictionary or glossary.  The WITW term "logical type" refers to the essential characteristics of objects in the extension of a stipulatively defined term.  For example, a therapy code word has a stipulative definition that lasts only for the duration of the therapist's and client's use of the word by its code meaning. precising definition (noun): A definiens legislated by the source of a text for the purpose of specifying a definition at a lower logical level than the lexical definition of a term used in the text.  Appropriate for certain legal and scientific communication contexts. lexical definition (noun): All the definiens given in a dictionary for a definiendum that you find in the dictionary. definiens (noun): A recorded or stated intensional definition of a term.  A definiendum can have more than one definiens. definiendum (noun): A recorded or stated term that has along with its record or statement one or more definiens recorded or stated for it. logical level (noun): (use taken from WITW) logical type (noun): (use taken from WITW)