The Rainbow Machine – Book Review

The Rainbow Machine
– Tales from a Neurolinguist’s Journal
By Andrew T. Austin – Review by Ulf Sandström

This book from 2007 keeps showing up on my radar through recommendations from several colleagues as “one of the most inspiring books they have read about NLP, hypnotherapy and change work in general”, and so far, I agree.

The author, Andrew T. Austin, seems to be full of knowledge, curiosity, courage, experience most importantly: humor. This book isn’t written for your rational mind, it is a story telling metaphorical voyage with a lot of nested loops – short stories that start and continue later leaving the reader in a constant state of suggestibility – and some are seemingly out of place, but they all make sense – to each in their own way I suspect. For me one of the most vivid memories of the book is the story about the 8 year old about to die, and everyone knows is but nobody dares mention it – that’s where I dropped my critical brain and just enjoyed the rest of the book.

It is guaranteed to open your mind to the challenges of being creative within the rules of modern healthcare, and a lot of the stuff other books break down into methods you will absorb as stories – which is what Andrew is a master of: weaving content and emotion into a web that offers multiple perspectives, just like reality does. His practical and creative demonstration of how a standard phobia cure can be delivered beyond the confinement of the principles in the case of the client with the broken penis is both simple and elegant, and his presentation of Frank Farelly’s provocative approach in a Small Case of Murder is equally entertaining and enlightening.

If you’re done with all those step by step books and want to start cooking complete meals this is a great book. If you’re curious about the difference between creative change work and trying to apply theoretical psychotherapy models it’s a must.

Milton Erickson – the role model of creative hypnotherapy said in 1965: “And therefore you have to have an open mind; not a critical mind, not a judgemental mind, but a curious mind, a scientific mind wondering what the real situation is. And so you try to appraise it.”

This book is a good example of somebody putting that to practice and sharing it. Are you serious about making a difference in therapy? Read it. Twice. Already.