From the Identity Level to Identifications
A necessary heresy?
Robert Dilts’s model of intervention levels has been the backbone of NLP for decades. Say NLP and most people picture that familiar pyramid: environment, behavior, capabilities, beliefs and values, identity, the transpersonal. Its practical success is not in doubt, and thousands of practitioners rely on it daily.
Questioning that model, and particularly its identity level, is not heresy but necessity. Developments in cognitive science, neuroscience and sociology invite us to examine our conceptual tools. As Thomas Kuhn showed in his work on scientific revolutions, attachment to an established paradigm can slow innovation and narrow understanding.
The point is not to demolish but to enrich. The aim is to move past the theoretical and practical limits of the identity level and offer something more dynamic, more nuanced and better grounded: identifications.
Where the identity level runs into trouble
The illusion of a stable entity
The first problem with the identity level is that it implies a stable and unchanging entity. When a client says “That’s just how I am,” they are usually invoking that level to justify their limitations. The framing encourages deterministic thinking that becomes a powerful brake on change. Identity turns into a gilded cage, a reason not to move.
In fact our cells renew, our thoughts evolve, our experiences continuously alter how we see ourselves and the world. A fixed identity is more a reassuring psychological construction than an accurate description of what we are.
No operational definition
The identity level suffers from conceptual vagueness. It works as a catch-all, mixing social roles, life missions, personality traits and beliefs about oneself without distinction. That imprecision makes targeted intervention difficult.
More troubling still: what actually distinguishes a belief about oneself (“I am a creative person”) from an element of identity? That artificial boundary reveals the conceptual weakness. Our beliefs about ourselves constitute our identity; no additional level is required to separate them.
Structural difficulties
Beyond the identity level, the structure itself raises questions. Despite the name, these are neither true “levels” nor “logical levels” in the mathematical sense. A higher level does not systematically include the lower ones, and influence does not travel only downward.
The proposed hierarchy is sometimes hard to defend: why would behavior be “logically superior” to environment? That linear structure imposes a reductive view on phenomena that are in fact circular and interconnected.
Theoretical grounds for the shift
Durkheim and the sociological view
Émile Durkheim offers an essential framework for understanding why identifications are the more useful unit than isolated individual identity. His work on social facts and collective representations reveals the constraining force of the social on the individual.
Collective representations, those mental frames shared by a group, impose themselves on us with binding force, shaping our thoughts and behaviors often without our noticing. When we carry out our duties as a parent, a citizen or a professional, we are following norms “defined outside us” and received through education.
Durkheim dismantles the self-made-man illusion. The individual is not an isolated being who builds themselves alone, but rather the product of a set of determinations woven through family, social and cultural history. That perspective shows that we cannot not identify. We are fundamentally social beings.
Heidegger and the existential view
Martin Heidegger enriches this by warning about unconscious identifications. He describes the “dictatorship of the They” (Das Man), that anonymous presence of others through which we lose authenticity. Dasein is “proximally and for the most part” lost in the they-self, where possibilities are levelled down by mediocrity and conformity.
That “inauthenticity” is not an absence of identifications but an unconscious and alienating identification. The challenge is not to avoid identifications, which would be impossible, but to transform them. Authenticity lies in resoluteness, the capacity to be called back out of lostness in the They and to develop conscious, chosen identifications.
Heidegger also underlines being-with (Mitsein) as a structural dimension of existence. To be in the world is from the outset to be with others. This confirms that identity cannot be thought independently of our social belongings.
Damasio and the neurobiological grounding
Antonio Damasio brings a bodily and neurobiological dimension to the question. His work shows that identity is not an abstract entity but an emergent property rooted in the body and the emotions.
The proto-self, that continuously updated non-linguistic representation of the body, constitutes the pre-conscious basis of identity. Somatic markers, the physiological changes associated with our emotions and past experiences, influence our decisions and contribute to our sense of who we are.
For Damasio, identity emerges from the dynamic interaction of body, emotion, memory and environment. It builds itself as a unique narrative thread, connecting our past to our future through our present. That view confirms identity as a dynamic process rather than a fixed substance.
The Experience Matrix
The space of identifications
The Experience Matrix replaces the static identity level with a dynamic, multidimensional space of identifications. The approach recognizes that we are social beings who cannot not identify, while offering tools to make those identifications more conscious and more deliberate.
Identification is defined as a dynamic process by which an individual adopts, to varying degrees, the collective cognitive frame and behavioral repertoire of one or more classes of people, while retaining their singularity. The process runs both ways: the individual identifies with a group, and the group exerts normative influence on the individual.
The space of identifications holds two essential components:
Intersubjective behaviors: the observable, typical actions that characterize a class of people. These are the behavioral markers of belonging, the ways of dressing, speaking and conducting oneself that signal identification with a group.
Intersubjective knowledge: the value systems, foundational beliefs and worldviews shared by a class of people. These collective representations act as a prism through which we perceive and interpret our surroundings.
Identity reconceived
In this model identity does not disappear; it is reconceived. It is no longer a static level but the temporal dimension of experience, represented by the arrow of time running through the model.
Identity becomes our unique temporal signature, the singular way each person lives, interprets and integrates their experiences over time. It is the personal narrative thread that emerges from:
- the succession of experiences lived
- the singular way of interpreting them
- the accumulation of learning
- the evolution of identifications
- projections toward the future
This reconception offers several advantages:
- it avoids the rigidity of a fixed identity
- it encourages a developmental view
- it makes change easier by making it natural
- it recognizes the uniqueness of each individual path
- it fully integrates the social dimension of being human
What this means for practice
New tools
Mapping identifications becomes a foundational exercise. It means exploring with the client their various belongings, conscious and unconscious. Which groups do they identify with? Which intersubjective behaviors have they adopted? Which intersubjective knowledge guides their decisions? That mapping often reveals contradictory or problematic identifications.
Analyzing resonance explores the coherences and incoherences between the different spaces of experience. How do the client’s identifications resonate with their individual behaviors? Are their personal capabilities aligned with the intersubjective behaviors of their reference groups? These questions surface the sources of internal conflict and the levers for change.
Working with problematic identifications allows the practitioner to support conscious disidentification. Unlike the traditional approach that seeks to “change identity,” this method recognizes that one can choose to disidentify from certain groups while developing new and more resourceful belongings.
A different posture
The identification approach changes the practitioner’s stance. Instead of asking “Who are you?”, a question that tends to produce fixed answers, the practitioner explores “Who do you identify with?” That reformulation opens a space of movement and choice.
The work becomes support toward relational authenticity, the capacity to choose one’s identifications consciously in light of one’s deeper values and life project. It is no longer about “finding your identity” but about learning to navigate authentically among your various belongings.
Three examples
Career transition. Marie, a finance executive, wants to become a therapist. The traditional approach would explore her “deep identity” to validate the change. The identification approach examines her current identifications (corporate world, performance, competition) and her prospective ones (helping relationship, care, personal development), the behaviors and intersubjective knowledge attached to each, and supports the gradual transition between those worlds.
Conflict of values. Jean feels torn between family life and his career as an entrepreneur. Rather than searching for “who he really is,” the practitioner explores his identifications with the groups “fathers” and “entrepreneurs,” the contradictory intersubjective knowledge of those two worlds, and supports Jean toward a creative integration of both belongings.
Identity crisis. After being made redundant, Sophie no longer knows “who she is.” The identification approach reveals that she had over-identified with her professional role. The work consists of rediscovering her other identifications (mother, athlete, engaged citizen) and developing new resourceful belongings.
A line of thought worth pursuing
This exploration of identifications versus identity is not an attempt to overturn coaching practice but to enrich it with a more nuanced and better grounded perspective. Dilts’s intervention levels have accompanied thousands of successful transformations, and that practical value deserves acknowledgment.
Still, the conceptual and theoretical limits of the identity level become harder to ignore as the human sciences advance. The identification approach, supported by Durkheim, Heidegger and Damasio, offers an alternative that is more dynamic and more respectful of human complexity.
For practitioners, this opens new ground: understanding a human being not as an isolated entity with a fixed identity, but as a relational being who constructs themselves through multiple and evolving identifications. That view allows us to support clients toward greater authenticity and greater freedom in their choices.
Moving from the intervention levels to identifications is not merely a theoretical quarrel. It is an invitation to enrich our understanding of human experience and, through that, the effectiveness of our work. In a world changing quickly, where traditional reference points erode, this more fluid and adaptive approach to identity may well be one of the keys to supporting people toward greater fulfilment.
This article is also available in French on atelierpnl.eu: De l’identité des niveaux logiques aux identifications.