The Sorting Hat

In the first book of J.K. Rowling’s fantasy series about the world of wizardry, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling, 2000a), the Sorting Hat is described as “patched and frayed and extremely dirty” (p. 129), yet it is a magical object that will deeply affect the students of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The magic Sorting Hat sorts the new first year students at the school into one of four Houses based on their abilities and character. When the Hat is worn by of one of the new students, it is able to magically perceive their thoughts, abilities, and character. In the words of the Hat itself:

There’s nothing hidden in your head
The Sorting Hat can’t see
So try me on and I will tell you
Where you ought to be. (p. 129)

The Sorting Hat ceremony is especially important because the decision of the Hat about the student’s House is not negotiable and will be binding over the seven years that the students will live and study at Hogwarts. The Hat’s decision will influence the development of their characters and continue to reverberate through their entire lives. When it is Harry’s turn to put on the Sorting Hat, it takes a little more time to decide his fate, but finally it announces that Harry Potter will be placed in the House of Gryffindor, rather than the House of Slytherin which he had feared.
Life can sometimes be thought of as an enormous sorting hat. Harry Potter gets put into Gryffindor rather than Slytherin. Similarily, people get sorted right from the beginning of their lives using sorting criteria such as socio-economic background, country of birth, gender, or race. As they go through life, they get further sorted by ability or circumstance into different schools, professions, and roles within society. There is no doubt that much of this sorting is useful as it does help to channel people into those areas of society that are most beneficial for both themselves and society in general, but there is also a danger that people can overly accept how they have been sorted and lose sight of the actual choices that they have in their lives. The Sorting Hat of life identifies a person’s abilities and assigns roles based upon those abilities, but it is sometimes seen as taking away or at least lessening the ability to make individual choices.
In NLP, we are always interested in helping people to become aware of their choices because having more choices means a richer map of the world, and a richer map can allow a person to utilize more resources to live a productive and fulfilling life. When a client says that “I have to …”, an NLP practitioner might use a metamodel response such as “What would happen if you didn’t?”, thus opening up the client’s map of the world to allow for the possibility of change. Following the metaphor of the Sorting Hat, the person who says “I have to …” believes that they have somehow been assigned into a particular place in life where there is only one available choice. Because they cannot deviate from that single choice, there is not really a choice at all because only one choice means that a person has to act in a certain way, and the action is no more than the stimulus-response of one of Pavlov’s dogs. Having two choices is better but results in a dilemma in which we must choose one thing or the other. It is when a person can identify three or more choices (even if they are not all good choices) that a person’s map of the world can open up to the myriad of possibilities that are always available to people at almost any point in life. Is Rowling really suggesting that the choices of Harry Potter and the other young magicians at Hogwarts are so constrained?
In book two of the series (Rowling, 2000b), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry confronts the evil Lord Voldemart in the form of Tom Riddle. As Riddle prepares to kill Harry, he tells Harry that they are similar in many ways and Harry realizes that this is true. Later, after Harry has defeated Riddle and is trying to explain the chain of events to the headmaster of Hogwarts, Dumbledore.
Dumbledore agrees that Harry is similar to Voldemart in many ways such as his “very rare gift, Parseltongue … resourcefulness … determination, and a certain disregard for rules” (p.357-8). Dumbledore says “Unless I’m much mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar”. Harry responds in horror, “Voldemort put a bit of himself in me? …. So I should be in Slytherin …. The Sorting Hat could see Slytherin’s power in me …” Both Harry and Dumbledore realize that the Sorting Hat should have put Harry into the House that he hates, Slytherin, based on his abilities and character, yet it didn’t and instead chose to place him in Gryffindor.
Dumbledore resolves the puzzle by telling Harry that his strong wish to enter Gryffindor made him “very different from Tom Riddle” because “it is our choices … that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” If we look back at the Sorting Hat scene from Book 1, we see that the sorting process was not quite as passive as was suggested above. Below is the section in which Harry puts on the Sorting Hat:

‘Hmm,’ said a small voice in his ear. ‘Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind, either. There’s talent, oh my goodness, yes – and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that’s interesting … So where shall I put you?’

Harry gripped the edges of the stool and thought, ‘Not Slytherin, not Slytherin.’

‘Not Slytherin, eh?’ said the small voice. ‘Are you sure? You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that – no? Well, if you’re sure – better be GRYFFINDOR.’

Just as the the Sorting Hat takes into account the strong choice made by Harry, so do the many sorting systems of life sort each of us not just by our abilities, but also by the choices that we make. When Harry Potter put on the Sorting Hat, it appeared that he was at the mercy of the Hat’s decision, but in reality he had at least two choices. Or perhaps he really had four choices. And in life, there are always more choices than initially seem obvious.
Although the magic of the Sorting Hat can identify our abilities, it is really ourselves who make the choice of what to do with our abilities, and it is ultimately ourselves who choose the limitations that are around us and within us. As Dumbledore said, “it is our choices … that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” There is always a Sorting Hat, a person or system that will try to make our choices for us, but ultimately NLP means an increasing recognition of our own choices and using our abilities in the way that is congruent with our own mission in life.

References

Rowling, J. K. (2000a). Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (1st American ed.). New York: Arthur A. Levine Books.
Rowling, J. K. (2000b). Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Bloomsbury Pub Ltd.

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©Copyright 2010 by Dr. Brian Cullen