You always have really cool stories, Jeff.
It makes a great deal of sense. Once someone has something stable to cognitively fixate upon, they can build a complete reality orientation around that.
Bandler and Grinder would use confusion as a teaching technique.
I never personally experienced Grinder's style of teaching, but I've attended a Bandler seminar, and I can tell you first-hand that he induces confusion. It can be pretty harrowing at times.
The thing about it is, when you're confused, your brain is desperate for something to latch on to, something to build a stable orientation around. When it gets it, it can cling to it pretty tightly.
Some people use it in teaching to really drill something in.
Unfortunately, some things learned this way can become a fixation point and your thinking and behavior can become "calcified" around it. Very rigid, unchanging, inflexible.
I've heard that in teaching Jeet Kune Do, the teachers do something like this, but constantly induce confusion and information overload, to try and keep the person lively and on their feet, out of their minds and in the moment, so to speak. Don't know if that's true, it's what I was told by a martial arts guy.
I've found confusion particularly hard to deal with. I was one of those smart kids to whom things came very easily. When stuff got tough, when I'd really have to strain and thing about something complex, a whole load of negative self-judgments and panic set in. I still have a lot of that stuff. It's a hard thing to deal with. Confusion can be a real pain.
I think for the latching onto the datum thing to work, it has to be something that you're really familiar with.
On a recent programming test for a job interview over the phone, they asked me to code something with the guy waiting on the line that I had absolutely no idea how to approach. I tried focusing on the simplest, most certain thing, but I got panicy, drew a lot of blanks, and just couldn't think. When I'd start to get oriented, some other unknown or the idea of the time constraint or some other thing would come into my mind, and I'd have to start all over again. It was a nightmare.
I know that I'll have to go through a lot more interviews before I get my legs and take it as it comes without freaking out. I guess it's just one of those things.