The NLP Purpose Frame is an NLP frame that is used for Chunking Up – to discover the motivation for doing something.
In human behaviour a person will have a positive intention for any particular action. Often it is a positive behaviour for the person taking the action, even if that action is intended to help another individual. This is a cycle that is in continuous operation.
Finding the positive intention is useful to help identify the pattern and if the actions are problematic, then to improve the behaviour.
eg By asking, ‘For what purpose….?’
So, if someone says, “I constantly feel like I want to scream.” You may wonder why it is that they want to do that. What is the behaviour behind that feeling? What is the reason behind the feeling that is making them want to scream? In order to get that person to really figure out “why?” and without asking “why?” we can ask them “for what purpose do you think that you constantly want to scream?”
It is likely that they will need to chunk up, or think in a more abstract way about the “wider picture” of why this is happening. This helps them because it gives them greater insight into the problem and it detaches them from the problem.