True Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Stories Part VI

NLP: Neuro Linguistic Programming

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, personal development and psychotherapy, which first appeared in Richard Bandler and John Grinder's 1975 book The Structure of Magic I. NLP asserts that there is a connection between neurological processes, language and acquired behavioral patterns, and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life.  According to Bandler and Grinder, NLP can treat problems such as phobias, depression, tic disorders, psychosomatic illnesses, near-sightedness, allergy, the common cold, and learning disorders, often in a single session. They also claim that NLP can "model" the skills of exceptional people, allowing anyone to acquire them.

NLP has been adopted by some hypnotherapists as well as by companies that run seminars marketed as leadership training to businesses and government agencies.

There is no scientific evidence supporting the claims made by NLP advocates, and it has been called a pseudoscience. Scientific reviews have shown that NLP is based on outdated metaphors of the brain's inner workings that are inconsistent with current neurological theory, and that NLP contain numerous factual errors. Reviews also found that research that favored NLP contained significant methodological flaws, and that there were three times as many studies of a much higher quality that failed to reproduce the claims made by Bandler, Grinder, and other NLP practitioners.

Early development

According to Bandler and Grinder, NLP consists of a methodology termed modeling, plus a set of techniques that they derived from its initial applications. They derived many of the fundamental techniques from the work of Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson and Fritz Perls.  Bandler and Grinder also drew upon the theories of Gregory Bateson, Alfred Korzybski and Noam Chomsky (particularly transformational grammar), as well as ideas and techniques from Carlos Castaneda.

Bandler and Grinder claim that their methodology can codify the structure inherent to the therapeutic "magic" as performed in therapy by Perls, Satir and Erickson, and indeed inherent to any complex human activity. From that codification, they claim, the structure and its activity can be learned by others. Their 1975 book, The Structure of Magic I: A Book about Language and Therapy is intended to be a codification of the therapeutic techniques of Perls and Satir.

Bandler and Grinder say that they used their own process of modeling to model Virginia Satir so they could produce what they termed the Meta-Model, a model for gathering information and challenging a client's language and underlying thinking. They claim that by challenging linguistic distortions, specifying generalizations, and recovering deleted information in the client's statements, the transformational grammar concept of surface structure yields a more complete representation of the underlying deep structure and therefore has therapeutic benefit. Also derived from Satir were anchoring, future pacing and representational systems.

In contrast, the Milton-Model—a model of the purportedly hypnotic language of Milton Erickson—was described by Bandler and Grinder as "artfully vague" and metaphoric.  The Milton-Model is used in combination with the Meta-Model as a softener, to induce "trance" and to deliver indirect therapeutic suggestion.

Psychologist Jean Mercer writes that Chomsky's theories "appear to be irrelevant" to NLP. Linguist Karen Stollznow describes Bandler's and Grinder's reference to such experts as namedropping. Other than Satir, the people they cite as influences did not collaborate with Bandler or Grinder. Chomsky himself has no association with NLP, with his work being theoretical in nature and having no therapeutic element. Stollznow writes, "[o]ther than borrowing terminology, NLP does not bear authentic resemblance to any of Chomsky's theories or philosophies—linguistic, cognitive or political."