Many myths have sprung up around NLP with probably the most popular being that it ‘has not been validated.’ Since NLP is a synthesis of the work of Virginia Satir, Gregory Bateson, Fritz Perls, Milton Erickson, Korzybski and others, all of whose work was validated may times over, this statement is far from being the truth. What is true, however, is that whilst the techniques taken from other modalities do work, I am not aware of any NLP-specific technique that is effective.
What is also true is that many people have jumped on the NLP bandwagon, and having themselves a very limited understanding of it, have reduced their teaching of NLP to watered down over-simplifications. The problem is exacerbated by companies offering to make you a master practitioner over the course of a few days. If those running the course are honest about it, they will explain thtat hey can teach you the tools and techniques but that it takes a lifetime of studying people and their behaviour before you really get to understand NLP.
So, what is NLP?
Neuro-Linguistic Programming – NLP
Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP, offers a set of models and techniques to help understand and improve communication and to enhance influencing behaviour. Unfortunately, as I wrote in the introduction, there is a clear divide in the effectiveness opf those techniques. Those that have been borrowed from other areas of behavioural psychology do work. However, I am not aware of any evidence of any technique that is specific to NLP working. And this is the problem when discussing NLP – so much is taught under the umbrella of NLP that in one sense, it has no clear identity.
Its name derives from the disciplines that nurtured its early development:
· neurology – the brain, and how we organise the information we receive
· linguistics – the study of the nature and structure of human speech
· programming – observable patterns (‘programmes’) of behaviour.
Not only that, you can apply it to yourself to change and empower the way you look at the world. Because NLP states that you create your own map of reality, it opens the door to you to be able to re-draw your map and give yourself new choices in life and at work, a view it shares with CBT amongst other modalities.
One limitation of NLP for some people is that the vast majority of the NLP techniques that do work rely on the client being able to make and manipulate pictures in their head.
If you want to know more about NLP, I am preparing further articles that will appear on this site soon. However, I would caution you that if you are thinking of embarking on NLP training, nearly everything that is of any use may be learned elsewhere.
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nice intro to NLP and the point about NLP techniques being easier to use if you’re a visual person is a good one
Many thanks – the full article will be posted over the next week – do come back and comment!
Sorry, but NLP is discredited pseudoscience
Here is the research
http://knol.google.com/k/joe-greenfield/neurolinguistic-programming/2j6nlcky7q5vo/2#
Neurolinguistic programing is as pseudoscientific as it sounds
Its utter crap, and makes people do and say stupid, tacky things. From adapting your submodalities, to metamodeling your transderivational search, to removing traumas. Utter new age scientologyesque bullshit!
Thanks for the link to the article, Damian.
Superficially, the article does a good job of ‘exposing’ NLP; a deeper read shows that it is seriously flawed.
First of all, it suggests that science should be the determinant of what is acceptable or not; this is extremely dangerous when considering anything that is non material; after all, ask a scientist to define, let alone measure, consciousness or the mind and they are lost.
Secondly, many of the references are very dated; most fields have moved on tremendously in the last 5 to 10 years yet many of the studies are from the turn of the century or even older.
Thirdly, the way the article describes NLP training courses is nothing like the courses I have attended; it is clear that the writer, who is preaching a ‘scientific’ approach, is relying on anecdotal eveidence and has not attended a modern NLP practitioners course run by a reputable training company. Yes there are charlatans out there running weird and wonderful courses that they call NLP; but NLP is not alone in that respect. There are charlatans in every field, who jump on a bandwagon, overly simplify matters and then profit from it.
Next, the point he makes several times about the naivety of NLP in using the left brain right brain model is a straw man argument. When I attended both the NLP Practitioners and Masters courses in 2006, Bandler was criticising the psychologists and psychotherapists who insist on using that model; he said he had gone into medical institutions and watched MRI scans and experiments and could see that when a person was stimulated, or asked to perform various activities, that there was electrical activity in all areas of the brain. He said he hoped that the psychologists and psychotherapists would catch up one day. For the author of the paper to turn that around 180 degrees is at the least a sign of poor research.
Finally, some of the shortcomings referred to in the paper have long been known in the NLP community and have been addressed; another sign that the writer is relying on very old material. Perhaps he should carry out his own field research rather than carrying out a meta survey of dated studies.
Anyway, in the context of the article I wrote, it is largely irrelevant. My aim waswas to answer a simple question, ‘What is NLP?’ and to let the reader decide whether or not to take the matter further.
There doesn’t seem to be anything new in NLP.
Psychology determines whether something works or not by subjecting it to thorough testing. Evidence based psychologists have been doing that for decades. NLP was tested. The results were negative.
The books on the shelf and the programs that NLP authors sell are the same as in the article. The article represents NLP quite accurately. Its obvious some NLPers are into the business training side and would rather not mention the occult side. But they are at odds with themselves. Like the shia are at odds with the suni! or the catholics are at odds with the protestants! To a independent observer, its all nonsense anyway. MRI scans? Who started that myth? Looks like nothing but speculation.
There is a so-called new code, but that includes all the PRS stuff from the past. It still includes all the old freudian unconsious nonsense that was discredited a long time back in the 30s.
The answer to “what is neurolinguistic programing” seems to have an obvious response:
Neurolinguistic programing is pseudoscience.
Thanks George,
There is little that is new in NLP, you are right. NLP is a synthesis from a variety of sources with a few techniques of their own thrown in.
PRS for example, initially proclaimed as an NLP breakthrough was rejected by Bandler in 1986 yet many NLP trainers continue to train it.
Sharpley was a huge critic of NLP and in 1987 published a meta survey that demonstrated that there is no scientific evidence in favour of PRS and that in fact the evidence disproved PRS. However, he conceded that a number of NLP techniques are worthwhile or beneficial in counselling, specifically mentioning “predicate matching, mirroring clients’ behaviors, moving sensory modalities, reframing, anchoring and changing history.”
the irony is that these techniques are ones that Bandler and Grinder had taken from elsewhere!
There are many techniques that are used in NLP that do work but they are the ones that have taken from elsewhere. I am not aware of any studies that show that any on the ‘NLP-only’ techniques work. However, to be unbiased, I will point readers to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_studies_on_Neuro-linguistic_programming that shows some of the peer reviewed studies into NLP.
The NLP only studies are the ones that found NLP failed. To be totally unbiased you would do better to look at meta analyses conducted by independent reviewers, not a long laundry list of whatever proponent fancied posting at the time.
Well, to be fair George, some of those studies that you dismiss are peer reviewed, a process upon which science places great importance.
However, my point is that those studies that focused on techniques that were deemed to be successful all looked at techniques that are not unique to NLP. I have yet to find anything that is NLP specific that is effective.
Nic
You claim to be debunking myths, but then you say neurolinguistic programing is a powerful set of models. There is no evidence at all that any of those models work.
Then you push another myth that visual people will be better at neurolinguistic programing. There is no such thing as a visual type of person. Its a myth. No evidence.
You are just pushing more myths.
George,
Thanks for pointing this out; it is my sloppy English.
There are powerful tools and techniques taugfht under the banner of NLP that do work; unfortunately for NLP practitioners, they are techniques taken from elsewhere, many from Behavioural Therapies. I am not aware of any techniques or models that are unique to NLP that work; I’ve pointed that out in subsequent articles but perhaps I should make it clear here.
In talking about visual people, I mean those who find it easy to make internal pictures – I do not mean it in the PRS sense, which I have also written about in a subsequent article. Whilst I agree with you that in the PRS sense there is no such thing as a visual person, some people find it easier to make internal pictures than others do. I, for example, am awful at constructing internal pictures, though my visual recall is OK.
So I am not pushing more myths, just guilty of sloppy English. I will editvthe article to make it clearer.
Thanks again,
Nic