Firstly I just have to say that I am a fan of Brian Dunning and his Skeptoid podcast... everyone should listen to this it's a breath of fresh air. Skeptoid and The Skeptics Guide to the Universe are shows I always listen to and heartily recommend.
On the 26th May the Skeptoid podcast was on NLP - and as ever Brian did a great job.
As an NLP guy myself I often think that the flavour of NLP I am promoting is not quite the same as that which is presenting itself to the 'New Age' and 'Alternative Community' today.
NLP does have history somewhat fragmented history and indeed legal wrangles, sex, drugs, rock and roll together with the odd murder do feature. No one would deny that in the 'heady days' of NLP's rise to fame those that were swept along with it had more than a little of the 'rock star' approach to life.
Anyone really interested in NLP needs to listen to and read Brian Dunnings analysis. He is coming at the subject as someone who has not been caught up in the rhetoric and hyperbole of some of the practitioners 'out there'. I mean let's face it NLP does tend to attract more than it's fair share of 'charismatics'. I've been in training with both John Grinder and Richard Bandler and there's no two ways about it - these guys have 'something'.
Brain focusses the bulk of his comments on the dogged, terrier like approach that the 'Meta Model' takes with what people say and the vague, wishy-washy statements that the "Milton Model" (or Inverse Meta-Model) leads practitioners to make. More importantly however is the generalised observation that many NLP Practitioners seem to focus on these two language patterns almost exclusively as the 'patterns for change'.
The problem here I think is that so many of the 'professional level' trainings (in the UK) are of the 'intensive' 'nuts and bolts' type. I mean, seriously, how can anyone learn effective communication patterns that can be applied in a therapeutic context in five or six days?
The motivating factor for many of these trainings is purely and simply 'money'!
NOW, I started by saying that I think I think of NLP differently to some of those who have been through the NLP sausage machine. Welll that may, in part, be due to my training in education and counselling. For me NLP is NOT a tricksy all singing all dancing therapy... NOR is it the 'power play' demonstrated by the superb psychological illusionist Derren Brown (I am also a magician and member of the Magic Circle so am aware of the wonderful interplay of fact and fantasy woven by Derren).
NLP is a set of ideas about HOW our minds make sense of the world around us.
NLP presents a number of 'models' about how people MIGHT be responding to subjective relaity. (Philosophically the model pays more than a passing nod to Radical Constructivism and Psychologically owes a lot to Skinner and Adler).
The NLP 'tools' are approaches which, to all intents and purposes, help people shift their 'perspective' on issues, problems and challenges. Such dialogues, linguistic and mental mind games can bring new insights and considerations.
Many NLP 'models' deal with finding ways of describing behaviours. Exploring the consequences and possibilities of these actions externally whilst creating frameworks (metaphors) around which the internal emotions and motivations can be explored.
It's not simply a question of to Meta-Question or Not Meta-Question the application is much broader than that.
There is no way that NLP Practitioners who have been subjected to an 'intensive' course with a charismatic leader should consider themselves as therapists of any tone, colour or falvour. Unfortunately many do. Hence the somewhat icy reception NLP has with it's closest therapeutic counterpart CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).
NLP is a mindset - and approach - which is infact more art than science. The narrow consideration and promotion of it as a method of gaining influence and power over people is ethically questionable and demonstrably improbable. (Derren Brown is a magician with a brilliant grasp of the psychology of deception as well as the psychology of human behaviour - in magician old speak he is a Mentalist... like Banacek, Kreskin, Max Maven.... and that should in no way detract from his skill!). However the internet is awash with NLP Trainers promising the secrets of "personal power" and somehow trips neatly into the psuedomystical hogwash we know as the Law of Attraction (see my Rational Mystic blog for some thoughts on that one).
Somewhere along the way some of the folks in the NLP community turned to marketeers rather than people helpers; entrepreneurs rather than explorers and some of the heart was lost. NLP is certainly not the 'star' it once was and some of its proponents are reinventing themselves as Svengali like perveyors of mind manipulation or as Mystical Mavericks who actually really undertsand the 'quantum nature' of the mind-body link and the way energy 'transduction' works. (Yes there is a course being advertised on Quantum NLP and I've seen one being promoted as "Fifth Dimensional NLP").... OH PLEASE!!!!
Nothing could be further from I what I though NLP was aspiring to be than this pseudo-msytical nonsense. Now I've no problem with mysticism (actually I think of myself as part Mystic) BUT you can't have it both ways - ie. claim scientific credibility and follow an approach which recognises the subjectivity of human experience. The two are imcompatible.... scientific process and mystical experience.
What NLP can do, is provide a neutral third position from which to question the assumptions we make about the reality we perceive. It does this by exploring behaviour within the context of a number of 'what if' postulates - what NLP folk call the key NLP presuppositions. In having this conversation, as in any focussed and deep conversations, attitudes can be explored, behaviours challenged and personal benefits derived. When such conversations are supported by tools to encourage creativity, behaviour flexibility, emotional expression (as in exploring emotional intelligence) and set 'targets' that are motivational people do find a benefit.
Talking to someone does help ...
NLP is not a psychotherapy as it would like to be considered, neither is it counselling as it tends not to rely on narrative, but it is a form of coaching which can help people understand something of themselves. I think NLP practitioners need to think carefully about what they say they do and what they can actually do.
Thanks Brian for stirring these thoughts and maybe starting some form of debate within the NLP community.
Alan
On the 26th May the Skeptoid podcast was on NLP - and as ever Brian did a great job.
As an NLP guy myself I often think that the flavour of NLP I am promoting is not quite the same as that which is presenting itself to the 'New Age' and 'Alternative Community' today.
NLP does have history somewhat fragmented history and indeed legal wrangles, sex, drugs, rock and roll together with the odd murder do feature. No one would deny that in the 'heady days' of NLP's rise to fame those that were swept along with it had more than a little of the 'rock star' approach to life.
Anyone really interested in NLP needs to listen to and read Brian Dunnings analysis. He is coming at the subject as someone who has not been caught up in the rhetoric and hyperbole of some of the practitioners 'out there'. I mean let's face it NLP does tend to attract more than it's fair share of 'charismatics'. I've been in training with both John Grinder and Richard Bandler and there's no two ways about it - these guys have 'something'.
Brain focusses the bulk of his comments on the dogged, terrier like approach that the 'Meta Model' takes with what people say and the vague, wishy-washy statements that the "Milton Model" (or Inverse Meta-Model) leads practitioners to make. More importantly however is the generalised observation that many NLP Practitioners seem to focus on these two language patterns almost exclusively as the 'patterns for change'.
The problem here I think is that so many of the 'professional level' trainings (in the UK) are of the 'intensive' 'nuts and bolts' type. I mean, seriously, how can anyone learn effective communication patterns that can be applied in a therapeutic context in five or six days?
The motivating factor for many of these trainings is purely and simply 'money'!
NOW, I started by saying that I think I think of NLP differently to some of those who have been through the NLP sausage machine. Welll that may, in part, be due to my training in education and counselling. For me NLP is NOT a tricksy all singing all dancing therapy... NOR is it the 'power play' demonstrated by the superb psychological illusionist Derren Brown (I am also a magician and member of the Magic Circle so am aware of the wonderful interplay of fact and fantasy woven by Derren).
NLP is a set of ideas about HOW our minds make sense of the world around us.
NLP presents a number of 'models' about how people MIGHT be responding to subjective relaity. (Philosophically the model pays more than a passing nod to Radical Constructivism and Psychologically owes a lot to Skinner and Adler).
The NLP 'tools' are approaches which, to all intents and purposes, help people shift their 'perspective' on issues, problems and challenges. Such dialogues, linguistic and mental mind games can bring new insights and considerations.
Many NLP 'models' deal with finding ways of describing behaviours. Exploring the consequences and possibilities of these actions externally whilst creating frameworks (metaphors) around which the internal emotions and motivations can be explored.
It's not simply a question of to Meta-Question or Not Meta-Question the application is much broader than that.
There is no way that NLP Practitioners who have been subjected to an 'intensive' course with a charismatic leader should consider themselves as therapists of any tone, colour or falvour. Unfortunately many do. Hence the somewhat icy reception NLP has with it's closest therapeutic counterpart CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).
NLP is a mindset - and approach - which is infact more art than science. The narrow consideration and promotion of it as a method of gaining influence and power over people is ethically questionable and demonstrably improbable. (Derren Brown is a magician with a brilliant grasp of the psychology of deception as well as the psychology of human behaviour - in magician old speak he is a Mentalist... like Banacek, Kreskin, Max Maven.... and that should in no way detract from his skill!). However the internet is awash with NLP Trainers promising the secrets of "personal power" and somehow trips neatly into the psuedomystical hogwash we know as the Law of Attraction (see my Rational Mystic blog for some thoughts on that one).
Somewhere along the way some of the folks in the NLP community turned to marketeers rather than people helpers; entrepreneurs rather than explorers and some of the heart was lost. NLP is certainly not the 'star' it once was and some of its proponents are reinventing themselves as Svengali like perveyors of mind manipulation or as Mystical Mavericks who actually really undertsand the 'quantum nature' of the mind-body link and the way energy 'transduction' works. (Yes there is a course being advertised on Quantum NLP and I've seen one being promoted as "Fifth Dimensional NLP").... OH PLEASE!!!!
Nothing could be further from I what I though NLP was aspiring to be than this pseudo-msytical nonsense. Now I've no problem with mysticism (actually I think of myself as part Mystic) BUT you can't have it both ways - ie. claim scientific credibility and follow an approach which recognises the subjectivity of human experience. The two are imcompatible.... scientific process and mystical experience.
What NLP can do, is provide a neutral third position from which to question the assumptions we make about the reality we perceive. It does this by exploring behaviour within the context of a number of 'what if' postulates - what NLP folk call the key NLP presuppositions. In having this conversation, as in any focussed and deep conversations, attitudes can be explored, behaviours challenged and personal benefits derived. When such conversations are supported by tools to encourage creativity, behaviour flexibility, emotional expression (as in exploring emotional intelligence) and set 'targets' that are motivational people do find a benefit.
Talking to someone does help ...
NLP is not a psychotherapy as it would like to be considered, neither is it counselling as it tends not to rely on narrative, but it is a form of coaching which can help people understand something of themselves. I think NLP practitioners need to think carefully about what they say they do and what they can actually do.
Thanks Brian for stirring these thoughts and maybe starting some form of debate within the NLP community.
Alan
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