NEUROLINGUSTIC PROGMMING

NEURO LINGUSTIC PROGRAMMING

 

What is Neuro-Linguistic Programming?

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is the science of modelling the patterns of human behavior. NLP explores the inner workings of the human mind: how we think, how we develop our desires, goals and fears and how we motivate ourselves, make connections, and give meaning to our experiences.

NLP is like the ‘user’s manual’ for the mind, and allows us to use the language of the mind to consistently achieve our specific and desired outcomes.

NLP was begun in the mid-seventies by a linguist (Grinder) and a mathematician (Bandler) who had strong interests in (a) successful people, (b) psychology, (c) language and (d) computer programming. It is a difficult to define NLP because those who started it and those involved in it use such vague and ambiguous language that NLP means different things to different people. While it is difficult to find a consistent description of NLP among those who claim to be experts at it, one metaphor keeps recurring. NLP claims to help people change by teaching them to program their brains. We were given brains, we are told, but no instruction manual

Grinder and corporate NLP

John Grinder, on the other hand, has gone on to try to do for the corporate world what Bandler is doing for the rest of us. He has joined Carmen Bostic St Clair in an organization called Quantum Leap, "an international organisation dealing with the design and implementation of cross cultural communication systems." Like Bandler, Grinder claims he has evolved new and even more brilliant "codes".

Do people benefit from NLP?

While I do not doubt that many people benefit from NLP training sessions, there seem to be several false or questionable assumptions upon which NLP is based. Their beliefs about the unconscious mind, hypnosis and the ability to influence people by appealing directly to the subconscious mind are unsubstantiated. All the scientific evidence which exists on such things indicates that what NLP claims is not true. You cannot learn to "speak directly to the unconscious mind " as Erickson and, except in the most obvious way of using the power of suggestion.