Neurolinguistic programming

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Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) began as an alternative school of psychotherapy in California, USA, during the mid-seventies. It was initiated by John Grinder, a linguistic professor, and Richard Bandler, a graduate, at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC). It is now marketed as a powerful method or technique of personal development offering unlimited potential and rapid improvement in the way a person thinks, behaves or feels [1]. It is supposed to work by copying or "modelling" the behaviour and thinking styles of particularly effective and successful people in business, coaching, education, sales, therapy, sport, and personal development.

Detractors argue that it is a hotch–potch of theories, some of which are based on legitimate science, but which have no connection with NLP, others of which are completely unscientific, including hypnosis, psychotherapy and unconscious thinking, mixed up into a messy soup of new age thinking.

NLP training

No university offers a course in NLP.

It is much favoured by trainers for its childish tricks for classroom courses.


Scientific Research on NLP

The Principal Clinical Psychologist for Sheffield Health Authority, Dr Michael Heap, looked at 70 papers on NLP, to examine its theoretical underpinning - Primary Representational System (PRS). This is the claim that we think in a specific mode: visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory or gustatory (first three being the most common). Thus NLP trainers would now diagnose me as olfactory, as keywords (predicates) are central to the theory, along with eye movements. The claim is that rapport can be enhanced using these techniques, therefore fooling people into doing what you want; working harder, buying your product etc.

Heap looked at the scientific literature and found that PRS is not serious science. He found that 'keywords' are not indicators in the way NLP practioners claim and ‘eye movement’ theories are, in particular, widely rejected. On ‘establishing rapport’, again Heap found that there was no scientfic evidence for the claim that these techniques improve rapport. In a famous study, Cody found that NLP therapists, using language matching, were actually rated as untrustworthy and ineffective. Heap concludes that NLP is “found to be lacking” and that “there is not, and never has been, any substance to the conjecture that people represent their world internally in a preferred mode which may be inferred from their choice of predicates and from their eye movements”.

David Platt, drawing from the German NLP research website http://www.nlp.de found that

1. There was no bona fide evidence to support the use of representational systems and concluded that they did not appear to play any significant role in communication.

2. Use of predicates had little to no influence in building or enhancing rapport.

3. Eye-accessing cues appeared to have no significant positive or negative impact when utilised in personal interactions.

Serious linguists will have nothing to do with the theory as its linguistic components were debunked long ago. Corballis says that "NLP is a thoroughly fake title, designed to give the impression of scientific respectability. NLP has little to do with neurology, linguistics, or even the respectable subdiscipline of neurolinguistics".

Beyerstein accuses NLP of being a total con, new-age fakery to be classed alongside scientology and astrology and many experts in management science are uncomfortable with its being mentioned alongside management theory. Sanghera, in the FT, described NLP as ‘pop-psychology’, ‘pseudoscience’ and ‘banal’. It has been called training’s ‘astrology’.


  • Heap (1988, 1989)
  • Krugman (1985)
  • Corbalis (1999)
  • Beyerstein (1990).

Neurolinguistic programming in Wikipedia

The Neutral Point of View policy has clearly broken down in the case of NLP. Consider the NLP article as it was in Wikipedia on 31 December 2005, with the version of as of 17 December 2007. The 2005 version says that "Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a collection of self-help recommendations, promoted through the popular psychology and self development sections of bookshops, and advertised in various media including the Internet and infomercials.", and that "NLP has been criticized in reviews of research by scientists such as Heap (1988), Sharpley (1987), Lilienfeld (2003), and (Singer & Lalich 1999), which have found that Neuro-linguistic programming is scientifically unsupported and largely ineffective. " You will not find this in the introduction to the 2007 version.


Neurolinguistic programming receives probably more attention in Wikipedia than any other apparently scientific subject. The following articles were all started by, and mainly written by FT2.

NLP professionals promoting NLP on Wikipedia

A post by Wales containing advice on dealing with the NLP dispute. Jimbo is asking all to be friends (i.e. to acquiesce to the NLP companies’ sock/meats), when in fact the only thing that needs to happen is to slap a ban on the obvious NLP cult. Katefan0 was heavily involved and actually ditched WP during this episode.

Another admin called Woohookitty seems to have stayed, and rather bullied the skeptics off in favor of the NLP companies. However Woohookitty seems to have strongly criticized FT2 and the promoters here and left in disgust a few days later (for the NLP companies to carry on the NLP whitewash). this was the quote from WHK that FT2 used to support of the idea that it was the anti-NLP editors who drove her off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long_term_abuse/HeadleyDown#Other_notes

Action Potential, who seems to have changed his username from Comaze. He seems to have been promoting NLP all along, and surprise surprise, FT2 has consistently defended the COI NLP company’s promotion of NLP via WP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long_term_abuse/HeadleyDown#Examples

Comaze/Action Potential is a character called [Scott Coleman] who runs [http://www.comaze.com Comaze, a "Human Performance Technologies" company. He at the time edited a lot with an editor called GregA, probably an NLP trainer called Greg Alexander:

Comaze also seems to have been working and recruiting together with an editor called Fainites:

References

  • Donald Clarke "NLP – training’s shameful, fraudulent cult " Archived here
  • Dr George - on whose precis this article is largely based - thanks!
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