The Skeptic's Dictionary

Chris,

You are right regardng quantity but some people believe NLP is therapy, many in fact nearly all practicing NLP use it in a therapeutic context, and there is even 'NLP Therapy' movement. Remember values, and respect their values & there is no truth , only your perception of truth.

So these people may have the opportunity to have a whole new experience of NLP and may even benefit from the distinction between NLP and its multiple applications.

NLP is used extensively in therapy by the majority of NLP practitioners, whether they regard it as therapy or not is utterly inconsequential, they are using it as a therapy full stop.

So that majority of NLP practitioners you know are practicing NLP in a therapeutic context. O.K so they are using an application of NLP in a context. I would hope that they are applying NLP models and patterns to assist people to achieve their outcomes in that context rather than doing therapy.

Speech Therapy is definitely a therapy, does it mean anyone hat helps another with their speech is doing Speech Therapy, of course not! Some people use music as therapy or part of it, so all who play music are doing therapy, of course not, the following whilst moving and emotional music is not therapy

Sorry. What is your point?

Damian,

You have failed to make even a single relevant point in all your posts on this thread, and still you persist.

If Paul Mckenna is not doing therapy, what is he doing? And why is it different than therapy.

By the way, on your 'About' section on the cheesy website the one with the dating photos, etc (dear oh dear!), you mention training with Richard Bandler, fair enough you did for a grand total of 3 days! He is one of few trainers you mention specifically in that section, rather misleading to say the least, mentioning him as one of two specifically entails you studied with him a lot, you didn't.

What was with attending Tony Robbins 'Unleash The Power' weekend (or 3/4 days) twice in succesive years or if not close to each other, once not good enough? Or after one you felt a low so needed a 'high' again with Tony's charisma?

Using NVC - non verbal communication this could aptly summarise your contribution to this thread :

YouTube - Hilarious Jingle Fart Season Song

Your opinions are welcome, being very pretentious and a know it all with large ego doesn't do your case or the points you raise much favours.

Anyway, wil you be expanding on your extensive 3 days training with Richard Bandler in the future?
Courses and Training
About Damian Training with co founders Richard Bandler (for 3 days) & John Grinder.

I think Damian's website looks really good.

Damian,

You have failed to make even a single relevant point in all your posts on this thread, and still you persist.

Peter,

I stated the following:
1) NLP is not therapy (and I backed it up)
2) What Paul Mckenna does is therapy, and he uses NLP applications in a therapeutic way. This does not mean that NLP is therapy.
3) The co-founders of NLP and all trainers so far state that NLP is not therapy.

By the way, on your 'About' section on the cheesy website the one with the dating photos, etc (dear oh dear!)

Thanks for checking out my site and your opinions. I'll take them into consideration. I never thought of the pictures of "happy people" (as I asked my webmaster to place pictures of) could be seen as dating photos. I'll ask him to change them.

you mention training with Richard Bandler, fair enough you did for a grand total of 3 days! He is one of few trainers you mention specifically in that section, rather misleading to say the least, mentioning him as one of two specifically entails you studied with him a lot, you didn't.

I did a three day seminar and also had two lenghty conversations with him (well, more of monologues if you know Richard Bandler). Never have I claimed to have studied alot with him. Once again you are paraphrasing and making claims about me that are untrue. If I'd have an interest in misleading anyone, do you really think I'd link to the page that says the training was 3 days long?

What was with attending Tony Robbins 'Unleash The Power' weekend (or 3/4 days) twice in succesive years or if not close to each other, once not good enough? Or after one you felt a low so needed a 'high' again with Tony's charisma?

My girlfriend wanted to go there the next year, and didn't want to go alone.

Using NVC - non verbal communication this could aptly summarise your contribution to this thread :
YouTube - Hilarious Jingle Fart Season Song

Yes, I've seen that one since you already posted it once. Very funny indeed.

Your opinions are welcome, being very pretentious and a know it all with large ego doesn't do your case or the points you raise much favours.

Peter, I highly applaud you taking such a personal interest in me and your care in eliciting the reasons why I attend the seminars I do and which ones I'll be attending in the future. And I do indeed value your feedback on my website. Do you think we could please return to the topic in question now?

Since I have such a large ego I'd be more than happy to discuss me and my website and answer any question you may have. I'm also very very interested in any tips you have on seminars I should attend to correctly learn what NLP is about. Feel free to start a new thread on this forum about it or simply message me or mail me if it's against your principles to feed my large ego by entitling me my own thread.

Anyway, wil you be expanding on your extensive 3 days training with Richard Bandler in the future?

After reading this thread, I think I'd just be wasting my money. As you pointed out, he's not only been contradicting himself in the past, he also doesn't seem to be able to define what he does correctly. That http://www.nlpisnottherapy.com website really made me angry. I'm not spending another penny on such an incompetent trainer.

Peter,

With respect - take a step back. What do actually want to achieve? What are you achieving? Is your strategy working?

Cheers

certainty can be really very appealing, even addictive can't it?

certainty can be really very appealing, even addictive can't it?

Yes John, a lot of people are addicted to the feeling of being in control, and can only cope with very little uncertainty.

This often gets reflected in their phsyiologies: higher degree of muscular tension, shallower breathing, and they seem to smile less. And is reflected inthier behaviour, focuised on feeling in control rather than being light hearted in a situation. Just my thoughts..

Let me add, I think a lot of people use control (of people and situations) as a tool to get a feeling of certainty.

Yes John, a lot of people are addicted to the feeling of being in control, and can only cope with very little uncertainty.

This often gets reflected in their phsyiologies: higher degree of muscular tension, shallower breathing, and they seem to smile less. And is reflected inthier behaviour, focuised on feeling in control rather than being light hearted in a situation. Just my thoughts..

Hi Sam,

I'd like to add a word to your first sentence; "...a lot of people are addicted to the feeling of being in [CONSCIOUS] control, and can only cope with very little uncertainty".

Cheers,
Chris Collingwood

Thanks Chris

All this talk about certainty reminds me of the old philosophical conundrum..

"If a man is in a forest and makes a statement and there is no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?"

The point has already been made, in answer to Peter's posts but FWIW (and mainly because I've just been writing about this in a new FAQ I'm preparing) I'd like to contribute my own two penny'th.

When Bandler started out (when he was working with Frank Pucelik, and before me teamed up with John Grinder) he started studying the way Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir worked, NOT (AFAIK) because he had a special interest in therapists, but because jobs he'd done as a student had involved editing a book on Fritz Perls and then working on the sound and recording systems for Virginia Satir.

When Bandler began working with Grinder they were studying Perls and Satir's - and a little later Milton Erickson's - COMMUNICATION skills. It was the way these people were able to be more effective at what they did that was the focus of B & G's interest, NOT the fact that these people were therapists.

Note: B & G started studying Erickson on the recommendation of Gregory Bateson (himself an anthropologist), NOT because they were looking for another therapist to study.

So, NLP is NOT a form of therapy, and never has been. Bandler and Grinder originally tested their ideas by simulating therapists because their measure of success was simply: "Can we replicate the success of the people we are modeling (i.e. Perls, Satir and Erickson)?"

So, as I think Chris Collingwood was gently suggesting, NLP and the NLP-associated techniques are applicable in a wide range of contexts.

Having said that, of course NLP and some some associated techniques can be usefully employed in a therapeutic setting (in various forms of therapy).

But this says no more than does the fact that a hammer can be used to tap a joint closed, to hammer in a nail, to break a pane of glass, to serve as a paper weight in a building site office or to do someone an injury. In all those contexts the hammer is simply a hammer, even though the different contexts give it different surface level meanings.

Hope this is of use

Be well

Andy B.

But agreed NLP has not been successfully scientifically tested.

I would go one step further and assert that NLP CANNOT be successfully scientifically tested

BECAUSE

Strictly speaking, NLP and the NLP-related techniques are NOT about cognition, or neurophysiology, they are about ***perceptions***.

"OK, smartarse", you might say, "so what's the difference?"

It is relatively simple, and absolutely crucial.

Cognition is *relatively* easy to test experimentally, and neurophysiology is an absolute doddle when it comes to scientific investigation.

BUT perception? Hoo boy!! Those are so obscure and controversial that some scientists argue that we don't actually have "perceptions" at all - we only mistake the nature of what are, in fact, simple physiological activities.

John Grinder made the point reasonably clearly in his stuff on transforms - though the subject itself has been a pain in the bum within the general scientific community for many, many years - maybe even many, many, many years (say a century or more).

Grinder's model (for any readers not already familiar with it) shows our senses receiving input which then goes to the relevant parts of the brain. So far, no problems. EXCEPT, that even thus far our initial sensory experience has now been encoded so that what we store is our PERCEPTION of the experience rather than the experience itself ("first transform"). This change from straightforward sensory messages into "perceptions" is the point where the overall process throws regular "scientific" investigation for a loop.

After storage we might try to recall some of the information - which calls for not one but two further transforms. Firstly, to store information the brain apparently divides it uo on a sensory basis - feelings go to the somatasensory cortex, pictures to the visual cortex, etc. So to remember something it must be reconstituted.

Secondly, when we do remember/recall something into consciousness we also tend to try to put it into words, and that is the point at which our perceptions are framed according to the vocabulary we have available to us as individuals.

Hope this is of use

Be well

Andy B.
Honest Abe's NLP Emporium

Hi all,

Although Andy and I usually tend to agree (thanks in large part, no doubt, to the large checks I sent his way every month for nonspecific 'protection' ), this is one area where he and I have been known to disagree, at least to an extent.

Since NLP is mostly a methodology for creating a calculus or syntax of subjective experience, I'd have to agree that it's largely untestable. There isn't very much you can do about that, or at least I haven't been able to think of a way of testing the efficacy of that in a way that would satisfy the current scientific standards of scrutiny. It imminently practically testable, but scientifically? Not so much.

I would also agree with Andy that most (if not all) of the basic postulates and applications of NLP don't stand up well to current psychological or even some methods of neuropsychological testing. Generally, anything being tested has to work in spite of an opponent's best efforts to the contrary whilst attempting to 'reproduce' the results.

For example, most NLP postulates or applications require a skilled practitioner to both observe client reactions and/or perform interventions. In the past, this has been accidentally or purposely exploited in the favour of opponents of NLP by having the 'practitioners' be grad students or tech sargents reading the 'technique' or 'test' off of a sheet of paper. SO, given incomplete or inappropriate instruction sets to graduate students in order to prove a thesis doesn't work, amazingly enough, they find it doesn't work! Go figure.

On the other hand, I do believe that it would be very easy, albeit expensive, to do significant neurological studies to test the efficacy of some NLP applications.

Here's a simple protocol for testing the fast phobia cure, for example.

1. Take 30 subjects with profound phobias.
2. Expose them to their phobic stimuli whilst they are in fMRI eye scanners in order to measure response in the amigdala to establish a baseline. All phobics that we know of have a simple profound increast in activity in that part of the brain during exposure to phobic stimuli.
3. Take 10 of the subjects and have skilled practitioners run them through the fast phobia cure.
4. Take 10 of the subjects and have skilled CBT practitioners run them through a single session of a CBT phobia treatment, a known good treatment (I know that a single session of CBT phobia treatment is not adequate or recommended, however, we are testing like with like here and gauging relative performance).
5. Take 10 of the subjects and have them have a simple conversation on a related topic as a control.
6. Rerun the original brain scan and compare activity in the amygdala versus baseline and versus the other groups.

This is a nice, simple, controlled neurological study with unambiguous results if done properly.

And while it wouldn't fit in with psychological studies, that fits in just fine with the structure of neurological studies, which are very different thing.

Neurologists are generally more open to alternative thinking like hypnosis and NLP than most psychologists are likely to be. There's a good chance they might actually want to explore the truth of it and peer review it accurately rather than simply botching the reproduction because they're biased. Maybe that has something to do with the fact neurologists don't have to worry about their theories and reputations being damaged if these studies prove valid, I'm not sure.

Anyway, I believe that can be done and I'd love to see it done. And, unfortunately, I've yet to read of anyone testing applications of NLP in this way.

Perhaps, one of these days, when I'm sitting on a boatload of money, I'll go ahead and pay for it myself!

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Thanks everybody for reminding me why I work so hard at not taking myself seriously!

"After storage we might try to recall some of the information - which calls for not one but two further transforms. Firstly, to store information the brain apparently divides it uo on a sensory basis - feelings go to the somatasensory cortex, pictures to the visual cortex, etc. So to remember something it must be reconstituted."...

hi Andrew, memorys...are...indeed...stored...in...such...a... way...yet...the...suggestion...
that...they...are...fragmented...to...a...degree.. .that...they...need...to...be...reconstituted...
...is...very...mis-leading!...memorys...work...like...a...electrical ring circuit...sometimes...we...create...new...rings!

peace&love...vern

Hi Nigel,

I'm sure if you think about it, you'll notice the difference between entering and exaggerating someone else's map of the world to illustrate a specific point without making any personal attacks and bickering. You might also notice the TOTE model in use and an exit point being reached and used when said strategy did not provide a useful outcome given my directionality.

Or you might not!

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Hmmm, so...

..."entering and exagerrating" ...."someone else's map of the world" ...mmm ..."personal attacks" ..."bickering" ...mmm ..."TOTE" ...."useful outcome"...


....hmmm...


You're right! I didn't!


How about:
..."tolerance of 'bickering' is directly proportional to the entertainment value of the interaction" as a new NLP Connections created model?

Baggsie half the license fees for teaching it tho!

:cool:

Michael 'The Fountain of All NLP Knowledge' Perez takes the time to waffle on that NLP is definitely not a therapy, then when discussing indepth how to actually test NLP he's right in there with dealing with Phobias! Ironic and comical simultaneously isn't enough to accurately describe that.

Phobia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Treatments 'Hypnotherapy coupled with NLP......'

Cognitive behavioral therapy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy has many similarities in nature to NLP at least in terms of what it is trying to achieve,CBT is definitely a therapy and many use NLP alongside it.

If NLP is not a therapy, why do most people attempting to measure it think of Phobias when doing so? Why does virtually every Professional NLP person treat phobias? NLP has many other purposes and uses of course, but when Phobias is such a prevalent and always present part of it, arguing it is not a therapy seems utterly pointless.

Many Therapists use NLP, often interlinked with Hypnotherapy or Psychotherapy :-
Therapies - NLP Psychotherapy - Fokkina McDonnell, Chartered Psychologist and Psychotherapist

NLP is NOT a therapy, yet virtually every Professional person using NLP uses it in as therapeutic context, nearly anytime you hear of people talking of scientifically measuring it they do so in the context of dealing with Phobias! How many other Non - Therapies deal with and treat phobias?????

NLP has many other purposes and uses of course, but when Phobias is such a prevalent and always present part of it, arguing it is not a therapy seems utterly pointless.

Even if phobias, according to you, are such a prevalent and always present part of NLP, that still doesn't make NLP a therapy.

Richard Bandler himself and to this day professes that NLP is not therapy, nor is it about therapy. It is about education and teaching people to run their own brains.

It is being used by teachers, sports coaches, personal coaches, doctors, lawyers, nurses, clergy people, accountants, negotiators, managers, entrepreneurs, motivational speakers, and so on and so on.

Maybe NLP provides the tools to help people see things in a different way which in turn opens up a whole new world of possibilities for each and everyone of us, that's maybe why it is used in a therapeutic context sometimes, really it's just about talking to yourself and others in a different way! In my map it doesn't really matter what the label is, surely the important thing is, that it is used in all areas of our lives and with wonderful results!

Violeta

All this talk about certainty reminds me of the old philosophical conundrum..

"If a man is in a forest and makes a statement and there is no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?"

I could qualify this by state, or filters, but for whatever reason, I've never laughed so hard on NLP connections as when I read that one.