From: Tagi@cup.portal.com (Tagi Mordred Nagashiva)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 92 13:52:57 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

9208.19 e.v.


Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The word of Sin is Restriction.


Carol Anne Ogden writes:

"Yes people _can_ read ABOUT these ideas, but the purpose of training
programs is to give people practical experience with real, live examples,
under supervision.  Would you prefer students of computer science never
write a line of code?  Physicians never see live patients with teachers
before hanging out a shingle?"

and...

"[NLP] is a very powerful and useful suite of skills which I, for one,
am happy to have at hand."


Response:

There are few things on which I'd like to see some focus.

1) If, as Amanda Walker says, among others I might add, NLP is criticized
by specialists in modern linguistics, then 

a) What do YOU, Carol, see as their motive for such criticism, and, if it
is unjustified, why does it occur?

b) What is the qualification of NLP to teach this 'suite of skills'
and what reputable sources (unbiased) can you bring forward to defend
the TRAINERS, not the information in the books.  As Amanda says, we
could go to the sources for the information.  You say that the value
is in the instruction of skills.   

The computer science student and the physician can rest assured (we hope)
that their instructor is certified by some government agency.  We have no
such certification for NLP.  Have these Trainers somehow demonstrated
both their linguistics skills AND teaching abilities in some PUBLIC 
fashion in which professionals have reviewed it positively?  If not,
how should we evaluate such training prior to engaging it ourselves?

Personally, if I was only to base my evaluation on YOUR communications,
both publicly with Amanda and Josh, and personaly between us, I don't
think that I'd be given incentive to trust their ability, but this is a
tough medium to judge such things.

c) Regardless of the tedium or complexity of the task, could you give us
some idea of what kinds of 'skills' you are talking about here?  When
a computer science student graduates she is able to produce a piece of
software or hardware that performs the task required by an employer.
When a physician exits Med School we are told that they are able to
perform basic healthcare, perhaps along with certain specialities.

What services do you offer, now that you are licensed, besides
training in the NLP skills?  What do these skills allow you to
do more effectively?  Can you demonstrate this in this newsgroup in
some fashion?  I assume that this is linguistically-based.  You
mentioned your 'meta-model' and were able to give at least one
example.  I thought Robert made a pretty good point that you were
also misdirecting or avoiding Amanda's question, yet I DID see
what you were after.  You wanted to dissolve the ambiguity of
her question and require additional information so that her claim
could be more completely understood and therefore evaluated for
what it was.  

I think that you will find that magick and language are deeply
intertwined and that many of the folk in this newsgroup (and in
others, perhaps) are conversant with some of the 'skills' which
you seem to value highly.  Just because we do not use the same
terms to refer to this skill-set doesn't mean that we are unfamiliar
with it.  If you were to provide examples of these skills, then we
might be able to more completely understand your claims and NLP's
value to human communications.


Thank you for your time in explaining your knowledge of NLP
to those of this newsgroup who are interested.  I know I am.
And thank you to all of you who are challenging her!



Invoke me under my stars.   Love is the law, love under will.


I am I!


Frater I Nigris (666)