From: steiny@steiny.com (Don Steiny)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Learning NLP (was: NLP)
Date: 30 Aug 92 05:11:50 GMT
Organization: Don Steiny Software, Santa Cruz CA

Ed.Evans@ofa123.fidonet.org writes:

>I would like to learn and use NLP, but the cost seems
>prohibitive for me.  Maybe I'd be better off going to a therapist to
>learn it; what do you think?

	I was talking to my friend, John Grinder, a couple of day
ago.   He mentioned that he does not even call what he does NLP.
(John Grinder, together with Richard Bandler, invented NLP).  I basically
knew why, but I asked him anyway and he said "since there in no quality
control, anyone can hang out a shingle and call what they do NLP."

	I knew the answer because I had a freind that went to an "NLP" 
seminar and it was TERRIBLE, a complete waste of money.   

	I was fortunate enough to take classes from John Grinder and Richard
Bandler themselves, eons ago; and few people are close to them, though 
Leslie Bandler, David Gordon, and Bob Diltz are all wonderful.  I have
been friends with John for 15 years and we usually talk about things like
music, horses, mountian climbing; but we talk about psychology, linguistics,
business, and such.   We often work together on joint projects.    He
thanks me in the acknowlegements of one of his books.

	I really don't know what to suggest to someone trying learn NLP.
It seems to me that there are so many completely unrelated people doing
something they call "NLP" that there really is no NLP at all.   Besides,
I hate to break it to you, but John and Richard definately saw the humor
in the name.   Richard Bandler says over and over that NLP is not 
a set of tools, it is not pacing, reframing, anchoring, or whatever, it is
an attitude.   

	The book "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" has in it the philosophical
underpinnings of NLP.    There are more academic societies that are 
devoted to studing Milton Erickson.   If a person is a professional
therapist, they might find that angle productive.    Erickson's complete
works have been published.    Much of what Richard and John learned they
learned from Erickson.   There are movies of Erickson.    The work
that Watslwick, Haley, Satir, Bateson were doing provided the baisis
for NLP; as well as their attempts to copy what Erickson did.

	Unlike what many seem to believe, NLP did not spring from a vacuum. 

	Not only that, part of the "attitude" of NLP is the line "if it 
doesn't work, try something else."   There are a zillion books on NLP and 
in the books are techniques that really didn't work.  Or at least, have
been superceeded by techniques that work better.

	In fact, the whole thing might be even more simple than you think.
If you watch the movies of Erickson you will see that he was simply so
congruent when he told people what to do that they just did it.   Richard
and John do that too.   People are in a special place when they go to
a therapist.   It is a special type of communication situation.  Therapists
can often just order people to do something and they will do it.

	It is not to say that John and Richard did not describe something
very wonderful and interesting about people and to some extent they described
it in such a way that it can be taught.   They are both remarkably insightful
people with far greater than average perceptual skills.   When I think
of John, I am fond of the comment by Wittgenstein, "Observations which no
one has doubted, but have escaped remark simply because they are always
before our eyes."    John was a linguist (me too).   Language is a remarkable
thing to study, because it is so close to us it is like a pen that works,
we do not even notice it as we use it to do real work.   Human communication
is like that too.   We do it all the time, we cannot not do it, and thus
it escapes remark simply because it is always before our eyes.   John 
has spent years noticing it.   

	And that is the trick to NLP.   It is not eye movements, or anchoring,
or pacing, or representational systems, it is simply paying attention to
what is going on around you and the affect you are having on others.   Those
thing are just names for things that happen whether you do them on purpose or
not.    

	If you want to change yourself read "Towards a Theory of Self
and Alcoholism" in Steps to an Ecology of Mind.    Remember that NLP
is based on a theory of psychology that spawned family therapy, the idea
that we always communicate and that our "self" is defined by our 
relationships with others.   If you realize that you realize that you have
the tools to change "you" any time you want.   It is no big deal.
A trained other can help a lot.

	One final note.   Milton Erickson was argueably the greatest 
therapist that ever lived.    Certainly many of the patterns of NLP were
derived from watching him work.   Milton did not do NLP, in fact in his
later years he grew to dislike NLP and many of the people associated 
with it.   What I am saying is that there are good therapists that do not
do NLP.   Some of the best I have met tend to say, oh yeah, I read those
books, I already do X Y and Z, and I don't like to A B and C, because I
do something else that works better.    The descriptive portion of NLP
grew out of John's training in linguistics and linguists DESCRIBE, not
PERSCRIBE.    John himself is always totally changing what he does and
trying different things to see if they work better.   It is one of the most
solid aspects of his character.    Thus the idea that there are a set of
tools that would be the one and only best way to communicate or whatever
would make his skin crawl.   

	John's Phd thesis starts with a quote from Noam Chomsky that say
(something close to): the purpose of a model is to push it as far as you
can and see what you learn when it disintegrates.     John believed that
then, and he believes it now.


-don
-- 
Don Steiny
Don Steiny Software
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
(408) 425-0382