From: lady@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Lee Lady)
Subject: Re: Change, NLP, and science (was NLP)
Followup-To: sci.psychology
Summary: There should be no fight between NLP and mainstream psychology.
Keywords: NLP  NeuroLinguistic Programming
Organization: University of Hawaii (Mathematics Dept)
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 20:00:50 GMT

In article <1541@newsserver.cs.uwindsor.ca> roussea@server.uwindsor.ca (ROUSSEAU PAUL            ) writes:
>
>>I've just begun to monitor sci.psychology tonight.  I'm a master
>practitioner in NLP and I've very pleased that people like Don Steiny
>are around trying to make progress in the ongoing fight between NLP and
>mainline psychology.

If there is a fight, I hope that the two can eventually shake hands and
make friends and help each other.  In fact, one of my goals in posting
articles here is to make clinical and scientific psychologists aware of
the ideas of NLP so that these ideas can eventually be absorbed into
the mainstream -- undoubtedly in transformed form.

I admit that I have sometimes been unwise enough to express my opinion
that NLP training is much more effective than the training most
universities offer in the practice of clinical psychology.  (NLP
training does not teach students how to assess mental illness or
psychological disorders, however, so that NLP training alone would not
be adequate for a true psychotherapist.)  I have hoped that my
information might encourage some of the faculty in clinical psychology
to find out a little more about how NLP trainings are run and
incorporate some of these ideas into their own programs.  In
retrospect, though, I have to admit that often I haven't found the best
way to frame my comments to accomplish this goal.

This past June I took a 22 day master practitioner training (6 hours per
day, with optional additional offerings most evenings) from NLP
Comprehensive in Colorado.  There were eight different trainers: Tim
Hallbom, Suzi Smith, Robert McDonald, Charles Faulkner, Lara Ewing,
Connirae Andreas, Steve Andreas, and Gerry Schmidt.  Not one of these
said anything derogatory about mainstream psychology.  In fact, several
of them incorporated references to mainstream studies into their
teaching.  

Many of these trainers have advanced degrees either in clinical
psychology or counseling.  Connirae Andreas, who with her husband Steve
founded NLP Comprehensive and edited such books as FROGS INTO PRINCES,
has a PhD in clinical psychology.  Much of her graduate work was done
long after she first became involved in NLP.  Now you might think that
she went through the PhD program merely because she thought it would be
useful to be able to list those three little letters after her
name, and I can imagine there's quite a bit of truth to that.  But I
think that anyone who's been through a doctoral program can testify that
it's simply not possible to complete such a program unless you have a
belief that the disipline you're studying in has real value.  

If anyone wants to have a fight with mainstream psychology, sci.psychology
would be a stupid place to carry it out.  If someone wants to convince
faculty and graduate students in academic psychology that their
discipline has no value, they'd be better off putting a pot on their
head, grabbing a broomstick, and going out to joust with windmills.

--
It is a poor sort of skepticism which merely delights in challenging
those claims which conflict with one's own belief system.  
                                                          --Bogus quote 
lady@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu         lady@uhunix.bitnet
Newsgroups: sci.psychology