From: ohumukin@spectra.com (Kawika Ohumukini)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: NLP and what the .... are we talking about???
Keywords: NLP   NeuroLinguistic Programming
Date: 29 Sep 92 16:20:52 GMT
Organization: Spectragraphics Corporation

In article <1992Sep29.093451.12757@news.Hawaii.Edu> lady@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Lee Lady) writes:
>In article <1992Sep28.042946.3437@ucc.su.OZ.AU> ben@archsci.arch.su.oz.au (Ben Colbron) writes:
>>In article <1992Sep14.173929.14613@spectra.com>, ohumukin@spectra.com (Kawika Ohumukini) writes:
>>
>>|> Rule #1 in NLP is that nothing is true or real.  
>>
>>In saying that nothing is true you must either claim that *that*
>>proposition ('nothing is true') is itself true, and if so, it 
>>contradicts the original claim, or you must admit that the
>>proposition 'nothing is true' is not itself true. Clearly, this
>>claim is self-reflexive: i.e., it is no proposition at all because
>>it raises no issue of truth or falsity.
>>
>>There is folk-psychology and there is science. Then there is simple
>>logic. To which do you subscribe?
>
>The presupposition here is that these are the only choices.  And there
>seems to also be an presupposition that they are mutually exclusive
>choices -- one cannot choose more than one.  
>
>Unlike the language of mathematics, in ordinary language there are many
>statements which are not propositions -- for which the values "true" and
>"false" don't really apply.  And yet these statements are meaningful.  
>
>Some examples are "It's not good to make wild generalizations on a
>subject on which you have minimal knowledge."   "No means no."   "You
>shouldn't intentionally hurt people's feelings."   "NLP doesn't belong in
>SCI.psychology."   "There is no such thing as truth."   "Psychology is not
>a real science."   "Anecdotal evidence is worthless."  
>
>Statements like this are the very life-breath of usenet, because one can
>argue about them forever.  It's impossible to establish their truth
>or falsity in any non-subjective manner.  Some of these statements
>simply express attitudes.  Some are capable of being interpreted on so
>many different levels that without an agreement on what the basic
>criteria and meanings of the words are, no argument about them can 
>ever be resolved.
>
>Now I'm not sure what Kawika means by saying that nothing is true or
>real.  But I do think it's a statement of an attitude or point of view
>rather than something that has a truth value.  
>
>I do find it a little strange that anyone would consider the assertion
>that nothing is true the #1 rule in NLP.  However I do think that it
>brings up an important point that causes confusion about NLP for many
>scientific psychologists.

	Hi,

	Clarity is surely needed and maybe a "sci.psychology.dictionary"
	would be useful here.  What I am saying is that a belief in
	one situation may not be useful in another situation or in the
	same situation but by another person. 

	If a person believes their beliefs are the universal truth
	for all time, this person may feel they know what is "true".
	This may presuppose that all others are false.

	When I noticed people share experiences all the time and I
	learned how to do it consciously, I learned that to that person
	at that moment in time, their beliefs are "truth" to them.
	So regardless of what I believe or what the world believes,
	to that person their beliefs are what is real.  For me to 
	communicate with this person from a place where we have strong
	rapport, I must share their beliefs.  Now it doesn't help for
	me to try to instill my beliefs on them, that will never work.
	What I must do is focus on the beliefs they have right then
	to feel their feelings.  

	So to me, true and false, in terms of communication and
	behavior are dynamic and constantly change throughout our lives.

>The attitude of Bandler, Grinder, and the other developers of NLP was
>that they were not trying to discover scientific truths, but instead were
>simply trying to create a *model* of certain phenomena.  And that the
>important thing about a model is not whether it's "true" or not, but
>whether it works to give one the outcomes one is going for.  
>
>The fact is that NLP is full of assertions based on nothing except the
>personal insights of Bandler, Grinder, and others.  There is shockingly
>little evidence, even informally, for many of these assertions.  But NLP
>can be regarded as a massive very undisciplined and uncontrolled
>experiment to test NOT whether these assertions are "true," but
>whether they are useful.  

	Yes and it still can be questioned.

>This misunderstanding is illustrated, for instance, in a series of
>articles almost ten years ago in the Journal of Counseling Psychology.
>(I could give the specific reference, but I don't want to destroy my
>image in sci.psychology as someone who knows nothing about academic
>psychology.)  The authors of the original article did a study to try and
>determine whether or not people actually do have a primary
>representational system, as is claimed by NLP.  
>
>The study is interesting in some rather perverse ways.  First of all,
>the authors found that the people studied did indeed exhibit
>individualized patterns of eye movements and the use of sensory related
>"predicates"  -- some favoring visual terms, some auditory, some
>kinesthetics.  Some other patterns were also observed.  But instead of
>noting these as something of real scientific interest and deserving of
>further study, the authors were only interested in the fact that these
>patterns were not found to be consistent with each other.  People whose
>eyes often moved sidewards rather than upwards when thinking (which in
>NLP would indicate paying attention to internal "auditorizations" rather
>than visualizations) might use a primarily visual vocabulary for instance.  
>
>To me, having studied and used a fair amount of NLP, this was
>not surprising.  Anyway, the conclusion of the authors (challenged by a
>subsequent paper in the same journal) was that there was not support for 
>the claim that people have a favored representational system.

	I don't want to discuss the scientific validity of this and
	I can say that I have main representational systems at different
	times in the same situation.  For instance, I play several
	musical instruments.  Sometimes visual is most useful, other
	times auditory is most useful.  The strongest combination would
	be the combination of the two, but not simultaneously.
	If I were to strictly follow NLP guidelines on how to elicit
	my main representational system in communication, it would 
	clearly be visual, "do you see what I mean?"  And I also speak
	in auditory means, "Do you hear what I'm saying".

	In examining many popular speakers I have noticed that many,
	not all, use 2 or 3 of the representational systems.  Many will
	communicate a point using all 3.  

	I also have noticed that some people use different representational
	systems then quickly fire 1,2,3,or more others before they
	"understand".  I believe that eye cues are only a small part of
	understanding someones main rep. system.
 
>Some have cited this article as evidence showing that there is no
>validity to NLP.  Well, if one looks at NLP as an attempt at finding
>scientific truth, I think that the best that one can say is that it
>offers the scientific psychologist some interesting phenomena to
>investigate and some valuable ideas and hypotheses to explore.  
>
>If one looks at NLP, however,  as a set of attitudes and points of view
>and "useful lies" (not to mention techniques!) that can enable a
>therapist to be more effective, I believe that one will find a lot of
>value in it.

	Kawika