Neurolingistic Programming is a change management discipline, developed by two grad students (neither in psychology) who thought that conventional psychology was nothing but a bunch of people testing their theories on their patients. Mostly a waste of time.
However, they thought that the therapists who were actually helping people were probably accomplishing that just because they were doing something right.
So they studied the work of Milton Ericsson, Virginia Satir and Fritz Perls, through transcripts and recordings, and to a lesser degree writings. They boiled down the process they used into a basic set of steps:
1. Rapport building to create trust and common language
2. Agreement between the therapist and client on the nature of the desired change
3. Agreement on a strategy to effect the change
4. Execution of the strategy
Though this sequence is identical to virtually any sales or project management process, and in fact many common types of conversation, the piece that attracted so much attention to NLP was the initial step.
Every subsequent step in NLP is completely dependent on the first. For both people to understand nature of the problem, you need open communication line between the two parties. How do you get that?
Well, NLP makes the therapist responsible for establishing rapport -- i.e. making the client comfortable enough to be open about who he is and what he wants and what his problem is in getting it.
The basic technique for doing this is called "mirroring." On a physical level that can be talking at the same rate, arranging your hands in a similar way, matching breathing. On a style level, the practitioner will listen for clues about things like age, values, background, place of origen, all the things that shape someone's sense of their own identity. And then feed back information that let's the patient know that therapists understands who the patient is.
It sounds pretty mechanical, and is. But it's also the fundamental way any relationship is built. By recognition and acknowledgment of the other person's identity.
There is a lot of this that get more technical, like mapping people's eye movements to tell if they prefer to learn visually or auditorially, or if they're lying. And NLP has provided a continuing forum for not just understanding how people access and process information, but also about change management techniques that have worked and can be shared with other therapists or "operators," as they call themselves.
I believe rapid eye movement technique that has proven so useful in short-cutting a lot of trauma work originated from the NLP community.
As to the comment that NLP can be used by salesmen to make people buy stuff they don't want, NLP people would disagree. It can however be used to give people what they want, and if what they want is a free ride of some sort, then they are a perfect mark for con men. But that principle long pre-dates NLP.
NLP is based on a number of premises that incorporate a lot of respect for other people. One of the first operating assumptions of NLP is "Everyone is doing the best they can." Another one is "The communicator is responsible for the success of the communication."
The first may sound kind of dopey, but it's really a major shift in consciousness for a lot of people. The second makes a speaker, and no one else, squarely responsible for whether he's understood.
Most people who study NLP use it to improve their own lives and to enrich what they offer professionally. I studied it when I wanted to switch from journalism to consulting. It turned out to be the best investment I ever made in myself, and my clients profit from it everyday. I intially went into PR, where it helped me teach my clients to be better communicators. Then into strategic marketing, where I got more involved with making sure that business strategy matched market needs. And these days, I use it to help non-profits and individuals reach their potential and hopefully change the world.
Too much information? I hope not. If you have any questions, you can contact me.
Kathy
