Bandler’s Conception of NLP

Here is NLP co-founder Richard Bandler speaking in 1993, giving a very basic description of his conception of NLP:

You want to become competent at whatever you do. That does not mean to get phobics, who shake in their boots while their blood pressure blows through the roof, to believe, “This is not fear.” The object is to get them to stay calm and alert, and to stay in their own lane, and to drive across the bridge, which remains standing.

Ask yourself; “Can we build better?” To build those things we have to be able to suspend whatever belief system we already have. Keep it out of the way… Those things get very, very personal. We’re talking about basic beliefs regarding human capability. Here’s the only truth about that. Nobody knows.

Most NLP adherents believe that whatever actions a person takes, they have a positive intention, although they may be completely unaware of what it is.

The assumption is that this behavior makes sense because it is the best choice this person has available at the time, given their beliefs and reality filters.

This is similar to what renegade psychiatrist R.D. Laing said, which is that what we normally call symptoms of mental illness are actually very reasonable responses to the sometimes ridiculous and impossible demands that modern life and society often put onto individuals.

Feedback loops are important to NLP, which prefers not to view people as either intrinsic successes or failures, but rather sees successes or failures in communication and learning.

The difference is that these problems can be fairly easily fixed. NLP is open to experimentation, as each individual is unique, and it is not always obvious what tactics will work for a particular person.

Therefore, if something does not apparently “work,” there is no reason to feel bad about it. Something has been learned anyway, and something else can be tried next.

Many people have heard the story of Thomas Edison, most famous for inventing the modern light bulb and a number of other conveniences we take for granted. But Edison “failed” hundreds of times for every “success” he had. He didn’t dwell on what didn’t work, simply learned what he could and tried something different, until it did work.

We feel stuck because there doesn’t appear to be any other way of doing something. Therefore, the way out of being stuck is to increase your choices, to develop new alternatives.

This has relevance in systems theory, which posits that the parts of a system that will be able to best adapt to changing circumstances are the parts that will be most successful. It’s not necessarily the person that exercises the most influence, or the most brute force, but the most flexible.

An important part of NLP is becoming conscious of how we are stuck.

Early Evolution of NLP

By the early 1980s Bandler and Grinder had each developed their own ideas about NLP and had parted company, each to continue on his own.

Some feel that around this time NLP lost some of its initial creativity and went into a temporary slump, turning into more of a conventional quick-fix New Age therapy, marketed to people with lots of money who wanted instant results.

There was some squabbling among different factions over who “owned” NLP and who promoted the “true” version. As time passed, NLP grew in popularity and developed many different strands, until its present status as a sort of “open source” system, with no central authority or single owner. This anarchic flavor contributes to its creative vitality today.

The Birth of NLP

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is the study of how we think and experience our world around us. Obviously, the nature of our brains and consciousness has not become an exact science quite yet, so the main method used by NLP is to form models of how these things work.

The models are then used to create techniques for quickly changing thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that you may not want or need anymore, or even be aware of.

The two people generally credited with developing NLP are Richard Bandler and John Grinder. Bandler was a psychology student at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1970, when he joined a group led by Grinder, then an associate professor of linguistics at the school.

The two men became friends and began working together, both influenced by the Family Therapy work of Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls’ Gestalt Therapy, and Milton H. Erickson’s work. Bandler used his background in mathematics and computers and Grinder used his linguistics knowledge to detect patterns and create models.

Both Bandler and Grinder were impressed with the seemingly magical effect that therapists like Satir and Erickson had on their clients, and wanted to see if they could break it down to a scientific level, so it could be more easily reproduced by anyone.

Other like-minded people joined Bandler and Grinder, and many of the methods that are still used today were developed, including anchoring, calibration, reframing, representational systems, and various personal behavioral change techniques.

Throughout the early 1970s, Bandler and Grinder worked on new ideas and experiments while giving workshops and writing books. The Structure of Magic, Volumes I and II, Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, Volumes I and II, and Frogs Into Princes were all published during the subsequent five years.

Most of these books are mainly addressed to therapists wanting to use NLP in their work, but anyone interested in the subject will find useful information there.