Neurolinguistic Programming

Neurolinguistic Programming

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created by Richard Bandler and John Grinderin California, USA in the 1970s. Its creators claim a connection between the neurological processes ("neuro"), language ("linguistic") and behavioural patterns learned through experience ("programming") and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life. Bandler and Grinder claim that the skills of exceptional people can be "modeled" using NLP methodology then those skills can be acquired by anyone. Bandler and Grinder also claim that NLP can treat problems such as phobias, depression, habit disorder, psychosomatic illnesses, myopia, allergy, common cold and learning disorders, often in a single session. NLP has been adopted by some hypnotherapists and in seminars marketed to business and government.

Reviews of empirical research show that NLP has failed to produce reliable results for its core tenets. The balance of scientific evidence reveals NLP to be a largely discredited pseudoscience. Scientific reviews show it contains numerous factual errors, and fails to produce the results asserted by proponents. According to clinical psychologist Grant Devilly (2005), NLP has had a consequent decline in prevalence since the 1970s. Criticisms go beyond lack of empirical evidence for effectiveness, saying NLP exhibits pseudoscientific characteristics, title, concepts and terminology as well. 

NLP serves as an example of pseudoscience for facilitating the teaching of scientific literacy at the professional and university level. NLP also appears on peer reviewed expert-consensus based lists of discredited interventions. In research designed to identify the "quack factor" in modern mental health practice, Norcross et al. (2006) list NLP as possibly or probably discredited for treatment of behavioural problems. Norcross et al. (2010) list NLP in the top ten most discredited interventionsand Glasner-Edwards and Rawson (2010) list NLP therapy as "certainly discredited".

The methods of neuro-linguistic programming are the specific techniques used to perform and teach Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a movement which teaches that with people are only able to perceive a small part of the world using their senses, and that this view of the world is filtered by experience, beliefs, values, assumptions, and biological sensory systems. NLP argues that people act and feel based on their perception of the world rather than the real world.

NLP teaches that language and behaviors (whether functional or dysfunctional) are highly structured, and that this structure can be 'modeled' or copied into a reproducible form. Using NLP a person can 'model' the more successful parts of their own behavior in order to reproduce it in areas where they are less successful or 'model' another person to effect belief and behavior changes to improve functioning. If someone excels in some activity, it can be learned how specifically they do it by observing certain important details of their behavior NLP embodies several techniques, including hypnotic techniques, which proponents claim can effect changes in the way people think, learn and communicate. NLP is an eclectic field, often described as a 'toolbox' which has borrowed heavily from other fields in collating its presuppositions and techniques.