I first stumbled across NLP around 30 years ago, and it's pragmatic orientation immediately appealed to me. I wasn't interested in other people's definitions of 'right' and 'wrong', I was big enough and ugly enough to decide that for myself, and it was screamingly obvious it is subjective anyway. What is 'right' and 'good' depends on who is asked and depends on that person's set of values and/or their objectives. As NLP sought to understand how someone achieved their desired outcome while respecting that adult's autonomy to choose that outcome, I was interested.

By that time, I'd already read a number of the 'classic' psychologists - Adler, Skinner, Jung, Freud, James etc. But, as I saw human behaviour through an evolutionary lens, few of those old theories seemed to fit. Unless a psychologist makes an effort to remove him or herself from the influence of their particular cultural programming, they're inevitably limited to solutions within that narrow template. Here's a random tweet from a psychologist that illustrates this narrow thinking.

I've taken out the authors information as that's not important. But you can see here how the psychologist is so welded to his cultural recipe he lacks any flexibility and therefore cannot offer his client any flexibility. Maybe the education, the 'success', and the life as the person 'should'live are the problems? Clearly, they are given that the recipe is not generating happiness. The psychologist is working from a completely ego-centric understanding of happiness. Ego shadows the more core emotions, allowing little light or oxygen to get through, so of course the guy is depressed. The solution is not to fertilise his ego; it's to prune it back so he regains the capacity to feel joy again, along with regaining some flexibility. Rigid, 'keep doing what you're doing' is just moronic advice, but it arises from the truncated template the psychologist has been taught.

Nuero linguistic programming ( NLP ) started in the 1970s at the University of California in Santa Cruz. Richard Bandler a mathematician and information scientist teamed up with linguistic John Grinder to try and understand why some therapists achieved amazing positive results with their clients, results far beyond what the vast bulk of therapists achieved. What was happening, what were they doing, or not doing, that generated the positive change? No one knew, not even the therapists themselves so this was an interesting, and probably fruitful, field to explore.

By analysing the micro communications of the top therapists, patterns began to emerge - underneath the ‘magic’ there was a structure which gave rise to the book ‘ The structure of magic’, and NLP had entered the arena.

Within NLP theories are just theories. Dig deep enough and no two psychologists share the same theory/model - it’s not maths - so the focus is on what actions generate the results we’re looking for. A tool is judged by it’s usefulness, not by it’s ‘truthfulness’.

It’s no surprise that NLP mushroomed quickly and it’s discoveries were applied far beyond the therapeutic realm. The tools generated increased the power of salesmen, politicians, the media etc etc as the ability to manipulate brains is obviously useful for many.

While NLP has now, 50 years later, evolved off along different paths and so it can be confusing, the core principles remain. These are deemed truisms as opposed to the truth. IN other words: they seem to be consistent with what we can discern about reality and they’re useful beliefs - they empower us.

Here’s the presuppositions - this is just the first link on google, but it explains it well enough.

https://anlp.org/knowledge-base/presuppositions-of-nlp

By reading that list, one thing probably jumps out and that is the lack of idealism - what is right and what is wrong depends on context and who u ask. Obviously, such an attitude endows us with flexibility and the focus shifts on what works - what actions generate the result we’re looking for - as opposed to what should work according to the recipe - values and beliefs- we happen to have in our head. This pragmatism also generates resistance as the idea that others can determine their own beliefs and values instead of complying with our set makes many people uncomfortable as it threatens their status.

Not surprisingly, the NLP perspective is very similar to Taoism. Not surprising because they are both determined to try and gain a reasonably accurate orientation and they both know that to do so they have to put aside their installed beliefs as much as they can. In particular, this is very Taoist ; ‘Behind every behaviour is a positive intention’. Ultimately everyone is trying to be happy - that’s the positive intention of all actions - towards pleasure and away from pain. That some people get pleasure from unusual experiences ( from our perspective ) and/or some people are confused and have terrible strategies to achieve that ultimate objective doesn’t change that this is their underlying objective/intention.

Much of NLP is concerned with helping people gain clarity around what their short term objectives actually are and then, if they’re interested, what their long term objectives are and how, or if, they are compatible. But, regardless of objective, if other people have achieved that objective then likely we can too if we learn what actions they did to be successful. In other words if we learn the right recipe and act accordingly. Beliefs and values dictate decisions and then actions and our actions shape our reality. If our basket of beliefs and values - our recipe - generates the reality we seek then all is good. But if not, we have to change our actions to make them more potent and this means changing our decisions which means swapping out limiting beliefs and/or values for more effective ones. If we know of someone living the life we would like then what actions did/does that person do, and not do ? If we know this we can model that persons programming and we’re likely to also build the same reality.

I haven’t actually followed NLP for many years. When I discovered it, I knew it was the clear eyed explanation of the human operating system I was looking for so studied it a lot, and did the NLP praticoners course. But once I thought I had a good enough understanding to serve my purposes I stopped following it closely, but I suspect much of it has now been trimmed and manicured to try and fit it within the dominant ideological framework. I remember that one of my instructors on my practiconer course said she intended to write a book called Ethical NLP. Obviously, once that attitude - that she can filter knowledge on behalf of other adults according to her values - enters the scene, the facts become twisted to fit those predetermined desired conclusions. The blinkers come on and we see only what we’re allowed to see. In effect, our teachers disorientate us on purpose.

Another hurdle the core, and very useful, NLP models face these days is that inevitably over time they get buried beneath the layers of subsequent, and increasingly detailed, theories that are thrown on top from all angles. It evolves into something incredibly, and unnecessarily, complex and this makes the average person recoil from learning the basic, core good stuff as it’s hard to discern.

IN practice, this means starting at the start so the core foundations are understood or getting hold of a book that explains it well in layman terms. Probably, to be useful, such a book would likely need to be written a few decades ago.

NLP gives us the ability to go meta to ourselves - to see ourselves from above wandering through the environment. In effect, this means we’re able to utilise our brain relatively dispassionately - we’re not confusing our subjective understanding of reality as the reality and instead can see the bigger, more objective picture. We can zoom in and zoom out, can view obstacles from different angles and can clarify exactly why it is we do this or that action. Does that action serve our objectives, and if not why are we doing it? Not only do we take ownership of our objectives, but we’re interested in learning how to achieve those objectives which leads to us consciously evolving our motivations/ habits to better align our energy and actions with our higher objectives. The alternative is stumbling around with the blinkers on.

There are many useful and potent therapeutic NLP techniques - interventions. For example, reducing the power of phobias, which is to say reducing the pain experienced from the echo of traumatic experiences. Get rid, or significantly reduce, the pain and we escape the negative effects that event/s has on our current lives. The six part reframe helps to align our motivations.

While I’m a big believer in first detoxing psychologically so we prune back our overgrown basket of motivations to more a manageable and innate level, so that we’re actually dealing with what belongs and not accommodating cuckoos/infections, such an approach is beyond the scope of typical psychotherapy in eluding NLP. Understandable, they are limited to trying to untangle and integrate whatever the client throws on the table and while most will make an attempt to discern between innate motivations and accumulated negative habits this is not easy to do and rapidly takes us into the realm of beliefs and values which is both a minefield and opens a can of worms that is really not the therapists field nor responsibility. Most psychologists have little or no idea about evolutionary psychology, some don’t even think it’s a thing, so how are they able to discern the innate is they don’t believe there’s any such thing.

The upshot is that typically the clients existing basket of motivations are taken at face value and the therapist tries to reconcile them so that the client is not battling themselves. NLP has some very potent interventions that aid in this process and even if the clients basket is overgrown and contradictory such interventions can be very useful as it at least helps the person to ‘see’ the various motivations which is the first step to doing some pruning in one way or another. Additionally, some people don’t have much in the way of overgrown motivations, they just have some contradictory ones - some of their horses pulling them through the environment are pulling the wrong way and often this is from confusion, from lack of communication. IN other words that horse/motivation is fine, it’s happy to pull along with the rest of the team, but it just hasn’t been shown how, which is to say it’s running off to get what it wants because it doesn’t understand that if it cooperates it’ll still get what it’s attracted to, but just a bit later. If it understands the team is trying to get to a lovely meadow with lots of succulent grass then it’s ok ignoring the grass on the side of the track. It’s ok, it can wait as it knows it’s needs will be catered to, and catered to better by being a productive part of the collective.