I will wait awhile before posting again so as to once again clarify my position.

Best wishes,

Pan

I imagine, as suggested by the glowing reviews, that it will make an excellent companion to “The Big Book of NLP Techniques.” Which is exactly what I was hoping for. Thank you for writing it. I can’t wait to read it.

Thanks for clarifying your message. I re-read it, and it still seems to me that you were referring to Rasa’s book while mixing words such as EFT and my name (I have never published EFT methods.. or was I?).

You wrote: ” the primary issue is with the glaring lack of simple, direct introductory NLP lessons that can be quickly and easily learned and applied by anyone.”

I published a book called “NLP for Beginners”. Did you read it? I believe it answers that need for a logical and simple explanation of NLP.

I did not read “Get the life you want” yet (I bought it, though), but I did read some chapters of his other book on Hypnosis, and it’s quite an interesting book. If the first works for you, great! I’m sure that Bandler can explain his ideas much better than anyone else

“If you truly want the masses to seek out NLP, find ways to present NLP for the masses!”

I certainly don’t. I’m not a promoter of NLP, and I have no interest in getting the masses to seek NLP. “The Big Book of NLP” is a reference book written for active NLP practitioners, not for the general public. There are a lot of great basic NLP books out there, including one of my own.

Regards,
Shlomo

I’d be interested in any other comments you may have regarding my remarks.

To correct something you wrote – I am not the author of the book “Beyond Rapid Therapy”, from which this article is taken (as stated in the beginning of the article).

Although I am very fond of Mr. Vaknin’s book, from a layman’s point of view, it still lacks a certain cohesion that I would find necessary in order to truly get a sense of how to incorporate NLP in my daily life.

I’ve done a fair amount of research on NLP over the years, and so far the most practical and financially accessible introduction to NLP I’ve found is Richard Bandler’s book “Get the Life You Want.” It’s written in plain language, and presents a comprehensive lesson plan that introduces the reader to a series of practical exercises.

Each lesson creates a foundation of understanding and experience which prepares the reader for the next slightly more complex lesson until, by the end, I finally at least felt that I had scratched the surface of NLP and come away with some meaningful and immediately useful NLP tools and information. And all of this was accomplished without having to wade through a sea of boring NLP jargon. What a concept! No other single NLP resource has done this for me. And for once, the only confusion I felt after reading a book on this subject was why the hell the author didn’t write the thing decades ago!

I guarantee that if Mr. Vaknin were to follow Bandler’s example of writing a bite-sized book with a few carefully selected, interrelated exercises, citing real life applications, written in plain language (hold the jargon please!) I would buy it in a heartbeat.

As it stands, I find the fringe methodologies like EFT (and yes, energy work, acupressure, etc), even with all their quirks, to be far more useful, intuitive, and applicable tools than any single NLP technique I’ve ever come across.

Of course the irony is that EFT itself is clearly rooted at least partially in NLP. But the way in which it’s presented (as it has been by Gary Craig) is so easy to grasp that even children can (and do) learn to use and teach it to each other, yet it’s profound enough to captivate hypnotherapists, psychologists, and all manner of professionals focused on helping clients achieve rapid, positive, and lasting changes in their lives.

If you truly want the masses to seek out NLP, find ways to present NLP for the masses!

/rant

Neuro Linguistic Programming; “What the hell does that mean?” is not an atypical reaction and could be a contributory factor in NLP not going mainstream.

LangueFolie, you mention >>>NLP …being used to brainwash citizens / to sell you stuff you don’t need. / create motivational practices in companies, that fuck with your mind and leave you drooling <<<
True enough, but that was happening before NLP and happens without NLP.
Also, NLP is not the fault, it is people who seek to brainwash, con and mindfuck other people.

NLP offers Other People skills, insights and awareness that will reduce the likelihood of getting hooked, conned, mindfucked or in other ways being bamboozled by politicians, employers or exploitative salesfolk – even those selling NLP.

I run Crafty Listening workshops and training on a range of topics, including for Adoption Professionals. Recently a delegate expressed disappointment that I had used a theoretical model that had gone out of fashion in the 1980s!

Transactional Analysis was the model refered to and, although TA was very 'popular', even say 'fashionable' in the 60s – which was, after all, The Dawning of The Age of Aquarious – it has never, as far as I'm aware, lost credibility as a valid viable and honourable methodolgy and philosophy.

I think NLP, TA and other models of human behaviour and personal evolution are 'just ways of talking about' why and how humans do what we do, and what we need to do to make choices that serve us and others well.

One of the benefits of NLP, for me, is that I can hardly imagine ever again finding another human [being] boring.

A psychiatrist on radio 4, talking about the two young brothers who sexually and sadistically tortured two young boys, was asked how or if the four youngsters could ever 'recover' from the horrors they caused or suffered.
His answer included "… 8 – 12 sessions of EMDR"
Asked what that was, he simply said, Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing. This was accepted without further query, which momentarily surprised me, because it is even more of a mouthful than NeuroL..etc. Upon reflection though,it is propably easy for the passenger on the Clapham omnibus to figure out what it means, with but a moment's pondering.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Teaching the spelling strategy AKA 'Magic Spelling' to all teachers would, I believe, make a profound difference to the efficacy of teaching as well as the process of students'learning.

Not because of spelling per se, but because understanding [NLP] strategies would enrich and enhance teachers' skills to such an extent that e.g., ADHD could be reduced.

The knock on effects of that would be radical and, soon enough, render NLP more mainstream.

go well

1. Similar to most therapeutic technologies if the AMA cannot control it there seems to be a problem with acceptance, accreditation and of course there is the problem of getting the insurance companies to pay the practitioner.

2. Another reason could be that during the peak of expansion for NLP in the late 70’s and early 80’s there was an incident in which one of the founders of NLP was implicated in the death of his girlfriend.

Although acquitted of the allegation, the medical community has a strange opinion of murder charges, alleged cocaine trafficking and the use of firearms as a therapeutic metaphor.

The last reason, I believe it is important to mention that NLP is a wonderful tool for coaching and for business strategies. At the time of it’s introduction, it was being used in a niche industry (psychotherapy) as a “brief-er therapy”. In some cases too brief for the existing medical community to accept that change could occur in “1 session” which was the presiding thought that was being taught while I was learning NLP in the early 80’s.

It is possible to change someone in “1 session” but should that be the norm?

What if the client has other issues that are related to but not immediately obvious to the client, who now thinks that everything is just fine or does it give the client a false sense of resolution?

It reminds me of some of the goal setting seminars I attended and there was always some guy who had never made more that 20,000 dollars in a year in his whole life and suddenly he sets a goal to make 10 million dollars. Sure it’s totally possible, but there may be some ecology issues and a some need for adjustment in his identy so that he can make the money ethically and there’s the whole question of now that he has made the money; does he have the necessay strateiges for keeping it?

NLP is a great tool just like many others. Perhaps one day NLP will experience the credit it deserves, in the meantime, we just need to keep doing good work and teaching as many people as possible this technology until we reach a tipping point where NLP has to be accepted as a viable alternative to traditional therapy.

Chiropractic medicine had this same issue of acceptance, bad PR and dis-information. They finally had to sue the AMA to get the strangle hold off of their business; we may have to as well.

My two cents
Michael Harris, PhD

Back in 1991 Geoffrey Moore wrote a very influential marketing book entitled:
Crossing the Chasm. This book describes something called the “Technology Adoption Lifecycle.”

Moore discovered that there was a very distinct pattern – a sequence that all ‘disruptive innovations’ go through before they go mainstream. NLP was and still is a disruptive system with premises that challenge many traditional approaches; psychology, linguistics, and science itself.

Moore recognized there were five main segments of the population; innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.

According to Moore, “marketers” should focus on one group of customers at a time, using each group as a base for marketing to the next group. If you have something new and disruptive you must start with innovators (group 1) and then move to the early adopters (group 2) and so on…

Important to our discussion is realizing that the most difficult step is making the transition between group 2, the early adopters and mainstream pragmatists (group 3: early majority). This is the “chasm” that Moore refers to.

The solution for crossing the chasm into the mainstream is a D-Day effort to conquer a beachhead or foothold in the marketplace.

Bandler and Grinder could have decided to focus all their efforts in making the fast phobia cure an accepted process. They could have modeled someone with a skill that mainstream (or corporations) wanted badly and marketed that installation over and over again until NLP was king of the heap.

Obviously, this never happened. The maverick founders of NLP were not business men and making money may have caused them to lose focus. The high degree of agreement required wasn’t there.

In contrast, Tony Robbins is a true marketer and so has been the closest individual to making NLP mainstream. He decided to call his approach NAC instead.

I’m asking you to consider ‘marketplace reality’ as a factor – not just the economic marketplace, but marketplace of ideas. Rarely do we NLPers look at the affect of making money on the founders, their lack of business and marketing acumen, and their lack of unity as the reason for NLP’s reputation and slow demise.

For a long time I tended to look at the merits of technology and I miss the fact that it was the people behind the technology that early on determined its future.

NLP that is being used to brainwash citizens by politicians.

NLP that is being used to sell you stuff you don’t need.

NLP that is being used to create motivational practices in companies, that fuck with your mind and leave you drooling with two goals in your mind – how to sell your soul to the devil.

Please, stop it.

Thanks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro_Linguistic_Programming