Neuro-Linguistic Programming

The NLP model

We experience the world through our five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. Because there is so much continuous information coming in our direction we consciously and unconsciously delete what we don't want to pay attention to. We filter the remaining data based on our past experiences, values and beliefs. What we end up with is incomplete and inaccurate because some of the original input has been deleted altogether and the rest has been generalized or distorted. The filtered information forms our internal map, which influences our physiology and 'state of being'. This in turn affects our behavior.

The story of NLP

At the heart of NLP, though, is the 'modelling' of human excellence - and that is where the story of NLP begins in the early 1970s, with the collaboration of Richard Bandler and John Grinder at the University of California.

Bandler, a student of mathematics with a particular interest in computer science, got involved in transcribing some audio and video seminar tapes of Fritz Perls, the father of Gestalt Therapy, and Virginia Satir, the founder of Family Therapy. He found that by copying certain aspects of their behavior and language he could achieve similar results, and began running a Gestalt Therapy group on the campus.

John Grinder, an associate professor of linguistics at the university, was intrigued by Bandler's abilities, and reputedly said to him: 'If you teach me how to do what you do, I'll tell you what you do.'

It wasn't long before Grinder, too, could get the same kind of therapeutic results as Bandler and Perls, simply by copying what Bandler did and said. Then, by a process of subtraction - by systematically leaving various elements out - Grinder was able to determine what was essential and what was irrelevant.

Realizing they were on to something, Bandler and Grinder joined forces and went on to write the first NLP book, The Structure of Magic, which was published in 1975. Subtitled A Book about Language and Therapy, it introduced the first NLP model, the Meta Model -12 language patterns distilled from modeling Perls and Satir.

Already the essence of NLP had been defined. By studying carefully and analyzing thoroughly - modeling - those who are geniuses in their field, it's possible for anyone to copy the crucial elements and achieve the same results. If you want to be an expert golfer you need to model someone who is excellent at the game - observing what they do and say, and then asking questions about what's going on mentally. In doing so you create a template for success that anyone can use.

The crucial discovery, though, was that our subjective experience of the world has a structure, and that how we think about something affects how we experience it. Drawing on the work of Alfred Korzybski, NLP makes a clear distinction between the 'territory' - the world itself - and the internal 'map' we create of it. This is often expressed succinctly as 'The map is not the territory'.