Stollznow writes, "ther than borrowing terminology, NLP does not bear authentic resemblance to any of Chomsky's theories or philosophies-linguistic, cognitive or political." Īccording to André Muller Weitzenhoffer, a researcher in the field of hypnosis, "the major weakness of Bandler and Grinder's linguistic analysis is that so much of it is built upon untested hypotheses and is supported by totally inadequate data." : 304 Weitzenhoffer adds that Bandler and Grinder misuse formal logic and mathematics, : 300–1 redefine or misunderstand terms from the linguistics lexicon ( e.g., nominalization), : 304-5 create a scientific façade by needlessly complicating Ericksonian concepts with unfounded claims, : 307 make factual errors, : 306 and disregard or confuse concepts central to the Ericksonian approach. Chomsky himself has no association with NLP whatsoever his original work was intended as theory, not therapy. Other than Satir, the people they cite as influences did not collaborate with Bandler or Grinder. Linguist Karen Stollznow describes Bandler's and Grinder's reference to such experts as namedropping. Psychologist Jean Mercer writes that Chomsky's theories "appear to be irrelevant" to NLP. : 240 The Milton-Model is used in combination with the Meta-Model as a softener, to induce "trance" and to deliver indirect therapeutic suggestion. In contrast, the Milton-Model-a model of the purportedly hypnotic language of Milton Erickson-was described by Bandler and Grinder as "artfully vague" and metaphoric. Also derived from Satir were anchoring, future pacing and representational systems. : 6 They claim that by challenging linguistic distortions, specifying generalizations, and recovering deleted information in the client's statements, the transformational grammar concepts of surface structure yield a more complete representation of the underlying deep structure and therefore have therapeutic benefit. : 6īandler and Grinder say that they used their own process of modeling to model Virginia Satir so they could produce what they termed the Meta-Model, a model for gathering information and challenging a client's language and underlying thinking. Their 1975 book, The Structure of Magic I: A Book about Language and Therapy, is intended to be a codification of the therapeutic techniques of Perls and Satir. : 41īandler and Grinder claim that their methodology can codify the structure inherent to the therapeutic "magic" as performed in therapy by Perls, Satir and Erickson, and indeed inherent to any complex human activity, and then from that codification, the structure and its activity can be learned by others. : 8īandler and Grinder also drew upon the theories of Gregory Bateson, Alfred Korzybski and Noam Chomsky (particularly transformational grammar), : 6 as well as ideas and techniques from Carlos Castaneda. : 6 Of such methods that are considered fundamental, they derived many from the work of Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson and Fritz Perls.
8 Associations, certification, and practitioner standardsĪccording to Bandler and Grinder, NLP comprises a methodology termed modeling, plus a set of techniques that they derived from its initial applications.Reviews also found that all of the supportive research on NLP contained significant methodological flaws and that there were three times as many studies of a much higher quality that failed to reproduce the "extraordinary claims" made by Bandler, Grinder, and other NLP practitioners. Scientific reviews state that NLP is based on outdated metaphors of how the brain works that are inconsistent with current neurological theory and contain numerous factual errors. There is no scientific evidence supporting the claims made by NLP advocates, and it has been discredited as a pseudoscience. NLP has been adopted by some hypnotherapists and also by companies that run seminars marketed as leadership training to businesses and government agencies. : 5–6 They claim as well that, often in a single session, NLP can treat problems such as phobias, depression, tic disorders, psychosomatic illnesses, near-sightedness, allergy, the common cold, and learning disorders. : 2 Bandler and Grinder also claim that NLP methodology can "model" the skills of exceptional people, allowing anyone to acquire those skills. NLP's creators claim there is a connection between neurological processes ( neuro-), language ( linguistic) and behavioral patterns learned through experience ( programming), and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life. Neuro-linguistic programming ( NLP) is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California, United States, in the 1970s.