NLP (neurolinguistic programming): C/D?

well yes, but that's why i included intense prayer as "brainwashing" in my previous post -- it doesn't have to be lab-tested to assume that any sort of obsessive restructuring of beliefs, intentional or not, can fuck with yr head

i mean i'm sure you could fuck yourself up on some dale carnegie "how to make friends & influence ppl" ish if you were as obsessive about it to integrate it into your belief system

I doubt you could brainwash yourself in that way. You have to have OCD already to be that obsessive.

well you can definitely train yourself to be a weirdo...

i think a false belief that you can transform things about yourself which are innate might be damaging in itself, if only because it delays the moment of having to come to terms with who you are.

maybe i haven't expressed myself well, but i think ultimately that belief can be a powerful & transformative thing, and it is possible to alter your beliefs intentionally, and that this isn't always a good thing. but sometimes it can be. i'm no nlp stan & i am loathe to come across as one -- just saying "mind is mysterious" that is all

xp: depends entirely on your definition of "innate" there. Michael Jackson went so far towards proving your point that he disproved it and then proved it again.

but it ended with me being right, yeah? (i'm not even sure what i meant by "innate" either.)

If your scope of what is innate is narrow enough you're right.

We were cleaning out a box of books last night and ran across a old NLP book. Hey, I wonder what happened to that Bandler guy? Did not expect to find this:

Murder trial and acquittal
In 1986, Corine Ann Christensen (December 8, 1954 – November 3, 1986), a former girlfriend of Bandler's friend and cocaine dealer, James Marino, was shot dead in her Santa Cruz townhouse with a .357 magnum owned by Bandler. Authorities charged Bandler with her murder. Bandler testified that he had been at Christensen's house but that Marino had shot Christensen. After a short deliberation, a jury found Bandler not guilty.

Mother Jones had a story about it - it's been transcribed here

Sample paragraph:

But Bandler, it seemed, had changed little. In February 1988, he was in Dallas for a workshop advertised as a weekend with "Dr. Richard Bandler." He was, as usual, unpredictable and provocative, mixing demonstrations of NLP with a rambling, funny monologue. One of his funniest stories was about a schizophrenic client who thought he was Jesus; Bandler cured the man, he said, by building a cross and threatening to crucify him. Later, in a bar, Bandler drank heavily, and told one story from his imagined career as a professional musician of a brutal 74-day concert tour.

I remember NLP being popular in corporate training circles and HR departments in the late 90s. Even then it seemed like pure snakeoil.

Not completely unrelated.... In today's Guardian:

Reprogramme your thinking from “everyone is horrible” to “everyone is lovely”, says Philippa Perry. It can turn your life around

Now, repeat after me: “everyone is interesting and attractive including you and me and we are all very pleased to see each other”. It will take practice. You have acclimatised to “everyone is not worth the effort” because you’ve practised that. Time to upgrade to your next self-fulfilling prophecy. We only have one life (apparently) – don’t be a fruit fly.

Jimmy Carr is currently shilling his book everywhere. I heard an interview snippet where he seemed to be endorsing - alongside NLP - Morrissey, Nietzsche and even a bit of Ayn Rand. Not surprising that he might be a bit of a sociopath but jeez.

Sounds suspiciously like a makeover of Emile Coué and the 1920s fad of repeating "every day in every way I am getting better and better".

I thought that was Frank Spencer.

I remember NLP being popular in corporate training circles and HR departments in the late 90s. Even then it seemed like pure snakeoil.

Perhaps unsurprising, the roots of NLP go through Esalen and damn near every Silicon Valley CEO in the 90s went through there.