NLP (neurolinguistic programming): C/D?

Bandler and Grinder, hypno self help, etc. - new age fluff or science?

Cool when Derren Brown does it, don't really care about the self-help apps.

Derren Brown doesn't do it. Or not as much as you think he does anyway.

I know it's only a small part of what he does but I'm sure he uses it sometimes.

Based on what I know[*] NLP sounds like bullshit to me and any time DB claims to be reading someones mind via their face or whatever, I find it far easier to believe that it's just standard magic, otherwise known as cheating.

[*] I read a wikipedia article once

You can tell what a load of bollocks the cult of NLP is from reading any of its fansites, which tend to the exact same tone as every other cult. But NLP as a system contains elements of psychology that stage magicians, professional mediums and hypnotists have used for a long long time so to that extent I think it has some use value to performers. I suppose there's a question about where the line is between NLP and old-school hypnotism. Brown seems to be reasonably sceptical/critical of NLP but he knows enough about some of the techniques to make use of them I think.

@Ledge, doesn't Derren Brown himself state everytime that it's trickery instead of a 'higher power' or other magical bullshit?

"Science"? Er, they might need to be running some proper trials for that, no? From what I understand, the clinical evidence is ... scant, shall we say?

It's been around for longer than everyone thinks and seems to have lifted various ideas from other, accepted psychological theories (a bit of Bandura's modelling here, a bit of CBT there), yet has always ducked and dodged out of the way of empirically justifying itself. As such, I tend to view it and its practitioners with heavy scepticism.

William Bennett to thread

xpost to self

(I'm talking about using it in a therapeutic sense, natch. In terms of entertainment: they can do what the fuck they want, really!)

DB is a magician first and foremost, and the best trick he ever pulled off is getting the NLP crowd to actually spread his misdirection FOR him. genius.

@Ledge, doesn't Derren Brown himself state everytime that it's trickery instead of a 'higher power' or other magical bullshit?

He definitely sells himself as being more than yer average magician, his talk about mentalism (lol) and nlp clearly suggests that (he wants you to think that) he has highly developed (but not magical) mental abilities of some kind.

xp, yup definitely. But enough about DB, he has his own thread anyway.

Yeah, but apart from DB all I can say on this thread is that NLP swings between obviousness, established psychology, and the kind of fairy-dust wish-fulfillment that preys on all the millions of unsatisfied customers that keeps the self-help industry going.

my brother is really into this. he has aspergers, diagnosed late in life, and i guess he thought it would help him overcome some social problems. but it's become part of the aspergers obsessiveness, so now he just wears people out with a monologue about how to be an excellent communicator.

He goes on a bit about it in his book - but I kind of skipped those bits to get to the bits about the magic.

DB that is (not joe's brother).

Stuff about NLP helping war veterans here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/feb/01/post-traumatic-stress-disorder

Of course people can find comfort and help in anything, Scientology might have been just has effective.

Paul McKenna:
[i['It works like this. If someone's got a skill that you want to master, you "model" that skill, so that you can learn to do what they do in a fraction of the time it took them. Say someone's a master salesperson. They'll be doing certain things with their body, and certain things with their language. So you "model" that. Say someone's a master footballer. They'll be doing certain things with their mind, and certain things with their body.[/i]

Oh right you could become a master footballer with yr mental techniques could you? coughbullshitcough.

Couldnt find the actual article I was looking for, in which an NLP guy tried to make the interviewer more relaxed and receptive by imitating her body language, but she was just disturbed by him copying her every move.

Jesus, Paul McKenna is the cunt's cunt of choice, isn't he?

i dunno, it's pretty easy to write this sort of nebulous pseudo-psychology as another sort of wish fulfillment bullshit, but as with anything else i think it has aspects that can be pretty useful. one of the more positive aspects, i think, is that it encourages one to evaluate behaviors & methods & states of mind based on whether they are useful to you. another is that it encourages you to think about what sort of skills and behaviors you want to cultivate and gives you a way to think about how to go about doing that. also, the idea of "anchoring" states of mind for yourself with verbal & physical cues would make sense to any performer or athlete who has a ritualized preparation to get themselves into an optimal attitude for their performance, so i don't see the harm in getting other folks to use the same sort of technique in more mundane circumstances.

obviously, the cult of salesmanship and "establishing rapport" is odious to me, i think the "mind reading" aspect is pretty much bullshit, and any person who's attracted to nlp because they think it will make them a mind-controlling svengali can't be helped anyway

yeah, good points. I guess what intrigued me about nlp, was this idea of how much routines/"rituals" frame our lives and how difficult it can sometimes be to look at them critically.

as with anything else i think it has aspects that can be pretty useful

Er, yeh, I don't think anyone on this thread is denying that! The problem, however, comes when something that fundamentally hasn't been supported by any rigorous scientific examination is presented by a small coterie of zealots as being a panacea.

I mean, established psychological therapies -- CBT particularly -- are the subject of enough debate (qv Lynch, Laws and McKenna, 2009)) without a bunch of NLP knobs coming along and pretending they know everything.

Bottom line: there might well be something in there. But until its proponents start acting like professionals, I'm going to ignore them -- and I'd hope any practising therapist/counsellor/coach/etc would, at the very least, keep their scepticism turned up to the max.

a mixed bag to be sure

i sure as hell don't believe that you can cure a phobia in 15 minutes as claimed tho

Exactly: talk about false expectations!

Also, Paul McKenna -- whether he's talking about NLP, weight loss or his bell-end -- is a deeply unappealing man.

William Bennett would be a much more appealing front man for NLP

what ends up worrying me about shit like this -- any pseudo psychology that encourages ppl to open up their own braincase and poke around, self hypnosis, nlp whatever -- is that you get ppl who want to use it to become neil strauss or otherwise hone their sociopathic impulses

Yeah, plus I think it might well be a bad idea to encourage people to open up cans of worms that they're not qualified or equipped to re-seal if things get out of hand.

for sure, a person could try to "cure" themselves of their homosexuality through self-hypnosis, nlp, intense prayer, or any other established brainwashing technique, but the result is that they can end up seriously fucking themselves in the head -- the DIY appeal of this just circumvents any questions of whether you should do what you can re: yr brane & mental health

The idea that you could fuck yourself up presumes that these techniques are at all effective in the first place though.

yeah it's not like messing with black magic...

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.