All that stuff was around before those cults, though scientology gets the drop on NLP, both in primacy and exaggeration.

What is special to NLP is eye accessing cues (failed testing), submodalities (hijacked word from neuroscience, with superficial ritual attached) and logical levels (no evidence for efficacy), and a whole bunch of wild promises that evidently never materialize.

Those who promote NLP tend to be the ones who bought into it and find whatever story they can to rationalize to themselves that its quote “really powerful”, or they spin stories to sell certificates on to others.

Yep, anchoring can do something, as any basic association will. But don’t swallow the newfangled and neurobabble powered NLP version. You’ll end up cognitively hooked, lined, and sunk.

So with things like eye cues he discusses how scientific research seems to be against it, but he also takes the time to explain that it’s an incredibly difficult thing to test conclusively and empirically. He then offers his thoughts on the matter which are essentially to the effect that you can take the prescriptive eye accessing cues chart and throw it out of the window but that people do have habitual eye movements that seem to be releated to their thought processes. The caveat is that these movements don’t seem to be universal and tend to be unique to each person so you need to spend some time establishing a baseline before you can begin “reading” them. It would also appear that the accuracy and success rate even in this looser application of eye accessing cues is somewhat limited (70% is over-egging it definitely).

The bulk of the chapter on NLP (which is greatly detailed) is concerned with encouraging people to be wary of NLP Evangelism and pointing out that a number of NLP concepts are just things we do naturally dressed-up in fancy terminology (mirroring for example; and he goes to great pains to state that if you take the term mirroring too literally you’ll end up making people feel uncomfortable rather than generating rapport). But he also takes time to explore a few of the more credible therepeutic applications of NLP including the swish effect (I think he may mention anchoring but I cannot remember off the top of my head; ah well! Now I have an excuse to re-read an excellent book!).

The conclusion he draws about NLP (one which echoes my own sentiments) is that it is an ultimately well-meaning area spanning both dubious and credible ideas that is, of late, frequently high-jacked by NLP-Evangelists who promote it as a magic, quick-acting cure-all; a path that even one of its co-creators, “Doctor” Richard Bandler (inverted commas because the man doesn’t hold a qualification above his MSc in Psychology), has even strayed down this path. I think that, coming from a noted skeptic, this is a pretty generous and fair summation of NLP (and Brown is by no means a “cuddly” skeptic; his chapter on Religion, Superstition and Alternative Medicine would certainly ruffle a few feathers amongst the less rationally-minded folk here).

Also just to point out, whilst Paul Ekman has been well respected in the past, his credibility has been called into question of late as he has stopped publishing his studies for peer-review and his concept of Truth Wizards has been all but diproven not only by many well-respected body language experts but also by his younger self!

Thank you,
Rick

I’m still trying to get my head around it.

Pointless trying to change Simon’s view, or help him see it another way, whatever. Let him be I say.

Nice blog, will be back for more and congrats on a good year.

Rob

Samm

Nick