[carapace]

> the “pseudo” in “psuedoscience” is usually the explanation

Explanation of what?

I would say that NLP is non-scientific or pre-scientific, yet you can find practitioners and promoters who claim it is scientific, so to that extent NLP is pseudoscience. The trouble is that detractors use the label "pseudoscience" to cast shade on the whole thing, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The techniques developed under the rubric of NLP are rigorous and repeatable. E.g. the phobia cure or the "Visual Kinesthetic Squash" are like algorithms, in the sense that they are concrete patterns that work to create specific changes. They have been tested and refined and the essential elements boiled down to render specific steps without extraneous elements. A person can learn a pattern like the phobia cure and apply it to cure phobias. So there is a kind of rigor and repeatability that distinguishes NLP from the vast majority of schools of psychology.

> I do doubt his explanations of what it was exactly that helped, and why.

One of the most interesting (IMO) aspects of NLP is that Bandler and Grinder were very careful not to speculate as to how or why these patterns work, they refused to develop theories. The patterns were developed operationally without trying to find explanations or stories for what was going on in the brain that made them work. So no one knows why the "VK Squash" works. No one knows why the phobia cure works. But they do work. And sometimes they don't, so you try something else. It's not scientific, it's operational: do what works.