[johw]

I do not know what experiences you made so that you think NLP is "such a big lie". It is a toolbox of methods which generally do work. Many of them are applied in behavioral therapy, which is proved to have an outstanding effect on depression (as one example).

The nice thing is that you do not have to study psychology for that, but have simple methods, which are almost common sense, to deal and/or transform most psychological issues.

[dalke]

"..generally do work".

If that were so, then could you explain the section at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming#S... ? Pulling three quotes from it, "controlled trials failed to show any benefit from NLP", "Numerous literature reviews and meta-analyses have failed to show evidence for NLP's assumptions or effectiveness as a therapeutic method", and "Among the reasons for considering NLP a pseudoscience are that evidence in favor of it is limited to anecdotes and personal testimony".

What evidence was enough for you to conclude that the methods "generally do work"?

[johw]

I do not know how NLP is taught right know, however I'll explain how I come to that conclusion with a reference to the mentioned book from steve andreas.

One of the basic tools of NLP is what is called "anchoring". An anchor is an association in terms of action->response. One example lots of people can associate with is: You hear a song and have instantly a mood change. You could feel very happy, because you remember meeting your spouse for the first time when this song was played. Or maybe you feel bad because something bad happened when you heared that song and associate the bad feelings with that song.

One way to break away from a specific "action->response" pair is by using a pattern interrupt and overwriting the usual response with another response. You do that regularly yourself, for example when you learned a false fact and correct it afterwards.

Of course you can also create new associations. You probably do not have any strong feelings associated with a song when hearing it for the very first time, but you can associate something with it.

Anchoring, pattern interupts and overwriting old anchors is heavily used in behavioral therapy, and is also the basic concept for a lot methods in NLP. For me the parallels to behavioural therapy are why I conclude "generally do work".

I think the bad reputation NLP is receiving is because of "hype-riders", people who want to rip the help-seeking people off their money. And as you do not have to study psychology to practice NLP (or say you can do NLP), charlatants have an easy entry.

In Steve Andreas book, you learn how to rewrite old anchors effectiveley, specifically the ones that make up your identity, the "how you know you are you".

Example Scenario:

Current situation: Suppose you think you are bad at maths and that is simply your personality, that's why you will never solve any math problem in reasonable time. Effect: You will not even try to solve math problems or will not have fun doing it, thus taking more time or limiting yourself in other areas as well as panicing as soon as you see a math problem.

How you change that? ->

1) Think about how you know you are bad at maths.

2) Do you imagine one or multiple situations where you were bad at maths? Are these pictures or video? How are they organized in your head? In color or black/white? Big/small?

3) Now take every example in your head that support that belief and change the modalities. Already at that point you will notice with each transformed example, that you feel less bad about maths.

4) Next you build positive images around maths in the same way as before, thinking about situations where you were good at maths and transform your images to the same modalities the bad images were before.

5) Pro step: Build values for yourself such as: intelligent, resilient, motivated and associate these values with situations were they helped you in solving math problems or other problems. This would decouple your identity from "maths" and help you not fall into panic as soon as you encounter a math problem or any other problem you think you are not good at (remember, you are intelligent, resilient and motivated?)

I do not know if specifically this technique with exactly these steps is used in todays scientific therapy. However, it is based on anchoring/overwriting old anchors and I do not see much novelty there.

[dalke]

Once upon a time we (that is, general medical consensus in the US) thought that milk would help treat ulcers, and that ulcers were mostly due to diet or lifestyle (overwork, smoking, etc). There was a model of how milk would be a good treatment, and doctor would recommend milk to patients with ulcers.

Starting a few decades ago, we found that "the vast majority of ulcers are caused by H pylori infection" (quote from http://www.ulcerresourcecenter.com/ulcers-and-milk ), and can be treated with drug therapy.

I point this out as an example of how even if there is a reasonable mechanistic model of how a therapy might work, which is widely believed to be true, that doesn't mean it is true. The Wikipedia link I posted gives reference to attempts to verify if NLP is a useful treatment, and concluded that it isn't.

As for "pattern interrupts and overwriting old anchors is heavily used in behavioral therapy", if you search for '"pattern interrupts" "behavioral therapy"' on Google there are very few hits. Duck Duck Go has even fewer. This suggests that "pattern interrupts" is not a term used in behavioral therapy. If you further look at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gquery/?term=%22pattern+interrup... you'll see that "pattern interrupt" is not commonly used, with only 214 matches in PubMed. A spot check shows only a handful used in the sense you mean.

Therefore, the term "pattern interrupts" is likely not the term used in behavioral therapy. You are, I believe, making a statement about a homologous treatment, perhaps operant conditioning? But operant conditioning, and its application, predate NLP, so I don't think it's reasonable to attribute its effectiveness to NLP, nor would it be novel in NLP if Skinner discussed it in the 1950s.

("Operant conditioning" has 18356 matches in PubMed, and the first 7 papers all use it in the cognitive psychology sense.)

[johw]

Sorry about the bad terminilogy, I have my input from a psychology student. Maybe someone can clarify about the correct terminology.

I researched more, and at least the wikipedia arguments against NLP are critisized heavily, too. http://realpeoplepress.com/blog/research-in-nlp-neurolinguis...

There is an organisation that aims for NLP to be recognized scientifically http://www.researchandrecognition.org/

At this point, you are right that there is not much scientific evidence. I hope for the research group that it produces some proper results soon

[dalke]

I looked at your first URL. My earlier comments hold.

For example, it says (concerning using mental imagery) "This result comes as no surprise to anyone with even basic training in NLP. Imagining “themselves performing this act, with as much sensory detail as possible” has been a standard and essential part of rehearsing or “future-pacing” any behavioral change."

A quick search shows that behavior rehearsal was part of non-NLP since at least the early 1970s. See for example http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311981/ , "Training predelinquent youths and their parents to negotiate conflict situations":

> In response to parental requests for assistance in dealing with adolescent problem children, three parent-child pairs were taught negotiation responses to hypothetical conflict situations using behavior rehearsal and social reinforcement. The negotiation process was separated into component behaviors that were practised during simulations by each youth and his parent under the direction of trainers. Results indicated that (a) the procedures were successful in training youths and their parents in negotiation behaviors that produced agreements to conflict situations, and (b) these behaviors generalized to actual conflict situations in subjects' homes.

or a clinical trial from 1981 at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/7205244/ , "The treatment of social phobia. Real-life rehearsal with nonprofessional therapists."

> It was concluded that repeated behavior rehearsal, both in the clinic and in real life is a cost-effective treatment procedure for many social phobias. The approach is straightforward and can be applied by nonprofessionals, including the patients themselves, after limited training and with minimal supervision.

Further, the original synopsis at http://digest.bps.org.uk/2011_06_01_archive.html points out that it's not just imagery which is important, but that there was question: why was there a seeming

> contradiction with earlier research showing implementation intentions are most helpful to those with compromised willpower? Churchill and Jessop can't be sure, but they said one possibility could be because their task of eating more fruit and veg is more complex than some of the lab tasks studied previously.

The summary of the summary at realpeoplepress.com leaves out these complexities.

[johw]

That is interesting.

To sum up, you say that a technique which NLP uses was non-NLP before and works, that's why NLP is not scientific?

Maybe I'm too tired right now, but for me that's a clearer NLP pro argument than I could come up with.

Anyway, I'm not really interested in who is right or wrong. I think NLP works and whoever wants to try it should do it, but be careful not to learn from charlatans. These who want to wait for scientific evidence can also do so.