[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.

[dalke]

Here's an analogy. In some churches, the faithful will kneel in order to pray. Now I come along and say that praying 200 times per day will lead to better health. We put this to a test, and find it's true. But there are conflating factors - is it the praying, or the physical exercise through kneeling, or doing it in a church, or all of the above, which lead to the outcome?

A Kneelologist could stop, be happy that it works, and promote Kneelism as a healthy activity. But a non-kneelologist could point out that it's similar to calisthenics, which was already known to give similar positive results, is simpler to understand because it doesn't require the prayer component, and can done by people who are against prayer or don't have ready access to a church.

(Or for a real world example, the asanas from hatha yoga are used as exercise, and called 'yoga' even though yoga is a much broader topic.)

The scientific approach would address some important factors: 1) is the effect real and reproducible?, 2) when should be be used instead of other forms of treatment, and 3) what are the possible conflating factors and can we disentangle them to improve 1) and 2)?

Applying that to NLP, and making this up because I don't know the details. What if NLP is an incorrect synthesis of real-world observations that were already known at the time NLP was developed? In that, the ability of NLP to predict similar effects is not surprising. Other psychology models developed since Bandura's work in the 1960s also need to "predict" that behavior rehearsal can be an effective treatment.

Instead, what new predictions does NLP make which are different from other behavioral models? Can those predictions be tested? Or failing the ability to make new predictions, is it a simper model which it at least equally effective as other models in describing behavior?

That's where the science comes in.

NLP might work. But so might cognitive psychology, and with seemingly fewer worries about charlatans.

[johw]

Yes you are right in the scientific approach.

What's more, NLP was not really developed. The techniques have been copied - or "stolen" - from other approaches, starting with Gestalt therapy. Therefore it's not a simple coincidence that you encounter similar techniques elsewhere.

Also, does NLP really need to bring novel ideas for it to be recognized? It does not promise anything like that, because that is not it's goal. NLP is about stealing what works to extend its "toolbox". That is also one of the points why it is considered being a pseudo science, "copying what works" is not scientific. In my opinion, not focusing on science is a major flaw of NLP. Therefore I hope that the NLP research organisation or others will change that.

Also, like you said, it is also possible that there are flaws in the copies, i.e. by making wrong conclusion from the observations. I would find it interesting to compare the NLP versions with the scientific versions to find the differences and maybe correct one or the other model after running some tests.

Btw. Do you know if depression or PTSD therapy based on the "scientific" psychoanalysis does yield results today?

[dalke]

"does NLP really need to bring novel ideas for it to be recognized?"

Of course not. It could be synonymous with "best practices." But even if it were identical to best practices, it uses set of unique terminology which makes it harder to understand. Why does it do that?

I do not know the answer to your last question.