Chapter 1
Founding principles of NLP
Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. If the map could be ideally correct, it would include, in a reduced scale, the map of the map; the map of the map of the map; and so on, endlessly, a fact first noticed by Royce.
(Korzybski, 1948, p. 38)
Within this chapter, the founding principles of NLP are considered as a psychological model that enables the understanding of subjective experience. The theory of NLP is presented as an overview, including the historical influence that Erickson, Satir and Perls had on the work of Bandler and Grinder. The philosophical principles of the work of each of these three therapists is initially considered and expanded further within subsequent chapters. Each of the therapists worked with the subjectivity of their client’s experience and Erickson in particular utilised this subjectivity of the client’s presented reality to therapeutic advantage. Over the past 15 years, NLP has developed into a therapeutic model and I have linked the presuppositions of NLP to neurolinguistic psychotherapy, providing case examples of how these are incorporated into everyday practice.
Historical roots of NLP
It is important to consider the historical background of the development of NLP, as NLP in itself is not a psychotherapy, but has developed through Bandler and Grinder’s modelling of the work of three therapists: Milton Erickson, a psychiatrist and hypnotherapist; Virginia Satir, a family therapist; and Fritz Perls, a gestalt therapist. It is mainly Erickson’s work that has influenced the neurolinguistic psychotherapist today.
Bodenhamer and Hall (1999) define modelling as ‘the process of observing and replicating the successful actions and behaviours of others; the process of discerning the sequence of internal representations and behaviours that enable someone to accomplish a task’ (p. 395). Through modelling, Bandler and Grinder were utilising Pareto’s (1935) principle that 80% of any results of a given behaviour will be produced by only 20% of input. They were able to successfully identify the 20% of Erickson’s, Satir’s and Perls’s linguistic behaviours that made a difference to their therapy work, separate these from the idiosyncratic, install them in themselves and achieve the same results.
Over the next few years, Bandler and Grinder continued to develop the model to include further work on programming through language, including the work of Korzybski and Watzlawick. They also incorporated systematic behavioural studies building on the theories of the physiologist and psychologist Pavlov, and the programming and strategy work of Miller and Galanter. Since Bandler and Grinder’s early work, NLP has expanded to include cybernetics and systems theory, philosophy, unconscious processes, cognitive psychology, neuroscience and spirituality.
Milton Erickson
Erickson had suffered from poliomyelitis as a young man and had learnt much of what later came to influence his work during his recovery from this illness. His inability to move freely meant that he observed very closely the non-verbal and verbal interactions of those around him and began to recognise that there were frequently contradictions between the verbal and non-verbal patterns. He used this heightened acuity to inform his therapeutic work later on, often bringing to consciousness unconscious patterns of behaviour.
Erickson began his career as a medical doctor, and a Masters graduate in psychology. He started to practise hypnosis in the 1920s and worked as a psychiatrist in the 1930s in Massachusetts. He developed a particular interest in the use of hypnosis in a therapy setting and spent much of his time researching and teaching therapeutic hypnosis, as well as working from a private practice in Phoenix, Arizona. Although he was initially considered a controversial figure, his work in the latter years of his life achieved considerable recognition. He has directly influenced the work of the well-respected therapists Rossi, Haley, O’Hanlon and Gilligan, among others, and his approaches continue to influence a range of psychotherapies today.
Virginia Satir
Satir was a therapist who was strongly influenced by the notion of the interdependence of people within a system. The main focus of her work was to use different perspectives to aid people to gain greater self-esteem, and she encouraged people to achieve balance between their own natural drives for personal development and the need to respect other people. Her work with families brought the notion of parts therapy to life and she would often encourage individuals to negotiate with more destructive aspects of their personality that were imprints from their own early influences. She also found herself acting the ‘Leveller’ to the different family roles that were acted out in the therapy room, those of ‘Placater’, often attributed to the mother/wife, the ‘Blamer’, often attributed to the father or head of the family, and the child roles of ‘Distracter’ for the younger child and ‘Computer’ for the older child.
Fritz Perls
Fritz Perls brought some of the principal components of gestalt therapy to NLP. His model of gestalt therapy moved away from its early aggressive and provocative tendencies and towards a place that respected the integrity of the individual through integration of mind and emotions. He utilised neurological processing of our sensory experiences and was one of the first therapists to actively include the senses of sight, sound, touch and feelings in his communication with clients.
Theory of NLP
You cannot pin NLP down to a single definition. There are many explanations of NLP, each like a light shining from a different angle, picking out the whole shape and shadow of the subject.
(O’Connor, 2001, p. 1)
Probably the most difficult thing to describe in NLP is what it is. There are a vast array of descriptions and each person who utilises the methodology will often have their own interpretation of what it is, based on their subjective experience. O’Connor (2001), in NLP Workbook, presents the following series of definitions as giving ‘a good idea of the field’ (p. 2).
- NLP is the study of the structure of subjective experience.
- NLP is an accelerated learning strategy for the detection and utilisation of patterns in the world (John Grinder).
- NLP is the epistemology of returning to what we have lost—a state of grace (John Grinder).
- NLP is an attitude and a methodology that leaves behind a trail of techniques (Richard Bandler).
- NLP is the influence of language on our mind and subsequent behaviour.
- NLP is the systemic study of human communication (Alex Von Uhde).
- NLP is the method for modelling excellence so it can be duplicated.
Each of these definitions goes only some way towards describing what NLP is and attempts to provide a summary of the subjectivity of human experience and how one can work with this subjectivity to facilitate more choice.
NLP is made up of three core components:
- neurology
- linguistics
- programming.
In the context of NLP, neurology is the study of the mind and how a person thinks and codes information at a neurological level; linguistics is how language is used to directly affect the internal landscape, state and behaviours; programming is how the internal and external behaviours are programmed or sequenced to achieve specific results.
Theory of neurolinguistic psychotherapy
McDermott and Jago (2001) define neurolinguistic psychotherapy as ‘a therapy of what is possible; it opens for the client and therapist a voyage which is genuinely into the unknown’ (p. 11). Neurolinguistic psychotherapy operates from the assumption that ‘a client should always leave the therapist’s room with more choices than they came in with’ (p. 11). The purpose of neurolinguistic psychotherapy is to create more choice while at the same time working towards the client’s outcome. McDermott and Jago recognise that this potential for growth towards outcome occurs if the fundamental survival needs are met and that because neurolinguistic psychotherapy works towards outcomes and considers the subjective nature of a client’s experience, it does not ‘identify or label a hitherto unremarked upon part of the client’s pathology’ (p. 11).
Kostere and Malatesta (1990) also view neurolinguistic psychotherapy as a model that facilitates choice for the client by assisting clients to change the ‘limits in their model of the world’ (p. 20). They view the purpose of therapy as ‘working with clients in order to facilitate the expansion of their world model, that is, to open new possibilities, to broaden the scope and depth of their world views, and to expand their models’ (p. 20).
The European Association for Neurolinguistic Psychotherapy (EANLPt) defines neurolinguistic psychotherapy as follows:
Neurolinguistic Psychotherapy is a systemic imaginative method of psychotherapy with an integrative-cognitive approach. The principal idea of Neurolinguistic Psychotherapy (NLPt) is the goal-orientated work with a person paying particular regard to his/her representation systems, metaphors and relation matrices. In the course of the therapeutical work in NLPt the verbal and analogue shaping and the integration of the expressions of one’s life and digital information processes is given an equal share of attention. The aim of the method consists in accompanying and giving support to human beings so that they can obtain ecologically compatible goals. Further the method helps to position the subjectively good intentions underlying the symptoms of illness and/or dysfunction so that old fixations about inner and outer unproductive behaviour and beliefs can be dissociated and new subjectively and intersubjectively sound behaviours and beliefs can be established and integrated.
(Jelem & Schutz, 2007)
The Neurolinguistic Psychotherapy and Counselling Association (NLPtCA) stays closer to NLP and defines neurolinguistic psychotherapy as:
A specialised form of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). The idea is that we work from and react to the world as we construct it from our experiences rather than directly from the ‘real world.’ We build our own unique models or maps of the world. Although all such maps are genuine to each of us, no one map is fully able to represent the ‘real world.’ Further, NLP is a way of exploring how people think, identifying success and then applying these successful actions or even beliefs in ways that work. This has proved practical and effective in a wide range of applications and situations. Using this form of what is called ‘modelling’ change can be quite quick. NLPt is broad based and draws on concepts from many areas of psychology and psychotherapy. Influences stem from the Gestalt ‘school’, the family therapy of Virginia Satir, Ericksonian brief therapy, and humanistic psychology. There are also clear links with the fields of systems theory, behavioural psychology and linguistics.
(NLPtCA, 2006)
Neurolinguistic psychotherapy is a model of therapy that makes a series of assumptions about a client, even before the client arrives for therapy.
- The client is the expert on their problem and therefore the expert on the solution. (If they knew how to create the problem, they will equally know how to ‘un-create’ the problem.)
- The client’s problem is how they structure their subjective experience, and it is therefore possible to change their subjective view, through ‘how’ rather than ‘why’ questions.
- The client has unlimited resources and flexibility of behaviour; it is a matter of facilitating the client to access and utilise these resources.
- The client will have their own internal map of the presenting ‘problem’ and will have developed a series of behaviours in response to this map.
- These behaviours have been generalised over time.
- Each of the behaviours that the client presents with will have a purpose and function.
- The purpose and function of each of the behaviours will have been positive for the client at some point in time.
- Behaviour is precisely that; it is not the identity of the person and the person is always more than their behaviour.
- Behaviours are contextually dependent, therefore there will be a time when they don’t ‘do’ the behaviour, i.e., the solution already exists.
- The client will communicate their internal landscape or ‘map’ in ways that are both conscious and unconscious.
- The purpose of therapy is to increase choice for a client and facilitate them to a more resourceful state than they currently have access to.
- A small change in the structure of the client’s reality can result in a major change in their subjective experience.
- The therapist can’t not project their perception of the client onto the client.
- The main focus of therapy is towards outcomes.
Each of these assumptions recognises the subjectivity of a client’s experience and assists the therapist to respect and acknowledge the subjective reality that their clients present in therapy.
The map is not the territory—the subjectivity of experience
Korzybski’s ‘the map is not the territory’ underpins neurolinguistic psychotherapy as a therapeutic model that works with the subjectivity of a client’s experience. The structural components of the NLP communication model (Figure 1.1) presuppose that there are a set of filters that directly influence the internal representation of the external world. Although the communication model is thought to be unique to NLP, similar concepts are described in the work of Gerhardt (2004, p. 24), who has researched the developing brain of an infant:
Unconsciously acquired, non-verbal patterns and expectations have been described by various writers in different ways. Daniel Stern (1985) calls them representations of interactions that have been generalised (RIGs). John Bowlby calls them ‘internal working models’. Wilma Bucci calls them ‘emotional schemas’ (1997). Robert Clyman calls them ‘procedural memory’ (1991).
Figure 1.1 NLP model of communication
However these filters are developed, they will each affect the behavioural responses of an individual based on the individual’s subjective experience.
Within the NLP communication model, it is recognised that a person determines their construct of the external world via a series of filtering processes: deleting portions of experience determined by the ability to handle abstract data and a preference for absorbing information in manageable chunks; generalising on past learned experiences and behavioural responses; and distorting the event by interpreting it in a way that fits the internal world.
The basis for the filtering of information is found in Korzybski’s (1948) review on general semantics where he proposes that deletion is an affective disturbance causing people to fail to recognise the intention, goal or meaning of information that they receive from another individual, ‘Disturbances of the semantic reactions in connection with faulty education and ignorance must be considered in 1933 as sub-microscopic colloidal lesions’ (p. 20). The neuroscientific component of this is supported in Rothschild’s (2000) work on trauma. Neural synapses connect both cognitive and somatic memory to the brain, but Rothschild states that ‘nothing is fixed about the sequence of synapses…. New learning is achieved through the creation of new synapse strings, or adaptation of existing ones. Forgetting…is the result of disuse of synapse strings—as the saying goes, “use it o...
