thankyousir

I have always been interested in NLP (okay, only since I saw it brought up in The Game by Neil Strauss) and have read a bit of stuff on it, but what amazes me is how amazingly profound and useful it can be, yet it is forgotten except by the self-help industry. and when the self-help industry talks about it they make it sound like it is a "get better results in 20 days" scam.

In actuality the topics are incredibly deep I think. a few of the presuppositions for instance:

The map is not the territory in this they cleanly and easily hurdle the whole philosophical argument of the separation of consciousness and reality, and use this presupposition as the basis for modifying "submodalities" or how we view the world subjectively

All actions are appropriate in some context/there is always a positive intention behind any action I view this as something completely humanistic and beautiful, something that asserts the essential goodness of every human being

You cannot separate mind and body/there is no failure only feedback These are also beautiful, Taoist things I think, stressing the duality (or non-duality) of things.



I just get a little upset that it seems like though this has its niche, it is not especially appreciated by popular science or psychology. This and Positive Psychology, which I also think is very profound, seems ignored. What do you guys think?

Baraka_Guru

I think the problem with it being ignored is based on how little is known about it. There is no academic or medical acceptance, there is no standardization, there are "professionals" as well as self-practitioners, and there is little or no peer-reviewed and published research about it that I know of.

This is a tough act to support. The self-help/new age thing doesn't help, either. It puts it in the same category as astrology and crystal therapy.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

ChrisJericho

thankyousir I completely agree. I also picked up "NLP The New technology of Achievement" after reading about NLP in The Game. I saw the book on Amazon and figured for $10 or so it was worth a shot just to see what it was like.

The book was very powerful, and I would be lying if i didn't say it changed my life a bit, especially the presupposition of 'If one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it."

I am a very scientific and practical person, I was a biology and psychology major in college. Baraka is correct in saying these techniques are very difficult to quantify or properly examine. Of course, just because we don't understand it, doesn't mean it's ineffective.

Reading NLP, as an atheist, was also somewhat enlightening to me as to how people experience gods and religion (I am trying not to threadjack here!). Often when I asked people about why they are religious they would reply with statements about their (pleasurable) feelings or emotions while praying or conducting other religious rituals. By conducting these rituals and experiencing these responses, their gods become more real to them. This is analogous to the NLP principle that you can take any idea or memory and make it more potent by attributing certain emotions or other effects to it.

I could really write so much more on this subject, but let's just say the book was worth the $10.

__________________
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows us that faith proves nothing." - Friedrich Nietzsche

thankyousir

NLP does seem to explain psychology very well, I also think it speaks very well to what beliefs are. Though I wish I had a greater grip on my subconcious. When I catch myself thinking very critical thoughts of myself and of others, worrying and inwardly exploding at the littlest things, I think of the NLP excercises, but they don't seem particularly useful to me.

I have tried having a conversation with the critical voice in my head and negotiating with it but all I can hear is my own voice pondering what the positive intentons behind the voice were. Perhaps deeper personal synchronization (was that what they called it, or was it congruence?) will come with time and practice.

Jinn

Anything that itself creates an exorbitant amount of acronyms without an empirical reason for them makes my "Quack Science" gauge start buzzing. The last thread on NLP on TFP made me not want to ever look at it, since I don't have an interest in crystal vibrations or chakras, either.

I may take a look at NLP if I can find some substantive research accumulated since it's inception.

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

roachboy

this seems to be taking some basic material from cognitive linguistics---which has been developed as a way of describing cognition and its mediations in a context shaped by embodiment as a point of departure---and turning into a self-help regimen simply by reversing the signs on the descriptions---so if cognition works in direction (a) we can change our actions by initiating procedure -(a).

i understand the idea, but i don't think shifting from description to action-modification is so simple a matter as just reversing the signs.

but the cognitive neuroscience/linguistics research materials is really interesting---the quackery part comes in the sign reversal.

and this is not to say that there are no implications of this research for politics or art-making: it's just not that easy.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

sitardude2000

NLP was offered as a "course" in a local community college near me. I had read about it and took the class. This was a decade ago or more. The professor ws a pastor and needless to say, here in the Bible Belt, his involvement with this science was not looked upon favorably by some of his peers. What I remember though were practical results. I used the Timeline tool to envision a job I wanted. i got the job and am still there. Could be coincidence. But what was most powerful was the "Quick Phobia Cure". I learned the technique and took my daughter through a session of it as she had a debilitating fear of dogs. It took 15 to 30 minutes and she was 10 yrs old or less at the time. It worked immediately. Her next time seeing or encountering a dog proved it. I was and am convinced this is a powerful idea.