Does NLP become a slightly risky if not dangerous sect?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Andreas Tenhagen on August 3, 2010 at 10:23pm

Hello Ian,

because NLP is really powerful and works with many many motivational skills, it seems that there is a sect behind it.

But many sects (as scientology and the watchtower-community) use NLP and hypnotic language. We recently had a workshop here in Germany to analyse the transcripts of services of "classical church" and of a sect, what we found out was, that both use a lot of NLP and Hypnosis.... but the sects are much better with it and they know how to bring in "fear".

I think Richard Nongard could say more .....as a former pastor. Couldn´t you Richard?

Greetings

Andreas

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Andreas Tenhagen on August 3, 2010 at 10:28pm

This "aggressive" method of NLP what frightens and also fascinates people, but you could see with many people behaving so...their on the top.....and then they fall. That is not only with NLP ....its with every method.

And Richard Bandler himself is not the only example for that.

What you send out to the world .....will come back.

Wish you well.

Andreas

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ian Read on August 3, 2010 at 10:55pm

I find the way some people defend it on certain forums dedicated to NLP and the way they deal with people, definitely reminds me of a dodgy sect at times, and I am an NLP practitioner myself.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Andreas Tenhagen on August 3, 2010 at 11:08pm

of course. Its not because of NLP ....its because of the character of some people.

Some people use a knife to cut bread and some use it to kill people ....and that is not because of the knife.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jan Krüger on August 4, 2010 at 2:00am

Hey, have I posted my science rant on HT yet? No? Well, it boils down to this (in response to your second point): empirical sciences involve a trade-off between getting as many answers as possible and getting them as dependable as possible (by some measure). So if you constrain yourself to things that are well-studied in science, chances are that you will miss out on other stuff that actually works but hasn't been made measurable by science yet.
Bandler doesn't claim that his solutions are the only ones, by the way, he just says that they are better than everything else he has tried. Not in these precise words, of course.

As for the point about the guru: there are actual quite a lot of people who could be considered guru level in the NLP world. And, really, I doubt that McKenna actually needs help from Bandler at this point. They do work together, though, so it's probably more about marketing, along the lines of "be sure to promote me whenever possible".
Anyway, there is a certain level of cult feeling to this, but at least, according to Bandler himself, his goal is for his clients to not come back. That certainly doesn't fit the sect profile.
(By the way, for the fun of it, see how well the sect profile matches any given psychotherapist, especially in psychoanalysis...)

Competing groups – well, you have that everywhere. Political parties. "Real" churches. Proponents of different scientific theories. All of those will tend to claim that they know better than everyone else. It's not a commendable attitude, in my opinion, but it's not the exclusive territory of sects.

In your fourth point, I have no idea what you mean by "negate" in that context. The expression "negate knowledge" doesn't have carry any meaning for me. Do you mean "question" or "falsify"? If not, what else do you mean?
Going from the assumption that you meant something like that, I would again say that almost everyone is incapable of that, or will avoid it as much as possible, with respect to some of their beliefs. Not that that's a good thing (unless the belief is useful and ecological, in which case I believe it would be stupid to question anything but whether it has those two properties).

In conclusion, the way I see it, either you allow a very, very wide definition of "sect", thus making NLP and also many other things one, or you stick to the closely-knit community that claims to have the perfect solution to everything (partial check: NLP claims to be an instrument to find individual solutions; Scientology claims similar things but also ends up blaming all problems on mind-controlling aliens. No, I'm serious, they really do that. They tie you up pretty good inside their whole system, and relieve you of a lot of money, before they unload that one on you, though), brainwashes people (partial check: practitioners of NLP will usually presuppose all the assumptions of NLP, such as submodalities and an unconscious mind that is dissociated to a certain degree, so NLP clients will eventually feature all of these, but I'm not sure whether that really constitutes brainwashing in the textbook sense), assumes control of as many aspects of their lives at possible (no check. NLP doesn't do stuff like telling you what to wear, where to live, who to associate with, etc.), and uses all kinds of leverage to keep them from leaving (no check).

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the NLP crowd in any way. All of my defences (or attacks) on NLP are based on my subjective impressions and not on serious research. In fact, I believe that there are people who do awesome things with NLP and go about it in perfectly reasonable ways... those just happen not to feature in this post because this thread is focusing more on black sheep. Or perhaps grey sheep.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ian Collins on August 4, 2010 at 8:34am

Well guys I need to thank you for your valuable opinions. Of course there is nothing wrong to NLP by itself. The point is what some guys do with that.
I wanted to know some opinions from people from another country.
Thanks a lot for your imput and I hope there will be more imput from others.

To others:)
Express yourself guys pls:)

Take Care

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Antoine Pruyssers on August 4, 2010 at 8:48am

It's all about the approach.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ron Franks on August 4, 2010 at 10:37am

At the risk of being considered dangerous by others who read this, it is my view point that nothing other than intention can be inherently dangerous. And even such an intention to harm or destroy something can not manifest itself in anything other than an individual's experience (as changing the form of a thing does not change the thing itself, its essence). This declaration is based on my view that everything is energy, which science declares can be neither created nor detroyed. If this view is correct, then there is nothing to be concerned about: as, whereas we may and do change forms that energy manifests as; we do nothing to that energy itself other than to temporaily direct it towards our own desires.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by James Malone on August 4, 2010 at 12:07pm

Ian, Done in the way you describe an NLP group of that sort would certainly have elements of a destructive cult. Personally I have never been one to "drink the Kool Aid" so to speak unless I was the one who mixed it! Unfortunately it is not very difficult for people well versed in psychological persuasion techniques, including NLP, to prey upon the needy. Jim

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Graham Old on August 4, 2010 at 1:23pm

I think that the biggest danger of NLP is towards therapists. It gives the impression that pretty much any issue can be sorted in one session by anyone who's learned a quick 4-step technique.

I'm not at all convinced that reductionistic codification of the world's best therapists is necessarily a good thing.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jan Krüger on August 4, 2010 at 3:33pm

Ron: have you ever heard of the word "accident"? ;)

Graham: if that's how people think of NLP, I think something got lost along the way. You'll find comments in several of Bandler's books about how there's an art to using the meta model, just to name one example.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kevin Cole-NLPTrainingQuest.com on August 4, 2010 at 4:19pm

"Richard Bandler knowing these answers and rejecting all other **scientistic** answers and approaches... hmmmm... well...."

What??

I have to be blunt and say, although I'm sure there's a valuable point somewhere in this post, I'm having a great deal of trouble understanding it...

• ▶ Reply

▶ Reply to Discussion

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next ›
• Page