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Sid Jacobson's History of NLP
NLP was developed in the early 1970's by Richard Bandler, Ph.D., an information
scientist, and John Grinder, Ph.D., a linguist. Bandler and Grinder were
interested in how people influence one another, and in the possibility
of being able to duplicate the behavior, and therefore effectiveness of
highly influential people. Their early research was conducted at the University
of California at Santa Cruz. What made their search special was their
use of technology from linguistics and information science, combined with
insights from behavioral psychology and general systems theory, to unlock
the secrets of highly effective communication.
The actual technology, or methodology, that Bandler and Grinder used
is known as human modeling; actually the building of models of how people
perform or accomplish something (anything--the usefulness in benchmarking
best practices should be immediately obvious). This modeling process actually
means finding and describing the important elements and processes that
people go through, beginning with finding and studying a human model.
This is a person, who does something in a particular, usually highly skillful,
way. For example, if you want to know how to teach some particular skill
or concept, you'd first find someone who does it extremely well. Then
ask him or her lots of questions about what they do, why they do it, what
works and doesn't work, and so on.
At the same time, observing this person in action will often lead to
new and better questions to ask in the process. Most of us do this already,
though perhaps not systematically.
The addition of specific NLP technology makes it possible to discover
much of what this human model does that he or she is not aware of. To
do this well means to actually study the structure of people's thought
processes and internal experience, as well as their observable behavior.
During their early studies Bandler and Grinder developed a unique system
of asking questions and gathering information that was based on the fields
of transformational grammar and general semantics. Later they and their
colleagues discovered certain minimal cues people give that indicate very
specific kinds of thought processes. These include eye movements, certain
gestures, breathing patterns, voice tone changes and even very subtle
cues such as pupil dilation and skin color changes (training of Practitioners
of NLP includes the skills and knowledge to use these information gathering
techniques and to notice and interpret the subtle cues).
NLP is this gathering of information to make models, based on the internal
experience and information processing of the people being studied and
modeled, including the part that is outside of their conscious awareness.
The word neuro refers to an understanding of the brain and its functioning.
Linguistic relates to the communication aspects (both verbal and non-verbal)
of our information processing. Programming is the behavioral and thinking
patterns we all go through. There is a relationship between perceptions,
thinking and behavior that is neuro-linguistic in nature. The relationship
is operating all the time, no matter what we are doing, and it can be
studied by exploring our internal or subjective experience. The formal
definition of Neuro-Linguistic Programming is: The study of the structure
of subjective experience (3).
So, now to the question of our basic theory in NLP. We don't really have
one. NLP is not based on theory. It is based on the process of making
models. There is a big difference. A model doesn't have to be "true" or
"correct" or even perfectly formed. It only has to be useful when applied
to what it's designed for. If it isn't, it can be discarded in any situation
where it fails. NLP is really an epistemology (the study of the origin
and structure of knowledge itself). Everything in NLP is based on specific
evidence procedures for effectiveness and is thoroughly tested. "Doing
NLP" means working diligently to be sure we know what we know, and use
it appropriately.
Adapted from: "Neuro-Linguistic Programming." INFO-LINE, American Society
For Training & Development, April, 1994.
By Sid Jacobson.
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