NLP: A Sober Guide for Aspiring Magicians – Exposing the Vulnerabilities in NLP
“You will have 100% success in getting a job. At interviews, potential employers will listen to you with bated breath, even if you’re talking nonsense. Your abilities will make them believe you’re the best candidate they need. Become the master of your life! Attract money! Succeed in everything! Become the chosen one!” All these benefits are promised if you enroll in an NLP center. But is it really true? Let’s find out…
Back in 1973 in the USA, two rebellious revolutionaries, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, came together to spark a revolution in people’s consciousness, using cybernetic-mathematical models to control the psyche. Their innovative experiment, based on Pavlov’s psychophysiological research, Korzybski’s philosophy, Pribram and George Miller’s cybernetic concepts, and the works of Maslow, Rogers, Frank Farrelly, and other humanistic psychologists, quickly gained popularity and evolved into a movement called NLP – Neuro-Linguistic Programming. The name, admittedly, is a bit complicated. Here’s what co-founder Grinder says: “When we wrote the first book, we needed to call what we were doing something, so we decided on ‘NLP.’ We didn’t think anyone outside our students and a small circle of specialists would be interested. By the time we realized otherwise, it was too late to change.”
Originally, NLP focused on identifying the constructive and successful features of the conscious and unconscious minds of well-known and advanced individuals, reducing them to algorithms, and developing psychotechniques based on these algorithms. The idea was truly revolutionary and deserves applause, as it helped many people achieve harmony, success, moral and physical health, and improve their lives. The problem is, like any popular movement, NLP eventually became surrounded by myths and implausible stories. So, if you haven’t fallen victim to these legends and don’t plan to, let’s figure out what information to trust and what to ignore.
The Basics of NLP Through a Critical Lens
At a gathering of math and programming students interested in psychology, several assumptions were made that later formed the foundation of NLP:
- A talented person differs from an untalented one by having unconscious behavioral strategies and reactions to internal and external circumstances.
- These strategies can be brought to a conscious level by specialists studying the psyche.
- Others can be taught these strategies and use them to achieve success in all areas of life.
In other words, the founders studied the intuition and spontaneous reactions of talented and brilliant people, broke them down into components, turned them into algorithms, and now offer to implant these algorithms into anyone’s mind.
The goal is certainly noble, innovative, and even a bit genius (could Freud have imagined his Id, Ego, and Superego would one day be dissected and algorithmized?). This approach, for example, helped replace standard learning errors with more effective strategies for mastering new material. But there are some points that aren’t as optimistic as Bandler and Grinder might have hoped. Let’s go through the assumptions that became the basis for NLP:
1. Talented People Have Unconscious Mental Strategies
In other words, good intuition and the ability to use experience stored in the unconscious. Yes, intuition helps achieve success or avoid trouble, and many brilliant discoveries are made intuitively. Everyone has intuition; it’s an appeal to unconscious experience, bypassing logic. But remember, if you lack life experience or at least a solid theoretical foundation, your intuition won’t have a database to draw insights or spontaneous solutions from. Also, every situation is unique – with its own conditions, people, moods, and values. Leonardo da Vinci’s successful experience in a similar but different situation could lead to disaster for you. In this sense, someone else’s algorithmized experience is unlikely to be better than your own, even if it’s unrefined. The plus side is that by practicing suggested patterns, you make them your own experience, which can be useful later.
2. These Strategies Can Be Formalized by Researchers
They can, sure… But here’s the catch:
- Not all geniuses will agree to be guinea pigs.
- Even if they do, they may not display all their unconscious strategies.
- Even if they do, next time in a similar situation, they might spontaneously use a completely different, but still successful, strategy.
Intuition is about flexibility (which all NLPers strive for), not a set of templates. For example, someone with good intuition knows who to approach and who to avoid.
3. These Strategies Can Be Taught to Others and Work in All Areas of Life
Here, NLP contradicts itself. If, by following the rules, we divide people into types: visuals, kinesthetics, active-passive, agreeable-disagreeable, and so on, and consider the combination of each parameter within a person, everyone turns out unique. Moreover, each person not only perceives the world according to their traits but also reacts and behaves accordingly. Now, what’s the chance that the success algorithm of a talented person with one set of mental traits (say, an auditory, time- and person-oriented, with an internal reference frame, a rebel, etc.) will perfectly fit your set of traits (if you’re a visual, listen to others, and tend toward conformity)?
You might argue: “All these characteristics can be copied and used to adjust to another person, to… brainwash them (see ‘NLP Myths’).” Let’s look at an example. Suppose you want to treat yourself to a new Corsair H70 cooling system, but you only have enough money for the H50. What do you do? Of course, ask for a discount. You enter the store and automatically look for the salesperson. You immediately start analyzing how to influence them, assessing their main representational system and how they process information. If they’re a strict logician and you’re a creative intuitive (or vice versa), there may be a disconnect, so mirroring and matching come in handy. But what if the salesperson is highly logical and doesn’t recognize emotions, while you live by aesthetics and intuition, and never thought about the difference between “echo” and “print” (and you only need the cooling system to quietly brute-force admin accounts on photostocks)? You might try your natural charm, but it’s not guaranteed to work. Still, you’re a hacker, and your logic deserves respect.
The next step is influencing the subject: you match their representational system and start your attack with logical arguments, since that’s what they’ll respond to. You need to clearly explain why they should give you a discount. If they like you (thanks to matching or just as a person) and don’t mind giving you the price difference, you’re set. But even here, there can be issues: what’s convincing to you may mean nothing to them – they have their own worldview. This is a common problem for persuaders: they forget everyone sees the world differently, and to make an impact, you need to know the specifics of their worldview (or “map of the world,” if you prefer). Can you quickly figure out and select arguments that influence the salesperson’s beliefs?
Don’t despair – it’s not hopeless. If you match well, you might intuitively start thinking like them, and your words will resonate. Also, in an argument, whoever is more confident is right: if you’re more confident in your position than they are in theirs, they’ll give in. If confidence is equal, it’s anyone’s game. A good example is the brothers’ dialogue with a shopkeeper (from Agota Kristof’s “The Notebook”):
– We need these things, but we have no money.
– What? But… you have to pay.
– We have no money, but we really need these things.
…
We say nothing more, just look at him. He looks at us. Sweat appears on his forehead. After a minute, he yells:
– Don’t look at me like that! Get out!
We say:
– In exchange for these things, we can work for you: water your garden, for example…
– I don’t have a garden! I don’t need you! And can’t you talk normally?
– We are talking normally.
…
He throws our paper, pencils, and notebook out the door and shouts:
– Get out! Take everything and don’t come back!
We carefully pick up our things and say:
– But we’ll have to come back when we run out of paper and pencils.
Get it? You can wear down the salesperson, and when they realize their peace of mind is worth more than the price difference, you might get your discount. If you analyze the situation, you’ll see success depends on many factors: preparation, luck, your ability to sense and influence (logic), the salesperson’s mood, motivation, personality, willingness to compromise, and the value of the item. But “brainwashing with NLP techniques” isn’t what’s happening here. These techniques can help you get what you want if circumstances are favorable, or soften things if they’re not. But achieving the unlikely with a couple of NLP tricks? That’s more the realm of hypnosis.
NLP Myths
Hopefully, you’re not too disappointed to see the myths of NLP crumble. My goal today is to snap you out of NLP euphoria and bring you into the harsh reality. So, let’s play myth-buster for a bit.
Anchoring aka The Magic Wand
While preparing this article, the editor asked: can you use NLP techniques like anchoring to make the most beautiful girl in the world fall in love with you? As one of the most beautiful girls in the world, I say: “Ha-ha-ha!” As the author of an NLP article, I say: “Of course.” As a psychologist, I say: “It’s possible, and not necessarily with anchoring or even NLP techniques.”
You already know anchoring is done at the peak of emotional experience – positive emotions create positive anchors, negative ones create negative anchors. But this division is conditional, and here’s why. When someone is at the peak of positive emotions, they’re self-sufficient, already feeling good, and it doesn’t matter who’s nearby – you, someone else, or no one – because they’re focused on the source of positivity. Also, “anchoring” is just a fancy word. It’s really about associations, and if you grab her wrist during a happy moment, she might notice and think, “That’s weird… What does he want?” Next time you touch her wrist, she’ll remember: “Hmm… what does this remind me of? Oh, right! That was Vasya! What did he want? Weird…”
In moments of despair, a person loses wholeness and needs support. Here, you have a much better chance: be there at the right time, cheer her up, or help solve a problem. Thanks to you, she regains her wholeness, and the formula becomes: her (in tears) + you (and your support) = wholeness. If this happens regularly, it becomes a habit, and soon: wholeness – you (and your support) = her (in tears). That’s almost dependency, and love isn’t far off (especially if you’re good-looking). To test the method, after all your adventures, mention another girl; if you notice jealousy or hurt, the scheme worked. Anchoring isn’t needed here, nor is mirroring. They don’t hurt, especially if you’re skilled, but they’re not the deciding factors in winning someone over.
You Can Brainwash a Person or Group with NLP
It’s all about the craving for spectacle. In Soviet times, there was a lack of “magic”; after the USSR collapsed, a wave of hypnotists like Anatoly Kashpirovsky and Alan Chumak appeared, giving the frustrated public a dose of miracles – miraculous healing, even raising the dead (there’s your brainwashing). Our black-and-white or poorly colored TVs were filled with people howling and crying with their eyes closed, swaying to the music and the hypnotist’s suggestive speech. This was the golden age of self-hypnosis and the placebo effect, and it gave hope that a clever combination of words could make someone do what you want. Since there were only two Chumaks and Kashpirovskys, and they were unique, NLP, which promised similar miracles without innate talent, arrived just in time. Magical and mysterious words like “reframing,” “meta-model,” “anchoring,” “submodality,” and “calibration” became the secret sauce for creating “miracles.”
Now, about brainwashing: if you think you can completely reformat someone’s mind and install your own programs with a technique, maybe you’re right – but only if you’re a talented psychotherapist skilled in hypnosis, and your “zombie” agrees to the experiment. If you’ve only completed the first or second level of “NLP Practitioner” (at higher levels, “brainwashing” isn’t even a goal), and your subject doesn’t want to be a zombie, you’ll face harsh reality.
NLP is a Science
Professional psychotherapists smirk at this claim, which would make pickup artists “scientific researchers.” As I wrote above, NLP is based on elements from various sciences, but it’s not officially recognized as an independent science. Almost all techniques are borrowed from other psychological schools or esotericism, and the terminology isn’t self-sufficient – if you translate NLP jargon into plain language, “anchoring” becomes “association,” “map of the world” becomes “worldview,” “reframing” becomes “reinterpretation.” Scientific research, even if based on other sciences, requires a multifaceted view of the subject. In NLP, the foundation is usually the work of one or two researchers from each field (except psychology). So the approach is one-sided, and the creators may have missed a lot. Today, few people seriously study NLP scientifically; most are self-taught trainers or those who completed 3-4 levels and now teach anyone who can pay. They don’t care about the psyche, scientific approach, side effects, or distorted information.
And here’s the kicker: science deals with patterns, evidence, research, and measurement; combinatorics is just a part of some sciences. In popular NLP, no technique gives a pure result even 70-80% of the time (by “pure result,” I mean the result directly from the technique, not lucky circumstances or other influences), let alone from a research perspective.
Warnings
Maybe you’re an open-minded person and realize everything above is just my “map of the world.” And you’re absolutely right. If you still decide to study NLP – that’s great, because developing observation skills and memorizing complex words is better than aimlessly scrolling social media. Yes, the techniques are borrowed from other scientific and esoteric fields, and while they don’t always deliver the promised results, a positive outcome is possible with the right approach.
And finally, a few words about a smart approach, or how not to fall victim to the flip side.
- In the rush for quick results, modern trainers forget that NLP is about working with the psyche – your own and others’. The danger is that metaprogramming teaches how to work with the subconscious, but doesn’t pay enough attention to how the subconscious itself works and its pitfalls. It’s rare to find true psychologists among NLP fans, let alone those with classical professional practice. Real-world practice (not just training) is what gives real understanding. A similar problem exists in Gestalt psychology: one institute churns out “specialists” – a person comes for therapy, attends for a year or so, solves (or doesn’t solve) their problem, then gets a diploma and the right to “treat” others. After such hairdressers, salespeople, and accountants with a “one-year” Gestalt diploma, professional psychologists are flooded with clients with damaged psyches…
- Obsessed with brainwashing everyone, many “future” NLPers don’t notice how they themselves become zombies: they believe everything a charismatic trainer says without critical analysis. Often, the attempt to influence others’ minds turns into self-deception, which, over time, can lead to various mental disorders (depending on temperament and personality).
- When choosing a teacher or institute, be careful: very few people are truly advanced in NLP. Usually, 90% of trainers are just like you, only they’ve completed 2-3 levels, and most are driven not by a passion for teaching, but by profit. So, as soon as they finish a course, they start recruiting newbies and enthusiastically retell notes they wrote a few months ago. Maybe because of such people, NLP has shifted from a potentially scientific field to something resembling a sect-like MLM (multi-level marketing).
In summary, it’s not the magical abbreviation “NLP,” but individual sensitivity, understanding, and experience that bring success and results.
Hero or Rebel?
Retelling Richard Bandler’s dry biography is boring. Much more interesting is that one of NLP’s founders was a real wild card: at age 10, he made his first attempt to kill his stepfather by running an electric wire to a wet rug; as a teenager, he was a rebel, starting his “career” with the protesting hippie movement. He always had his own opinion and fiercely defended it, even over the smallest details, driving teachers crazy. If there was a rule to break, he’d break it.
Richard loved all sorts of antisocial opportunities: alcohol, cocaine, physical abuse of his wife, bizarre threats to NLP colleagues (he once promised to hire the mafia, the weirdo). Then there were court cases involving the murder of a prostitute (see the “Corina Kristen Case” sidebar) and fighting for the right to call himself the intellectual owner of NLP… Studying the biography of this brilliant and wildly unconventional person, you realize that the motivation to discover something new can come not just from curiosity, but from a wild desire to defy social norms.
The Corina Kristen Case
In 1986, in Santa Cruz, a prostitute named Corina Kristen was shot and killed in Bandler’s house, and her blood was found on Richard’s shirt. It looked like a total disaster… But Bandler was a genius for a reason – he immediately shifted all blame to the woman’s lover, James Morino. The trial lasted three months: during that time, Bandler mocked the jury, completely copying Morino’s speech, posture, behavior, facial expressions, and voice. In the end, he confused the jurors so much that they acquitted both men and tried to forget the “strange double vision” forever. By the way, it’s possible this is just another myth (or at least an embellished story) about the wonders of NLP.