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NEURO LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING
The Study of the Structure of Subjective Experience
‘Neuro Linguistic Programming (N.L-P.) is a refreshing new concept in the study of personal
dynamics. Its main difference from the bulk of new age therapies is the fact that it deals
specifically with the structure of human processes and experience, rather than the content of
e experience.
For instance, how often have
you been in an argument with one
person saying something like:
“But don't you see", or "I just
want you to get a better picture of
this" and the other person keeps
replying with:
"I just can't seem to grasp it", or
"It doesn't feel right.
yave As an example, close your eyes
one and think of a recent experience, one
that is easy to remember. Some of
just you will recall it as a picture of the
eof event, others of you will recall
zeps how you felt about it and there is a
third group, those people who have
,or the sometimes annoying, sometimes
lifesaving ability “to remember
exactly what was said and who said
what and in what order in a
conversation even years ago (or
maybe a sort of running
commentary of the event), who
remember it auditorially.
One of the easiest ways to tell
which Representational System a
person is using is to listen to the
words they use to describe their
experience, specifically the
predicates (verbs, adverbs and
adjectives). There are other ways
to tell but I'll only deal with these
for now.
It was developed in the late '70s
by two Americans, Richard Bandler
and John Grinder, who together
decided to investigate the how of
some therapists’ remarkable
successes, while other therapists
could do basically the same things
but not get the results. For this
they chose Milton Erickson, Fritz
Perls and Virginia Satir primarily,
as they were getting incredible
results.
Their first radical departure
from orthodox psychology was with
this original attitude - who ever
heard of studying people who are
good at something? Like allopathic
medicine today, modern psychology
deals almost solely with problems.
Richard and John decided this was
a bit like trying to build a better car
by researching the wrecks that
didn't make it ina