Four Professors Looking the Wrong Way

The Opening Round

A frequently cited source of NLP criticism, since its publication in the mid-2000s, is Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology by Professors Scott Lilienfeld, Steven Lynn and Jeffrey Lohr.  It came as a bit of a surprise, therefore, to discover that "NLP" and/or "neurolinguistic programming" is mentioned only four times in this book of 477 pages (apart from in lists of referenced material). And all four passages combined hardly amount to a single page of text.

The first two passages, apparently written by Lilienfeld, Lynn and Lohr, read:

"All a clever entrepreneur has to do is apply a formula historically guaranteed to be successful: [Quick Fix + Pseudoscientific Gloss) X Credulous Public = High Income. That is why, when TFT, FC, neurolinguistic programming and rebirthing have travelled the route of electric sleep therapy and the Transcutaneous Electro-Neural Stimulator, new miracle therapies with different acronyms will rise to take their place. It's the American way."
(page xvi)

"… a recent and highly selective sampling of fringe psychotherapeutic practices (Eisner, 2000; see also Singer and Lalich, 1996) included neurolinguistic programming ..."
(page 2)

I'm not sure what "highly selective" means in this context, since Eisner's target seems to have been pretty much anything, from Freud onwards that is associated, in Eisner's mind, with psychotherapy*.  Which doesn't seem to be at all "highly selective".
(*Eisner's book is rather revealingly entitled The Death of Psychotherapy: From Freud to Alien Abductions.)

The Singer and Lalich book is equally unhelpful due to the authors' inadequate knowledge/research and a penchant for unattributed quotes - e.g. "NLP promoters and advertisers continue to call the originators ..." (page 172) - and the use of non-authoritative sources such as the alleged "top DHE^TM/NLP spokespeople" (page 173) who are in reality simply a pair of NLP trainers.  Lilienfeld, Lynn and Lohr's choice to cite this book in support of their allegations fits well with the idea that a Life magazine article about Tony Robbins in 1985 provides reliable information about NLP, then or now (see below).

Anyway, after those first two comments you might imagine that the three professors would:

1. Dissect NLP to demonstrate the legitimacy of their allegations
    
2. Provide solid evidential support for those allegations
    
3. And have at least a basic knowledge of NLP.

The Main Event

But you'd be profoundly wrong, on all three counts.  The two remaining passages go as follows:

"Tony Robbins tells his listeners that if they use the right strategies - obtainable through his products - they can "make someone fall in love with you in 5 minutes" and that he can "cure any psychological problem in a single session" (Griffin and Goldsmith, 1985, p.41).  He has also claimed that through neurolinguistic programming (NLP), clinicians can cure people of tumours and long-standing psychological problems in a fraction of the time required by conventional treatments (Leikind and McCarthy, 1991, p.186).  NLP is a scientifically unsubstantiated therapeutic method that purports to "program" brain functioning using a variety of techniques, including mirroring the postures and non-verbal behaviors of clients.  Robbins claimed that NLP has allowed him to "read people's motives like an open book."  It has also allowed him to "make a woman have an orgasm without touching her" and even "bring a person who was brain-dead back to life" (p.186).  Moreover he cautions that if therapists see their clients for more than two sessions, they have "no integrity" (Griffin and Goldsmith, 1985, p.41)."
(page 446)

and

"Neurolinguistic programming: Unvalidated therapeutic method that purports to "program" brain functioning using a variety of techniques, including mirroring the postures and non-verbal behaviors of clients.  Some proponents of neurolinguistic programming have claimed to be able to cure phobias in a matter of minutes.
(page 455)

The first thing to note is that these last two passages were not written by Lilienfeld, Lynn and Lohr, but by Associate Professor Nona Wilson of the University of Wisconsin (as she was then).

Having said that, whilst Chapter 15 was written by Wilson,, it seems reasonable to suppose that at least one of the three editors "vetted" the text before it was accepted for inclusion in the book that bears their names.

The second thing, as most NLP practitioners will quickly realize, is that the material in these last two paragraphs isn't about NLP!  In fact it's pretty much wall-to-wall fantasy as far as the field of NLP is concerned.  And in this case, it really is "highly selective".  Whilst the quotes from Leikind and MCCarthy's article (see References) are only inaccurate by one word, what Wilson does not tell us about is this comment near the end of the article:

"Now neurolinguistic programming may be a useful addition to mainstream psychology, but from the material presented in [Tony Robbins' firewalking seminar, November 1984] it is certainly impossible to make a sensible judgement."
(Leikind and McCarthy, 1991.  Page 192)

It seems that Leikind and McCarthy were better able, as compared to Wilson, to distinguish between Robbins' hype and the topic he was hyping, and therefore reserved judgement.

To the Man with a Hammer ...

What isn't immediately obvious from the text is the very questionable validity of Wilson's quotations.  Of course we know that she consulted Leikind and McCarthy (1991), but you'd have to see the actual material to discover that the text in question is based on just one paragraph in one chapter of a book of skeptical articles on the paranormal, or that the authors' only direct comment on NLP itself is very mildly positive (see above).

Likewise, it seems fair to assume that Lilienfeld, Lynn and Lohr read Eisner's critique in (The Death of Psychotherapy: From Freud to Alien Abductions, Donald A. Eisner, 2000), but it may not be clear, from the brief mention, that Eisner was writing under the illusion that NLP was one of the "fringe psychotherapeutic practices" that he was investigating.  So his claim that "Virtually no clinical support has been presented for the effectiveness of NLP" (p.158) is both ill-informed and, since NLP isn't a form of therapy, irrelevant.

And of course there's the reference to Singer and Lalich (1996), but here again the possible value of the comments is undermined by the authors' misunderstanding of the nature of NLP.  Yes, they, too, apparently thought that NLP was a form of psychotherapy.

So far, not too good.  But the real kicker in Lilienfeld, Lynn, Lohr and Wilson'scriticisms is the fact that they themselves seem to know next to nothing about NLP.  And what they do think they know is completely inaccurate.  How do we know that?  We know it because:

• NLP is not, and never has been, a form of psychotherapy as Lilienfeld, Lynn, Lohr, Eisner, Singer and Lalich claim
• Tony Robbins is not and never has been representative of NLP, or a representative of NLP.
• There is no truth in the claim that NLP or its creators have ever 'purport[ed] to "program" brain functioning using a variety of techniques, including mirroring the postures and non-verbal behaviors of clients.'

On NLP and psychotherapy

To borrow from my article for the Skeptical Intelligencer (M. Heap, ed.  Vol. 11, 2008):

The idea that NLP is a form of psychotherapy seems to stem from the adoption, within the community of academic psychologists (and others), of two false syllogisms that go something like this:

1. Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson were all therapists
2. Bandler and Grinder built NLP around their models of Perls, Satir and Erickson
3. Therefore NLP is a form of therapy.

and:

1. Bandler and Grinder carried out certain therapeutic activities
2. Bandler and Grinder created NLP
3. Therefore NLP is a form of therapy.

    Problem: In neither case is Step 3 either logical or accurate.

• Bandler and Grinder were studying communication rather than therapy as such;
• It seems to be widely agreed that successful therapy depends on rapport existing between therapist and client;
• A therapist can only create rapport through their communications - both verbal and non-verbal
• But whilst therapy is always about communication, not all communication is about therapy.

On Tony Robbins

As far as I know, Tony Robbins went on just one NLP training course, and then followed Richard Bandler around for a while as a sort of unofficial apprentice.  He then "wrote" a couple of books which feature NLP, but entirely off his own bat, and there seems to be some question as to his exact role in the production of at least one of the books.

Having been advised, by John Grinder, to model the firewalking process that was being used in a variety of self-development courses at the time, Robbins was apparently so impressed that he started his fire walking seminars and subsequently created his own product - NAC (Neuro-Associative Conditioning), which obviously isn't NLP - which he has promoted ever since.

In short, whatever claims Tony Robbins has made about NLP and his own abilities are entirely down to Tony Robbins, and any similarity to NLP or claims about NLP are only valid where they coincide with authentic NLP and the claims made by the co-creators of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder.

To base an assessment of any part of the field of NLP on the words and/or behaviour of Tony Robbins is patently ill-informed and ill-conceived.
It might be argued that this is especially true when most of the quotes aren't based on genuine research (in the scientific sense), but on anecdotal accounts taken from two articles, both around 20 years old - one from a skeptics magazine (see Leikind and McCarthy, above), and the other from an article in a 1985 issue of Life magazine!

NLP and "programming"

Here again Wilson seem to be labouring under some kind of misconception.

We are told that NLP is a "therapeutic method [not true] that purports to 'program' brain functioning [not true] using a variety of techniques, including mirroring the postures and non-verbal behaviors of clients [not true]."

If we re-wrote that sentence accurately it would look something like this:

"NLP is in essence the study (modelling) of communication patterns used by people who are regarded by their peers as 'excellent' in some field.  The creators of of NLP adopted, adapted and developed a number of techniques for creating rapport, such as mirroring non-verbal behaviors.  The 'programming'* in Neuro-Linguistic Programming refers to all the rules, regulations, maps of 'reality', etc. that we pick up as we go through life (especially in childhood) and which we accept as unquestioningly as a computer accepts the software and data which it runs and processes - and how they can be modified."

(With regard to the last sentence, NLP-related techniques are only concerned with past events insofar as they are still being manifested in current behaviour. Psycho-archaeology, as it has been called - digging up past memories and experiences is generally regarded as being counterproductive.)

The profound difference between these two descriptions, and hence the endemic inaccuracy of the description and evaluation of NLP in this book will be evident, I think, regardless of how much or how little the reader already knows about NLP.

Unfortunately, as can be seen in the other sections of this FAQ, this is quite typical of the poor research and ill-informed claims and opinions that can be found over and over again in the published views of academic psychologists and the like.

* Note:   Regarding the subject of "programming" in this context, it is important to draw a distinction between brain "function" and brain "structure".  It is correct to say that some NLP-related techniques allegedly alter brain structure, but not brain function.

This must be understood in the context of the work of brain researchers, such as Professor Elizabeth Loftus, who point out that simply recalling a memory invariably appears to involve some degree of editing of that memory.  Since editing a memory would seem to involve "editing" some of the relevant synaptic connections (i.e. altering the brain structure), these techniques - if they do indeed work - are only doing what we all do for ourselves on a daily basis.  The significant difference is that the NLP-related techniques are designed to trigger that process in a more orderly fashion and hence, when used with skill, to better effect.

Likewise research into brain plasticity over the last couple of decades has shown that the structure of the brain adapts to physical activities, etc., and even where we focus our attention.  Far from being any kind of pseudoscientific claim it would be hard to imagine how NLP-related exercises and techniques could not have an effect on brain structure.

References

Griffin and Goldsmith, The charismatic kid: Tony Robbins, 25, gets rich peddling a hot self-help program,   Life magazine.  March, 1985.  pp.41-46.)

Leikind, B.J. and MCCarthy, W.J., An Investigation of Firewalking, in The Hundredth Monkey, Kendrick Frazier (ed). Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York: 1991.  pp.182-193.

Lilienfeld, S.O., Lynn, S.J. and Lohr J.M., Science and Pseudoscience in Counseling Psychology.  Guilford Press, New York:2004.  pp.xvi, 2.

Wilson, N. Commercializing Mental Health Issues: Entertaining Advertizing and Psychological Advice.  In Lilienfeld, S.O., Lynn, S.J. and Lohr J.M., Science and Pseudoscience in Counseling Psychology.  Pages 446 and 455.