20.   What's Wrong with NLP?

Prologue

Due to the ways that search engine algorithms interpret search requests, you may or may not have ended up at the right page.  To help you to get to the information you are really after, here are some related pages in this site which you might want to visit as well as, or instead of, this one:

• FAQ #2 - Describes what "NLP" is.
• FAQ #3 - Describes where genuine NLP and the NLP-related techniques came from.
• FAQ #21 - An example of criticism of "NLP".  Two school textbook authors use NLP-type linguistic techniques to criticise whatever it is that they think of as "NLP".
• FAQ #22 - A discussion of research of NLP and NLP-related subjects.  Includes references to over 100 such studies which have produced positive findings.
• FAQ #27 - A detailed rebuttal of the wildly inaccurate article on "NLP" in the so-called Skeptics Dictionary.
• FAQ #28 - Following up on FAQ #27, this "multipart" FAQ shows how poor research has meant that a dependence on flawed and even unequivocally false information about the FoNLP (field of NLP) has been commonplace amongst academic critics for over 20 years.  The subsections include details of the infamous 'reviews' by Sharpley (1984) and Heap (1988).

What's Up, Doc?

Most day's I get at least one visitor to the Emporium asking about the downside of NLP - using search criteria such as:

• "nlp has been debunked"
• "arguments against nlp"
• "why nlp does not work"
• "nlp therapy criticism"
• and so on

And on one of the discussion lists I belong to, someone recently posed the question, "Is there an unbiased site on NLP? - most websites I found give me sales pitches on the benefits of NLP.  What I would like to know is the disadvantages as well as the advantages of using NLP and if there was a website that did just that."

Since I've already dealt with the question of whether NLP works, and why, in FAQ #3, this time I'll just outline a few basic criticisms.
And because I'm limited to a certain extent by not knowing quite what people have in mind when they raise these searches - this FAQ will take the form of a few entirely personal thoughts on the subject.

What are the Disadvantages of Using NLP?

Short answer:   There aren't any.

Longer answer:   There aren't any - as long as you are using the 'right' technique for a given context in a skilful manner

In an article by Professor Aldert Vrij and Shara Lochun (1997) the lead author descibes how he witnessed two police officers interviewing a suspect using one or more NLP-related pacing techniques:

'Recently [this is from a publication that appeared in March, 1997] I ... was asked to assess videotapes of a police interview.  My first impression was that both detectives were behaving "strangely".  I then discovered that they were both imitating the suspect's movements.
 
The whole situation looked bizarre and the approach was not effective.  The suspect was silent at the beginning of the interview and remained silent throughout the interview.'

Which was hardly surprising.
Since Vrij had no emotional tie to the scene, which he was in any case watching on a video tape, we cannot know how accurately his judgement on the degree of skill shown by the two interviewers matched the viewpoint of the person being interviewed.  If the two policemen were genuinely using the technique in an unskilful way, surely that reflects the inadequacies in their training, rather than the quality of the technique.  That is to say, their training should not have been considered complete until they had demonstrated proficiency in their use of the techniques they had been taught.

It would also be important, in order to estimate the appropriateness of the approach - in that context - to know whether this was a first interview, the seriousness of the accusation(s) made against the suspect, whether either of the officers had dealt with the suspect on other occasions, and so on.
The NLP-related rapport-building techniques, no matter how skilfully used, are scarcely likely to turn an experienced criminal into a chatty little fellow ready to 'shop' himself on the spot.

Moreover, we might contrast Vrij's rather negative view with that of other researchers who seem to have discovered the efficacy of the NLP-related "mirroring and matching" technique, possibly without knowing anything about NLP.  See part 1 - Be a mimic - of this online article from New Scientist magazine of May, 2008.
The explanation here is such a close match that you could put it into any NLP-related book or training course and I doubt if even experienced NLPers would notice that it came from a non-NLP-related source.

Room for Improvement

The name is a major pain

Although Bandler is rumoured to have made up the title "neuro-linguistic programmer" off the top of his head when a traffic cop asked his occupation, it is a very accurate description of what NLP is about - though not very enlightening if you don't already already know what the various parts of the name mean.
To be blunt, trying to understand what "NLP" is by analyzing the name is as useful as trying to understand what Beef Wellington tastes like by eating the printed recipe.  Still, for what it's worth, this is how the name was explained in Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Volume 1 (1980):

"Neuro" (derived from the Greek neuron for nerve) stands for the fundamental tenet that all behavior is the result of neurological processes.  "Linguistic" (derived from the Latin lingua for language) indicates that neural processes are represented, ordered and sequenced into models and strategies through language and communication systems.  "Programming" refers to the process of organizing the components of a system (sensory representations in this case) to achieve specific outcomes."
(NLP, Vol. 1. page 2)

(Incidentally, the term "neuro-linguistic" was actually coined by Alfred "a map is not the territory" Korzybski in the 1940's.)

It would have been a big help if Bandler and Grinder had been more precise in their definition of NLP when they were starting out

Despite the "sound byte" definitions such as "NLP is an attitude" and "NLP is the study of the structure of subjectivity" (which are both true, in their own way), there doesn't seem to have been much of an effort to work out a draft of a detailed description of what NLP is about at the time when NLP was first being developed.
For example, "NLP is the study of the structure of subjectivity" sits quite comfortably with John Grinder's statement that NLP itself is nothing more than a specific modelling technique.  But where does that leave "NLP is an attitude"?  And despite Bandler and Grinder's joint experiments with various aspects of psychotherapy, Bandler is on record as having said that he has never done therapy in his life.
It's all true, of course - but again not readily understood until you have a reasonably good grasp on the mindset that goes with the FoNLP (Field of NLP - NLP the modelling technique + the NLP-related techniques and applications + FoNLP training).

And having said all that, it is only fair to point out that it is notoriously difficult to provide exact definitions in the context of "soft skills".
For example, "coaching" has become a multi-million dollar industry over the last 10-20 years.  But what is "coaching"?  However hard you look I guarantee that you won't find a generally agreed definition, even amongst the self-appointed experts.  Indeed, from the contents of a number of discussions on specialist forums it's quite clear that there isn't even a generally agreed set of characteristics which can be used to distinguish "coaching" from "mentoring".

Despite its emphasise on using "systemic thinking" and dealing with "the whole person", different "schools" have grown up within the NLP community which have become overly focused on one particular type of approach to using NLP.

As Wyatt Woodsmall describes it, the three main schools can be distinguished from each other,Thus:

• The "school of physiology and behaviour" - the Klingon school, of which John Grinder is a leading exponent, puts emphasis on the value of physiological/behavioural modification as the key to changing everything else.  In Turtles All the Way Down, for example, Grinder and DeLozier talk about have a group dancing session at the end of each day in order to help to integrate that day's learning.
   
• The "school of the internal state" - the "hearts and flowers" or Doctor McCoy school, of which Woodsmall nominates Leslie Lebeau (was Leslie Cameron-Bandler) and Michael Hall as being leading exponents.  In this case the emphasis is on changing one's emotional state as the "prime mover", so to speak.
   
• And thirdly we have the "school of internal processes" - the Mr. Spock school, favoured by Richard Bandler and Robert Dilts.  Adherents of this school tend to emphasize techniques, such the use of sub modalities.

Please note, the point Woodsmall is making is that, as a general rule, all of these approaches should be accorded equal value - though each situation may favour the use of one approach over the other two.  The decision as to which approach is most suitable in a given situation should be based on an assessment of the situation - not on the basis of an assumption that one approach is inherently "better" than the other two.

The NLP techniques aren't as simple as is often claimed

There are people who claim that you can use any NLP-related technique without anything more than basic training - or maybe even just an accurate written or verbal description - and it will work.  But are they right?
In the first place, not every technique is appropriate in every situation.  Part of the skill set in the FoNLP is knowing which techniques are appropriate to achieve a particular result in a particular situation with a particular person.
NLP-related techniques are supposedly focused on "process" ("how" someone does something) rather than "content" (the material being processed).  On that basis the only question one should need to ask of a client is "Have you done that?" (i.e. have you carried out whatever instruction you have been given?).  And it would be even better if the practitioner was able to "calibrate" the client's behaviour in order to tell whether they have completed the action without needing to ask.  That takes time and practice.
NLP-related concepts and techniques may be relatively simple to teach - at a purely factual level - but it takes genuine experience to be able to use the techniques effectively.  But not all NLP trainers will tell potential customers about that - possibly for fear of putting them off the idea odf taking the training.

Because there is no clearly defined theoretical dimension to NLP, it has accumulated a wealth of crud along with the good stuff.

NLP started out on the basis of adopting/adapting patterns of behaviour which had already been shown to work - by Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson, and others.  That didn't mean that everything was bound to work all of the time, for everybody, of course.  Rather it provided a toolkit of proven methods and techniques from which practitioners could select whatever seemed most appropriate/effective in a given situation.  In other words, NLP started out being entirely pragmatic.
Except that there's no such thing as "entirely pragmatic" in this context.

Even the description of NLP as "the study of the structure of subjective behaviour" assumes that subjective behaviour does have some kind of structure, and a structure, moreover, which can be studied.
By failing to deal adequately with the theoretical aspects of NLP, the original developers left the door open for the subsequent introduction of a whole heap of loopy and/or irrelevant ideas and concepts into the "toolbox" - including techniques and methods which weren't "adopted" because they had already been found to work, but were created because someone thought they "ought" to work.  Or even just because they fitted potential trainees' perceptions of what "NLP" was about.

It is interesting to note that research into neuropsychology over the quarter century since NLP came into being has, on the whole, tended to validate those parts of NLP that were arrived at on a pragmatic basis (Bandler's work on submodalities, for example, was way ahead of its time), whilst the theoretical stuff has been invalidated (the so-called "neurological levels 'model'", for example, already contradicted the relevant scientific research when it was first introduced, and nothing has emerged since that time to make it any more viable today - see FAQ #9)

NLP attracts its fair share of extremists

Okay, this isn't something that is exclusive to NLP, nevertheless, there is a "lunatic fringe" who have attached themselves to NLP and go around claiming that it can do virtually anything from raising the dead (yes, really) to getting your whites "whiter than white", so to speak.

There are people who appear entirely rational, who claim to be experts on NLP, yet who actually come out with little more than pure gobbledegook.

And there are people (trainers, authors, etc.) who have no interest in NLP other than making money out of it.  One book that came out in the summer of 2009 - Understanding NLP, by Kay and Kite - for example, contains almost no information about genuine NLP.  What it does contain is page after page after page of information which is either nothing to do with the FoNLP, or actually contradicts claims made for various NLP-related techniques.  Such as the quite amazing statement that: "Building rapport with others takes time, commitment and effort" (page 95)!
(On that last point, for readers not familiar with the NLP-related techniques, there are several NLP-related techniques which have the sole purpose of building rapport quickly and easily.

This makes NLP almost impossible to regulate, and whilst various organisations have set up as "professional bodies" for NLP practitioners I'm not at all convinced that any of them are worth they paper their letterhead is printed on.
In my opinion no NLP "certificate" has any inherent value.  As demonstrated by the fact that the co-authors of one of the all-time worst books on NLP - Neuro-linguistic Programming for Dummies - are a certified Master Practitioner and an NLP trainer.
To be blunt, if you know the company someone trained with, and you know the company or you know the work of other people who have been trained by that company, you can decide what value to attach to their certification.  If you don't, then all you're looking at is a piece of paper.  It could be a genuine reflection of the holder's knowledge and ability - or just a piece of paper that shows they turned up every day the course was running.

Just a thought - if you think that demonstrates anything untoward about NLP certification, just ask yourself what a university degree actually demonstrates other than that the holder turned up to his/her seminars and tutorials more or less regularly and successfully gave the approved answers to a series of exam questions from time to time.  And remind yourself of the number of business people and business organisations who claim that university graduates don't have the knowledge and skills needed to function effectively in the "real world" and therefore have to be trained all over again, for another year, or two, or three, before they are of any use to their employers (i.e. on a "graduate training programme" of some kind).

Some critics also point out that NLPers are evaluated at the end of their course by the same people that trained them, and that therefore the examiners have a vested interest in the result.  This is, of course, true.  And again it is also true of universities and other professional bodies that supply training as well as certification.
(And in case you're wondering if this is "sour grapes", I do have a degree in social psychology (from a formally accredited UK university), and I am a certified NLP practitioner.  I just don't think that any kind of certification is as valid as actually seeing what someone does with the skills they claim to possess.)

Unfortunately the misuse of NLP techniques is not limited to that one group, however.  I have witnessed first hand several supposedly upright members of the NLP community use techniques such as "revivifying memories" (specifically refreshing a memory which carries disturbing implications) in order to cause someone they don't like to become agitated and distressed.  There is absolutely no justification for this, and once again the fact that these people behave, or have behaved, in this manner is primarily a demonstration of their own "less than optimal state", to put it nicely.
There is also some anecdotal evidence that politicians in the UK and the USA (and maybe elsewhere, for all I know) are beginning to use NLP techniques (see Cracking the Code for more details).

As to whether this behaviour is sufficient to justify putting limitations on NLP -
To be realistic, even if it was, how could it be done.  It is obviously totally impractical to suggest - as it has been suggested - that Bandler and Grinder should somehow be policing the use of their work all around the world.  To use an analogy, Freudian psychoanalysis has been around for more than a century, and professional practitioners are subject to various checks and balances.  None of which has prevented the (usually covert) use of Freudian theory in advertising and marketing since the mid-1920's.

Some Freudian techniques - especially those which play upon the so-called "primal urges" - are extremely powerful and have been used for decades in advertising, and elsewhere, with the deliberate intention of manipulating the target audience.  Does that mean that Freudianism/psychoanalysis are necessarily "bad"?
Personally I don't think they are.  I think they are like a chisel - it can help in the production of beautiful furniture, say, when used by a skilled craftsman with positive intentions.  Or it can become a vicious, even lethal weapon in the hands of someone whose intentions are focused in that direction.  As far as I'm aware, all of the authentic NLP-related techniques were originally designed to help rather than harm the person they are used on.

And lastly, a limitation rather than an outright flaw, the linguistic/language element of NLP:

NLP was designed by people whose first language is English

Or to put it another way, the linguistic elements of the NLP-related techniques weren't designed to work in any language other than English.
If you are studying, or want to study NLP, and English is not your first language, it is advisable to find a book on the subject which has been written by someone who has your own language as their native language.  I say this because I know that my own books have sometimes been translated directly into other languages without making allowances for what will or won't work in any of those languages.

For example, phonetic, scope, syntactic and punctuational ambiguities, adopted from the work of Milton Erickson, are all useful techniques for English speakers.  But which, if any of them work at all in, say, German, Greek, Arabic or Chinese?  And on the plus side, are there linguistic constructions which will work in other languages which won't work in English?

By the way, after this last section first went on line some bright spark made a complaint (in a business-related chat group) that this proved that "NLP" violated UK law on catering for diversity - that it discriminated against people who didn't have a good working knowledge of the English language.  Apparently the person who wrote the complaint hadn't considered the possibility that ALL languages violate the UK diversity laws in regard to anyone who doesn't have a working knowledge of a given language.

Conclusions

This whole discussion comes down to just a couple of simple points:

• The FoNLP developed over a period of time, and is still developing.  But its initial development was pretty ad hoc, and no one foresaw that it would one day blossom into a world-wide phenomenon.  The safeguards and regulatory mechanisms built-in to the FoNLP reflect that pattern of development.  That is to say, there aren't any.  The people created the FoNLP, and the people who assisted them, were all too busy having a good time extending their knowledge and skills to worry about the formalities until it was too late too do anything about it.
   
• The development of the FoNLP has been a process of both discovery and creativity/innovation.
  Discovering processes that people were already using, and have used, (usually at an unconscious level) since who knows when.  Innovating by extrapolating new information from what was already known, and in creating the various techniques for using those discoveries.  But behind it all, they were working with raw material which was already there.  If Bandler and Grinder had been Japanese, or Pakistani, or Lebonese or even European then the FoNLP would undoubtedly look different, to a greater or lesser extent, as compared to the way it looks today.
  To borrow a thought from Shakespeare: People, things and events tend to appear good or bad because that is how we perceive them, and/or because they being used to (what we regard as) good or bad ends, rather than because "goodness" or "badness" is one of their innate qualities.

  References

  Brown, D and Motluk, A, Eight Ways to Get Exactly What You Want.  In New Scientist, Issue 2655, May 10, 2008.  Accessed online at http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826551.400-eight-ways-to-get-exactly-what-you-want.html

  Vrij, Aldert and Lochun, Shara K, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Police: Worthwhile or Not?.  Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, Vol. 12, No. 1. March, 1997.

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