Anyone who has visited the Wikipedia page on NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) will know that a long list of references appear at the end of the main article. What very few people are likely to realize, however, is that many of the these references are of little or no value when it comes to determining whether NLP is practical, useful and/or effective.
To be blunt, most of the self-appointed "experts" on NLP (especially those with Ph.D. after their name), present opinions that are pretty much pure nonsense. No doubt people like Drenth, Levelt, Heap, Druckmann, Sharpley, etc. deserve the respect that they get in their own specialist fields. But when it comes to NLP, their reviews and evaluations are distinguished only by the consistency of the sloppy thinking and lack of research* they display.
* Sloppy thinking: Presenting unsupported claims, arguing that something must be taken seriously because it suits the author(s)'s agenda that it should be so. And as importantly as anything else, blind adherence to the Transderivational Lock-out.
One quartet of academic writers, for example, based much if not all of their evaluation on the assumption that Tony Robbins was a significant figure in the field of NLP, and a twenty-year-old article in Life magazine. Likewise there seems to be a widespread belief - again based, it would seem, on the misconceptions harboured by Sharpley and Heap - that "NLP" is a form of psychotherapy. As you will discover here, it isn't, and never has been, a form of psychotherapy, though many of the NLP-related techniques can certainly be utilized in a therapeutic context - as well as in business, education, training, etc., etc.
Many NLPers choose to simply ignore the criticisms, arguing that their experience of successfully using various NLP-related techniques is the only evidence they need. Whilst accepting that as a perfectly reasonable, pragmatic point of view, on this site we decided take a slightly different line.
Which is why I started to research the various references to critical studies, article's and such like.
Somewhat naively, I started out on this investigation thinking that there wouldn't be so many criticisms by highly qualified people without some kind of justification. When I began to read the relevant material, however (starting with the NLP entry in the so-called Skeptics Dictionary), I found that I was quite simply wrong. I discovered that when it comes to NLP, many of the so-called experts really didn't know what they were talking about. But they wrote and published their criticisms anyway.
This extended FAQ simply provides a more detailed account of a number of these comments and articles so that readers may decide for themselves what the criticisms are really worth.
If you thought that NLP had been "scientifically disproved" you may be surprised by the information compiled here.
The sub-FAQs
Items are arranged in alphabetical order by critic's name:
You Don't Have to be a Professor ...
David V. Barrett's Sects, 'Cults' & Alternative Religions is "A valuable, subtantial and well researched book", according to the Fortean Times (back cover blurb). But not in the case of the report on NLP - which seems to be based on almost no research at all.
Time for an Informed Review?
A response to the four generations of Dr Heap's review of research into NLP. The original version of this article was published in the 2008 edition of Dr. Heap's yearly magazine, The Skeptical Intelligencer.
The Mystic Sociologist
Reader in Sociology, Dr Stephen Hunt, offers some misinformation and illogical reasoning in a distinctly second-hand, third-rate assessment of NLP.
4 Professors Looking the Wrong Way - Part 1
Professors Lilienfeld, Lynn and Lohr's "evaluation" of NLP in their book Science and Pseudoscience in Counselling Psychology, aided by Professor Nona Wilson, turns out to be way off-beam and well past it's sell-by date.
4 Professors Looking the Wrong Way - Part 2
Professors Lilienfeld, Lynn, Ruscio and Beyerstein promise to bust some myths of "popular psychology", but are apparently not too well informed about one of their targets - the field of NLP (FoNLP).
The Doctor Who Misread the Map
A sometime theologist Dr David Major acknowledges that NLP is "neutral" on the subject of religion, but argues for its inclusion in a book on "new religions" anywat, based on his own personal, and distinctly questionable, interpretation of what NLP is all about.
My Way, or the Highway
Adjunct Professor Emeritus and clinical psychologist Margaret Thaler Singer evaluated NLP without, it seems, ever knowning what the "plot" was in the first place.
All Roads Lead to Sharpley - Part 1
Sharpley's two reviews (1984, 1987) have frequently cited quite regularly by other academics, from the 1980s right through to the present day. This first article deals with Sharpley's 1984 review and shows how the entire thing was dead in the water even before it was written.
(A second article, dealing with the 1987 paper is "in production".)
'Alternative' Training?
Despite the title of the article by Von Bergen et al (1997), the section on "Neurolonguistic [sic] Programming" turns out to be just another rehash of material from the 1980s, especially Sharpley's articles and the 1988 report by Druckman and Swets (which was itself largely based on Sharpley's work). Naturally a number of the basic errors that characterise the earlier material have been as carefully preserved as flies in amber.
Three more evaluations, of articles by Dr Von Bergen and Dr Roderique-Davies, and a book chapter by Spicer and Boussebaa, are going through final checks and will be posted soon.
Further analyses, of articles by Devilly, Drenth, Druckman and Swets, Levelt, Novella, etc. are in preparation