The Title
Name(s) of the Author(s)
Publisher and ISBN Number [this will be for the paperback version except where the number ends with (Hb)]

Core Transformation
Connirae and Tamara Andreas
Real People Press   ISBN 0-911226-33-8
I had always been a little surprised to find NLP being described as some kind of New Age cult or the like - but the surprise ended when I started reading this quite dreadful book.

I think the general tone of the book is summed up in this snippet from a conversation which reportedly took place in London not long before the book was written:

"Margo ... told us, 'Well, my part says it wants oneness with God.  But I'm an atheist!'  I [Connirae] assured Margo it was fine for her to be an atheist.  She didn't need to change her beliefs to do the process."
(p. 25.  Italics as in the original.)

Well, that's mighty big of you Connirae.  Someone tells you the result of running your process is that they want "oneness" with a being they do not, by definition, believe exists, and your best answer is that they don't have to stop being an atheist in order to run the process.  No, they don't.  But they sure as heck need to change their beliefs to make sense of the result of running the process!
Or maybe I'm missing the point?  Maybe the results don't matter?  Maybe just running the process is what it's all about?

Actually the authors seem quite keen on the manipulation of words.  (Not surprising, perhaps, given that Connirae has produced an excellent set of tapes on "Advanced Language Patterns".)  For example, as part of their justification that there are five core states the authors write:

"... all of the major spiritual disciplines describe another deeper reality in which we realize that we are all one."
(p. 24.  My italics.)

But this isn't actually true, and it isn't even what the authors actually mean, as I discovered when I asked Connirae for a more explicit explanation:

"In Christianity, as in most and perhaps all religions, the experience of oneness is primarily described by the mystics of that religion."
(e-mail response dated 24/9/2004.)

It is fairly obvious, I think, that there is something of a difference between a "major spiritual discipline" and what this mystic, that mystic or even a whole bunch of mystics happen to believe.  To the New Age mentality, however, which seems to place a particularly high value on religious homogeneity, such distinctions appear to be of little or no account.  As does the equally unfortunate fact that there are as many competing views amongst mystics as there are in any other walk of life, and that one can only present the illusion of agreement by ignoring most of the available information.
For me, at least, this highly partial claim did little to bolster my confidence that contents of the rest of the book would be any more reliable.

Nor was I reassured when I found, on the very next page, a blatant use of Milton Model-style indirect quotes to tell us how wonderful this process is:

"At a recent seminar a man came up to me during a break.  His eyes were alight and he seemed to be almost bursting with excitement.  'Do you realize what this process is doing for the people in this room?' he asked.  'They are reaching states in minutes that people go sit on mountains for years to try to attain!' "
(p. 25)

Oops - not just indirect quotation but an indirect quotation of someone mindreading!

Indeed, there is subtle yet unequivocal manipulation within the process itself, as described in this book.
The authors have determined, for whatever reason, that there are 5 core states: Being, Inner peace, Love, OKness (borrowed from Transactional Analysis), and Oneness.  In Chapter 5, we are treated to a demonstration of the "Core State Exercise" (pages 28-33), which also turns out to be another demonstration of how the language manipulation works.

The session starts with Tamara Andreas asking "Cathy" to identify a "feeling, behavior or response" she would like to change.  Once a "part" has been identified which is responsible for the response in question we are taken through the standard NLP process for finding out what purpose the part is seeking to fulfil.  In fact Tamara goes through seven questions of the kind:

Ask the part:
"What do you want..."
"... what do you want ..."
"... what do you want ..."
"... what do you want ..."
"... what do you want ..."
"... what do you want to experience ..."
"... what do you want to experience ..."

At this point Cathy answers "The experience of loving oneness.", which fits two of the alleged "core states", and what do you know, the question changes to:

"... is there anything you want to experience ..."

Arrugha!  Arrugha!  Spot the changing presuppositions!
Does it really take a rocket scientist to notice that the emphasis has changed radically here from obvious expectation or necessity of some deeper intention, in the first seven questions, to the mere possibility of something else in the eighth?  Is it any surprise that Cathy answers that there is nothing else that's deeper or more important.
Good grief, they might just as well have told Cathy outright, "OK, that's all we expect to find, but you can add on something else if you really must.
If this is typical of the way the authors talk to their clients is it any wonder that they regularly confirm their own expectations?

Nor do the verbal gymnastics stop there.  Chapter 6 is mainly taken up with an analysis of the session with Cathy, and in Step 5. Reversing the outcome chain with the core state we find a level of reasoning that almost beggars belief:

"Our inner parts somehow get the idea that their best chance of getting a wonderful Core State is to begin with a behavior, feeling or response we don't like, and then proceed through a long series of Intended Outcomes.  This method usually doesn't work at all.  Cathy's nervousness did not bring her to a full experience of loving oneness."
(p. 37)

These metaphorical parts are thinking for themselves?  They "somehow" get the idea?  The method usually "doesn't work at all"?  Have the authors ever heard of the NLP presuppositions?
Okay, I know the presupp's are to be taken as "as- if's" rather than facts, but many of them are supported by solid experimental and observational evidence.  For instance, if we repeat a strategy, even when it doesn't work, that is usually because it did work at some time or other.  Alternatively, it is achieving some kind of secondary gain in the here and now.
And just where did our metaphorical part get the concept of one or other of these alleged "core states" in the first place?

Anyway, now comes one of the book's major switcheroos:

"Once we have discovered the Core State our inner part wants, we are in a position to transform the basis of our inner life. ..."
(p. 37)

Now watch carefully and try not to blink.  At this point all we (allegedly) know is what this "inner part" wants.  What follows next is some quite confusing doubletalk, within which ... well, see for yourself:

"Now the process guides us in literally turning our old pattern around.  We can begin by having what we were hoping we could somehow get to if we worked hard enough at it. ..."
(p. 37.  Italics as in the original.)

There!  Did you spot the switch?  Here comes the reinforcement:

"We can begin with the Core State - the wellspring within.  We invite the part of ourselves we are working with to step into its Core State and have it."
(p. 37.  Italics as in the original.)

Neat, huh?  One minute this metaphorical part just "wants" this so-called "Core State", and then suddenly, "with a leap and a bound he was free!"  Sorry, I mean, suddenly there IS the Core State and all the part has to do is step into it and "have it".
Where did the Core State come from?  The authors might have meant that "wanting" one of these "core states" is the way to "have it".  Only that can't be true in this case because we've specifically been told that "Cathy's nervousness did not bring her full experience of loving oneness".  And anyway, if simply wanting or talking about a "core state" was enough to get it then we wouldn't need buy this book, and the authors' "ten step program", would we?

["With a leap and a bound he was free": It is said that there was once a comic strip writer who discovered he was about to lose his job.  In revenge, in his last strip he placed his action hero in a seemingly fatal situation - tied to a rock, surrounded by heavily armed attackers and so on.  The incoming cartoonist ignored the logic of the situation and adopted a "Gordian Knot" approach.  In the first panel of the next strip the hero was shown escaping from his enemies with the simple caption: "With a leap and a bound he was free!"  (Source unknown, probably apocryphal) ]

In fact the book skates round the problem of where core states come from with yet another "leap and bound" explanation:

"The key criterion [for the core states] is that the Core State is always an internal state that has a being quality.  States like OKness, lovingness, beingness, peace and oneness, just are."
(p. 38.  Italics as in the original.)

Unfortunately this claim makes no more sense than anything else in the book.  The authors go on to say that core states:

"... are not dependent upon anything external ... A Core State just is; it is not in relationship to anything else."
(p. 38.)

And that for this reason:

"Understanding or knowing are not Core States because they are in relationship to something."
(p. 37.  Italics as in the original.)

How, I wonder, do you have "love" without there being an object of that love.  And how do you have "OKness" without being "OK" (by definition a rterm of comparison) in relation to "something else?  Not surprisingly the authors have no answer for these questions other than the unsupported claim that core state "love" and "OKness" are different because they "just are".

This is by no means the end of my criticisms of the book, which could easily have been edited down to 50 pages, or even less, without losing its message, instead of 230 pages of repetition, waffle and persiflage.  There is, for example, the utter jibberish that starts in Chapter 20, called "Parental Timeline Reimprinting", which is based on the idea that:

"Since the way we absorb patterns from our families is so automatic, it is easy to conclude that we are stuck with the unresourceful patterns we learned from them: 'I'm that way because my mother is that way.  That's just how I am.  All the Smiths are stubborn, and I'm a Smith."
(p. 126-7)

So what do you do?  You give your core states to your parents so you can inherit them instead of what you did "inherit".  That's the core states that "just are"!  If it doesn't work with your patents (not sufficiently credible!!!!) you can give them to your grandparents, or your great grandparents or, as one person reportedly chose to do (page 142), you can send them all the way back to Adam and Eve!

Of course the authors are careful to remind us that our parts aren't really real, and what we're actually doing is changing our ideas about our parents.  Which might make a certain amount of sense if it weren't for the fact that the authors aren't too consistent in their descriptions of "parts".  One minute they're metaphorical, next minute they're presented as very real indeed:

"One way to think about inner parts is that when we were young we separated or 'split off' a part of ourselves in a time of difficulty or crisis.  Once a part has split off it tends to persist in the behaviors it chose as a young child.  Since it is separate from us the part doesn't have access to other information and choices we learn as we grow up.  In a sense this part remains frozen in time.  This part of Joe may feel like 'wailing' as an adult, even if he tries to suppress it."
(p. 169)

Yes, the paragraph starts with the phrase that tells us this is a metaphor, but the further on it goes, the more it read, to me, like it was talking about something real.  In fact, by the time I got to "In a sense", I had to go back to the beginning of the paragraph and re-read it just to make sure I understood what was being said.
In many other places parts are referred to with no such qualifying phrase - as in the first two paragraphs of page 171:

"This part was nine years old..."
  "... Jon's part felt ..."
 
"... we often form parts that are like judges ..."
 
"... we may have tried to get rid of the part that was afraid."
and so on. (p. 171)

In short, 230+ pages of vastly overblown, pseudo-spiritual, New Age-style tosh.
I wouldn't give this to my worst enemy.

Don't Think of Purple Spotted Oranges
Martin Shervington
Marshall Publishing   ISBN 1-84028-314-9 [Hb]
This is another book that poses more questions than it answers, like:

• Why was it written?
• Why was it published?
• Who is the book aimed at?
• Why was this presented as a book on NLP when the link is in fact so tenuous?

At first glance you could be forgiven for not realizing that this is, in fact, a book for adults since it looks like nothing so much as one of those books for five-year-olds with masses of colour, pictures, abstract shapes and blank space, with a few lines of text thrown in now and again just to help things along.  And even when you look closer, you'd still be hard pressed to know what audience the book is meant for.  Especially when you find comments like "By thinking positively and aiming high, you are putting a spring in your step to help you jump.  Just like the cow who jumped over the moon!" (page 85) - this is a reference to an old British (?) nursery rhyme).

There seem to be two key issues in play here which undermine the value of the book - in addition to the horrendously wasteful layout:

1. The author doesn't seem to know what he's actually writing about.  By which I mean that the book contains a complete hodge podge of ideas, of which NLP is just one, with no apparent order or theme.
   Although the book's 92 pages (main text) are divided into five main sections, the topics within the individual sections range from meta programs to items such as "Learn to Accept Change" (which is an incredibly obscure reference to the use of submodalities) and the highly uninformative item headed "Become Instantly Enthusiastic" which is entirely "what" and no "how".
   So is this really a book about NLP, or about self-development in general, or just a jolly read to while away an occasional minute or two whilst you're waiting for something else to happen?
2. EVERY topic gets just two sides, regardless of how simple or complex it is.  Thus thoughts on the word "try" gets two sides, and the use of "don't" gets two sides, and "logical levels" get two sides, and meta programs get two sides, and so on ... You get the idea.

Granted that the book is pretty cheap - £9.99 for a heavily illustrated, hardback book with very good quality paper - but as an introduction to NLP it is quite frankly way over-priced, confused and bubble-headed to be of much use to anyone.
It doesn't quite make it into the "yuk" group, but I cannot in good conscience give it any kind of positive rating.

The Book of Tells
Peter Collett
Bantam Books   ISBN 0-553-81459-9
If you're wondering what on earth a "tell" is, wonder no more.  Amongst devotees of the card game poker, a "tell" is an unconscious signal that "tells" the expert observer what they are really thinking (always assuming the player isn't deliberately sending out fake (tells"!).
In other words, a "tell" is basically a non-verbal signal,

So what's the difference between a book on "tells" and a book on body language, you might ask.  And the answer seems to be, by and large, "Not a lot."  What differences there are seem to lie in the fact that many "tells" are quite small scale and subtle, compared to body language.  Though having said that, the "power walk" (walking with the arms slightly out from the body with the palms facing backwards - natural for serious body builders, not genuine for several politicians who just want to impress with their supposed physique) is as much a "tell" as was Marilyn Monro's pose with eyes half closed, and lips slightly parted.

Although thie contents of this book don't stray very far into NLP territory, it is a fairly comprehensive guide to the subjuct and provides plenty of useful material for anyone who wants to beef up their calibration skills.
My one reservation is that the book is a little repetitive in a couple of places.  On the other hand I personally found the writing style extremely easy to get on with, and I think that even complete novices will find the book informative and useful.

Purely as a book on body language, etc., I rate this volume strongly recommended:   *  *  *  *  *

The Really Good Fun Cartoon Book of NLP
Philip Miller
Crown House Publishing   ISBN 978-184590115-8
The back cover of this book tells us two things:

"Philip Miller is a Master Practitioner and Certified Trainer of NLP, specialising in running training courses on the use of NLP in business.  He is the Visiting Fellow of Small Business Development at Cranfield University School of Management and works as a tutor on the Business Growth Programme (BCP) [sic]."

Impressive, or what?  Unfortunately the answer, if this book is a reliable indicator, is definitely, "or what."

The second thing is this recommendation:

"A terrific little book for anyone curious to find out what the acronym 'NLP' is all about."
(Romilla Ready, Co-Author of Neuro-Linguistic Programming for Dummies®)