Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a set of tools that facilitate our understanding of our experiences by unveiling the structure (feelings and thought processes) guiding our behavior and emotional patterns. This unveiling offers the opportunity to revise currently limiting aspects of our behavioral and thought patterns and to update them with actualized resources.
Brief history of NLP: Inspired by the outstanding results obtained by Drs. Frederick Perls and Virginia Satir, Richard Bandler, then a graduate student in psychology, and John Grinder, professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, developed the NLP techniques in the early 70s by methodically observing these psychologists’ sessions, to later include the insights of Dr. Milton Erickson. Although not widely recognized, a fundamental contribution to the development of NLP is based on Alfred Korzybski’s (1879-1950) work on General Semantics. In fact, it was Korzybski who coined the term neurolinguistics. Grinder and Bandler published The Structure of Magic Volume I in 1974, in which they describe how the ‘magical’ results obtained by Perls and Satir can be reproduced by understanding the structure of communication with their clients. Other contributors, including Gregory Bateson, Robert Dilts, Steve Andreas, Leslie Cameron-Bandler, Byron Lewis, and Frank Pucelik, served to clarify, refine, and develop the concepts, ideas, and methods of traditional NLP.
In the book A New Psychology Transformational NLP (Carl Buchheit, 2017), Dr. Buchheit provides a comprehensive account of the origins and development of NLP, including how Bandler and Grinder, together with their immediate team of collaborators, focused the NLP techniques as quick cures for almost any problematic experience or difficulty and neglected the psychological base upon which NLP was originally founded. According to Dr. Buchheit, Dr. Jonathan Rice, a practicing psychologist specializing in child development at the time, began participating in the NLP training seminars offered by Grinder and Bandler in 1975. Dr. Rice observed that the NLP techniques were replicable and could bring about changes in clients that he could not achieve with regular talking psychotherapy (Carl Buchheit, 2017, page 56). The Grinder-Bandler partnership dissolved in 1978, and each of them continued to focus on NLP as a series of independent techniques or procedures. In turn, Dr. Rice distanced himself from the NLP founders and focused his attention on conceiving and adapting traditional NLP techniques within the original frame of linguistics, psychology, and Ericksonian hypnosis. Instead of the mechanized approach instilled by Bandler and Grinder, Dr. Rice implemented the NLP techniques within a personalized and respectful approach to his client’s current and past life experiences, as well as aspects of their conscious awareness that prevented them from change and learning.
T-NLP: In the mid-2010s Dr. Buchheit formally established a new approach to conceiving and practicing NLP, which he coined Transformation NLP (T-NLP). T-NLP is based on Dr. Rice’s lineage and Dr. Buchheit’s approximately 40 years of experience as an NLP practitioner. The cornerstones of T-NLP are based on respecting and valuing the experience of being human in its multidimensional complexity. Conceptually and in practice, Dr. Buchheit’s approach embraces child developmental psychology, neurophysiology, and systems dynamics concepts and information, as well as metaphysical and quantum time-space concepts. In my personal experience, as a client and student of T-NLP, one of the most prominent attributes of Dr. Buchheit’s work is his capacity to instill ways to include more of ourselves, so that our quest to change unwanted present states for experiences that is coherent and congruent with us now.
