[Neurons] NLP and Ethics

[Andrew Bryant]

>From Andrew Bryant www.selfleadership/blog


Further to my post on whether NLP is dangerous I have been asked about the
ethics of NLP.

Wikepedia describes ethics as major branch of philosophy, encompassing
right conduct and good life. The Wikepedia ehtics post gives a good
summary of the major prinicples of philosophy governing our thinking about
ethics including:

Socrates who equated knowledge with virture.
Aristotle who promoted moderation.
Epictetus who promoted self mastery

...And applied ethics which attempts to apply theory to real life situations.

In a modern world what has emerged is 'legal ethics' which equates to,
"what can I do that I won't get locked up for?"

Legal ethics has given rise to the concept of 'full disclosure' which has
put the burden on medical practitioners to explain to a patient the
potential risks of any procedure.

Even a cursory study of NLP or psychology would alert the reader to the
danger of the Pygmalion Effect or Self fulfilling prophesy. What kind of
embedded command is, "I don't want you to WORRY but this procedure might
cause you to DIE."?

NLP is about knowledge and particularly self awareness (going meta) and
self management (state management), and so is in-line with Greek
philisophical thinking on ethics.

Can it live up to that other Greek, Hippocrates who gave the medical
profession the oath to "do no harm"?

My belief that it is all in client selection and framing.

Milton Erickson set us an example when he would  get his patient's to
climb a hill before he would see them. By getting them to do something
uncomfortable he set the conditions for compliance and a response
potential. In other words, if they weren't prepared to do something for
themselves but wanted the hypnotist to do it to them, they were not taking
responsibility for the change.

When I teach coaching, I make sure my student's know whether their
prospective client has the ego strength to face reality and take
responsibility for the change.

When we talk to our client's we should frame up that we are engaging in a
process where they can effect the change for themselves and we are just
facilitating the process. When we do this we are true to the NLP
presupposition that, "people have all the resources they need, they just
need to access and amplify them."

In addition the NLP ecology frame gets us to check whether the outcome is
good for self/other and short/long term.

In my view this is ethical practice for the use of NLP methodologies, but
I am sure there are other perspectives and I would welcome your input.

Andrew Bryant www.selfleadership.com/blog

NS and NLP training in Singapore in 2009:

Coaching Essentials http://www.selfleadership.com/coaching-essentials.htm
Coaching Genius http://www.selfleadership.com/coaching_genius.htm
Master Practitioner http://www.selfleadership.com/NLP_master-practitioner.htm


Regards, Andrew

Andrew Bryant
Executive Coach and Leadership Trainer
andrew at selfleadership.com
www.selfleadership.com