[Neurons] 2023 Neurons #34 NLP THERAPY: IT'S NOT JUST ONE THING

Sun Aug 6 15:25:38 EDT 2023

From: L. Michael Hall

2023 Neurons #34

August 7, 2023

NLP THERAPY:

It's Not Just One Thing

As I've been presenting Meta-Therapy in some trainings this year, I recently
came across Lisa Wake's book on therapy.  I heard of it years ago, but I had
not seen the book prior to writing Meta-Therapy: Psychotherapy in the Meta
Place.  I recently got a copy of her book, Neurolinguistic Psychotherapy
(2008).  That's when I discovered that it presents a "peculiar" view of NLP
psychotherapy-it is a view that I kind of recognized, but it is not exactly
the view that I have known or practiced during the past 40 years.  It's a
good book and covers a lot about psychotherapy and about NLP, but it also
has a lot of weaknesses.

What's best about the book is chapter 1 "Founding Principles of NLP."  There
Lisa Wake covered the NLP presuppositions and connected them specifically to
therapy.  There are also a lot of good connections between NLP and therapy.
Wake mostly focuses on psychological research.  As I read the book, it
reminded me that one's view of psychology or therapy depends to a great
extent on who a person reads and who one does not.

Now counter-balancing the good, there are a great many things that are
simply inaccurate.  First of all, there is a lack of understanding the
origins of NLP.  Reading this book, a reader might come away thinking that
NLP first modeled Erickson, and the great majority of NLP comes from
Erickson.  You would never know that it started with Perls and Satir for two
years before the founders ever even heard about Erickson.  Wake constantly
presents the order "Erickson, Satir, and Perls" whereas the historical order
is "Perls, Satir, and Erickson."

Also, not knowing the history, here is an entire book on NLP and therapy
with almost no recognition of the Human Potential Movement and the role of
Maslow and Rogers.  That may have been acceptable once, but in 2005 I
revealed that history in articles which are still on the website.  I
presented that information at the NLP Conference in London several years
(2005, 2006), but there's no indication that Wake had any awareness of that.
The presupposition "People already have all of the resources they need to
act effectively" came from Maslow long, long before Erickson may have
repeated it (p. 34).  While Erickson would have accepted that premise, it
expressly came from Maslow and Rogers and the Human Potential Movement.

Nor did the Meta-Model come from Erickson (p. 88).  It simply did not.
Frank Pucelik and Richard Bandler worked with their Gestalt class for two
years developing the Meta-Model from Perls and Satir.  They developed it
using Transformation Grammar that Grinder brought to the party.  And that
was long before they were introduced to Erickson.  The statement "... the
Meta-Model from Erickson and Satir..." completely leaves Perls out and
mis-attributes it to Erickson. I wrote about this in 1997 in the book now
titled Communication Magic.

Then there are the attributions to sources of NLP that has no basis at all.
Wake attributes a lot of constructionism to Piaget (p. 39, 89) and to Jung
(p. 48, 68, 109) but neither of them were quoted by any of the founders of
NLP in any of the literature from 1975 through 1980.  None!  So quoting them
in this book gives a false impression about what NLP is about and where it
came from.  My journalist reporting of the history of NLP, Untold Secrets of
NLP (2018) is a good corrective.

Lisa Wake also has some kind of concept in her mind about "the programmatic
and modelling work of Bandler" and how it works.  What that concept is, I
could not determine from the writing.  Regarding it, twice she asserts
(without any evidence) that "In this approach the therapist stays outside of
the relationship with the client and operates from a model of facilitating
change in 'how' the client does what he/she does." (p. 7, italics added).
This is very strange!  It does not fit anything that I even encountered or
experienced in all of my trainings in NLP or the work I did with Bandler.
In fact, the opposite it true.  When I ask a client about how he or she does
an experience like depression or panic, I do that while creating and
maintaining rapport ... and rapport at all levels.  For me, this description
of Cognitive Psychotherapy constitutes a straw-man argument. 

Later in the book I discovered her misunderstanding.  Like many in NLP, she
confuses the idea of meta-position with dissociation (p. 163).  If she had
read any of my five books on Meta-States, she would have known better.  That
is only one of 16 possibilities!  Very sad.  Actually "going meta" has
nothing to do with what is called "dissociation."  When you can "go meta" or
"step back" out of one state, you can step into all sorts of other
states-learning, joy, curiosity, playfulness, etc.  Going meta into pure
observation or neutrality is only one of many choices. 

It is my guess that "programmatic and modeling" for her refers to asking a
client, "How do you do X or Y?" and somehow she thinks this makes it
entirely conscious and cuts out anything and everything that is
outside-of-consciousness.  I don't know how something like that is suppose
to work.  In Meta-States, we know that the great majority of higher frames
and states are all outside-of-consciousness.  It's systemic-everything human
is both conscious and unconscious simultaneously.

There are several other similar strange assertions in the book.

"The more unconscious approach involves the therapist as a core element of
the therapeutic process and recognises that all behavior and therefore all
change lies within the unconscious, and it is only through direct
communication with the unconscious that change can occur." (p. 7).  All
change?  There is no change at all that lies within the conscious mind?

"It is mainly Erickson's work that has influenced the neurolinguistic
psychotherapist today." (p. 14).  If you read The Structure of Magic Volumes
I & II (1975, 1976) that presents a model of change in therapy and all of
the original NLP work about therapy-which occurred before they even met
Erickson, this is a very strange statement and simply not historically
accurate.

"We therefore make meaning of our experiences outside our linguistic
representation." (p. 101).  Really? We make meaning outside of linguistic
representations?  Then what about all of the NLP materials about framing and
reframing.  That's what Erickson is also known for.  Bandler's book on
Reframing is sub-titled: The Structure of Meaning.

I thought, and had hoped, that maybe the case studies of therapeutic
processes would add a great value to the book.  But sadly, the case studies
are written as abstract conclusions.  There are not actual dialogue with
clients of the therapeutic processes which are described.

Finally, there are quotations from Chopra and his book, Quantum Healing,
also from Quantum Linguistics, and other new age non-sense that, for me,
really undermine the value of the book.  For anyone who wants to promote the
credibility of NLP, and identify its scholarly and scientific standing, this
does not help at all.  In spite of all of these inaccuracies and weaknesses,
there's a lot of value in the book and I do recommend it to anyone
interested in NLP and Therapy.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

ISNS Executive Director

P.O. Box 8

Clifton Colorado 81520 USA

(970) 523-7877

drhall at acsol.net, meta at acsol.net 

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