[Neurons] 2023 Neurons #36 RE-PACKAGING BANDLER --- MAKING HIM CUDDLY

Sun Aug 20 18:51:48 EDT 2023

From: L. Michael Hall

2023 Neurons #36

August 21, 2023

RE-PACKAGING BANDLER

MAKING HIM CUDDLY

In June I saw a new video which has been made about Richard Bandler, it is
called Altered States: The Richard Bandler Story.  It was produced by people
in Bandler's group and it is obviously a promotional film.  This becomes
especially noticeable in the last 20 minutes of the film as the focus goes
to a new book that has been produced.  My guess is that someone (namely John
LaValle) decided that they needed to humanize Richard and re-package him in
order to deal with all of the bad press, the negative stories, and a lot of
the not-so-nice facts about Bandler.  And why would LaValle be interested in
doing that?  Because he is "the heir apparent."  He will take over when
Richard is gone.  Now overall the video presents Bandler in a positive light
and reframes the negative facts.  You can see a lot of use of NLP in how the
video was produced.

What's good is that there are a few moments of old videos of Virginia Satir
and Milton Erickson which I had not seen.  Also some old videos of John and
Richard.  But the facts get sacrificed a lot in this video.  There's a
suggestive hint that maybe they also saw and worked with Fritz Perls.  But,
of course, they did not; he died two years before they met or worked
together.  They used Robert Dilts to talk about the origin of NLP, but of
course, Robert was not there during the first two or three years (from 1972
to 1975).  Robert didn't entered until 1975.  He had not been a part of the
original group with Frank Pucelik and Richard before John Grinder ever came
along. 

When you watch this video, you will get no hint or indication that before
"Richard and John," there was Frank.  "Frank and Richard" were the dynamic
duo who ran the first gestalt class and the first "meta" people class.  And
it was into that class that they invited John some later time.  But because
this video completely eliminates Frank, it is a major deletion and distorts
the NLP history about how it all began.  At the end of the video, they quote
from John's 2001 book to validate Richard.  But they did not quote where
John wrote in that book that there was "a third man," Frank Pucelik, who
also was a co-creator.  Judith DeLozier also left out significant facts,
small things like she was married to Frank Pucelik when they moved to Santa
Cruz and that later she married John Grinder. 

When it comes to addressing the murder lawsuit, the strangest thing about
that is that they portray Richard as if he was the victim(!).  Nothing is
said about why his "best friend" was a known drug dealer, James Morino.  How
come?  What was that about?  Nor why James would call Richard to come and
pick him up at a bar after a fight (sounds kind of shady).  Another unstated
fact was that, at that time, Richard was taking a lot of drugs (cocaine,
LSD, etc.).   The film presents Corine Christenson, the woman who was shot
and killed either by Richard or James, as a prostitute!  What they did not
say was that this same Corine was also Richard's personal assistant and
handled his books, appointments, etc.  Richard portrays himself as having
been completely set up for the murder charge and it's presented in such a
way as to create sympathy for him.

The film also skips over all of the lawsuits that Bandler brought against
people-against Grinder, Anthony Robbins, against the field of NLP, against
Andreas, etc.  Nothing.  Instead the video focused on the death of his wife
Paula and then the dating and marriage to his current wife (Glenda).  All of
this certainly humanizes him and creates a feeling of sympathy for him.
This humanizing continued as various people talked about his depression
about the loss of Paula, his "stroke," and how so many people "took
advantage of him."  Yet that really does id not fit with anything I know
about Richard, especially the idea of "people taking advantage of him."
Really?

There's not a single mention of Richard's lawsuit against "the field of NLP"
in 1995 which lasted until Feb. 2000, and which essentially destroyed the
field of NLP in the US.  There's no mention of the fact that he lost the
lawsuit, had a court judgment against him for $600,000.  He was to pay to
Christine Hall, but he never did.  Instead to avoid the IRS, he moved to
Ireland.

If the purpose was to make Bandler more human and more cuddly, then it
works.  If it is to portray the history of NLP, it is sadly distorts a whole
lot of things.  It also deletes even more about the story.  Knowing the
power of "deletions" to distort one's perception of reality-the film deletes
so much that in the end, the video leaves a very distorted view.

To view the video- 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_dAY14wSow  

Reference

For a more accurate history of NLP, see NLP Secrets: Untold Stories (2019).
You can even get it on the Shop as a PDF file.
https://www.neurosemantics.com/shop/page/6/   

Neuro-Semantic News             

The newest book from Neuro-Semantics: The Meta Place is now on the shop.
https://www.neurosemantics.com/shop/page/7/   

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

ISNS Executive Director

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

(970) 523-7877

drhall at acsol.net  

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