[Neurons] 2024 Neurons #57 WHAT IS IT --- TOO OLD TO REMEMBER OR TOO MUCH CHANGE PERSONAL HISTORY?

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2024 Neurons #57

December 23,  2024                                 

 

TOO OLD TO REMEMBER OR TOO MUCH 

"CHANGE PERSONAL HISTORY"?

 

I recently watched a current 2024 video of Richard Bandler.  For some
unknown and unexpressed reason, Tony Robbins invited Richard to speak to a
training that Tony was conducting in Florida.  I got the impression that
Richard was already in the area, so Tony invited him over, but that was not
made clear.  Anyway Tony thought he might be good to have him speak to a
group of 40 people.  So Richard did. You can see the video on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_GCNlk05jY 

 

The video is about 110 minutes and Richard simply sat in a chair and
"talked" to the group.  Three times he invited someone to the stage to do a
process-once a hypnotic state and the other resolving troubling thoughts of
the past, and once to get someone to get himself to do what he wanted to do.
But what he mostly did was tell stories.  And to his credit, he has always
been a good story-teller, not necessarily accurate or truthful, but engaging
stories.  And if you've never been to a training or watched videos, I'm sure
you will be fascinated by the stories.  But if you have, then the stories
are the same old stories and, sadly, they were not told as effectively as he
once was able to tell them.

 

Critique

There's a problem in these Bandler stories-they are usually exaggerated and
told using all-or-nothing language.  Sometimes to the point of being
ridiculous, and sometimes they are just blantonly false.  At the beginning
he says he "remembers Eisenhower's presidency and how he ran against Adlai
Ewing Stevenson II.  Hmmm, just how old is he anyway?  Now true enough, he
does look old, and he does talk about himself being old.  But he's not that
old!  Eisenhower was President in the 1950s.  That reference was 1955-6, so
Richard would have been 5 years old! Now how much does a five-year-old
remember about political debates?!

 

He then speaks about "a psychiatrist's" house (i.e., Dr. Robert Spitzer,
publisher of Science & Behavior Books) that he stayed in and says, "it was
the 1960s."  Well no, actually it was 1971 when he just turned 21.  He says
that he read 100 books in Spitzer's library and "not one of them said
anything about what to do about problems except take drugs."  Well, no.  In
that library would have been Fritz's books on Gestalt and Virginia Satir's
books, including People Making.  So there would have been lots of things
suggested to solve problems.  That's the kind of exaggeration you can expect
to hear from him.  And if you have any knowledge about these things, it
significantly undermines his credibility.

 

He said that he was playing in a band, a friend went to his medicine cabinet
and found some drugs ... the picture is that of a young adult Bandler, but
he dates it in the 1960's, so he would have been 16 or 17.  Another
statement meant to mis-represent things.  Next he says "I was an information
science major."  Well, from transcripts of the colleges he attended, that
just was not so.  He took some classes on computer science, but that was it.
His degree was not "information science."  It was general psychology, BA
from University of California, Santa Cruz, and a MA from Lone Mountain
College in San Francisco.  He never earned a Ph.D.  He took some mathematic
classes, but taking some classes does not sudden make one "A Mathematician."


 

Again, describing the 1960s, he said that's when he met Virginia.  But not
so.  That did not happen until 1974. He then tells a story of meeting a
psychiatrist ... but that story occurred later when he and John were
applying the Meta-Model, somewhere around 1976-7 or later.  I suspect that
this is the effect of too much "Change Personal History."

 

Talking about Virginia and her statement, "I know it intuitively" he says
that means "it is not learnable."  He asserts that he "made them up"-namely,
"deletion, generalization, and distortion."  Ah yes, more claims to
intellectual ownership!  Actually, these come from Transformational Grammar
which is what Grinder contributed to NLP.  Richard did not "make them up."
This is a case of not giving credit where credit is due.

 

Richard then tells a new story about "the origin of the phobia cure."  In
other videos from the 1980s he said that he met a person who said "I used to
have a phobia."  He then asked how he got over it and wrote down the steps.
In this story, he says he was working with a group of 6 psychiatrists.  He
asked each of them to bring him one person who got over a phobia.   They
asked, "How would we know someone got over a phobia?"  If there's any
question that strikes me as silly, that is it.  So he put add in the paper
offer $100 for someone who got over a phobia.  Then he gave them a lie
detector test; "90 percent" of those who responded.  Again, all this seems
pretty preposterous!

 

Next he claims to be a "Physicist." and with that he declares, "When
psychatrists speak about reality, they as a group know nothing about
reality."  Sadly, when talking about his own books, he says that his books
"are not a repeat of anything" (24:30 min).  But they are!  In fact that's
one of the disappointing things, he has hardly presented anything new for
decades. 

 

Another new story emerges here about eye access cues.  Here he claims to
have read an article in 1972 of an experiment that suggested eye accessing
cues.  Then he went to his class at the university that had 300 students
(!).  In saying this, he implies he was the teacher (he was not) and that
they had classes that large at Kresge (they did not).  He asserts, "That's
where accessing cues came from."  Well, the previous story which he told for
years and years is that the discovery occurred in a night club where he was
playing a guitar.  And another story, which is recorded in Grinder's book,
John discovered it in a liquor store!

Again, speaking about the 1970s, he tells the story of Andy the
Schizophrenic.  The problem is that that story occurred in the mid-1980s in
Denver with Steve Andreas.  There's a two-part video from NLP Comprehensive
about that.  "He walked into the room, I grabbed his hand and put him in a
trance." Well, not exactly.  The video shows it beginning as they sat in
chairs and began talking.

 

Finally, Richard says-quickly and briefly-that he "certified" Tony Robbins
as a trainer.  Well excuse me, if that's true, why did you sue Tony for Six
Million Dollars in 1989?  And why did Tony settle out of court, paying you
$500,000 and signing the trainer's contract in 1990 when I was with you at
your home in San Francisco?  At that time, I asked, "What stops Tony from
changing the name?" you said to me, "I grabbed him by the balls and he would
not dare."  Of course, tony did dare- Neural Associative Conditioning. Now
if Richard is "thinking" he signed the contract and that serves as me
"certifying" him ... it is a major piece of mis-communication!"

https://www.bing.com/search?q=Richard+BAndler+lawsuit+against+Anthony+Robbin
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l=  

 

Some Good Stuff

In spite of the exaggerations, distortions and sillinesses, there is some
good stuff on the video.  Here's the best stuff you will find on the video
that stands out as really valuable.  Namely, the two times when he said: "If
you don't have control over your thoughts, you won't have control over your
feelings." (20 min.)  Therefore, be sure to "take control of your thoughts."
Later, "If you ask the wrong question, you will get the wrong answer."  If
you ask yourself, Do I want to go to the gym?  The answer is "No."  If you
ask yourself, "Do I want to live long and healthy?" the answer is yes.
Planning enables you to be connected to your desires. Desire is what leads
us to move forward.   The Meta-Model is designed to solve problems.  It
helps you focus on the right thing.

 

With a co-founder like Richard Bandler, no wonder the field of NLP has
struggled to attain a respectable reputation and credibility.  For years, I
had hoped that he would have matured as he aged, but no.  His original
genius gave the world a wonderful communication/ thinking model and he could
have produced so much more than it has.

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

 <http://www.neurosemantics.com> www.neurosemantics.com 

 

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Making smart decisions is not easy--- many, many cognitive biases work
against us and it is far too easy to default to pseudo-decisions:  emotions,
gut feelings, intuitions, circumstances, others.  Executive Decisions (2021)
offers a way to decide intelligently and wisely.

 

130969 Neuro Semantics Executive Decisions Book Cover

 

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