[Neurons] 2025 Neurons #44 THE 50th ANNIVERSARY & THE FOUNDER'S SELF-PROMOTIONS

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2025 Neurons #44

October 27, 2025

 

THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY

AND THE FOUNDER'S SELF-PROMOTIONS

 

Last week both John Grinder and Richard Bandler held a joint
web-presentation celebrating the 50th Anniversary of NLP.  But that's a bit
deceptive.  They did not actually get together and hold the celebration of
50 years.  Instead each of them separately recorded a 30 minute presentation
in which they were asked a few questions.  Supposedly they were to answer
questions that the audience asked, but in the end all of the questions were
softball questions.  Actually, extremely softball questions!  None were
challenging in the least.  The questions, in fact, were such that the
questions allowed each one to boast and glory in himself.  I had submitted
two questions that would have been challenging, but they were obviously not
mentioned as were many others that I knew about.

 

If you listen to the presentations what you will learn is that each man
thinks that what he did was absolutely spectator.  And both of them think
they created the NLP model completely between themselves!  They had no help
and needed no help.  They congratulate each other, but no one else!  They
seem to have totally forgotten the role of Frank Pucelik and the way Robert
Dilts formulated nearly all of the original NLP model.  John seems now to
dismiss the role of Frank saying he only imitates(!), a very different story
from his book that introduced Frank as "The Third Man." 

 

They also had amnesia about the many different Gestalt and Meta Groups which
in The Structure of Magic they described as "therapists groups."   What a
complete forgetting!  It was as if none of them existed and none of them
were co-founders.  I addressed this in the book, NLP Secrets: Untold Stories
(2018).  And still, 50 years later, the stories are still untold ... at
least by Richard and John.

 

Richard tried to emphasize that he gave credit to others, but only to the
obvious- Virginal Satir, Milton Erickson, Noam Chomsky, somehow he forgot
Fritz!  He also magically forgot to mention Frank, Robert, Leslie, Judith,
or many other key people who actually turned the first discoveries into what
became known as the NLP Communication Model.  

 

He also engaged in a good bit of "change personal history" inasmuch as what
he is saying now does not correspond to what he has said over the years in
books and videos.  He now claims that he got things from various people even
though there is no historical record of those people.  An example he now
credits Dorothy Kimura for eye accessing cue although she was never
mentioned in any previous NLP book.  Neither Richard nor John ever mentioned
her regarding eye accessing cues!  Paul Bach-y-Rita was mentioned once, but
only a brief reference.  Not exactly a big source for NLP.  Moshe
Feldenkrais was also only briefly mentioned a few times.  He was primarily
referred to in a training Richard did in London in 1990 Neuro-Dynamics (a
training that I transcribed at Richard's request and turned into a book-a
book which has not been published). 

 

The biggest elephant in the room from this 50th year anniversary is that
they did not speak at all about their lawsuits with each other, with the
divisions they created in the field, or with the $90,000,000 lawsuit that
essentially destroyed NLP in the United States.  Nothing at all about that!
Another nice thing to be amnesic about.

 

Not a word was said about the fact that neither has supported the field in
recommending any of the leaders who have arisen who have made NLP what it
is.  I'm thinking specifically of Robert Dilts and Steve Andreas.  If it
were not for Robert and Steve and Connaire, NLP would have never achieved
its recognition in the 1970s and 1980s that it did.  They did far more than
Richard or John in those years to formalize and promote NLP.  If not for
them, there very well could be no NLP.  

 

Over the years, neither John or Richard ever came to any of the NLP
Conferences around the world to support the field.  They never wrote
articles for the many Journals that we had in the 1980s and 1990s (except
when someone wrote an article about them).   Instead each worked to keep his
'camp' going and refused to acknowledge each other or anyone else.  That's
not exactly what we think of leaders.

 

Given that, I would say that they were only founders, but not leaders.  They
never groomed others to step up to lead the field.  They never gave credit
to people making contributions to the field. When I took my training with
Richard, there were no patterns from Dilts or Grinder-none.  I walked out of
Master Practitioner never hearing one word about what they offered to NLP.

 

Over the years many of us tried to get both of the founders to participate.
We asked them in 1997 to come to the Visionary Leadership Conference.
Neither did.  Although Richard sent his lawyer (!) who met some of us out on
"the green grass."  They following day John showed up on "the green grass"
to present his side of the 90 million dollar lawsuit.  We asked them to show
up at the Millennial Project (2000), neither did.  We asked them to come to
the 40th Anniversary; they did not.  Richard sent a two minute video.
What's amazing to me is that while we asked them to be leaders-and they
refused.

 

Then last year (2024) some years after Frank Pucelik and I started the NLP
Leadership Summit (2011), we held the Summit in Santa Cruz California where
John still lives.  Did he show up?  No, of course not.   But Judith DeLozier
did.  Then she and Robert gave the group of 70 plus NLP leaders a tour of
Kresge College and the University of Southern California.

 

My view?  The founders are bold in taking credit for what they partially
founded, something which they did not grow.  They contributed a lot of the
first intellectual structures, but were unable to contribute any kind of
true leadership over the decades.  NLP Leadership fell to those who created
the Conferences, the Associations, the Journals, the Research Conference,
who developed new models, new patterns, and new communities (as indicated in
Innovations in NLP, 2012).

 

References

I wrote NLP Secrets: The Untold Stories as a journalistic investigation
researching it via reading countless books on the origins of NLP, collecting
sources, cross-referencing, and relying on numerous personal experiences
with those who were there.   There I emphasized that NLP's origins were the
result of a community effort.   It was not accomplished by any one or two
individuals.  To create NLP, it took Robert Spitzer introducing Perls' works
and to Satir herself.  It took Bateson send them to Erickson.  It took all
of the individuals in the original groups for the collective contribution
they made including David Gordon, Stephen Gilligan, Terry McClendon, and
many, many more.    https://www.neurosemantics.com/shop/page/7/  

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

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

 

The stunning new history of NLP--- NLP Secrets.  

Investigative Journalism which has exposed what has been kept secrets for
decades. 

http://www.neurosemantics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/NLP-Secrets-2_sml2.
png

 

 

 

 

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