A Critique of Neuro-Linguistic Programming

When Something Sounds Too Good To Be True, It Usually Is

It was the time of the 1970s USA and the scene of psychotherapy in the country was widely different from what it is in the current times. Psychoanalysis prevailed in most places and humanism, with its client-centered therapy was spreading quickly across practitioners. Despite the prevalent orthodoxy, there were many undercurrents of dissatisfaction among the practitioners, the patients and the insurance companies that paid for many of these therapies.

Psychoanalysis could last for years with minimal progress and client-centred therapy seemed too non-directional to help people. The patients were growing frustrated with uncertainty over whether their time would lead to an equal outcome in results. Something new was needed.

A lot of ideas started sprouting up across the land. The cognitive theory developed which gave us Cognitive therapy, the precursor to the modern CBT technique. Another idea that developed at the same time was called Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

A Promising Start

NLP was developed by two academicians John Grinder and Richard Bandler who had collaborated to study the success of some psychotherapists over others. Their idea was simple:

Some psychotherapists were clearly more effective than others, these people must be doing something differently. We can observe them and learn exactly what that is so it can be used by other psychotherapists or even patients themselves.

They observed the work of three of the most successful therapists in the country and came up with different models that ended up being known as neuro-linguistic programming.

Now, this seems like a really reasonable and good idea, right? If we can learn from the work of the best, it will only help everyone else. At the beginning of their careers in NLP, they claimed that a person’s map of the world could be effected by some processes like distortion, generalization, or deletion. This is quite similar to the very detailed description of cognitive distortions that CBT offers.

Again, these are very promising starts and suggest that NLP can end up becoming a form of psychotherapy which could challenge CBT.

The problem though was, Bandler and Grinder started making claims that were wildly beyond the scope of ‘helping therapists’ or ‘locating distortion in language’. They were dabbling in the area of curing myopia and the common cold (among other things).

Beyond The Scope

I was going through one of the early texts written by the duo on the scope of NLP and this one particular quote really stood out to me,

Myopia isn't too hard to deal with, because nearsighted people are just squeezing their eyeballs too hard….. All they have to do is learn the meaning of the word "focus." Trance-Formations (p. 166)

So all of a sudden, the two had gone from trying to help therapists treat people more efficiently to….curing myopia? It seemed too far-fetched. They also claimed they could cure depression, phobias and other psychological in one hour which otherwise, would have taken weeks or months.

If you are someone reasonable, your bullshit senses may be tingling already.

This is not all there was to NLP. The two also believed that a person’s eyes, in conversation, could convey the inner thoughts of the person. This might seem like a simplification, which it is, but that is what the general idea was. Not really something you expect to hear from something trying to change psychotherapy.

Is NLP Scientific?

This is something that it all seems to come down to eventually. It does not matter what the proposition is, the only question that matters is, “Is it scientific or not?”

If you look at it through the empirical, laboratory setting, randomized control trial standard of science, no it is not. The studies so far have shown minimal, if any, support for practices of NLP.

This is something that was asked to Bandler as well during an interview with the BBC. Bandler refuted the allegations by saying something to the tune of “Well of course it doesn’t have empirical support. NLP is not designed to be tested in a laboratory.”

There is a bigger question here though. Does the whole practice of NLP become invalid because it does not have empirical support? What would happen if there were mixed results? Would the practitioners feel better if it was not tested empirically ever?

There is a lot of defensiveness and bad faith argument when it comes to discussions on practices such as NLP. Science purists claim that something which does not have empirical evidence in its support should not be practiced. NLP practitioners claim that no amount of lab evidence will change the mind of those who have been helped by the idea.

Ultimately, in my opinion, it comes down to the practitioner who is being asked to make a choice. If I had to choose between two forms of therapy, one which had evidence backing it and one which did not, I would always go for the evidence based one because I believe it is the more responsible thing to do.

One thing is for sure, NLP is not what it started off trying to be. Today, it is commonly used in lifestyle coaching and by self-help gurus to build an audience. Everyone likes being proposed a quick fix to their problems, even if the fix exists or not.

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Question of the Week

What would you choose if you had to make this choice? Would you choose a therapy which offered a quick solution but did not have evidence backing it, or would you go for the slower but evidence-backed form of therapy?

You can let me know by replying to this email or in the comments :)