PRINCE CHARMING
Frogs into Princes – Richard Bandler and John Grinder (live)
Aaaand abracadabra! The Richard Bandler and John Grinder communications revolution formerly known as, erm, well… nothing… is – just like that, finally, ta-da! – now ‘neuro-linguistic programming’ or ‘NLP’!
Yes, published in 1979, the next NLP ‘source book’ in our series is Frogs into Princes.
After the tedium of The Structure of Magic I and II, and Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton Erickson I and II – none of which use a moniker for Bandler and Grinder’s much-hyped ‘technology’ – here, at last, is the NLP book to get you psyched about NLP.
There’s a lot to like about this book – starting with the fairytale-themed wraparound cover by artist Elizabeth Malczynski. Inside, we are presented with the most impressive testimonials and foreword known to humankind. Then the meat of it is a transcript, edited by Steve Andreas (who also penned the foreword, and whose name starts cropping up in this fledgling NLP franchise), of a three-day seminar with Bandler and Grinder.
The key message is: NLP is going to change the world, and your life. (And maybe cure cancer..? Unclear, but they seem to encourage people to have a crack at it.) Yes, Bandler and Grinder are in full cult-leader mode – you can picture them swaggering about the stage, regaling disciples with tales of their Jesus-esque hypno-feats.
Excitingly, this is hypnosis’s first NLP outing, though its deployment is ambiguous for both artistic and practical reasons (the latter being US laws on doing hypnosis). So: “Everything is hypnosis,” Bandler tells us, but also, follows Grinder: “There is no such thing as hypnosis.” They’re quite the double-act and revel in their ‘bad boys of therapy’ reputation.
There’s no evidence for all their fantastical claims, of course. But that doesn’t matter because spoilsport “researchers” (also known as scientists?) don’t know jack shit next to our two intrepid mind magicians; hence the disparaging double quote-marks used throughout “the book”. We’re instead to be persuaded by sexy stage demonstrations of phobia cures and such, as well as the bulletproof claim that if we don’t get it, it’s all being communicated on a subconscious level anyway.
And the demos are sexy. And the stories are impressive and compelling. As always, I particularly enjoy the tales of unsplitting personalities, of psychotics being irritated out of their delusions, and of general rampages around mental hospitals. It almost makes a girl want to go get sectioned in order to go test out her anchors and swishes and stuff…
Almost…
I’ve set out my and Kev’s positions on NLP in my first post on Structure. To reiterate my view in the context of this book, there are some good ideas and suggestions in Frogs into Princes (and elsewhere), and, when NLP was novel, it may very well have been very potent. Kev makes the case for science over investing in stray, untested ideas from the likes of young Bandler and Grinder while, eg, meddling with acute mental patients. But I’d like to make the case for NLPers to also better understand its memes – specifically when insisting it is definitely a real, true, factual Thing…
I’ll let Bandler and Grinder explain:
“We’re not offering you something that’s true, just things that are useful.” – page 7 (original emphasis)
[In reference to modelling family therapist Virginia Satir as key to the creation/discovery of NLP and how students must, in turn, model her patterns.] “We do not test the description we arrive at for accuracy, or how it fits with neurological data, or statistics about what should be going on. All we do in order to understand whether our description is an adequate model for what we are doing is to find out whether it works or not: are you able to exhibit effectively in your behavior the same patterns that Virginia exhibits in hers, and get the same results? We will be making statements up here which may have no relationship to the “truth,” to what’s “really going on.” We do know, however, that the model that we have made up of her behavior has been effective.” – page 10 (original emphasis)
[In introducing representational systems and the eye movements people make when accessing the various systems.] “Do you believe that? It’s a lie, you know. Everything we’re going to tell you here is a lie. All generalizations are lies. Since we have no claim to truth or accuracy, we will be lying to you consistently throughout this seminar. There are only two differences between us and other teachers: One is that we announce at the beginning of our seminars that everything we say will be a lie, and other teachers do not. Most of them believe their lies. They don’t realize that they are made up. The only difference is that most of our lies will work out really well if you act as if they are true.” – page 18 (bold emphasis mine; italics original)
[Framing for seminar attendees to practise eye-accessing cues on each other.] “For those of you who are doubtful, and those who have skeptical parts, we would like to ask you – and this is true for all the lies we are going to tell you – to do the following: accept our lie for a limited period of time, namely during the exercise that follows our description of the pattern we claim exists. In this way you can use your own sensory experience – not the crazy verbalizations we offer you – to decide whether in fact the things we describe can be observed in the behavior of the person you’re communicating with.” – page 23-24
[In response to a (cut short!) question about a statement about a therapeutic intervention that may not be true and which might not work.] “There are lots and lots of things that we cannot do. If you can program yourself to look for things that will be useful for you and learn those, instead of trying to find out where what we are presenting to you falls apart, you’ll find out where it falls apart, I guarantee it.” – page 93 (original emphasis)
So, yeah, hey – if you want to just take Bandler and Grinder’s word for it that NLP works, and help yourself and others via magical thinking and confirmation bias, then I’m not going to take you to task*. But if you believe the lie, surely you missed the damn point?
*Though I shall grimace at you if you insist upon claiming ‘FPC’ as a legit acronym, as if ‘Fast Phobia Cure’ is an original NLP invention. The catchy ‘two-step visual/kinesthetic dissociation pattern’, as described in Frogs into Princes, could address phobias and a myriad issues – the cerebral snake oil, if you will. (And, yes, I know it cured your and your clients’ arachnaphobia… Because THAT is the power of suggestion, as Bandler and Grinder knew full well.)
