Robert Dilts - Neuro–Linguistic Programming - Volume I. The Study of the Structure of Subjective Experience

Meta Publications P.O. Box 565 Cupertino, California 95014

© Copyright 1980 by Meta Publications. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without written permission of the Publisher.

Library of Congress Card Number 80–50147 I.S.B.N. 0–916990–07–9

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to acknowledge Doug Davis for all his help with the copyreading and editing of this book, and Terrence McClendon who participated as a co–facilitator in a number of the clinical incidents described within these pages.

Illustrations by Robert Dilts

PREFACE

There comes a time when it is both useful, and appropriate, for the purpose of continuing to expand our understanding of the universe we live in, for entirely new fields of study to be created. Separating new from old, exceptions from rules, and useful from previously unquestionable. So learning and experiences from entirely divergent fields have the opportunity to combine knowledge and experience into configurations that allow further growth, understanding, and impact upon ourselves as a species. It is in this way that neuro–linguistic programming came into being. We wish at this point to separate our NLP from the many fields from which it draws information, from the many fields for which it has application. And in this way have greater clarity and freedom to delineate NLP's own methodologies and basic purpose.

While it may be fundamentally correct to say that all knowledge is part of one field, it is fundamentally impractical to approach learning in this way. By separating biology from chemistry they later recombined and both held shared value for each other. By separating electronics from optics, new technologies and application came into being. NLP could be described as an extension of linguistics, neurology, or psychology; separations that although may in fact be ficticious in nature are in fact expedient for human learning and the development of knowledge that is practical and inpactful on our lives. These separations are based primarily on the purpose of the study of the field itself. The purpose of NLP is as discrete from linguistics as logic is to philosophy, as discrete from psychology as neurology to medicine. Although interaction of these fields yields useful results, the lack of interaction in some areas is also useful so developments in one field can aid another. The chemist, the doctor, the psychologist, the mathematician all individually better define their separate purpose and develop their skills, so when combination and interaction occur it can yield more results, be more fruitful. An ancient Greek said it quite well in the early times of western thought:

The same, but different.

We would like to add, it is only the difference that makes a difference, and the same which provides the vehicle for useful interaction between fields. For instance, even though two sentences of English may use similar letters, a through z, many of these sentences will differ in meaning. Without both, language and learning would be impoverished.

So now NLP, the study of the structure of subjectivity, can take its place with other fields of study, with its own methodologies, and its own purpose, drawing information from wherever it can, offering that which is uniquely its own. So the evolution of ideas, conscious and pragmatic skill can go forward.

We ask only you, the reader, to go on. Turning this page opens the doorway to new possibilities we have found worthwhile, but years ago we would not have thought possible or real. We now know they are possible, and recognize they are only the beginnings of a continuing process. The Horizon has been identified. The adventure of exploration is for those who wish the burden and joy of confronting the awesome power of the new.

IN HOPE

NLP is the unexpected byproduct of the collaboration of John Grinder and Richard Bandler to formalize impactful patterns of communication (e.g. therapeutic, sales etc… . ) With the addition of Leslie Cameron–Bandler, Robert Dilts, and Judith De Lozier, NLP took form into more than any one of us ever expected. Not just useful models and patterns formalized from various activities, but an extension of how those patterns and models came into being, thus a field both informative and practical, but most significant … unique in its purpose and methodology. Proving once again the old adage that the sum is greater than the whole. As the tools of NLP find their ways into other fields and the number of NLP'ers increases, we will witness in our lifetime marvels as grandiose as a man on the moon, the permanent elimination of smallpox from the planet earth, and atomic power. We may witness perspectives as broad as ecology, relativity, and civil, woman's, and human rights. The limits of human potential for progress and humanity, war and other acts of myoptic thinking are the by–product of subjective experience. Understood, and used with the elegance and

pragmatism with which NLP was created we may not only discover how Freud made Einstein's theories possible, but a way to influence and predict the very elements that would make humans capable of being humane, by subjectively valuing what creations, creating can offer.

Subjectively

Robert Dilts

Richard Bandler

Leslie Cameron–Bandler

John Grinder

Judith De Lozier

Welcome! It is a pleasure to introduce you, the reader, to the field of Neuro–Linguistic Programming (NLP). Our purpose here is to place NLP in some historical context and to make some suggestions about how to use what follows.

Neuro–Linguistic Programming is the discipline whose domain is the structure of subjective experience. It makes no commitment to theory, but rather has the status of a model — a set of procedures whose usefulness not truthfulness is to be the measure of its worth. NLP presents specific tools which can be applied effectively in any human interaction. It offers specific techniques by which a practitioner may usefully organize and re–organize his or her subjective experience or the experiences of a client in order to define and subsequently secure any behavioral outcome.

NLP begins in the early 70's when we found ourselves in possession of a set of extremely powerful and effective communication models. We had originally developed these models for use in the psychotherapeutic context. It quickly became apparent that they could be easily generalized to other areas of human communication—specifically, business (sales, negotiation), law and education. With these tools we were able to secure results—5 minute guaranteed "cure" for phobias in psychotherapy; quick, graceful and satisfying resolution of conflict in dead–locked negotiations and settlements in business; success in teaching "educationally handicapped" children formerly impossible skills measured in minutes

results which bordered on magical for the professionals of these disciplines.

Having recognized and demonstrated the power of these tools to create an effective model which was not limited to the resolution of intra and inter personal conflict or problems, but a model which was evolutionary—a model which was not limited to remedial contexts but one which explicitly offered a step by step process which people could use to evolve themselves into any effective behavior of their choice.