I think outta all of us Doc has the most experience with NLP. I on the other hand have a very limited understanding of it. So far i think its an excellent tool. Not only for PU but for life.

As Doc pointed out, NLP is a realatively new practise. Pyschology itself is realatively new and there are still people out there who look down on convential psychological practises.

Personally i feel that, in relation to PU, NLP is a useful tool and should be spread accross the framework of your natural abilities and strengths. Im personally not a beleiver in using purely NLP to do PU, but use it as a tool like C&F and it will help improve your game.

For the most part i have used NLP in a very limited way, and mostly for inner game purposes/self betterment. I think its helped reshape some of my behaviors and get me going in the right direction.

A good example is chewing my finger nails...this has been a bad habbit for as long as i can remember. Ive tried the nasty tasting nail polish, ive tried chewing gum or other things, etc. My parents spread that crap on my fingers as a kid and i ended up chewing my fingers even more.

In a matter of about a week i managed to almost completely stop chewing because of a pattern destroying technique that Doc posted. Im not "cured', but its made it infinatly better. I actually have gotten some comments on the turn around in just my nails.

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-Ka-
"Be the same, only better."

Even though psych was my minor in college I don't have much experience of using NLP in field.
Can anyone recomend a good book or a web site on it?
Thanks!

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This game is automatic. You give it to 'em one time, they come back like addicts.

Introducing NLP by Joseph O'Connor and John Seymour

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"The 'Brick Walls' are there to allow you to prove how badly you want something!" ~ Randy Pausch

~ Rye

Thanks a lot man.
I'll check the bookstore today.

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This game is automatic. You give it to 'em one time, they come back like addicts.

Posts like this make me smile, and make me thankfull for studying NLP and Psych in general. It's the little things sometimes that snowball and have much greater effects on our lives then we would think.

This also brings up one of the major arguments against NLP... that is the public opinion that change takes time... that it would take you weeks/months/years to gradually change your nail biting pattern. This is simply false, change happens almost instantly... When that sponser at AA who's been sober for 23 years decided to quit drinking it happened almost instantly... the change itself that is, everything else is prepairing you to change... building leverage (Pain/Pleasure) mostly. This brings us to why NLP is so difficult to test... because the most important thing is leveraging someone into a state where they truly feel they MUST change... we rarely do things we should do... human nature it burns important energy stores on less then important actions and all that. But we will find a way to accomplish the things we MUST do.

Maybe your broke... and you should spend 500 bucks on a new set of tires for you car... they're pretty wore afterall. When are you going to do it? Probably not today... and the longer we put it off, the easier it is to put off 'just one more day'.

Now say you go outside and all 4 tires are flat... you ran them right through the wear bars... Damn you'll get fired if you don't get those fixed for work tommorow... then you won't be able to pay the rent... or pay for food... Now when are you going to get those new tires? Probably today.

If Survive and Replicate are the 2 intended 'destinations' on the biological map of our lives, the Pain and Pleasure is our compass.

Doc, soon as I meet you in person, I'm gonna get you to work some NLP on me if you're up to it.

I've tried using it on myself, but aside from anchoring feelings, I don't have much success. There's several small things that tend to snowball like you say, but I can't seem to make myself get to that point of NEEDING to change, even though I know I need to and I want to.

If Doc does work some NLP magic on me, then I'll be sure to give a thorough report on the effects for anyone that is interested.

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"The 'Brick Walls' are there to allow you to prove how badly you want something!" ~ Randy Pausch

~ Rye

I'm packing for a 10 day trip and don't have the time to reply adequately right now. It is possible that I will be able to post if I have some downtime, but I will definitely respond once I get back.

_________________
Lo' there do I see My Father.
Lo' there do I see the line of My People, back to the beginning.
Lo' they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them.
in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.

I truly, truly appreciate the well thought out arguments presented by everyone who has contributed to this thread. Now everybody go out and sarge. Empirical evidence, chi-square, NLP, and peer-review will get you nowhere if you can't exude confidence out in the field. Debate this all you want, Fiction, but I think you are missing a greater point. You can learn all you want about NLP's merits or lack there of, but USING it is a completely different story. And you keep saying you don't have time to waste on bullshit science...yet you do have time to break down every phrase written about every retort made towards your posts. Research NLP all you want. Learn it in and out...or don't for all it matters. Because if you are uncomfortable approaching a random girl on the sidewalk it will show immediately, and you won't even begin to use any meticulously researched pick-up strategies before you have been written off.

With that being said, you made some great full-proof arguments. I'd vote you president of my debate club any day.

I found the Joseph O Connor book very dry and quite hard to read.

A better book is 'NLP - the new art and science of getting what you want' by Dr Harry Alder.

It's written in layman's terms and is therefore much easier to follow and apply in life.

I think you are confused about how scientific theory develop. There has never been a question as to whether or not things move toward the ground. The question, rather, is what makes it move toward the ground. Newton and Galileo formulated the modern conception and Einstein modified that further. The conception of things falling toward the Earth has been around since Aristotle who thought that things naturally aimed to move closer to the proper sphere of heaven. Theories change over time, and science accepts and modfies those theories as more data is acquired. NLP is an explanation--and one that hasn't fit the evidence thus far.
It's not really that young--Bandler and Grinder developed it in the 70s, and cognitivism and its affiliate clinical approach CBT now reigns supreme within psychology and has only been around about 10 years prior.


Cool, you should post it up when you're finished.
I can appreciate her skepticism, but that does seem a bit excessive.
This probably highlights the crux of my criticism--anecdotal evidence. While not to be disregarded, as a psychology student, you must have taken a research methods class where you discussed the dangers of things like small sample size, tester bias, and of course, placebo effect. Just as important, if you studied cognitive psych focusing on memory, you must have dealt with issues of belief preserverance and confirmation biases. The fact that a thing seems to be effective to you is certainly shakey grounds to base scientific knowledge on. Nutjobs believe--firmly believe--in astrology, ESP, and other such nonsense. The real test is whether it can be verified with empirical testing in controlled settings.

And the fact remains that research has been done on NLP and it has been found wanting. Of course, there are various schools of thought within NLP and PRS, for example, is only one as is eye fixations. But thus far the research seems to turn up either inconclusive or negative for NLP.


I'm not sure what idiots you are referring to--I knew some geniuses at my former university. Certainly Ph.D.s make mistakes like the rest of us, but it is part of the strengths of the system of science and academia to check and recheck. That is where peer-review and the structured and meticulous logging of data for retesting and evaluation becomes valuable. It is the fact that science moves forward with caution that it is valuable. But yes, as you say, that might be getting a bit too detailed into the philosophy of science.


I disagree. If you are trying to place NLP as a prescience according to Kuhn's model, I could accept that, but as such it doesn't deserve the sort of esteem that it tends to get. There should be a lot more concerted efforts on the part of the NLP community to research their techniques.

As it stands, my opinion on the matter is that of Sharpleys that NLP should be presented as a partial compendium of existing suggestive therapies, rather than presenting original material. And it is definitely not responsible for the grand claims that it does make.
Well, at this point, as I said, I intend to start looking into hypnotherapy as it was something I pursued in the past, but never got very good at. Might be worth looking into. I think we can both agree that Erikson was a genius (and he was mainstream ). Right now, I'm just looking for stimulating discussion.

BTW for those interested, here are the three studies that I referred to:

http://rapidshare.com/files/89645036/cou-31-2-238.pdf
http://rapidshare.com/files/89645428/cou-32-4-589.pdf
http://rapidshare.com/files/89645734/cou-34-1-103.pdf[/i]

_________________
Lo' there do I see My Father.
Lo' there do I see the line of My People, back to the beginning.
Lo' they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them.
in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.

But to make a claim that NLP is a branch of social science, don't you think it ought to be verifiable, at least to a degree? That is like the ESPers or, even more comically, the people practicing martial arts "chi" attacks--yet when people other than the student are tested, the martial artists/ESP practiconer simply states that the target must have an open mind and a skeptic has unhealthy and disruptive mental energy/chi meridians, which throw off the attack. In other words, confirmatory evidence is embraced and contradictory evidence is ad hoc dismissed, even to the point of flat out claiming that the thing is not verifiable.

_________________
Lo' there do I see My Father.
Lo' there do I see the line of My People, back to the beginning.
Lo' they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them.
in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.

I fully agree. And to say a placebo doesn't work is just silliness. Placebo has been found to go as far as to cure cancer (I will cite the source if you want, but I don't have it with me, sorry). There is a good reason that drug commercials talk about the results that X drug had over sugar pill--it is because taking a sugar pill--the belief that you are taking a special drug--is enough to induce some effects. I just want to use the system that will privde the maximum effect. If someone that having my own personal magic pickle given from God would allow them to pick up chicks, it would likely help some people in their confidence (after all, who is an HB10 to defy God?).


I'm going to guess that Doc has spent more time studying NLP than I have breaking down these posts--it took about 30 minutes total. But I will admit, I do enjoy these discussions.
I whole heartedly agree with you there. That's what I'm workin on.
Aww shucks.

_________________
Lo' there do I see My Father.
Lo' there do I see the line of My People, back to the beginning.
Lo' they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them.
in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.

See... what I hate about the scientific community is the crutches of sample size, etc.

Ah so someone who's untrained in the art can't successfully perform a Chi strike, or move a Psi Wheel, or perform NLP, etc... etc... etc...

My response... no shit they can't! Firstly it's nearly impossible to suceed at something which you believe you will fail it (if it's something with any difficulty involved)... secondly they don't have the practice, skills, or training sufficiantly to perform the given task.

If I were to hand a baseball to a group of psycologists and tell them to throw a 90mph fastball, I doubt even one them could come close. Hell over 99% of the population put in the same situation couldn't come close... Therefore we could conclude from our sample size that throwing a 90mph fastball is not possible? Ah but most pitchers aren't even that athletic, what they are is trained in very specific sciences, and have repeatedly practiced those sciences.

Hypnotheropy wasn't always mainstream btw... for many years people though Errickson was a nut, and a large portion of the scientific community still claims that his theropy model does not work.

Thousands... if not Millions of people do 'impossible' things every single day, wether science likes it or not, it's still true.

I hope you found my insight and opinions on this subject helpful. If you decide to study NLP and have questions feel free to ask.

But do you understand why they're there? They're there so people can verify that something is happening for a particular reason. For example--we go up to a group and we decide we want to see if a particular supplement works for building muscle. We give them a pill and miraculously we see them gain 20 pounds of muscle after being in a weightlifting program for five months. Do we assume that the pill caused the wieght gain? Lets say we even decide to go so far as to add a control group--one that didn't take the pill or added a sugar pill--and they still don't gain muscle. THEN did the pill work? Well, maybe--we still have to make sure our samples were random... if one group.

I don't mean anything offensive by this, but all of this is pretty much Research Methods 101. I mean, some of the issues can delve into more complex issues in the Philosophy of Science, but didn't you take a Research Methods or Psychometrics class that covered all of this? The devices of science are crucial to doing things like establishing cause, eliminating placebo and bias, etc.
No, the argument has never been that "People who are untrained in the art cannot perform X adequately, therefore X is not a genuine phenomenon."

The questions that form the crux of this issue is, "What is truly at work here" and "how and do we know that Y causes X." The methods carefully developed by science are designed in order to eliminate bias, develop a theoretical framework, and test the hypotheses made by the developed theories in a controlled environment.
If this is true, why hasn't the scientific community risen up in protest to dispute the theories developed by strength and conditioning coaches? The fact is that there is a very large and comprehensive theoretical framework that explains the ability of professional athletes to perform incredible physical feats.
And then it went ahead and started developing theoretical models and testing its hypotheses in experimental settings. NLP has not attempted to defend its claims, and where it has, it has failed.
"Impossible" feats like average people lifting up cars to save people? This is not an "impossible" action, this is backed up by data on the effects of norepinehrine, psychological responses to high stress situations, biomechanics, and others. There is a big difference between "impossible" and "rare". I think you are conflating the two. You keep mixing up an event with an explanation. I don't dispute that that my Easter basket is filled with delicious jelly beans and chocolate bunnies every Easter (yes, I still get candy for Easter )--what I would dispute is the hypothesis that the Easter Bunny brought it.


The phrasing of this sentence seems to imply that our debate has come to an end.

_________________
Lo' there do I see My Father.
Lo' there do I see the line of My People, back to the beginning.
Lo' they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them.
in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.

I wished people would stop bringing up Derren Brown when they talk about NLP.
What Brown does may look like NLP, but it is in fact just sleight of hands, and Brown himself is pretty scathing in his criticism of NLP.

If you have ever seen the video where Brown is in NYC, and he purchases a $4500 ring with blank sheets of paper, here's how the trick is done (vid included):
http://www.cafeadler.com/2012/01/derren ... ealed.html