Introducing NLP: Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)

At one point, this book was probably the best thing on the market. If you read "Frogs to Princes", then you will know the level of improvement this book is over that one. Original NLP books came out in the mid to late 70's and this book was written in 1993 with supposedly few changes to the second edition.

The author is constantly referring to other more thorough books. The title is accurate, it is an introduction and nothing more. If this was only meant to be an introduction, I think it should have been half the size. Too much of it was filler text.

I'm looking elsewhere.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a practical and scientific mechanism of self-improvement and serenity. There is the mental (neural) part of it that emanates from our neurological processes in our brain that induce stimuli such as sense, smell, taste, etc. As the Sapir-Whorf Thesis postulates, we conceptualize the world through language and this is the linguistic part of NLP. The programming part of it is the result of the organization of the neurological and linguistic components. NLP is very practical in large part because of it's scientific veracity. Authors Joseph O'Connor and John Seymour are scientists, and seem to have a very good grasp of the natural world, especially neurology and anything in the cognitive sciences. I immediately realized this on page 5 when they were discussing NLP maps and filters which are referred to as behavioral frames. The first is what they described as an orientation toward outcomes rather than problems. The second is to ask "how" rather than "why" questions. The third is feedback versus failure. In the fourth you consider possibilities rather than necessities. In the fifth, you adopt an attitude of curiosity and fascination rather than making assumptions. These are essential values towards a reason-based and objective existence. The third frame surprised me because I've heard it before by Lawrence Krauss in a debate of the existence of God and again in his book - A Universe From Nothing - which I've previously written a review for. It's been ingrained in my mind ever since, and I feel that it's an invaluable mental mechanism towards viewing the world free from dogma and fallacious orthodoxy. The same exact applies to the fifth frame, and all for that matter. It's the mental algorithm that should be ingrained in all high-level thinkers. There's good interpersonal framework; calibration, anchors, pacing, loops and systems, learning loops, levels of learning, etc. The so-called "meta-model" was very interesting to me. The Meta Model is a serious of questions that seek to make sense of communication and elicit latent information. The concepts in the Meta Model are unspecified nouns, unspecified verbs, comparisons, judgments, nominalizations, modal operators of possibility, modal operators of necessity, universal quantifiers, complex equivalence, presuppositions, cause and effect, and mind reading. This may have been the most illuminating part of the whole book, and I highly solicit the idea that if NLP is a pseudoscience, then regardless these concepts are viable and understanding them would definitely be helpful. The memory strategy introduced in chapter 9 builds my trust because I've been studying memory on the side and the memory techniques introduced in the text seem to correspond to the underlining memory-improving consensus. The music and especially the memory strategy are interesting too. Now there are some sketchy things like some of the psychotherapy techniques introduced, the phobia cure and the swish pattern, and some more things.

What is good about NLP is that it seems to be science based; it acknowledges the mind and body under a naturalistic light, and thus considers both part of the same system abiding by the same laws. Now I've seen criticism online of it being a well known "pseudoscience". Perhaps it has been extended to be one recently? This book is pretty old and i'm not sure about the veracity of everything in it but usually im quickly aware of pseudoscience. Regardless, there is a lot of good self-help information to glean from it. I believe that with all my heart and I have a high amount of trust in a lot of the [science-based] information in the text. By the same token, I am sketched out by some of the miraculous "techniques" in this book and I do encourage everyone who's interested to do further research.

4.2/5

Learning about NLP for my own use and this book is the best I've read thus far in terms of practical strategies for personal application. Very engaging writing style. Highly recommend!

Overall, the information was presented well. This is a good first book to have a basic understanding of what NLP is and what it is not. My main issue with the book is that it seemed very wordy in places.

DIDNT UNDERSTAND THIS AT ALL, IT WAS LIKE A CHEMISTRY CLASS

Anyone with even the slightest of interest in NPL, NEEDS to read this book. It gives an insightful look at things without overly explaining it. The authors express what they think clearly and everything said is understandable and with examples and metaphors that are thrown in here. Hands down 5/5.

I became certified in NLP at the "Practioner" level nearly fifteen years ago and this is the best introduction to NLP that I have read. It does not equip the reader to use the full range of NLP techniques any more than a book on martial arts equips the reader for a real fight, that can only be accomplished by taking a certification course which is lengthy and expensive, but well worth it. Almost all are taught by board certified psychiatrists. But this book provides a highly informative introduction to the theory and techniques of NLP such that the reader can make an informed decision whether to invest in actual training. BTW, it works.

Interesting. Slightly creepy because I am a psychology major and plan to become a therapist. Useful.

Don't be a super villain

Tough to read. Not enough instruction

excellent introduction to NLP subject matter