A Brief History of NLP

How it started

In the early 1970s, Richard Bandler, who was a student of psychology, and John Grinder, who was Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of California in Santa Cruz, collaborated in a study of three exceptional therapists.

The three therapists, who were recognised as outstanding in their field, were:

• Fritz Perls, who developed Gestalt therapy
• Virginia Satir, who pioneered Family Therapy
• Milton Erickson, a hypno-therapist

Bandler and Grinder wanted to find out why these people were outstanding — what did they do, how did they do it and would it be possible to emulate it. In other words, could they describe what these exceptional people were doing to enable others to be as effective.

They discovered that although the three therapists appeared to work in different ways, their thinking and approach was very similar.

Using the results from the study, Bandler and Grinder were able to incorporate the therapists’ linguistic and behavioural characteristics, and the values and beliefs that underpin them, into a model.

The model provided a framework for better communication, improved personal development and accelerated learning. This model was the foundation for what was to become the study of excellent behaviour that Bandler and Grinder called Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP for short.

Many other people also contributed to the development of NLP; two of the most notable being Gregory Bateson and Robert Dilts.

Gregory Bateson

The British writer Gregory Bateson was a specialist in the fields of anthropology, biology, cybernetics, and psychotherapy. He worked with Bandler and Grinder to develop NLP, with a particular emphasis on how people use language. He is also often acknowledged as the fourth person whom Bandler and Grinder studied during the development of their NLP model.

Robert Dilts

The psychologist Robert Dilts has been involved with NLP from the beginning. He started to develop and expand the field of NLP from the mid-70s and continues to this day. While many in the NLP field create techniques from existing knowledge, Robert has consistently tried to develop NLP through original work. Among other activities he runs an NLP University each year at Santa Cruz.

Further developments in NLP

After the initial work, NLP developed in two important areas:

• a method for discovering the characteristics of excellence in any activity, known in NLP terminology as patterns of excellence
• a way of modelling the thinking and communication styles of people acknowledged as outstanding in what they do.

Because NLP is the study of how people do things well, it must also consider why people do things badly. Since we all have more or less the same ‘thinking equipment’, why is it that there can be such a difference between the results of two people who appear to be equally capable?

Through NLP we can analyse our own thought processes and behaviour and learn how to change if we want to and what that change might be.

Since it began in the 1970s NLP has been taught worldwide and the techniques are used in many activities that demand continual improvements in performance, such as sport and business.