→ Psychotherapy generally → Neuro-Linguistic ProgrammingNeuro-Linguistic Programming
During the 1970s, linguist Richard Bandler and computer scientist John Grinder collected a multitude of methods that are considered to be good and useful in psychotherapy, and they combined proven methods to their method with an own philosophy.
Because they were impressed by the efficiency of Virginia Satir’s family therapy, Milton Erickson’s hypnotherapy and Fritz Perls’ gestalt therapy, NLP makes use of approaches from instructional and behaviour therapy as well as from psychoanalysis, bio-energetic and hypnosis.
The term “NLP” contains already the fundamental assumptions of this approach:
- “neuro-” represents the entirety of inner and outer perception processes,
- “linguistic” indicates the linguistic representation of perception processes on which people’s individual models are based,
- “programming” refers to the process of organising perception and meaning.
NLP deals with the structure of personal experience—how a person perceives the world and organises this perception. NLP doesn’t claim to be a theory, it has the status of an approach which is to be judged by its utility. NLP offers tools for everyone to organise and reorganise their subjective experience in a reasonable way to be able to define and ensure a result in behaviour.
NLP is efficient for implementing individual goal mainly because specific moral concepts are kept as prerequisites for NLP and not by exactly following NLP techniques. Some of these moral concepts are:
- Every behaviour has a positive intention. It is very suitable at the moment and will only be given up when there is a better one.
- Every person possesses all abilities necessary to reach their goals.
- Every problematic situation contains choices.
NLP is a short-term therapy.