The How of Thinking: The Secrets of Neuro-linguistic Programming

Abstract

Introduction:  No two people perceive the world around them in exactly the same way. Each of us first filters the sights, sounds and sensations surrounding us through our sensory systems before sending these perceptions on to be processed by and stored in our brains. Understanding exactly how we make sense of the world around us caught the interest of the psychologist, Richard Bandler and the linguist, John Grinder in the 1970’s. Working together at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Bandler and Grinder began to study excellence in communication in the field of psychotherapy. Based on the premise that modeling successful people and defining exactly what they do can lead to successful communication, Grinder and Bandler made video and audio tapes of the renowned therapists, Virginia Satir (family therapy), Fritz Perls (Gestalt therapy), and Milton Erickson (hypnotherapy). They then carefully scrutinized their speech patterns and developed a system of coding them, in order to be able to teach these isolated elements of communication to others. This was the start of what we know today as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).