NLP: DEEPER THAN COMMUNICATION

After several years of research into the field of critical thinking, and then into thinking itself, and after publishing more than ten books on thinking and its many kinds, I wrote about NLP as a Thinking Model [that was Neurons, 2023 #43 and #44]. That came about after I surveyed all of the early NLP books to see if I could determine why the founders and developers choose to focus NLP as a Communication Model rather than a Thinking Model. I wanted to know, “What was their reasoning to do that?”

“NLP is the martial art of communication: graceful, enjoyable, and very effective.” (Seymour and O’Connor, 1990, 41).

Sometime after that I re-read one of the very best NLP book, Introducing NLP by John Seymour and Joseph O’Connor I came across this which is right in the beginning of that book: “NLP—a way of thinking about ideas and people.” (1979, p. 21). Now for a moment I thought that perhaps I had jumped the gun by making my statement that “no one had recognized NLP as a Thinking Model.” But then, when they wrote the following, I realized something else.

“What is thinking? ...everyone knows intimately what thinking is for themselves. ... Thinking is such an obvious commonplace activity, we never give it a second thought. We tend to think about what we think about, not how we think about it.” (Ibid., p. 43)

By framing the phenomena of thinking as “such an obvious commonplace activity” that everybody does it and everybody knows what it is—they thereby dismissed it completely! “We never give it a second thought.” Amazing! Somehow they forgot Bateson’s comment in his Preface to The Structure of Magic (1975) that what he and his colleagues had struggled to do for years and years trying to find a basis for human psychology, linguistics, consciousness, and thinking. He said that the NLP founders identified it in something so simple, and so obvious, namely, the sensory systems. Thinking has its beginning in the sensory representations which we use to reference, in our minds, what we’re thinking about. That was an incredible discovery!

Yet, for the most part, NLP as a field essentially dismissed the thinking question, “What is thinking?” and focused on another question, “What is communication and how does it work?” “What makes Perls’ and Satir’s communications so transformative?” Ultimately, as they built the NLP Communication Model, they ignored the deeper phenomena of thinking. Yet ironically they built it out of the thinking patterns of the Meta-Model, the representation systems, and the cinematic features (falsely labeled “sub-

modalities”). In that way, NLP shifted from its essence as a thinking model as it was sold as a Communication Model.

Now NLP as a Communication Model has performed wonderfully. The sensory systems (VAK) has provided a deeper look into the key variables that operate in the theater of our minds. That, in turn, establishes many of the different intelligences that we have which we can use for learning, information gathering, knowledge building, modeling, and much more. Of course, anything powerful can be powerfully misused and NLP has suffered that fate as unethical persons have used it for personal gain by taking advantage of others.

Yet in focusing on Communication rather than on thinking, NLP has missed so many opportunities for changing the world. Because more fundamental than communication is the quality of our thinking. If your thinking is distorted or biased or fallacious—then so will be your communications. Therefore the place to correct things is at the level of thinking. And that’s what we call critical thinking—to think about our thinking so that we can check it against reality, so that we can make sure it is accurate and precise. And if we can do that—we can much more easily change ourselves, invite change in others, and ultimately, change the world. To that end, we now have three Brain Camps wherein we train people for critical and creative thinking. We call the critical thinking skills —essential skills, and the creative skills—eureka thinking skills, and the meta skills— executive thinking skills.

Of course, at this point an old problem arises. Thinking is hard work. Well, real thinking is. Superficial thinking is easy because it is pretty much mindless. Real thinking starts when you realize that we don’t truly think until or unless we have a problem. Ah, that’s the problem with thinking! Problems elicit thinking. “We do not think unless we hit a snag.” That’s what John Dewey wrote in his classic book, How We Think. “The origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion, or doubt.” How about that? If you are moving through your daily interactions without problems, puzzles, inquires, questions, etc., you are probably not thinking. But here’s the magic, you can! If you want to, you can choose to actually and truly think. But be warned: when you do—you and your world will change.