THE FIVE MODELS OF NLP

What is Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)? In spite of the fact that NLP has been around since 1975 (and 1972 if you count the pre-development days), the question about what it is and how to define it continues. So, what is it? And why is it so difficult to define?

Imagine that we had asked this question in 1980— five years after the official beginning of NLP and eight years after Richard and Frank began their Gestalt Class at the University at Santa Cruz. If you had asked it then, you would have heard about five models. You could also have discovered this on your own if you simply read the key books of that era. If you had read The Structure of Magic volumes I and II, read The Hypnotic Patterns of Milton H. Erickson, volumes I and II. Read NLP: The Study of the Structure of Subjective Experience, read Frogs into Princes, Therapeutic Metaphors, Changing with Families ... And you will have heard about five and only five models that comprised the content of NLP:

1) Meta-Model of Language in Therapy

2) Milton Model, Hypnotic Language Patterns

3) The Strategy Model— the Representation System enriched TOTE)

4) Representational Model including Sub-Modality distinctions

5) Meta-Programs of perceptual filters

Fast forward a decade to 1990 and the same answer would have also been given at that time as well. By 1990 you could have also read Trance-Formation, Using Your Brain for a Change, Reframing, Introducing NLP, Unlimited Power, etc. If in 1990, 15 years after the beginning (or 18) and again ask: What is NLP? The answer would be pretty straightforward and clear: NLP is a Communication Model. It is a model derived from Transformational Grammar (TG) which was the primary tool that the early developers used to modeled how Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton H. Erickson used language (verbal and non-verbal) to facilitate change in people so that they would become more resourceful, conscious (mindful), responsible (take charge of their own lives), and able to be effective in succeeding at reaching and actualizing the goals that they set in life.

NLP is a Personal Development Model. By using the internal and external communication channels, a person could then learn how to “run his or her own brain,” take responsibility to manage one’s state, understand the structure of one’s experiences, and frame and reframe the meanings that inform experience. All this was part of the original design and purpose of NLP. And no wonder, Perls and Satir were second-generation leaders at Esalen of the first Human Potential Movement, so was Gregory Bateson. They learned the presuppositions from the new Humanistic Psychology of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.

NLP is a Modeling Process. Again, using the communication processes as well as the Strategy Model taken from the Cognitive Psychologists, George Miller and associates, NLP provided a way to find the structure of any experience, especially experiences of expertise, and replicate that structure so it can be transferred to others by training, teaching, consulting, coaching, and therapy.

What is NLP? The short answer is that NLP is communication, personal development, and modeling. This three-fold definition describes what NLP was at the beginning and what it was at its foundational stage. And it is based on those original five models.

In the beginning the developers only had two tools—they had mimicking and Transformational Grammar. First Richard Bandler copied and mimicked Fritz Perls’ voice and words from audio- tapes that he was transcribing. Later, when Richard and Frank Pucelik, as students, taught Gestalt, they realized that something beyond the theory of Gestalt Therapy was occurring. So they invited John Grinder to examine the linguistics using Transformational Grammar (TG). From that they created they called “the Meta-Model of Language in Therapy.”

Now the funning thing is that while NLP started with Transformational Grammar, it quickly disappeared as an NLP tool. They put it in the first two books (The Structure of Magic) and then it was never used again. And rightly so! That’s because Noam Chomsky, the developer of Transformational Grammar, also dispensed with it as unworkable. He did so in 1976. I noted this in the book, Communication Magic (1997/2001) and commented that all that TG really provided NLP was the distinction between two levels of language: surface and deep level. They rejected it because they have a better model for their purposes— The Meta-Model.

NLP also began, and created its own models, as the early developers modeled “best practices.” It arose first from copying (modeling) what Fritz did and then what Virginia did. Wyatt Woodsmall calls this Modeling I— modeling the products of expertise. Strange enough, NLP did not do Modeling II at the beginning. The early developers were so focused on techniques, on what the experts were doing, they did not model how they did what they did or how they learned to do it. So today we have no model of any of the original experts regarding their creativity, learning, or development.

This means we have never found out about how Perls, Satir, and Erickson thought and felt, how they created what they created— their creative strategies. What were given to us were a few of their attitudes in the form of the “NLP Presuppositions,” yet these came mostly from Maslow, Rogers, and Bateson.

Bottom line, what is NLP? A communication model that incorporates within it the variables about how human experience works. And because we create our experiences via our meanings and linguistics in our embodied state (neurology)— the “communication model” of NLP enables us to identify how we create our experiences can be used for so much more— modeling expertise in the world around us and transferring it to others. That makes it pretty important. It makes NLP a meta- discipline about multiple disciplines and so is an inter-disciplinary model as well.

Why is it so hard to define NLP? Because it is a synthesis of three disciplines! No wonder it takes a mouthful of words to describe it. It is not a singular discipline. It is inter-disciplinary.

Linguistics — Chomsky’s Transformational Grammar, Bateson’s Communication Theory, Korzybski’s General Semantics. Cognitive Psychology– Miller’s Structure of Behavior and TOTE, Chomsky’s TG. Self-Actualization Psychology — Maslow and Rogers, and Human Potential Movement second-generation leaders Perls, Satir, and Bateson.

NLP Today in Neuro-Semantics If this is what NLP is, and this is certainly what we present in Neuro-Semantics, then anyone properly trained in NLP needs a thorough and robust training in these five models. For us, a Practitioner in this inter-disciplinary field needs to know these five models inside-out. And if NLP is communication, personal development, and modeling, then this is the content and focus of what a practitioner should be.

A professional communicator A developer of persons A modeler

To that end, we in Neuro-Semantics have used Coaching as the discipline wherein people can learn to become professional communicators. Similarly, we have used Self-Actualization Psychology as the discipline wherein a person can truly become a developer of persons, and we have made the Master Practitioner training as the foundation for modeling.

A professional communicator — Meta-Coaching at multiple levels: ACMC, PCMC. A developer of persons — Self-Actualization Psychology Diploma: The Unleashing Series. A modeler — Master Practitioner training in the tools for modeling, Meta-States, Matrix, Neuro-Semantic Modeling, Cultural Modeling.

If you’re interested in getting a thorough and robust and high quality experience of the NLP models— then check out Neuro-Semantic NLP. Contact a Neuro-Semantic NLP Trainer near you who is training Practitioner and Master Practitioners. See www.neurosemantics.com — if you are a NLP Trainer, join us in Trainers’ Training this year (May 16-30) to add Neuro-Semantics to your repertoire.