WHAT ABOUT ROBERT SPITZER?

Another long lost person who was highly instrumental in the origins of NLP was Robert Spitzer, M.D., Ph.D. Without Robert Spitzer, there might not have been any NLP at all. He was the person who entrusted the audio-tapes of Fritz Perls to young Richard Bandler and who later was the publisher of the first books, The Structure of Magic I and II. It was Spitzer who also provided the opportunity for Richard, John, and Bateson to live at the same place on his property as neighbors. And that’s just the beginning; there’s more, much more.

It was 1967 when Robert S. Spitzer met Richard. Dr. Spitzer wrote about that in his article “Virginia Satir and the Origins of NLP (Anchor Point, Volume 6, No. 7). What he didn’t write about was how he met Richard, why, what that was all about, and what came out of it. I found that out from Dr. Martin Roberts (Pilot, Business Consultant, NLP Trainer, founder of Crown House Publications) in an interview. Robert told Martin that he met Richard as a patient when Richard was brought to him for a “speech impediment.” Robert never told Martin the specifics of that impediment, but Martin’s impression and sense was that it was for stuttering.

Dr. Spitzer worked with Richard on the speech impediment by asking him, “Who would you want to be if you could be someone else?” That could have been his opening question for accessing where his client would find resources for his problem, or it could have been a question from a comment like, “I don’t like who I am; I wish I could be someone else.” Anyway, Richard said, “John Wayne.”

The assignment that Robert then gave young Bandler was to go away, watch John Wayne movies and return in one month and “convince me that you are John Wayne.” So that’s exactly what Bandler did. And in one month, having watched the old western movies of John Wayne, Richard Wayne Bandler had overcome his speech impediment. Martin’s comment to me was that he recalled that Richard had more of a western American accent rather than an eastern New Jersey (his place of birth and young childhood) or Californian (San Francisco), and that there was a certain swagger to the way he walked and conducted himself. My own first recollections of Richard was that of him carrying his knife and keys on his belt and swaggering around in a very macho way.

Next, Robert asked Richard what he liked to do and the answer was play drums. So again he asked a resource-searching question. Who is the best drummer that you know? And while Martin couldn’t remember the answer, the next assignment was to watch that person on the drums, watch the movements, the gestures, the pace, the rhythm, etc. and copy it. Watch and copy the fine minute movements within the drumming. So Richard did precisely that and he

became so good that a few years later, when Robert Spitzer’s son wanted to learn to play the drums— guess who he hired to teach his son? Richard Bandler.

So where did Bandler get his modeling skills— his skills to see and copy another person’s excellence? Could it have been that it arose from his work with Robert Spitzer as his therapist who later became his boss (when he worked in the warehouse of Science and Behavior Books, and when he worked to transcribe the Perls’ tapes and then record the Satir seminar in Canada), who later became his landlord (when he lived in the small house on his property), and who later became his publisher?

Robert Spitzer later wrote that when Richard was listening to the Perls’ tapes and transcribing, that sometimes when he would walk in the room, Richard would say hi using Perls’ tone of voice and Robert would say hi back, “Hi Fritz, I mean Richard.” So my impression as well as that of Martin Roberts is that Dr. Spitzer was incredibly influential in what eventually evolved —in Richard’s copying / modeling skills, in putting Richard into contact with three highly influence people (Perls, Satir, Bateson and Bateson put him and John in touch with Milton Erickson), and in creating the opportunity for creating and publishing the original works.

This also accords with what Malcolm Gladwell has written in his recent book, Outliers. There he described the importance of the right social conditions for success– that success is not merely a personal and individual thing, but that every highly successful person is such because of the social-economic-political conditions that have contributed to that success. That it takes a community to create a successful person or movement, that we are the people we are due to the influence of those who came before us and those around us who have created the conditions within which we have actualized some potential.