Neuro-linguistic programming

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy that first appeared in Richard Bandler and John Grinder's book The Structure of Magic I (1975). NLP asserts a connection between neurological processes, language, and acquired behavioral patterns, and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life. According to Bandler and Grinder, NLP can treat problems such as phobias, depression, tic disorders, psychosomatic illnesses, near-sightedness, allergy, the common cold, and learning disorders, often in a single session. They also say that NLP can model the skills of exceptional people, allowing anyone to acquire them.

NLP has been adopted by some hypnotherapists as well as by companies that run seminars marketed as leadership training to businesses and government agencies.

No scientific evidence supports the claims made by NLP advocates, and it has been called a pseudoscience. Scientific reviews have shown that NLP is based on outdated metaphors of the brain's inner workings that are inconsistent with current neurological theory, and that NLP contains numerous factual errors. Reviews also found that research that favored NLP contained significant methodological flaws, and that three times as many studies of a much higher quality failed to reproduce the claims made by Bandler, Grinder, and other NLP practitioners.

Early development

According to Bandler and Grinder, NLP consists of a methodology termed modeling, plus a set of techniques that they derived from its initial applications. They derived many of the fundamental techniques from the work of Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson and Fritz Perls.