The Debt to NLP

• Ericksonian Therapy and NLP by kendavis@erols.com, 9/3/97
  • (...)
    
    • NLP Practitioners by Jeffrey Zeig, 9/27/97
      
      

I doubt that anyone denies the debt that Ericksonian therapy owes to Bandler and Grinder and to NLP in particular. First, Bandler and Grinder popularized the work of Erickson more than anyone since the days of Jay Haley. A lot of important concepts of Dr. Erickson entered the psyche of the mental health practitioner through NLP. If you think about the number of leading practitioners of Ericksonian therapy who were involved at one time in NLP, the list is indeed impressive: Dr. Stephen Gilligan, Stephen Lankton, Dr. Michael Yapko etc. Many of these people were introduced to Erickson through NLP and then went beyond the limitations of NLP. For many years, David Gordon has preached that NLP must be more than a collection of techniques that the practitioner pulls out of a bag. Unfortunately, very few people have answered the call. People want a technique to apply in all situations. This is unfortunate because many items in the NLP model of Erickson are vital. Remember the first (post-Haley) non-NLP books? They offered valuable transcripts of Erickson doing therapy but then cut away and said...at this point Erickson told a story... In other words, until the NLP'ers came along and modeled Erickson and his therapy, many mainstream therapists ignored metaphor as a therapeutic tool. As far as your comments about licensing requirements, I agree. People should have credentials. If medical schools turned out doctors the way NLP mills turn out "therapists", people would die like flies.

• Ultimately Bateson, for the record by Stephen Lankton, 11/12/97