What they discovered was revolutionary. NLP came into being and quickly grew, but this new model, introduced by outsiders, was not welcomed by the establishment. Despite lacking any 'stamp of approval' the NLP model became an established alternative model that still heavily influences pragmatic therapy.

Often people think that surely our science has developed a proven, and accepted, model of the human operating system by now, but that's not the case at all. Partly this is because we're so complicated - there's so many variables involved -and partly because much of what we see under the veil many do not want to see. It makes us uncomfortable and potentially undermines the beliefs and values our cultures depend upon. Another reason for the cold shoulder is it's powerful stuff. Salespeople, politicians etc use the knowledge to achieve their objectives. They can 'push buttons' most do not even know exist by waving something of a 'matadors cape'. Naturally enough, there's the belief that such knowledge should only be in trusted hands - i.e. theirs - and even then should be diluted down.

Officially, NLP is deemed to be 'wrong'/ inaccurate which is a bit like saying philosophy is wrong/inaccurate as NLP is open source - no one owns, or controls, what is deemed to be NLP. While the original discoveries, explained in books such as 'The Structure of Magic' and 'Frogs to Princes', were straight forward enough to readily understand, nowadays that's largely lost after 50 years of splitting hairs, putting them under the 'microscope' and splitting them again etc etc. Trying to define NLP these days is like trying to define Buddhism; it depends on who you ask.

NLP, at least original NLP, has many similarities to Taoism which isn't surprising if it's obvious people are looking to feel better, or achieve their objectives ( thus feel better), and successfully them achieve their objectives is NLPs sole focus. 'Right' and 'good' have no place in NLP, instead they judge by usefulness as determined by the specific objective. Naturally, this ruthlessly pragmatic approach ruffles some feathers, but it's also why it's so effective. They don't take the long, established road to objectives if there's a shortcut and they don't impose their values onto their clients. I don't actually know the state of NLP these days as I was just after the empirical knowledge I thought relevant and haven't looked at it in the decades since. I suspect most of it has been diluted, and sanitised, by now. Indeed, on a course I remember one of the instructors proudly telling us she intended writing a book called 'Ethical NLP'. Exactly why she thought anyone would be interested in her ethics was puzzling but clearly regurgitated 'NLP' was starting to push the original variety off the plate.

Anyway, it's worth looking at the core NLP presuppostions - what they understand to be accurate not what is accurate. NLP doesn't deal in 'truths', they deal in truisms, for the very good reason we can't know the truth and what's actually relevant is what is useful to believe given our objectives. Of course, typically, we want our model of reality to reasonably accurate so it's useful therefore we want to pencil in what seems to accurate and relevant.

NLP Presuppositions

I've actually just taken this list of NLP presuppositions from the first page google offered me. They, and the brief explanation, seem accurate enough. From nlpworld.co.uk.

The main potential benefit from having a look through them is from noting the unusual mentality. Humble, fluid, pragmatic.

1. Respect for the other person’s model of the world.
   In order to communicate properly it is important that you have an understanding for the other person’s model of the world. All people have different ways of experiencing the world (different beliefs, values, filters, etc.). By understanding and respecting these differences instead of judging, better communication will occur.

2. Behaviour and change are to be evaluated in terms of context, and ecology. Change is only ‘true’ and sustainable if all the environmental conditions support it!

3. Resistance in a client is a sign of a lack of rapport. (There are no resistant clients, only inflexible communicators. Effective communicators accept and utilize all communication presented to them.)In NLP, being in rapport with the client is crucial! If you are not in rapport, you will not get the positive outcome that you are working towards. In order to get a different outcome you must alter your communication (If what you’re doing isn’t working, do something different).

4. People are not their behaviours. (Accept the person, change the behaviour.)
   The behaviour a person is acting out is not the person itself, but the person’s response to something in their world. What NLP seeks to do, is to enable the person to have more choice in terms of their behaviour and their responses.

5. Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they have available.
   Behaviour is geared for adaptation, and present behavior is the best choice available. Every behaviour is motivated by a positive intent.

6. Calibrate on Behaviour: The most important information about a person is that person’s behaviour.
   People’s behaviour is the only thing we as communicators can observe. Anything else is mind reading. We cannot enter the other person’s mind, and it is therefore important to calibrate on behaviour.

7. The map is not the territory. (The words we use are NOT the event or the item they represent.)
   People respond to their experiences, not to reality itself. We do not have access to reality as it is, we do not know reality. We experience reality through our senses, our beliefs, our filter systems, our own personal “map” of reality. NLP works with changing the “maps” that are not working for the client.

8. You are in charge of your mind, and therefore your results (and I am also in charge of my mind and therefore my results).
   Every action you take has first been a thought in your mind. For there to be an action, there must first be a thought. Nobody but yourself is in charge of your own thoughts, therefore nobody but yourself is in charge of your own results. You are the only person who can change your own results.

9. People have all the resources they need to succeed and to achieve their desired outcomes. (There are no unresourceful people, only unresourceful states.) All people have the ability to create whatever they want in their lives. If another person can do it, so can you. By the process of modeling you can do it even faster than the person who originally did it, because you don’t have to create a strategy as it has already been made for you. It’s all about getting into the right state, the state of excellence.

10. All procedures should increase wholeness. Parts integration is better than labelling to create separateness. Labels can be good for seeing things more clearly under a microscope, but ultimately a telescope cannot see the whole land.

11. There is ONLY feedback! (There is no failure, only feedback.)There is no need to label our results as failures. Rather, seeing our results as feedback and information that can enable us to seek improvement is far more powerful.

12. The meaning of communication is the response you get.
    The intention you have for the communication is just as important as the response that you get. The response that you get may be different to the response that you wanted. The response is feedback that you can use in order to alter your communication to get the appropriate response.

13. The Law of Requisite Variety: (The system/person with the most flexibility of behavior will control the system.)
    The more flexible you are, the more opportunities you can take on in your life. If you have boundaries, you restrict yourself. Being open and flexible simply creates more choices in life.

14. All procedures should be designed to increase choice.
    The more choices you have, the freer you are and the more influence you have.

It’s a light, pragmatic way of thinking. We’re able to separate out the useless baggage and once we start being more effective this process becomes easier until the irrelevant fluff, and contradictions, are gone.

However, as mentioned numerous times, if we’re invested in - experience pleasure via - a given belief/value we’re naturally reluctant to jettison it. In practice, just as a house is built from many bricks, we can become invested in all of them which, if the house is satisfactory, is fine, but if it's not, it's not.

NLP therapy uses a lot of reframing and puts a lot of focus on parts alignment.

Reframing is changing the meaning we're attaching to something/ an event. Change the context - the frame - and we change the meanings. It's often the meanings we've automatically attached that is where the problem/pain is.

'Parts' refers to our motivations and, naturally, we want them to be aligned, more or less. NLP seek to achieve alignment by negotiating with the parts/motivations. 'Ok, you're not happy about path 'A' because you're not going to get what you want. How about if we accomodate your wants on path 'A' to at least some extent. Then you can stop pushing against the rest of the parts/horses/motivations right?' Can work well if the required flexibility is present. But, it's much better to first go upstream of those tangled motivations and detox away the accumulated junk ones. What's the point of trying to incorporate them? Not all motivations are equal. Our little carriage doesn't need 12 horses pulling it through the environment. It's a lot of work feeding all of them and good luck aligning them. We go back to our innate, hardwired ones and see what we've got. Experience that reality, and then decide what other ones you want to invite in. We can now mix and match; Different environment, different objectives, different horses. Horses for courses.

Not all motivations are equal. Perhaps necessarily within incremental therapy, given it's limited scope, this is typically overlooked. Indeed, how can someone on the outside, or even the person themselves, possibly understand from exactly where pleasure and pain flavours are pouring into their cocktail from? They can't. Their brain can guess, but how can it possibly know? To sort it out, we throw it out and then only put back what we want back. We've now only got the flavours we want in our cup and we can swap them out if they go stale, if there's a better set of motivations to hitch to given our present objectives, or just because we like a range of cocktails.

To emphasise the 'no one knows, here's a quote from Harvard professor, and one of the worlds top psychotherapists, Dr Shedler. He's someone I follow on X and, for the record, his model of reality is pretty much exactly the same as mine, at least as regards the human operating system. Of course, there's selection bias in play; I follow him because I agree with him...But the point is the model I'm presenting here aligns with those of many mainstream pragmatic psychotherapists. Not surprising as you'd think at least the basics of our operating system would be figured out by now.

Shedler Quote;

'Around 2000, I had a medical scare and got a lot of terrifying diagnoses from medical doctors. The diagnoses had two things in common: 1) They were wrong. 2) They were all delivered with certainty.

It made me reflect on my own work as a psychologist. I printed a sign and hung it on the wall in front of my desk so it would always be in my line of sight. It said,

“We don’t know.”

It was my reminder to be humble in my work with patients. I’ve fallen short many, many times, and still fall short. But I’m still trying, every day.'

He didn't put that sign up to virtue signal, to collect 'brownie points'. He did it so he could be more effective.

Jensen Huang. CEO & President of NVIDIA made the same general point speaking recently at a conference;

“you cannot show me a task that is beneath me.”

I used to be a dish washer and cleaned toilets. I’ve probably cleaned more toilets than everyone here combined.’

Elon Musk shared it and wrote ‘ this is the way’

I save many of Shedlers quotes and the one I have below the above is kind of related so I'll add it.

'I’m coming around to the view that the central challenge of what we might call the “psychology project” is carving out a discipline of psychology and psychotherapy that is distinct from what we might call “morality projects.”

It is only recently in human history that we have begun to think of mental and emotional suffering in psychological terms, rather than moral terms.

The heart of the psychology project is the recognition that none of us fully know our own hearts and minds, and we can benefit from greater self-understanding.

But it’s been an ongoing battle to claim and reclaim the terrain of psychotherapy from the tides of moralizing that continually encroach and threaten to erode it away.'