subject: An Insight Into Neuro Linguistic Programming 6 [print this page] Despite the NLP community's being splintered, most NLP material acknowledges the early work of co-founders Bandler and Grinder, as well as the development group that surrounded them in the 1970s. In June 2001, the lawsuits were settled with Bandler and Grinder agreeing to be known as co-founders of NLP.
Since its beginnings in the 1970s, NLP has been taught in a variety of formats that involve the promotion of associations and the attainment of course certificates. Course lengths and style vary from institute to institute. In the 1990s, following attempts to put NLP on a regulated footing in the UK, other governments began certifying NLP courses and providers for example, in Australia, a Graduate Certificate in Neuro-linguistic programming is accredited under the Australian Qualifications Framework.
However, NLP continues to be an open field of training with no official best practice. With different authors, individual trainers and practitioners having developed their own methods, concepts and labels, often branding them as NLP, the training standards and quality differ greatly. According to Peter Schutz, the length of training in Europe varies from 2-3 days for the hobbyist to 35-40 days over at least nine months to achieve a professional level of competence. He says the multiplicity and general lack of controls has led to difficulty discerning the comparative level of competence, skill and attitude in different NLP trainings and has resulted in NLP getting associated with cults like Scientology, and getting labelled in unfavourable political ways (nazi linguistic programming).
In 2001, neuro-linguistic psychotherapy, a derivative of NLP, was recognized by the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy as an experimental constructivist form of psychotherapy.
Today, there are many competing organisations offering varying forms of NLP training and certification in what can be a lucrative business. The Guardian reported that in 2006 that a seven day course by Paul McKenna's company for 600 delegates produced 1 million pounds of revenue. Many variants of the practice are found in seminars, workshops, books and audio programs in the form of exercises and principles intended to influence behavioural and emotional change in self and others. There is great variation in the depth and breadth of training and standards of practitioners, and some disagreement between those in the field about which patterns are, or are not, NLP.
There have been advancements in our understanding of neurology over the past few years that corroborate a view long articulated by the co-creators of NLP documented in some of their earliest writing. You will hear the term neuro plasticity, which refers to the changing nature of the brain in the aforementioned videos and text. This is precisely what Bandler and Grinder have been saying in seminars and writing for several decades.
