NLP > Background
The history behind NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming, could be said to have started in California in the US in the beginning of the 1970:s. One of the founders of NLP, Richard Bandler, was at that time a young student who did not feel that he got as much out of his studies in psychology as he wished. Under supervision of one of the teachers at the university, John Grinder, the other person mentioned as a founder of NLP, Richard started teaching other students about gestalt therapy.
In the beginning of NLP
When Richard taught he copied much of what he learnt from Fritz Perls, founder of gestalt therapy, and did as he had said and done. With the help of Johns presence as an observer the two soon started to marvel at what worked and what did not work effectively when it came to creating change.
They studied which grammatics that came to cause change and this also affected the shaping of NLP. They reached the conclusion that it was not enough to do as other successful people said or dig. One also had to gain knowledge of their inner strategies. Bandler and Grinder continued to study several successful people in the area of personal transformation and observed both their verbal and non-verbal communication.
Neuro Linguistic Programming takes shape
The created the concept of modelling, which means to in a systematical manner acquire a successful persons inner and outer strategies, or what you could call mental and physical strategies. Modelling within NLP means that you another persons patterns of thought or structures of thought to your own. This is also a part of the Core Principles of this method.
Additional persons that were studied by Bandler and Grinder in the creation of NLP and Neuro Linguistic Programming were for example Virginia Satir, Milton H Erickson, Gregory Bateson and Paul Watzlawick.
Areas of application for NLP
From the beginning Neuro Linguistic Programming was used mostly as a compliment in different forms of therapy. In later years NLP has come to be used in for example education, sports, health, sales, leadership development, parenting and organisational change.
