The following are the files in the my NLP archive (formerly available from ftp.Hawaii.Edu). All the files listed here are now in HTML format, so they should be pretty readable for most web browsers.
For those who would prefer to retrieve the archive via ftp, go to ftp.manifestation.com/lady. This is Michal Sabren's site.
Almost all of these are articles which originally appeared in sci.psychology. Most of them are by me, a few are by other people. They represent my own interpretation of NLP. Therefore my own ideas are mixed in with the ideas of NLP and it's not always easy --- even for me --- to tell where the one leaves off and the other begins.
These articles extend over a period of roughly five years. The dates given are usually the date when the article was most recently reposted, although the text of a reposted article will usually mention the date of original posting.
Over the five-year period, I've learned a lot of new things, both about NLP and about academic psychology, and my ideas have changed in various ways. I'm not totally satisfied with the earlier articles any more, but I'm also not willing to take the time to rewrite them.
In any case, please note that I am not an ultimate authority or guru in NLP. I have training a little beyond the master practitioner level but I am not trained as a trainer myself. It is best to think of me simply as a journalist, doing my best to provide some information about NLP as best I understand it.
One thing which I had expected to get a lot of flak from NLPers on is the fact that the articles here concentrate almost exclusively on NLP as therapy, and in fact focus mostly on techniques. Almost every NLP training I have been through has emphasized that therapy, and most particular the NLP techniques, are not what NLP is, they are merely an application of NLP. In this respect, one can object that the view of NLP presented here is fairly superficial. And, in fact, it is. These articles were mostly directed towards a skeptical audience of academics and practicing therapists, and I thought that if I could get them to see some possibility of value in the NLP techniques, that would be a major accomplishment and as much as I could hope for. Furthermore, this superficial introduction to NLP was all that I really felt qualified to write about.
Articles by other people are included in this archive when, in my opinion, they contain valuable information or ideas which are worth thinking about. In general, I have included such articles in their entirety. The fact that an article by someone else is part of this archive does not mean, however, that I endorse all the statements made in that article.
In a few cases, I have added a little additional factual information, such as specific bibliographic references and the like, to articles written by others.
The files
(listed here in not quite chronological order) contain information about the history and roots of NLP. The file called history was my first stab at this and it is mostly fairly accurate. Hist.add contains some corrections and additions by someone named Charles Duncan. Hist.93 is based on a talk by Robert Dilts and Judith Epstein and has a high degree of accuracy. Roots.0 is an article by Charles Faulkner discussing some of the links between NLP and the work of George Kelly and the Constructivists.
Most leading NLP figures make of point of asserting that NLP is not really a form of therapy, that therapy is merely one application of NLP. According to this view, the real subject of NLP is what NLPers call "modeling" --- i.e. the process of eliciting mental strategies from a person so that that person's skill can be taught to someone else. The two files modeling and roots.2 give an introduction to this.
The file books is a list of introductory books on NLP. (The file books.kfail contains a longer list by Kenneth Fail. More comprehensive lists can be found at other NLP web sites.) The file videotapes contains descriptions of a few videotapes. The files tape.connirae and tape.leslie are reviews of two videotapes.
The files
contain various comments on what an NLP training is like.
Here are some articles describing and discussing specific NLP techniques.
The thought-stopping and anxiety remedy techniques are interesting because they make no sense at all on a purely conscious level. They apparently retrain the nervous system. The anxiety remedy seems to be merely a temporary calmative, not a permanent cure.
The files depression and depression.2 discuss some nlp techniques (also described in other files) which might be useful in conjunction with cognitive therapy for depression. The first article is purely speculative. The second is by Tad James and gives a time-line therapy approach.
The articles in the series
are a lengthy discussion of a method for structuring one's thinking in doing changework [therapy], taught to me during my first NLP training in 1983-84.
The series
is an exposition of the very important NLP idea of "submodalities." This idea is the basis for a large number of NLP techniques developed in the past ten years.
The articles thinking and thinking.2 partially address the question "What is thinking?" from an NLP standpoint. These articles tend to contain mostly thoughts of my own, inspired by what I've learned from NLP, rather than things that can be found in NLP references.
The html article chronix.html contains a set of notes on suicide prevention written at the end of a three-year period during which I was a telephone volunteer for the Honolulu Suicide & Crisis Center.
The directory Hedberg/* contains a paper by Chris Hedberg (in various formats) surveying academic research on NLP.