Neuro-Linguistic programming has been the target of large criticism recently by professionals and laypeople around the world. Neuro-linguistic programming trainers call this “tragedy of opportunity” for psychological science and related fields. The reason for this is because every time NLP is mentioned, it’s instantly dismissed out of hand and it’s a great loss for modern psychology.
Here are the reasons as to why NLP is hugely and widely criticized.
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1. An old rivalry
It’s a known fact that one of the earliest pioneers of NLP made a name for himself by criticizing the work of psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and others in traditional mental health.
This man was arrogant and hypocritical towards the mainstream traditional mental health and made a bad name for himself and the whole NLP community.
Source: dralinagram.comThis caused other doctors to discredit NLP professionals and make them lose credibility because they were mocked. Instead of sharing the model that could have revolutionized mental health treatment, that man offended everyone in mental health and made them hate their NLP peers.
For all the attention NLP has gotten, it was certainly bad attention.
2. The NLP pioneers were a bunch of hippies who wanted a grassroots movement
It has always been the intentions of NLP developers to avoid professionalization to their field. They have historically avoided trademarking their brand as NLP has always been a public domain and everyone owns it.
The NLP pioneers have been criticized in the past for their lack of scientific research. Scientific research is based on the philosophy of the scientific method, which NLP developers find it highly subjective due to the fact that it is very close to a metaphor. This makes NLP developers lose credibility in mental health.
Because no one is in charge, there is no definite organizing body to monitor how trainers and training happens. There is no organizing body to oversee anything. Everyone is doing their own separate thing.
This is making NLP lose professional credibility which doesn’t make NLP less effective, or credible, it just makes it harder to convince everyone.
3. It’s hard to validate NLP with science when you never do the same thing twice
Highly skilled NLP practitioners understand that doing the same thing twice is not preferable. NLP is about building blocks that you can stack in all kinds of different ways. And the keyword in this sentence is “different.” Every session with a client is different than others. Every session with a client has dynamic events that can head in any direction. And that’s the sole purpose of NLP; all of those directions are based on client observations and client feedback.
The real hard task is that you can’t set up a study with proper controls. If every session is different, then how can you test the same thing twice?
Source: Kelly Morgan
4. Some NLP trainers are indeed scam artists
Because NLP has no governing body, anyone can learn it and come up with anything in which he can use NLP and make money out of that, no matter how stupid it is.
Some of the examples of such scams are
- Get any woman into bed right now with these simple NLP seduction tricks!
- You will be raining in money and taking home any chick with these NLP techniques!
- Get anyone to do anything you want with these NLP mind controls!
These are the reasons why NLP is losing credibility. You don’t get to see things like this in other areas of mental health.
You might be a professional NLP trainer, and in cases like this, the best weapon you have against this is to acknowledge that there are a few bad apples on every field. There is nothing you can do but distance yourself from people like these.
