Talk:Neuro-linguistic programming/Intro

Stuff that might belong in the intro:

• Neuro-linguistic programming, often shortened to NLP, is the name of ...
• It falls within cognitive sciences
• It is considered an applicable science.
• It has a working methodlogy
• It was founded by Grinder and Bandler in the early 1970s.
• It was based upon in depth studies which attempted to identify ("model") how a range of excellent therapists achieved the exceptional results they achieved
• It attempts to study methodically, and describe functionally, how people do what they do
• This includes how excellent performers do well, so that their skills can be documented and understood more and taught easier, and how people with problems are having those problems, to allow efficient ways to be found to help them
• NLP has a rich and complex set of principles and approaches. Although sometimes pictured as being "about" some pattern or other, in fact it is a full approach to modeling how people work at an AI-type level.
• Philosophically, it treats people as black boxes whose behaviors (internal and external) can be approximated as a systemic pattern of sensory based processing.
• It does not look to anything beyond the five senses and verifiable observation, and systems built upon these, in approximating how people work.
• It is pragmatic, it focusses on what is visible, testable and works, rather than imposing a theory.
• It has had a controversial history, due in part to litigation by its founders, its willingness to extend its approach to examine dubious phenomenae usually classed as non-scientific, and the commercialization and hype with which many people promote, package or make claims for it, and its somewhat anarchic development which has not lent itself well to clear explanation.
• As a skill-based approach to diagnosis and treatment it has also had considerable difficulty in scientific testing because it is itself developing empirically, outside academic discipline, poorly understood by some experimenters, lacking an agreed set of rigorous definitions and formulations, not documented in the scientific manner, some of its claims have appeared premature or questionable, and it is designed by users not theoreticians.
• On the other hand both functionally and empirically, it appears that there is significant evidence both from formal research and subjectively from users and clients, to suggest that its methods are effective when used by skilled users "in the field".
• A variety of researchers have questioned NLP's validity, some going so far as to name it pseudoscience, lacking credibility, charlatanery, or simply erroneous, others to either name it (or the fervor of its believers), as a cult, or cult-like.
• NLP is used three ways -- in its own right as an approach to efficient communication, as an approach to change and self-help, and packaged and used by third parties -- for both beneficial and fraudulent purposes.
• Although its public association is with self-help and cult-like promises, in fact it is solidly used within the clinical profession, within education and training, law enforcement, and a wide variety of other fields, though some who are not aware of this widespread acceptance will find this surprising and controversial.

The next sections might then be:

• Overview
  • Definitions
  • Approach
  • ...
• History and utilization
• Working methods
  • Core models
  • Working principles and presuppositions
  • Working methods

...