Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, NLP dominated America more than anywhere else in the world. Once upon a time there were hundreds upon hundreds of training centers —several in every major city and half a dozen NLP Associations across the country. Then there were numerous journals, practice groups, and the talk of NLP was everywhere. But no longer.
Today there are a dozen or so centers left and all are much smaller versions of the former ones. And today there are no Associations left nor are there any magazines or journals. And if you are like most people when they hear this, they ask with astonishment, “What in the world happened?”
Also, once upon a time in southern California, NLP as a new model of human development arose that caught the attention of the field of psychology, psychotherapy, counseling, education, hypnotherapy, and many other fields. And it was based on some solid researchers and world-class communicators— people like Bateson, Korzybski, Satir, Perls, Erickson, George Miller, Chomsky, etc. And it thrived from the late 1970s through the 1980s. Then the movement began hitting some snags.
So what happened? Well, I think that the demise of NLP in the United States lies mostly in the hands of the very person who also did the most to create it—Richard Bandler. At the same time, he offered a new way to think about and perceive human experiences he also seemed incredible skilled at creating offense and disrespect for the model! When I entered the field, his murder trial in San Diego was just beginning. [Yes, that was quite an introduction to the field!] Prior to that was the lawsuit between him and Grinder; and after the murder trial, the lawsuit he filed against Tony Robbins. Then there was all of the drugging with cocaine and heavy drinking and so on.
Yet what really created the demise of NLP in the U.S. was Richard’s 1996 lawsuit for 90,000,000 dollars against eight people and “200 John Does” (that’s legal language for people to be named to the lawsuit”), a lawsuit against the field of NLP. And given his reputation for playing nasty or hardball, that lawsuit scared a lot of people. Actually, it not only scared them, it scared the hell out of them so that scores of people began shutting down their training centers, they stopped using the letters “NLP” in their writings, presentations, businesses, and they distanced themselves more and more from the community (what was left of it). As a strategy for ruining a movement, for torpedoing a field, for throwing cold water on fans of the model— it was very successful! Of course, if you are wondering as I have heard so many wonder aloud and in writing, “Why would anyone in their right mind do that?” — well, that’s another question, and I can only guess at it.
The lawsuit was filed in 1996 and lasted till 2000 or 2001 when Bandler lost. He was then assessed some $600,000 to be paid to Chris Hall (no relationship to me), NLP was declared in public domain, and he moved to Ireland. Yet in the past eight or nine years, the field has been very, very slow to recover. In fact, one of the strangest things now about the field of NLP— it is thriving and growing and doing very well almost everywhere in the world except the United States! It is exploding in Russia and the former Soviet countries; it is thriving and exploding in China and throughout Asia.
This is not to say that everyone helping with the spread is presenting high quality NLP or being ethical in what they are doing. Many are not. In this, the buyer truly has to beware and has to ask many, many hard questions. But that’s the subject of another article.
Regarding bringing NLP back to the United States, it does not seem to be arising from within. There is some growth, but it is very small. We probably need solid NLP trainers in England, Europe, Latin America, Canada, even Australia and that part of the world to bring it back and establish it on more solid grounds. In fact, if you are a solid quality NLP trainer, there are dozens and dozens of major cities in the United States without any NLP training— cities of a million or more people and not a single training center.
And this is also true of Neuro-Semantics. At this moment, we do not have a Neuro-Semantic Institute in the United States —Mexico, yes. Canada, coming soon. But in the United States— no. Nothing. Zip. Zadda. I would, but currently my relationship to the States is that I keep flying back home to pay taxes. In terms of living, I mostly live everywhere else!
Why am I writing about this? Because here is a true opportunity for lots of people and because most people around the world don’t know about this. Here is an opportunity for someone, or several someones, for people in Europe, Asia, Latin America or elsewhere make it their mission to import NLP back to the United States. What do you think? The opportunities are immense. With dozens of major cities with populations into the millions and with over 300 million across the country, the States offer a vast market. Who has the business acumen to create Training Centers or Event Companies and bring a high quality, ethical, and commercially viable business model to the United States? What Neuro-Semantic/NLP trainer will do that?
I train almost exclusively outside of the United States, but not by choice. I do that because that is where NLP is growing and where Neuro-Semantics is exploding. For myself, I would love to conduct the Meta-Coaching System on both coasts of the United States and a couple places in the middle, yet to do that, we need NLP trainers training NLP Practitioner and/or NLP Introduction courses. There also need to be Neuro-Semantic trainers running APG workshops on Meta-States.
Now that NLP is “in the public domain” in the United States and in the UK, and now that nearly a decade has passed since all of the commotion of the lawsuits and the bad press of NLP, the time has come for there to be a resurgence of NLP in the US. And now that the original hype and all of the new-age non-sense has passed, the time is ripe for a professional development of NLP and Neuro-Semantics in the US. Those who know how to present NLP for business, for high quality communication, for modeling excellence and those who know how to present the higher ethical and professional standards of Neuro-Semantics and the vision of “walking the talk” —you have a wonderful opportunity. People need it. Who will rise up to take up the challenge?
Michael Hall