Introducing NLP: Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) Paperback – May 1, 2011

First my opinion of NLP in general. I am a religious person, and next to the scriptures, this is one of the most important collections of concepts we could have. There are human understandings and techniques here that have been lost, or worse, hidden from us: information that should have been handed down from generation to generation since Adam instead of being discovered/assimilated in the 1970's. These are techniques that can essentially be used to bring our mind and will under our subjection.Not only is this book a great introduction to NLP, but it is one of the most clearly written and explained books I have ever read on any subject. There were one or two chapters that were not as good as the rest and a bit more vague as to their purpose and application.Reading through is a waste of time, you will glean important information, but the riches that you discover will be much greater if this is treated as a workbook, taking each suggestion and practicing it. I spent a year reading and trying and it has been very rewarding.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming is a pseudo-science that has dramatically improved the way that I approach business and social scenarios with confidence and success. NLP is an approach to communication that focuses on the link, hardwired in our brains, between language and behaviors. In that way, this book is more of a toolkit than a textbook. It presents the reader with new processes and patterns to help make them a more effective, confident communicator. NLP is no more or less real than traditional hypnotherapy, and both probably work simply by virtue of practitioners’ belief. While some of the book may be a bit exaggerated in its efficacy, I have certainly gathered some tools from this book that I use on a daily basis. NLP has helped me to become more perceptive and clairvoyant in life, as well as enhancing my ability to call upon strength and confidence in character whenever it’s needed. Even for a chronic skeptic like myself, there are certainly some useful tools buried in this book.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a practical and scientific mechanism of self-improvement and serenity. There is the mental (neural) part of it that emanates from our neurological processes in our brain that induce stimuli such as sense, smell, taste, etc. As the Sapir-Whorf Thesis postulates, we conceptualize the world through language and this is the linguistic part of NLP. The programming part of it is the result of the organization of the neurological and linguistic components. NLP is very practical in large part because of it's scientific veracity. Authors Joseph O'Connor and John Seymour are scientists, and seem to have a very good grasp of the natural world, especially neurology and anything in the cognitive sciences. I immediately realized this on page 5 when they were discussing NLP maps and filters which are referred to as behavioral frames. The first is what they described as an orientation toward outcomes rather than problems. The second is to ask "how" rather than "why" questions. The third is feedback versus failure. In the fourth you consider possibilities rather than necessities. In the fifth, you adopt an attitude of curiosity and fascination rather than making assumptions. These are essential values towards a reason-based and objective existence. The third frame surprised me because I've heard it before by Lawrence Krauss in a debate of the existence of God and again in his book - A Universe From Nothing - which I've previously written a review for. It's been ingrained in my mind ever since, and I feel that it's an invaluable mental mechanism towards viewing the world free from dogma and fallacious orthodoxy. The same exact applies to the fifth frame, and all for that matter. It's the mental algorithm that should be ingrained in all high-level thinkers. There's good interpersonal framework; calibration, anchors, pacing, loops and systems, learning loops, levels of learning, etc. The so-called "meta-model" was very interesting to me. The Meta Model is a serious of questions that seek to make sense of communication and elicit latent information. The concepts in the Meta Model are unspecified nouns, unspecified verbs, comparisons, judgments, nominalizations, modal operators of possibility, modal operators of necessity, universal quantifiers, complex equivalence, presuppositions, cause and effect, and mind reading. This may have been the most illuminating part of the whole book, and I highly solicit the idea that if NLP is a pseudoscience, then regardless these concepts are viable and understanding them would definitely be helpful. The memory strategy introduced in chapter 9 builds my trust because I've been studying memory on the side and the memory techniques introduced in the text seem to correspond to the underlining memory-improving consensus. The music and especially the memory strategy are interesting too. Now there are some sketchy things like some of the psychotherapy techniques introduced, the phobia cure and the swish pattern, and some more things.What is good about NLP is that it seems to be science based; it acknowledges the mind and body under a naturalistic light, and thus considers both part of the same system abiding by the same laws. Now I've seen criticism online of it being a well known "pseudoscience". Perhaps it has been extended to be one recently? This book is pretty old and i'm not sure about the veracity of everything in it but usually im quickly aware of pseudoscience. Regardless, there is a lot of good self-help information to glean from it. I believe that with all my heart and I have a high amount of trust in a lot of the [science-based] information in the text. By the same token, I am sketched out by some of the miraculous "techniques" in this book and I do encourage everyone who's interested to do further research.4.2/5

I have read plenty of NLP books. I have always had trouble really grasping the whole meaning behind NLP. After reading this I finally get it. This book really puts NLP terms in simple language. I found myself reading and saying to myself, "that actually makes sense now!" The best way to describe it would be like a light bulb turning on. There is also no BS that you will find in a lot of NLP books. It's not one of those feel good NLP books. It gives you what you need to practice and breaks it down step by step. Seriously if you have ever had trouble grasping the concepts and meaning of NLP buy this book.

I became certified in NLP at the "Practioner" level nearly fifteen years ago and this is the best introduction to NLP that I have read. It does not equip the reader to use the full range of NLP techniques any more than a book on martial arts equips the reader for a real fight, that can only be accomplished by taking a certification course which is lengthy and expensive, but well worth it. Almost all are taught by board certified psychiatrists. But this book provides a highly informative introduction to the theory and techniques of NLP such that the reader can make an informed decision whether to invest in actual training. BTW, it works.

At one point, this book was probably the best thing on the market. If you read "Frogs to Princes", then you will know the level of improvement this book is over that one. Original NLP books came out in the mid to late 70's and this book was written in 1993 with supposedly few changes to the second edition.The author is constantly referring to other more thorough books. The title is accurate, it is an introduction and nothing more. If this was only meant to be an introduction, I think it should have been half the size. Too much of it was filler text.I'm looking elsewhere.