Neuro-linguistic programming
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a field of human endeavor concerned with empirically studying and modeling human performance and excellence, with the goal of creating transferable skill sets. The field has grown in many directions since its beginnings in modeling successful psychotherapists and has found applications in most areas involving human communications, such as education and learning, persuasion, negotiation, sales, leadership, team-building, etc., as well as decision-making, creative processes, health, medicine, and athletic performance.
History
The field was created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the early 1970s from what they called "modeling" several well-known psychotherapists, namely Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erickson. Bandler, then a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Grinder, then an Assistant Professor of linguistics, were strongly influenced by the mentoring of Gregory Bateson, and they drew their approach from many inspirations such as cybernetics and the General Semantics of Alfred Korzybski.
NLP clearly falls under the broadest heading of psychology, and perhaps most closely relates to cognitive psychology. But while Grinder had an undergraduate degree in psychology, NLP began quite outside the academic mainstream, and it remains largely divorced from mainstream academic psychology to this day, even though many NLP practitioners do have traditional credentials in psychology and psychiatry.
