NLP Goals and Methods
Goals
NLP as a discipline is pragmatic; practitioners generally take interest in models only insofar as those models have useful applications. Any explanatory or predictive benefit is strictly secondary. NLP practitioners seek to discover how people do what they do, especially how experts and superior performers in a given area achieve their excellent results, finding out what is "the difference that makes the difference", and then modeling those behaviors to create transferable skill sets.
As a small example, consider the task of spelling English words. (Note that here we are referring to the simple task of recalling the spelling of words that one has seen in print before, rather than the more complex task of guessing how a word might be spelled based only on hearing it pronounced.) According to NLP developers, some people remember spellings phonetically, and some even remember them by physically writing the words out, whether on paper or in the air. It seemed to them that the spellers with the quickest and most accurate recall tend to remember the spelling of words visually, i.e. they literally see the printed word in their "mind's eye". According to this view, people may learn to excel in spelling by changing their approach to the task: instead of writing or sounding out words, they may learn better by learning to visualize words and regularly applying this technique to the task of spelling.
Methods
The field of NLP has over time gathered many mini-models and associated techniques that can be applied to various situations. The models and techniques range in purpose from information gathering and building rapport, to anchoring and triggering of internal states, to trance induction and changing beliefs. There are models of internal representations (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.) and their submodalities and concomitant effects on emotions, beliefs, and behaviors. (Accordingly, one early book on NLP subtitled the field as "the study of the structure of subjective experience".) As fallout of the modeling process the field has also developed specific techniques that can be applied to applications ranging from psychotherapy, e.g. curing phobias, handling criticism and flattery, handling grief, stopping unwanted habits and behaviors, etc., to sales and persuasion techniques, to learning techniques, to curing some allergies, and many others.
