This history of NLP is best summed up in the video clip we produced in 2011.
Leslie Cameron Bandler, and David Gordon at the University of California, Santa Cruz, grew out of the 'behavioural modelling' activity of in studying Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, and Milton H Erickson in the 70’s. NLP was co-created in the early 1970’s by John Grinder (linguist) and Richard Bandler (mathematician) with the collaboration of Robert Dilts, Judith Delozier, Stephen Gilligan and whilst editing the work of Fritz Perls, Bandler started to notice patterns in the excellence that Perls was achieving using Gestalt Therapy. He started running Gestalt therapy workshops to refine his skills and achieved exceptional results. Bandler invited Grinder to observe his workshops to assist to build a model of how Gestalt therapy was applied. Bandler and Grindler first modelled the leading psychotherapists of the time, starting with Fritz Perls and moving to family systems therapist Virginia Satir.
The resulting linguistic model analysed how therapeutic recognition and use of language patterns could on its own be used to influence change. First published in The Structure of Magic Volume I (1975), the models were expanded in The Structure of Magic Volume II (1976), and Changing With Families (co-authored with Satir herself in 1976), and eventually became known as the meta model (meta meaning "beyond"), a model of specificity and the first core model within what ultimately became an entire field.
The Meta Model captured the attention of Gregory Bateson (anthropologist) who besides being a major influence on the intellectual foundations of NLP introduced the co-founders to Milton Erickson (father of clinical hypnotherapy). Bandler and Grinder modelled Erickson for the next eighteen months and developed the Milton Model, a model of vague ambiguity and the other core model of NLP.
Other fore-runners and influencers of NLP were:
- Alfred Korzybski & Noam Chomsky & Paul Watzalawick (Formal Linguistics)
- Twitmeir & Pavlov (Stimulus Response)
