NLP Standard Deception and Lies

Smoke and Mirrors. The tools of NLP.

Someone posted this on my Facebook page:

how can a method or an approach be a cult? who is the leader of this cult?

Both standard defences from cult members and easy to answer, so I did.

It uses both the methods and approach of a cult. Richard Bandler.

He came back with more:

what you're noticing are the methods of success and that can be succeeding in doing unethical things or wonderful things. there is a light and a dark side to anything especially something that is powerful. it depends on the person using it. NLP is just a study and a set of tools. You can use it to create a cult and manipulate people or you can use it to find solutions to end world hunger. i've done several trainings in NLP and no one has ever tried to manipulate me or control me. i've never met Richard Bandler. i've never pledged allegance to him nor have i ever been asked to. you're thinking that NLP must be a cult is the same narrow minded thinking that creates cults. NLP is a method that frees people from their limiting beliefs instead of creating limiting beliefs about things they don't know much about.

Of course it sounds quite convincing on first reading but let’s look a little deeper and answer line by line.

what you're noticing are the methods of success and that can be succeeding in doing unethical things or wonderful things.

As with many NLPers he immediately starts by trying to tell me what I am thinking, a basic mind control technique designed to manipulate me in to accepting what he said is true. What I notice is the unethical use of mind control. That is attempting to use these techniques on someone unaware of what is being done to them, that is unethical.

there is a light and a dark side to anything especially something that is powerful.. it depends on the person using it.

That is patently untrue. Is there a light side to genocide or a dark side to fluffy toys?

NLP is just a study and a set of tools.

NLP is the study of mind control and manipulation, so yes tools. It is also dressed up as science and sold to the unwitting.

You can use it to create a cult and manipulate people or you can use it to find solutions to end world hunger.

I have seen many examples of the former never one of the latter.

i've done several trainings in NLP and no one has ever tried to manipulate me or control me.

Judging by what he has said they have done exactly that. They brainwashed him so thoroughly he is now spreading the gospel and trying to brainwash others using the exact same techniques they used on him. That is what cults do.

i've never met Richard Bandler. i've never pledged allegance to him nor have i ever been asked to.

The same is true of many members of other cults. Meeting the leader or pledging an allegiance are not required to make it a cult. (edit: It turns out Damon was NLPed by Judith DeLozier, a member of Grinder and Bandler’s original group of "students", so his links to the cult leader are closer than he lets on. Students are of course how they refer to themselves, in reality they are the original cultists.)

you're thinking that NLP must be a cult is the same narrow minded thinking that creates cults. NLP is a method that frees people from their limiting beliefs instead of creating limiting beliefs about things they don't know much about.

Yet again telling me what I think and why I think it. Yet again he is completely incorrect. Thinking that something is a cult cannot in anyway create a cult.

NLP is a method that frees people from their limiting beliefs instead of creating limiting beliefs about things they don't know much about.

Cults and other supernatural pseudoscience nonsense often use these meaningless phrases to allude to some secret knowledge beyond those not in the cult. I limit my belief to that can be demonstrated to be true. I do know a lot about NLP, I studied it when someone close to me had her personality and vitality destroyed by it. I needed to find out what happened, and I was horrified by what I found.

Everything he wrote above is identical to how other NLP cult victims respond. They are all taught to defend the cult using these same methods of deception. I can see through them unfortunately they can’t.