Richard Bandler and John Grinder
Richard Bandler and John Grinder
As a young boy, Dave Elman had to watch his father, a stage-hypnotist,
dying a terribly painful death from cancer. A week before his father was to
pass away, a friend of the family, also a hypnotist came and put his father
into trace to take away his pain. This was the last time the Dave Elman saw
his father peaceful, playful and in good spirits. It made a lasting impression.
Elman spent the rest of his life dedicated to teaching hypnosis to healing
professionals. Doctors, psychologists, dentists, pediatricians and more
flocked to his classes week after week as Elman traveled the country with
his wife. Elman specialized in a rapid induction that worked very well much
of the time. This opened the door for medical applications where the doctor
did not have the time to spend ten to twenty minutes inducing the patient
into hypnosis. Word of mouth spread fast and Elman’s class was a success.
He wrote one book that describes it all before he passed away. In my
opinion, it is a must read for anyone… medical or not. Check the
bibliography for more information.
psychotherapy while editing a book written by Dr. Pearl and approached
John Grinder and professor and master or linguistics to propose a study of
the structure of the language patterns that therapists use to cure patients.
The combination of Bandler’s structured logical thinking and Grinder’s
breakdown of language was something that therapy had not seen before. By
studying the patterns of noteworthy, successful therapists (Fritz Pearl,
psychologist; Gregory Bateson, Linguistics/General Semantics; Virginia
Satir, Family Therapy; Milton H. Erickson, hypnotist), they developed a set
of “cookie cutter” therapies that anyone could use to cause change.
While NLP has taken many directions, we will look at its benefits of healing
and hypnosis. NLP has also been applied to everything from persuasion to
power writing to selling anything to seduction. There are many resources
available in the Bibliography.
