NLP courses

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by jra, Aug 20, 2008.

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  1. jra

    jra Member

    Hey guys any of you knows if there are any NLP or NLP related like Hypnosis (preferably RA) classes for credit?
     
  2. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

    What do you mean NLP? Neuro-Linguistic Psychotherapy?
     
  3. jra

    jra Member

    Neuro Linguistic Programming
     
  4. BlackBird

    BlackBird Member

    I have certification on the Master Practitioner level and I am not aware of regionally accredited institutions offering credit for NLP courses. The closest was/is Robert Dilts NLP Unversity but that is not what you are appear to be looking for in terms of traditional academia credits backed ultimately by the Dept. of Ed.

    I've often wondered why there are no regionally accredited programs in NLP. NLP is too advanced for traditional psychotherapy as taught in grad schools. When I got my traditional training, it was funny to watch that some of the most effective methods used or mentioned in academic texts were stolen (my opinion) from NLP. The same has happened with EMDR treatment modality. It gets trashed by snobish psychology academicians who are inefficient in seeing consistent healing in patients. Pardon my bias. :eek:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 20, 2008
  5. jra

    jra Member

    do you teach NLP at Miami Dade?
     
  6. BlackBird

    BlackBird Member


    One of the classes I teach is called "Psychology of Personal Effectiveness." This course uses principles of NLP and since I am certified in it, I can take my students into places your typical non-trained professor can't. Other than that, there is no degree or course that is NLP specific, in undergrad or graduate. I have seen some psychology grad schools offering a few courses on hypnosis that might include Ericksonian hypnosis (used in NLP).
     
  7. Chip

    Chip Administrator

    I suspect that it's not that the psychology profession devalues NLP (or EMDR, for that matter) per se; I know quite a few practicing psychotherapists that incorporate both modalities into their practices.

    But NLP (like EMDR or any other intervention) is not a standalone, end-all approach. In order for someone to be able to properly deal with psychological issues that a typical patient seeking therapy, they need the training that comes with a counseling or psychology or clinical social work degree (depending on state, etc.)

    I would be surprised if there are not regionally accredited schools that offer coursework in NLP and EMDR as part of their overall curriculum, and honestly, I believe that's the best place that trainings such as NLP or EMDR belong.

    Also, I think it's worth noting that NLP was developed as an outgrowth of Milton Erickson's lifelong work on clinical hypnosis, and Bandler and Grinder, who developed NLP, had written on Erickson as well. I know that there are some programs that include Ericksonian hypnosis and brief therapy as part of their curricula, and I would suggest that perhaps looking for programs that include instruction on Ericksonian approaches might lead one to similar instruction in NLP.
     
  8. jra

    jra Member

    oh Chip you surprise me! i didn't know you were into NLP too!
     
  9. BlackBird

    BlackBird Member

    Chip, you have some good points.

    What happens is that you have two types of clinicians. One kind are the folks that "live up in their heads" and look at the world primarily through rules, precepts, theorems, etc. and you have those that are highly intuitive and very much in touch with their "heart" [for an amazing series of YouTube videos on how the heart has neurons go to: Heart]. The guys that control how the profession goes are the guys in academia that emphasize mostly quantitative approaches to research. The guys that are very good at seeing healing in their patients do not tend to be in academia/research in large numbers because they usually are more successful in the practice of therapy.

    In light of the aforementioned NLP and EMDR do not necessarily appeal to these left-brainers as they do to right-brainers. The academic types want limitless journal studies to justify them putting their imprimatur of acceptance. Hence you get a bunch of academic types that tend to snub and even trash these modalities and others. This is another reason why they migrate towards "cognitive"-behavior psychology versus psycho-dynamic forms of therapy modalities. I have seen this. I have to be careful with talking about successes because you get jealous colleagues that live in their heads and have large egos. I can remember when I was in grad school that I saw tons of patients experiencing massive healing in their lives using NLP and other modalities. My supervising clinical professor told the chair and I got an immediate "cease and disist" from doing what I was doing because it did not have sufficient journal/substantiation. Never mind that they had never had successful private practices and that I already had 25 years of pastoral counseling plus the highest certification possible in the practice of NLP under my belt. Never mind that my immediate and on-site supervisor totally saw and celebrated the healing taking place among dual diagnosed populations.

    This is much like the "bumble-bee" story that scientists of the past could not "prove" it could fly. Now that we know more in aerodynamics we see that there are more complex principles involved that make that little bug able to fly despite the former disbelief of old aerodynmicists (sp?) [see bumble-bee].

    Anyways, Chip... For the most part I'm with you.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 20, 2008
  10. Chip

    Chip Administrator

    We're pretty much in agreement here. I agree there is a tremendous amount of resistance to innovative approaches, particularly those, such as NLP and EMDR, that don't "make sense" in conventional terms.

    There are a few notable exceptions (California Institute of Integral Studies, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, JF Kennedy University) who embrace more of the psychodynamic / humanistic / "person-centered" therapy approaches, (as Carl Rogers called it) but it does seem as though most of the psychology graduate programs out there are focused on cognitive and brief therapy, and a ton of research on behavior, rather than a focus on treatment modalities. The emergence of the Psy.D. programs seems to be addressing that insufficiency, though I think those degrees are considered by some to be somewhat "second class" to the traditional Ph.D.

    The only place I get nervous is where some of the NLP programs are basically holding their programs out as standalone trainings, after which one is qualified to treat people. I do strongly believe that no one should be attempting to treat psychological issues without either the proper clinical training (a recognized degree in counseling, social work, or psychology) or a close clinical relationship with someone who is appropriately trained. My experience is you *don't* see the EMDR training programs encouraging people to treat individuals solely on the basis of EMDR training, while you do see that with many of the NLP programs I've seen over the years.

    There are also quite a few clinicians that discount hypnosis (separate from NLP) and do not believe it has any meaningful clinical benefit; my experience in talking to those people is that they've never really taken the time to learn about Ericksonian work and look at the extensive literature on its use and history.

    But at the same time, I've heard NLP practitioners claiming persecution, saying things like "Psychologists don't want NLP to get accepted, because we can do in one day what it takes them 5 years to do", and that is simply not true in 90% of cases. Yes, things like PTSD and certain traumas do seem to have long-term lasting benefit from very brief EMDR and NLP interventions, but it is when the NLP practitioners (usually the ones who do *not* have counseling or psychotherapy credentials outslde of NLP) make these sort of outrageous and largely unsupportable claims that the traditional psychologists tend to get annoyed. Understandably, in my opinion.

    Getting back to the actual topic, since I'm the one who hijacked the thread in the first place, I think the solution is to look to the schools who are already focused on helping therapists-in-training develop the more humanistic/intuitive style of treatment. Those schools, many of which *are* regionally accredited, are a lot more likely to embrace NLP and similar approaches. Some go even further and embrace things like shamanic healing practices (soul retrieval, extraction of dark entities, that sort of thing which is pretty wacky to the uninitiated and/or the skeptical). So my impression is, the training resources really are there, you just have to look a little harder, and seek out the programs open to nontraditional approaches.
     
  11. Chip

    Chip Administrator

    One other point: Don't lose hope that psychology is stuck in the hands of the research mavens; Abraham Maslow was the head of APA back in the late '60s, and he was certainly one of the most innovative people in terms of humanistic psychology. (I remember reading that he personally approved Paul Bindrim's work with nude psychotherapy, which in spite of evoking images of hippies in a hot tub, appeared to have a lot of promise.)

    I believe that as people realize how ineffective the current managed-care based approach to therapy is (not to mention the problems with drug-based approaches to psychological dysfunction), we will begin to see a movement back toward longer term therapy. There's already some movement toward this in drug rehab circles, and I am hopeful that it will find its way into more mainstream applications as well.
     
  12. chrislarsen

    chrislarsen New Member

    Yo Blackbird

    Y'all may remember me from past postings. I am a Ph.D. student at Fielding Graduate University in their clinical psychology program. (and loving it). I am also very interested in NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis. Fielding offers nothing in these areas but I think these techniques have the potential to be very powerful. Right now I am looking for some training and I am amazed at how expensive the workshops leading to certification can be. I am reluctant to fork over money (on top of my Fielding tuition) for bad training. My main beef with NLP is that it i so jargon-filled and some of the people marketing these seminars seem, at least on their web pages, to be either hopelessly New Age or somewhat sociopathic or cultish. Any suggestions for good solid clinical training that won't cost me an arm or leg?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 21, 2008
  13. jra

    jra Member

    Dr Bobby Bodenhamer trainings are serious and affordable, he is really good! they are christian-oriented but if you are a Christian (and even if you aren't) i dont think that would be a problem
     
  14. BlackBird

    BlackBird Member

    Chip,

    You have some very good points. You are correct about those California Schools being more open to alternative modalities. I would include Saybrook to that list. I would add that as long as the movers and shakers in psychology are stuck in the paradigm that "reason" rules supremely that they will hold it hostage. To break that level is to "surrender" control and move into the non-linearity of love. People living in their heads can study "love" but they know little about it experientially. They don't live love. I know this is quite lofty. Sorry if so.

    To Chris Larsen,

    I was trained by NeuroEnergetics with John Overdurf and Julie Silverthorn. They are Master Trainers who were trained under Bandler. They have high integrity. Training under any of the original gang is not too bad (Grinder, Bandler, and second generation such as Andreas, Dilts, DeLozier, etc). Bandler is the one that is a little controversial because of his somewhat "dark" side in terms of his past. One that is Okay is Tad James who also trained under Bandler. The NeuroSemantic guys are good if you don't mind Christian lingo going on. Until you get trained via NLP trainers you can read a lot of stuff in books and the internet. The NeuroSemantics web site is very generous with lots to read.

    Hope this helps.
     
  15. jra

    jra Member

    Are the Andreas offering trainings? i have read some of their material and it was awesome but couldn't find any training by them
     
  16. BlackBird

    BlackBird Member

    Apparently, Steve Andreas is still doing a few trainings:

    http://www.steveandreas.com/workshopsched.html
     
  17. Paul S Rogers

    Paul S Rogers New Member

    Enjoying the discussion. Back when I was in grad school, the NLP discussion was raised by some students as a viable treatment modality, but my school (Tulane) emphasized the psychoanalytical model i.e. Freud and the discussion of NLP went out the door.

    Paul S Rogers, LCSW, RN, CNS (retired)
     
  18. BlackBird

    BlackBird Member

    Paul,

    I find it humorous that the "psychoanalyticals" persecuted NLP'ers.

    It just goes to show that we need to be careful about our positionalities... the games that pesky ego plays on us telling us we are "better" because we know, have, are are more than others.
    :D
     
  19. Chip

    Chip Administrator

    Tad James is one of those who always made me uncomfortable with pretty bold claims and very commercialized marketing. I know someone who went to one of his (shorter) trainings and his description of how James presented everything -- combined with some ads in various alternative medicine magazines that I read -- made it sound like a snake oil salesman's pitch.

    On top of that, I believe I remember that Tad's operation was holding itself out as an (unaccredited) university without telling people it was unaccredited, and it was located in Hawaii, which was, at the time, one of the worst havens for fraudulent schools.

    That doesn't mean that the training itself was bad -- I have no experience with that -- just that the marketing of it (then and even now) always made me a little nervous.

    I also vaguely remembered that Tad James might have had a bogus Ph.D. from an unwonderful school. I checked his website bio and searched elsewhere on Google, but conveniently, his CV is nowhere to be found and his bio doesn't mention where his degrees are from. However, our own degreeinfo archive seems to have some juicy stuff:

    http://www.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=893

    I haven't checked to see if perhaps the guy has since gotten a legit degree, but I doubt it.
     
  20. BlackBird

    BlackBird Member


    Chip, I think he has a legit undergrad and a masters (Syracuse U?).
    You are correct about his tendency to be "snake oil-like." Despite that, he is good at teaching NLP and is the creator of Time-Line Therapy which I consider one of the most powerful healing techniques around. I put it way above EMDR, for example. Tad is very good at scripting in hypnotic language in order to install learnings at different levels. This is where he shines.

    I do know that he shafted some of his best friends who were also Master Trainers who trained also with him under Bandler. They are no longer "best" friends.

    Ditto also on his non-accredited higher learning school.
     

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