1.Definitions of NLP
NLP stands for "Neuro-Linguistic Programming"
An ofter used explanation is
"The study of the structure of subjective experience", which some
people complete by adding: "and anything that can be derived from it"

1.2. What is NLP-technology?
NLP is a model about making models.  These models are made by
observing
people who are seen as an expert in their field.

To observe experts, NLP offers some building blocks, such as:
- calibration techniques such as patterns in the language someone
uses (predicates and the meta-model), the internal representations
used (eye-movements and submodalities), Body posture & gestures
- models such as TOTE, SCORE and SOAR
- other analytical models: Logical Levels, Meta-programs, perceptual
positions, time-frames.
The use of these building bloks is teached during NLP trainer.  That's
why the trainings are called "NLP Practioner" and "NLP Master
Practitioner training".

Apart from the building blocks, some typical skills will be learned
during NLP-training, such as
- Rapport
- Match-Mismatch
- Pacing and Leading
- Anchoring
- Eliciting Strategies
- setting up a psyhogeography
- The use of the Milton Model
- Sleight of Mouth Patterns

1.3 What can I do with NLP?
NLP can be used differently by anyone who has learned about it.
It can be combined with wethever a person is doing.
1.3.1. Basic NLP use
The contribution by Keith Fail (kfail@aol.com) also explains what NLP
can be used for...
-  improvement of communication skills.
-  A self-help discipline.
-  A method of learning athletic skills quickly and easily.
-  A series of sales techniques.
-  A way of questioning that allows you to uncover information that is
missing, unconscious or hidden, so that you can understand a
communication fully.
-  A model of human subjective experience.
-  A set of presuppositions that allow humans to grow.
-  A collection of skills for influencing people while maintaining your
integrity and respecting theirs.
-  A way to build stronger, more enjoyable relationships.
-  A detailed understanding of how people learn and how to teach
them.
-  A model for business behaviors: coaching skills, leading by example
and open,authentic communication that builds and maintains trust,
commitment and responsibility between employees.
-  A way to recognize and change problematic family patterns.
-  A model of how to induce hypnosis.
1.3.2. What are Typical NLP applications?
Often NLP is seen as a bunch of applications, and is mistaken as
being equal to the applications.
The items described below are just applications.  These applications
have been developped using the basic building blocks.

NLP is, among others, being used by therapists, and has applications
like:
- collapsing anchors
- Visual squash
- 6-step reframing
- V/K dissociation
- change personal History
- aligning Logical Levels
- Belief Change Cycle
- Reimprint

In NLP-jargon, these applications are often called "procedures" . These
procedures form a set of change techniques that can be added to a
therapeutic model.  An NLP-therapist, therefor, is probably a therapist
using some of the procedures mentioned  above.

In business, there are applications based upon the meta-programs (the
LAB-profile and the Phred Software) and the Belief Assessement
Sheet from Robert Dilts.

For enhancing creatitity, the Disney Model was developed.

In Learning, you can work on the structure of the wow-state.


c. PM: Basic Presuppositions are:
- The map is not the territory
- Life and mind are systemic processes
Further (explicit) operation presuppositions are
-
1.4 What is DHE?
DHE stands for "Design Human Engineering".  It has been developed
by Bandler.
As far as I know, it's supposed to be the successor of NLP.
In DHE-training, they build upon the NLP-building blocks.  The basic
idea behind DHE is that there are more powerfull ways to develop
strategies than to elicit existing strategies from experts (which is what
NLP does).
2. What do you need to begin, try, or learn more about NLP?
--------------------------------------------------------
Depending on your learning style, there are different ways to learn
more about NLP:
- read some books (see further);
- talk to others about it (e.g. on compuServe and Internet);
- follow some NLP training: start by a NLP Practitioners Training, then
take a Master Practitioners Training, and end with a trainers training, if
you want to teach others about it;
- above all: practice it!

2.1. Can you recommend some good NLP books?
--------------------------------------
2.1.1. For Beginners:
Personally, I would like to recommend "Introducing NLP, revised
Edition" (1993) from J.O'Connor (100013,2002) & J.Seymour as a
good, structured introduction.

From a contribution by Bob Janes (71307,1415): here are some more
book "for beginners" (the list is limited to books that he read).
- for a businessperson: probably Genie Laborde's 'Influencing with
Integrity'
- for a therapist: perhaps Stephen Lankton's 'Practical Magic'
- for a musician: Joseph O Connor's 'Not Pulling Strings'
- for a singer: Eloise Ristadt's 'A soprano on her head' (a wonderful
book and a great pity that she was killed before she wrote the sequel)
- for everyman:  maybe Anthony Robbins, maybe Patrick Porter's
cover version 'Awaken the Genius'
- for a teacher:  the Suzette Haden Elgin 'The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-
Defense series'
- for 'self-developers': 'Frogs Into Princes' by R.Bandler & J.Grindler
- for intellectuals: Leslie Cameron-Bandler 'The Emprint Method'
- for health professionals: Robert Dilts et al 'Beliefs'

2.1.2. Other books:
I uploaded a file "Patrick.txt" to the New Age B forum (NLP-section)
describing other NLP books that I have read.

2.1.3. Some NLP-magazines are:
- Anchor Point (American): contact Anchor Point Associates/ 346
South 500 East #200 / Salt Lake City, UTAH 84102 USA, Tel: 1-800-
544-6480.  Outside USA call (801) 534-1022.  12 monthly issues for
$39(US).
- MultiMind - NLP (German / German spoken): contact Klaus Marwitz
(100273,2057)
- NLP World (European): Contact Peter G. Winnington, Les 3
Chasseurs, 1413, ORZE
NS, Switzerland, Tel (+41) 21 88 777 21, Fax (+41) 21 88 779 76,  3
issues a year, $50(US)
- Rapport (Britisch): I don't have the contact address

2.2. The electronic meeting places are:
On CompuServe, ordered by forum-age, oldest first
- AIEXPERT forum, section 10: "Neurolinguistic" (unmoderated)
- NEW AGE B forum, section 12: "NLP" (moderated)
- MIND/BODY Sciences forum, section 21: "NLP &Hypnosis"
(moderated)

On Internet
- USENET: alt.Psychology.nlp (unmoderated, dedicated to NLP only)
& alt.self-improve (often containts info about Tony Robbins)
- WWW: http://www.nlp.com/NLP

2.3. Institutes that teach NLP:
There are many institutes that teach NLP, but I don't have a list at
hand.  If you want to find out which institutes close to you organise
NLP trainings, send a posting to one of the electronic meeting-places.
I'm sure you'll get some reactions.

2.4. NLP Conferences
The largest ones I know are:
- US: NLP Conference: (I have no further info)
- UK: ANLP (in London): Summer Conference (in '95:1st,2nd july) &
Automn Confere
nce (in 95: 25 & 26th november) contact: Jo Hogg, 27 Maury Rd.,
London N16  7BP (tel/fax 0181 806 6165)

3. What are the roots of NLP ?^?
------------------------------
3.1. Contribution from Jeff A. Weakley (74434,40):
NLP was orginally started by a computer whiz and Gestalt therapist -
Richard Bandler and a Linguist named John Grinder.  Their goal was to
design a meta-model.
 A way of building models of how people do things and transfering that
knowledge to other people.  It started around 1976 and their original
forays involved "modeling" successful therapists like Milton Erickson
(The Father of Modern Hypnotherapy), Virginia Satir (The Mother of
Family System Therapy) and Fritz Perls {a son-of-a-bitch and a leader
in the Gestalt Therapy movement}.  Since much of the early modeling
was done with therapists it has a psychological bent to it though many
people are now branching out into a lot of other fields with it: Health,
Sales, Business, Organizational Development, Comedy, and
Screenwriting to name a few.  You may have seen the Reader's Digest
Condensed Version of NLP through a infomercial huckster named
Tony Robbins.  His is an excellent introductory book by the way,
"Unlimited Power" if you want to know more.  And I might recommend
"Frogs Into Princes" by Bandler and Grinder, the creators of this
"technology". It is edited transcripts from some of their earlier
seminars.

3.2. Contibution from Tad James (73160,352)
(just off the top of his head)
Most everything in NLP came from somewhere else.  I think that the
following is
more or less correct:
- Eye patterns - Stanford University, research on synesthesia in the
early 70's, and SyberVision published eye patterns in 1979 in a book
called SyberVision.
- Anchoring -- Behavioral Psychology -- Pavlov, "Conditioned
Reflexes", 1904
- Chunking -- Alfred Korzybski, Erickson, Watzlawick -- General
Semantics
- Strategies, TOTE -- Miller, Galanter & Pribram, "Plans and the
Structure of Behavior," 1965
- Milton Model -- Milton Erickson, "The Advanced Patterns of MH
Erickson, MD", by Jay Haley.
- Meta Model -- Virginia Satir, "Conjoint Family Therapy"
- SubModalities -- Work on Synesthesia at Stanford University 1970-
1978 suggested this.
- Outcome Frames -- Virginia Satir
- Parts -- Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir
- Reframing -- General Semantics, Watzlawick, Keeney,
- Sleight of Mouth -- Patterns of Plausible Inference, G. Polya
- Time Lines -- William James, Principles of Psychology, 1890, the
Chapter on Memory.
Any definitive references to the early work that underlies NLP can be
found in the bibliography to The Structure of Magic.

3.3. Some additions by the editor.
See also "The roots of Neuro-Linguistic Programming" by Robert Dilts
(dating from 1976); "EEG and representational systems" (1977) and
"Applications of NLP" (1978), wriiten by the same author.  These 3
texts, published by Meta Publications in 1983 (collected in a book)
point out some of the roots, especially about eye movements.

4. What does NLP have to do with AI ?
---------------------------------------
To answer that question, I give you a part of a mail I wrote some
months ago discussing links between AI (Natural Language
Processing) and NLP.  It was part of the tread "**NLP vs NLP :-)".  If
someone can explain how the compress a tread and how to upload it,
I'm willing to do so...

Here it goes:

The link between AI (or Natural Language processing) and NLP is
stronger than one would think at first sight: NLP took over some
elements from research on transformational grammar, and started
applying it to human beings.  NLPers call this the "meta-model".  It
actually works quite well!
Elisa is maybe another example of links between AI and NLP.  Often
NLP-ers are like Elisa: they seem to ask "stupid" questions, often
they are psychologists (actually, in the NLP practitioner training I
followed, half of the students were psychologists.
I've also read some of Shank's work, and I like his idea's about stories.
In NLP they also do a lot with stories: Erickson, one of the "NLP "-
examples used story telling as a "healing"-technique.  To me, those
experiences prove that Shank
must be right in some way.  I wonder if we ever will succeed building a
good story-telling machine (I never got further than writing a Pascal-
version of elisa).

I'm currently working in "small AI": I'm a developping expert systems
as a consultant, in area's like help desks and finance.  Currently I'm
doing something closer to management consulting, since we found out
that building systems doesn't really solve the customers problems: we
all know how little succesful applications have been built.  Doing this, I
use my experience as knowledge engineer (and knowledge acquisition
techniques, as well as NLP techniques.  They fit together!