This might sound like a rant. Perhaps it is. But if you do your own research, digging past the shiny marketing brochures and the “become a wizard in a weekend” promises, you will likely end up at the same conclusion I reached decades ago.
I became a Master Trainer of NLP in the early 90s. It was a different time. There was a sense of discovery, a feeling that we had cracked the code of human communication. But right as I was stepping into that role, the sky fell.
I earned my credentials just before the infamous lawsuits erupted between the founders and the major schools of NLP. Suddenly, the field wasn’t a community of explorers; it was a battlefield. There was the Bandler camp. There was the Grinder camp. There was legal confusion, professional hostility, and a complete collapse of credibility.
As a new Master Trainer, I didn’t just read about this in the news. I felt it in my mailbox. I received intimidating notices from lawyers about using the word “NLP” or teaching the methodologies we had learned. We were told we needed to pay $200 per year, per student we qualified—including for ourselves—just to “keep” the title.
In the early 90s, that was a lot of money. But the money wasn’t the issue. The issue was: Pay whom? And for what?
The founders were fighting over the pie, trying to own a technology that was supposed to benefit the world. It was no longer about helping people; it was about royalties and trademark law.
When the dust finally settled, and the courts made decisions that essentially collapsed that extortion scheme, I made a choice that defined the rest of my career. I decided not to use the NLP credentials in my practice at all. I was already a Clinical Hypnotherapist, so I used my C.Ht designation. I saw the respect for NLP plummeting among professionals, and I didn’t want to go down with the ship.
As to which “camp” I belong to today? None of them.
As time went by, I watched NLP training groups push harder into building pseudo-associations and creatively named “licenses” that mean absolutely nothing in the real world.
Let me be clear about this, because it confuses many students: The accreditation isn’t applicable in real life.
Every training company seems to have its own “accreditation organization,” comprised mostly of themselves and a printer, pretending that their certificate is recognized worldwide. It’s not. It’s fake. It has no meaning beyond building a false pretense of professional association. It is built to make the newbie feel safe or impressed, not for the practitioner to rely on for credibility.
And then came the marketing rush.
Right after the lawsuits of the 1990s, the gates of grift opened wide. Suddenly, everything became “NLP.” We saw NLP Seduction seminars (teaching awkward men how to manipulate women), NLP Reiki, NLP Sales Tactics, and “Dark Psychology.” If you want to drag a field’s reputation through the mud and keep it there, just attach those nominalizations to it. You don’t need proof or a case study; you just need a sales page.
It was easy for the “NLP manipulation” grifters to sell their courses because, tragically, a few of the respected early trainers did the same thing. They started selling “secrets” and “persuasion strategies” rather than developing more advanced therapeutic tools. This fed into the myths and unsupported fables—like the stories of Bandler using conversational hypnosis to get away with murder—that turned NLP from a clinical tool into a carnival act.
I have seen NLP “tricks” used to recruit people into cults. I have seen it used to intimidate elderly people into buying timeshares for non-existent vacation spots.
Once those gates opened, the scientific community had the excuse they needed to kick NLP out of the mainstream. Even Tony Robbins, who built his empire on these technologies, eventually took a big step back and disconnected his reputation from the label “NLP.”
So, why am I still here?
I am not saying this to bash NLP. I don’t think that is fair. The knowledge, the experience, and the methodology itself are incredibly valuable. I have many colleagues who are honest, caring, and professional, who use these tools to change lives every day.
It is a shame that the name has been stained, because NLP still has a whole lot to offer the world. We have to remember how it started. It started with a pure intention: to model the most successful therapists.
You can still extract this immense value out of learning NLP, if you do so properly.
Dr. Milton Erickson gave his time to Bandler and Grinder for a good reason. They deserved it. The work they produced from that relationship—the deconstruction of how language impacts the unconscious mind—is still beneficial today, 50 years later.
But greed ruins every good thing.
What do I think about NLP, after 30 years of using it on myself and in my private practice?
It is powerful. It is needed. But the certificate means nothing without the skills.
For coaching or therapy, I would never rely on it exclusively. I advise my students to learn the Ericksonian Method (the name I give to everything taught to me by J. Haley) as a strong clinical basis.
NLP provides many tools, but the Ericksonian approach provides the wisdom to use them.
When you combine them, the change you’re hoping for can hold for decades. When you treat it like a magic trick, it falls apart.
That is why I teach the way I do. I am not interested in the politics, the camps, or the pseudo-associations. I am interested in being effective in my work.