Welcome! It is a pleasure to introduce you, the reader, to the field of Neuro–Linguistic Programming (NLP). Our purpose here is to place NLP in some historical context and to make some suggestions about how to use what follows.

Neuro–Linguistic Programming is the discipline whose domain is the structure of subjective experience. It makes no commitment to theory, but rather has the status of a model — a set of procedures whose usefulness not truthfulness is to be the measure of its worth. NLP presents specific tools which can be applied effectively in any human interaction. It offers specific techniques by which a practitioner may usefully organize and re–organize his or her subjective experience or the experiences of a client in order to define and subsequently secure any behavioral outcome.

NLP begins in the early 70's when we found ourselves in possession of a set of extremely powerful and effective communication models. We had originally developed these models for use in the psychotherapeutic context. It quickly became apparent that they could be easily generalized to other areas of human communication—specifically, business (sales, negotiation), law and education. With these tools we were able to secure results—5 minute guaranteed "cure" for phobias in psychotherapy; quick, graceful and satisfying resolution of conflict in dead–locked negotiations and settlements in business; success in teaching "educationally handicapped" children formerly impossible skills measured in minutes

results which bordered on magical for the professionals of these disciplines.