This book brings together for the first time the recollections and thoughts of some of the main protagonists from the very early days of NLP. In 1971 when Richard Bandler and Frank Pucelik were students at the University of California Santa Cruz, they both had a strong mutual interest in Gestalt Therapy. Frank because of his traumatic time in Vietnam and because he had been working with drug-addicted kids, and Richard because he had been working on transcribing and editing Fritz Perls' seminal works. They started a local gestalt group and started collaborating and experimenting with the language of therapy. They soon achieved some brilliant results but were having problems transferring their skills to others and so Richard invited one of their professors, John Grinder, to observe what they were doing in order that he would, hopefully, be able to deconstruct what they were doing that was so effective. John was a professor of Linguistics and was instantly impressed with the work. He was able to add more structure and in due course the three of them formalized what is now known as the Meta Model. NLP, or Meta as it was known then, was born.
In this volume John and Frank and each of the other contributors give their own personal account of this period of collaboration when something magical was happening in northern California. Of particular interest is the role Gregory Bateson played, particularly in bringing John and Richard together with Milton H Erickson. Contributors to this volume include: Robert Dilts, Stephen Gilligan, Judith Delozier, Byron Lewis, Terry McClendon (author of the first history of NLP, The Wild Days) and others. An extremely insightful and riveting read for anyone interested in NLP. |
