2.  What is NLP?

Despite the multitude of definitions you may come across, NLP is in fact very easy to describe.  Because NLP is simply a particular form of modeling which enables the modeler to:

• Identify the essential elements of the exemplar's thinking, behaviour, etc., which enable them to achieve "excellent" results
• Codify the relevant elements
• Use the coding to show other people how to replicate the exemplar's performance.

As you can see, everything here is a process.  Identifying, coding, "teaching".  It is the modeling process which is NLP, not the model itself.

Note:   A full description of the NLP modeling technnique can be find in FAQ#24 on this site:

http://www.bradburyac.mistral.co.uk/nlpfax24.htm

In Pursuit of Excellence

The original motivation for creating the NLP process was a driving curiosity about the way some people seem to be so much better at performing certain tasks than other people engaged in the same activity.

Richard Bandler, the originator and co-developer of NLP, was fascinated by the work of Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls (he was employed to edit a book on Perls which involved watching videos and listening to audio tapes of Perls at work) and family therapist Virginia Satir (for whom he worked temporarily as sound technician, etc.).  Without really understanding what they were doing, or how they was doing it, Bandler and fellow student Frank Pucilik found that they could imitate the activities of these therapists so accurately that they could also replicate their results.

The next step came when Bandler started to work with NLP's co-developer, John Grinder, to get a conscious understanding of what he was actually doing (at a detailed level) to get these results.  Bandler's primary interest was a desire to pass what he had learmt on to the students attending a course on Gestalt therapy that he (Bandler) was running at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
(Grinder, who was a professor of linguistics at Santa Cruz at the time, was also the faculty supervisor for Bandler's course.)

(Frank Pucilik apparently dropped out of the picture not long after Bandler and Grinder started to work together, in order to pursue interests of his own. Apart from co-authoring Magic Demystified (an introduction to NLP), Pucilik seems to have taken little or no part in the "Story of NLP" after that time.)

NLP - some Core Presuppositions

It is sometimes said that NLP has no guiding "theory," and therefore cannot be validated or invalidated.
I don't buy that.  In fact I believe that there are several "core presuppositions" about the NLP process itself, which only partially overlap the already well-known "NLP presuppostions" - which are actually beliefs about how people function.  Moreover, if one or more of these core presuppositions could be invalidated (in general, not just under specific, limited circumstances, then this would throw the validity of the NLP process itself into doubt:

• Experience - basically everything captured during a person's life time, stored in their brain, and accessible for subsequent consideration/use - has a structure.  In other words, our memories and consequently our mental maps, are related to each other in a coherent fashion, they aren't just connected up at random.
• The way someone performs a particular task is determined by specific aspects of their structured experience - which can be modeled.
• What can be identified by a competent modeler can be described in a clear and coherent manner for use by the modeler and/or other people.
• Someone who has access to a particular model can, if the modeling process is accurate, and if they meet certain pre-requisites, incorporate that information into their own patterns of thinking and behaviour and thereby achieve a similar level of performance.