History of NLP cont.
Through a friend of Bandler's they got to know the British anthropologist, social scientist, linguist and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson who suggested that their study should include the work of Milton H. Erickson, an American psychiatrist specialising in medical hypnosis and family therapy.
Bandler and Grinder modelled Erickson and the ways that he used metaphor and stories to induce trance and to help people remove life long phobias and overcome the effects of trauma. Their studies led to the creation of the second NLP language model - the Milton Model, which described mechanisms for influencing people by use of particular language patterns.
The development of the Milton Model gave rise to a number of publications including Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, MD Volume 1 and later in 1977 Volume 2.
Bandler and Grinder continued to run various NLP workshops. Other members of the group began to experiment with the application of NLP in other fields. Robert Dilts used NLP in the general area of health, David Gordon developed metaphor as a specific and teachable language skill and Tad James developed the use of the Time Line (TM).
Tapes of a number of these workshops were transcribed by John O. Stevens (better known as Steve Andreas) and then edited and published as one of the most popular NLP books to date (350,000 copies sold worldwide) - Frogs into PRINCES. This particular work was aimed at therapists and challenged the myths that therapy had to be a long, painful experience in order to be effective. Frogs backed up this challenge by providing many practical alternatives that could achieve change more quickly and easily than had previously been considered possible.
From these beginnings NLP continues to evolve, grow and diversify almost organically and is now practiced in almost every country in the world. Used in fields from sales to coaching, from therapy to presentation and management skills, the reach and diversity of ways NLP is used by it's practitioners is almost as diverse as the tool set found within it, almost!