I watch the way psychology, therapy, and even spirituality crawl toward science, begging for legitimacy. They borrow its words. They dress themselves in its lab coats. Neurology here. Quantum energy there. “Manifestation” renamed as physics. Reincarnation recast as particles. Even hypnosis and NLP sold with borrowed jargon, as if subjective fire needs a scientific candle to make it real.
(Neuro-Linguistic Programming). A modern echo of classical rhetoric.
Aristotle named rhetoric a techne—a technology. Not philosophy, but a weapon sharpened for public speech, forged so the ethical might stand against sophists. Two thousand years later, we still polish those same blades.
But NLP is not just a tool. It is a philosophy in disguise. It does not simply speak—it models. It does not merely persuade—it reframes how thought itself moves. Classical rhetoric implies answers. NLP builds them outright.
Three questions crown philosophy:
- Who are we? (Ontology — metaphysics, psychology, anatomy)
- How do we know? (Epistemology — the sciences, the tools of proof)
- How do we live knowing these things? (Ethics — the ground of action, the craft of politics, the birth of technology)
Classical rhetoric assumed these foundations. NLP enacts them. It uses the answers to conjure techniques, interventions, transformations.
And yes—critics claw at the “Neuro.” They want proof in the synapses. They note that Chomsky’s seventy-year-old linguistic scaffolding never held. And they are right. The science is brittle. But the praxis—the method—the work—remains.
Cognitive science offers sturdier ground. Placebo still whispers. Belief still fuels change. Yet the techniques do alter lives. That is philosophy in action, even if the temples of science frown.
CBT challenges what you think. NLP transforms how you think. Together, they forge something sharper: Socratic interrogation married to sensory reprogramming. One drills into the content. The other bends the frame. Both aim at the same altar—freedom from faulty thought, the power to choose again.
Even in play, the truth sings. Dirty talk—ritual, rhythm, erotic spellcasting—is NLP alive in the flesh. Words arranged not as decoration, but as transformation.
Do not forget: Bandler and Grinder birthed NLP not in ivory towers but in rebellion. They spat at psychiatry and psychology, turned from the academy, and courted the alternative fires of the seventies. Their hypocrisy was blatant—condemning capitalist therapy while selling NLP to salesmen and managers to manipulate markets and staff. Liberation twisted into profit. Fire bottled and sold.
Still, the root remains. NLP is not science, though it steals its language. It is rhetoric reborn. A living philosophy. A technology of persuasion, healing, transformation, and yes—manipulation.
Those who seek in it pure science will always leave disappointed. Those who wield it as tool, weapon, ritual—will know its power.