Science and Neurolinguistic Programming (15 July 2009)
In “Language May Shape Our Thoughts” (Newsweek, 20 July 2009), Newsweek science writer Sharon Begley, discusses a number of ways that language actually influences—programs—our thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions. When a language (French, German, and Spanish, for example) marks nouns with a gender, the nouns are given different characteristics. A German bridge, “Brücke,” is feminine, whereas a French bridge, “pont” is masculine. When describing a particular bridge, Germans perceive feminine characteristics. The French ascribe masculine characteristics to the same bridge. When Richard Bandler and John Grinder first developed Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) in the 1970s, academic researchers in both linguistics and psychology set about attempting to prove that NLP was wrong. In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s a significant number of studies were published refuting some of the major premises of NLP, including eye-accessing cues, the significance of submodalities, and the influence of language on neurology. At the time, the belief was that language might influence feelings and behavior, but the underlying neurology remained unchanged.
It seems as though science is finally catching up. That’s one of the things I like about science. Scientists may have biases and attempt to prove that what they already believe is “the truth,” but other scientists will continue to re-examine the evidence until a new truth is discovered. In the mid twentieth century, Alexander Luria started mapping brain functions based on the loss of function experienced by soldiers who had received brain injuries (see The Brain that Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge, M.D.). Now we have fMRIs that provide images of brains at work.
At the time Luria was doing his work, the accepted belief was that the brain was fixed at birth and began a process of decline when people reached about 30 years of age. If something in the brain was damaged, the associated function was lost forever. Fortunately, a few physicians and others noticed that some people who had sustained brain damage as a result of accidents or strokes recovered functions that had been lost. This led to the investigation and development of the concept of brain plasticity. Given the right directions, the brain can and will “rewire” itself. (See my previous blog on "Brain Plasticity and Human Evolution," 7 July 2009.)
In other words, it can reprogram its neurology with linguistics and behavior. One of the first discoveries was that a person who lost the ability to walk following a stroke was able to regain that ability by repeating the process of learning. He began by crawling. Infants do this naturally, and then move to standing while holding on to something, and inching along. Their first efforts at walking are a struggle, but the brain learns from the experience. It turns out that adult brains can also learn new programs when the appropriate sequence for learning is followed.
As Mehmet Oz has demonstrated, meditation, guided imagery (hypnosis), yoga and other meditative practices actually change an individual’s DNA by turning off genes leading to disease and turning on genes that promote health and well-being (see You: Staying Young: The Owner's Manual for Extending Your Warranty, by Michael Rozen and Mehmet Oz). Although I’m pretty sure that neither Bandler nor Grinder knew that this was what was happening with NLP interventions, they obviously knew that what they were doing was working. It was also obvious to others, and because according to accepted theories at the time, what they were doing wasn’t supposed to work, people who felt threatened set out to demonstrate that it wasn’t really working.
I am reminded of early studies of aeronautics, when according to the accepted physics at the time, bumblebees weren’t supposed to be able to fly because their body weight was more than their wings could support. Because so many bumblebees were flying around, physicists and aeronautical engineers had to change their theories. It might have been different if bumblebees understood human language and had listened to those saying that their body weight was too much for them to achieve liftoff. Told they couldn’t fly, they might have believed it....
People, however, understand language and respond to it by changing their neurology. If someone has a stroke affecting leg function and a health care professional says, “You’ll never walk again,” that has an effect. It is, in fact, neurolinguistic programming of the worst—most ignorant—kind. Now that the degree to which language shapes thoughts is better understood, perhaps more people—and especially more health care professionals—will focus on the ways to use language to program neurology in positive ways.
It will be good to have science finally catch up with the NLP of the 1980s.
joel@scs-matters.com
www.scs-matters.com
