NLP and cults
Is there a connection between NLP and cults?
Many outsiders who come into contact with NLP and its principles initially react skeptically. The promises of profound changes made by NLP often raise reservations, in which NLP and cults are compared.
In a certain sense, the connection between NLP and cults does have real foundations at first glance.
NLP offers a wide range of strategies that support a person in discovering and utilizing their natural potentials and abilities, thereby promoting them in their pursuit of satisfaction and happiness. Many NLP practitioners report how much contact with NLP has changed their lives and encourage friends and acquaintances to get to know it as well. NLP provides tools for communication and influencing people.
Superficially, similar attributions also apply to cults. Cults often claim to be able to tap into unknown and especially unimagined potentials and to perfect people, or to guarantee satisfaction and bliss. They offer warmth and affection to lonely individuals (albeit only within the community of these cults). Expansive cults usually demand a break with the old life, associated with a 'rebirth', and many of their members evangelize more or less actively. Some cults even go so far as to promise their members supernatural powers.
Furthermore, modern psycho-cults also make use of NLP methods: both for internal and external communication (to keep cult members under control and to mislead outsiders through a charm offensive), motivational courses to build followers (who thus project the image of the happy cult member outward), etc.
In light of these parallels and connections, one should not dismiss reservations about NLP as ignorance, but rather take the equation 'NLP=Cults' seriously. The reservations about cults are indeed justified, making it all the more important to clarify why the one has little to do with the other.
Accusations of the abuse of NLP often arise. What is on the other side of the coin and how do we deal with it?
The differences between NLP and a cult
