228 of 248 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Clinging to the Law of Averages, November 24, 2004
This review is from: Neuro-linguistic Programming for Dummies (Paperback)
Have you ever run into the sort of person who talks about things they know nothing about, but talks on and on and on, apparently in the hope that if they keep talking for long enough then the law of averages means they must get at least some of it right?
That's what I felt I was up against when I was reading this book.
Firstly, it is badly laid out, by which I mean that it has no obvious flow other than (I guess) the order in which things popped into the authors' heads.
Secondly, a significant amount of the material has little or nothing to do with NLP - like the "Wheel of Life" and the stuff on PTSD - and quite a lot the material, whether about NLP or not, is at best ambiguous and at worst plain inaccurate.
Thirdly, the frequent, pointless repetition of quite basic material, and the inclusion of the irrelevant material, means that a whole lot of genuine NLP material gets left out.
In the case of the meta programs, for example, only six meta programs are included, and even those aren't explained particularly well. Indeed, at one point in the book the authors claim that all meta programs ("metaprograms", as they call them) work along a sliding scale. Which clearly is NOT true of meta programs such as the "Work Preference Filter", the "Primary Interest Filter", and especially not in the case of the "In Time/Through Time" or "Time Storage Filter" meta program, which the authors confuse with "Time Lines" as in Time Line Therapy.
Worst of all, there doesn't seem to have been any attempt to edit the book once it was complete. Thus, for example, there are several places where a topic flagged up as being covered "later in this chapter" actually turns up on the very next page. Likewise the text itself is inconsistent, as in:
"We get very good at one style of thinking and processing information and let the rest of our senses lie dormant in a rusty heap."
Not only is this not true, psychologically speaking, but the authors flatly contradict themselves less than three pages later:
"As human beings we naturally blend a rich and heady mix of these three main dimensions, yet we tend to have a preference for one mode over the others."
So, "rusty heap" or "rich and heady mix"?
If you know enough to recognise which description is more accurate then you already know far more about NLP than this book will tell you. And if you don't know enough to weed out the nonsense, I'm afraid you're likely to end up with a pretty confused view of the subject if you read this book.
Definitely one of the worst books on NLP I've read.
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59 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very good beginners guide to NLP for non (self-styled) NLP-Gurus!, September 21, 2005
This review is from: Neuro-linguistic Programming for Dummies (Paperback)
Of all the NLP books I've read (several dozen) this is the clearest and most accessible entry-level guide to NLP.
While I am not going to comment on any other review, I hope I can say that once you've read this book, you'll be able to tell quite a lot about all the reviewers from they way they write, and from what they've written! They really do expose their own metaprograms rather elegantly (read the book to find out how!)
The Dummies style does not suit everyone - it's exciting, captures the attention, it's upfront and full of interesting anecdotes and asides - and as a result, I actually read all of my copy, and dip into it on a regular basis!
The material may extend beyond the boundaries of what may be regarded as "core" NLP - in my book, that's a bonus. The people who are buying this book are not, in my opinion, looking for an academic treatise (there are plenty of those!) rather a practical introduction to a subject that is not within the mainstream of psychology (yet).
Bottom line - if you're looking to expand beyond basic NLP Practitioner knowledge and practice, then you'll find this book fun even if you don't learn anything new. Otherwise, this is the perfect introduction which will lead you on to discover fascinating new worlds of possibility, achievement and fulfilment.
I heard that 50% of all books are put aside after Chapter 1 - this isn't one of them.
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43 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Appropriate Title- this book will indeed make you a, February 23, 2005
This review is from: Neuro-linguistic Programming for Dummies (Paperback)
I purchased this book, and within reading the first 130 pages, I returned it. This is a general mishmash of some key NLP information, combined with pointless "inspirational" anecdotes that don't show how to apply the techniques (which even the authors recommend that a reader could skip and not miss a beat).
Now, I am no "expert" on NLP (not yet at least!) but I understood enough to have instinctively felt that something was wrong and that I was wasting my time. So I went to the Honest Abe Website quoted above and learned my instincts were correct. [...]This excerpt was purposefully taken out of context, because in the following lines, indeed the entire review, this book gets intensely criticized for its poor research and actual errors. I want to thank Mr. Bradbury for a well researched and precise review which saved my time, effort, and brain from a poor book.
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