NLP–By Steve Bavister and Amanda Vickers

I only got up to chapter three in this book before I had to give up. I was not impressed, I must admit. It was published under the ‘teach yourself’ series and I wonder how anyone can learn from that.


Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP for short) is a very vaguely written book. It somehow manages to write pages upon pages of words without actually telling you what’s going on. Here are two of the claims it makes:

• To help you to know what you want and how to get it
• Put you in the driving seat of your life

Tell me this; how can a book tell YOU what YOU want?! How?!?!? It can give the reader suggestions, but it can’t just blatantly say that, YOU want to be a doctor, YOU want a car, YOU want a job, because it’s a BOOOK!!! And the latter just annoyed and bemused me so much so, that I don’t actually know what to say.

It all sounds far too much like motivational drivel to be deemed as scientific. From what I’ve read, there isn’t even any experimental evidence to back it up!

So, in conclusion, if you really, really, really, really want to read it, then go right ahead.

You may get more out of it than I did.