NLP  History  
 
NLP  began  in  the  early  1970s  when  Richard  Bandler  and  John  Grinder  
met  at  the  University  of  California  in  Santa  Cruz,  USA.  
 
Richard  Bandler  was  a  student  of  Psychology  at  the  University  and  John  
Grinder  was  an  Assistant  Professor  of  Linguistics.  Bandler  was  carrying  
out  a  study  of  the  family  therapist,  Virginia  Satir.  Bandler  noticed  that  
Satir  was  able  to  obtain  startling  results  with  her  clients  and  that  certain  
phrases  and  questions  Satir  was  using,  patterns  of  speech,  seemed  to  be  
particularly  significant.  Bandler  asked  Grinder  to  help  work  out  what  it  
was  that  Satir  was  doing  specifically.  The  result  of  this  was  the  first  
modelling  project  that  has  to  lead  to  the  creation  of  NLP.    
 
Grinder  was  able  to  model  and  codify  Satir’s  work  and  from  this  process  
developed  the  Meta  Model.  Bandler  and  Grinder  went  on  to  model  Fritz  
Perls,  a  founder  of  the  school  of  therapy  known  as  Gestalt,  and  later  the  
Hypnotherapist  Milton  Erickson.  After  modelling  Erickson  they  came  up  
with  the  name  Neuro-­‐Linguistic  Programming  to  describe  what  they  had  
created.  
 

Virginia  
Satir   Meta  
Model  
Fritz  Perls   NLP  

Milton   Milton  
Erickson   Model  
 
 
Bandler  and  Grinder  did  not  intend  to  create  a  new  form  of  therapy,  
rather  they  simply  wanted  to  model,  code  and  replicate  processes  that  
worked  in  practice  and  that  could  be  taught  to  others.    
 

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