I’m putting on a fight with the presuppositions in NLP

Wednesday is NLP day. I have an ambition to become NLP Trainer and I’m currently in training to be a certified NLP Practitioner, step 1 towards my goal. On Wednesday I discuss concepts, thoughts and experiences with NLP.

NLP has many presuppositions that are needed to explain the theories in NLP. So I’m dedicating a series on the different presuppositions. And I’m taking them heads-on.

The act of presupposing
To presuppose is “to suppose or assume beforehand; take for granted in advance”. Presuppositions therefore are assumptions that NLP considers to be true, without the explicit need for proof.

This is tricky, because this means that they can be wrong. However to construct a theory, assumptions are needed. It’s good practice to make explicit as many assumptions as possible and communicate them when you use them for your theory. Assumptions may be tricky, but hidden assumptions are plain nasty. So pointing out the presuppositions is thumbs up for NLP.

Foundations on beliefs
The presuppositions are the foundations on which the theory of NLP is built. A lot of the presuppositions can be considered beliefs, as we are unable to provide proof for them. If we look at the presupposition “The meaning of your communication is the response you get” for instance, there’s no way that we can conclusively accept or reject that presupposition. It’s a hypothesis that’s hard, if not impossible, to verify. So we have to choose to believe the presuppositions.

Putting on the fight
And this is where I start to be critical. I don’t mind choosing to believe assumptions, but I won’t do it without a decent fight So I’m going to challenge all the presuppositions in upcoming articles. I’m going to explore the following:

• what does NLP mean with the presupposition?
• why is it necessary for NLP to believe this?
• can I find proof or personal experiences that support the presupposition?
• can I find proof or personal experiences that undermine the presupposition?
• in conclusion, how do I feel about this presupposition?

Exploring all the presuppositions thoroughly will deepen my understanding of them and I can use that as a part of my education and for future reference. Challenging them will also encourage you, the readers, to challenge (please do!) or defend them (please do!) in the discussion area of the articles. I’m very interested in your thoughts on this subject and together we can turn this into a great resource!