1. Elicitation- Valid and used by all gov. and counter-intelligence agencies and taught by default in some military areas. A manual how to counter elicitation is to be found on all servers of intel agencies. Valid in the use of extracting information, social engineering, sales, by prosecution in court, and so on....
2. Via self-hypnosis
2.1. This is nothing more than an autosuggestion technique.
2.1.1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autosuggestion
3. Specific models
3.1. The Swish Pattern CM: Energy ritual therapies - INVALID
3.2. Time Line Technique CM: Recovering memories - Scientology-like - INVALID
3.2.1. Circle of Excellence CM: Ritualistic like - INVALID
3.3. Sensory Acuity
3.3.1. Eye Accessing CM: Disproved and INVALID (doesn't count in the eye disorders either)
3.4. Sensory Awareness
3.5. Visual/ Kinesthetic dissociation CM: Processing traumatic events from a more detached or less invested perspective. - Valid if practiced by trained professionals.
3.6. Perceptual positions CM: VALID = Helicopter view or different vantage points.
3.7. Milton model
3.8. Meta-Model
4. My final conclusion: Learn and promote critical thinking and logic as opposed to NLP and self-help like methods.
5. Techniques
5.1. Neuro
5.1.1. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
5.1.2. Psychotherapy
5.1.3. Behaviour
5.1.3.1. Body language
5.1.4. Neurology
5.1.4.1. Brain
5.1.4.2. Neural network
5.1.5. Hypnotherapy
5.1.5.1. Milton Model
5.2. Linguistic
5.2.1. Communication
5.2.1.1. Verbal
5.2.1.2. Non-verbal
5.3. Programming
5.3.1. Modelling
5.3.1.1. Setting/ coding: CM: as in altering the state of mind, shaping, persuading, influencing, or manipulating
5.3.1.2. Duplicating behavior
5.3.1.2.1. Scientifically invalid
5.3.1.3. Modifying behavior - valid
6. Tools - methods
6.1. Persuasion skills
6.2. Elicitation
6.3. Rapport Building
6.4. Behavioral Flexibility
7. Benefits
7.1. Low benefits if any or if learning how to be deceptive is a benefit, then it scores quite high.
8. Claims
8.1. "promises to teach the masses the key to success, power, health, and happiness"
8.2. "teaching a variety of communication and persuasion skills"
8.3. "effectively used in the fields of management, education, business, training, and also for personality development and performance-related activities."
9. My conclusions on its validity so far
9.1. No validity in the science field. It has been classified as a pseudoscience and repeatedly disproved.
9.2. Promotes cognitive bias.
9.3. Encourages manipulation.
9.4. It fails in controlled studies of clinical trials.
9.5. Uses lots of misconceptions about the brain and the human mind.
9.6. None of the neuro techniques are properly understood or applied.
9.7. It's a poor replica of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
9.8. Human potential is poorly understood or very well understood and brilliantly manipulated.
9.9. Some presuppositions are misleading. Example: "There is no such thing as failure. There is only feedback."
9.10. Many of their claims about thinking and perception are not supported by neuroscience.
9.11. Some techniques might work such as: rapport building, teaching persuasion, but there is no way to measure the real results.
9.12. It makes bizarre interpretations at times, such as trying to decipher the douchbaggery of a Fox News presenter. (Around min. 4)
9.12.1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-5klVwASGg
9.12.2. They might confuse a frustrated debater with someone set out to "program the minds".
9.13. NLP uses the power of suggestion disguised as "hypnosis" - which basically is nothing more than that - power of suggestion. They are incredibly good at at finding easily suggestible people.
9.13.1. See also the method of compounding.
9.13.2. Hypnosis - aka the power of suggestion - is known to be used for behavior modification.
9.13.2.1. Hypnosis and the placebo effect are "so heavily reliant upon the effects of suggestion and belief that it would be hard to imagine how a credible placebo control could ever be devised for a hypnotism study." -R Barker Bausell
9.14. It also makes use of what is called Barnum effect, commonly known as the Forer effect.
9.14.1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect