Using Your Brain For A Change (Richard Bandler, 1985)

[madali]

Using Your Brain For A Change (Richard Bandler, 1985)

It is books like this that make you think of Tyler’s “Self-improvement is masturbation.”

I do want to better myself, to know more about the world, about people, and about myself, but how can you work on the latter, when lots of books are pure garbage.

Richard Bandler is one of those annoying self-help guys that just make me angry knowing they exist. The book is about something called NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming). See how impressive that sounds? That is what these motherfuckers do. Their aim is to fool people. See, the word has “Neuro” in it, so it sounds medical, it has “linguistic” another attempt to make it sounds more professional, and ends with “programming” to make it sounds very logical. It is not, no matter how many times assholes like Richard Bandler use terms like “cutting-edge technology” to talk about bullshit.

One of his most annoying traits is how he insults psychology. I’m not a big fan of psychology, since I think most of it is wrong, and psychologists are usually morons who studied to be better morons, but I at least acknowledge that it is the best thing we have at the moment. But here are some of Bandler’s put downs of psychology,

“…in which professionals get paid more if they take longer to solve a problem. Since incompetence is rewarded, new and better methods take much longer to become part of the mainstream in these fields.”

“Except for torturing rats, probably more psychologists’ time has gone into studying memory than any other subject.”

To get into people’s minds, he overstates his work. He talks about how by controlling the images in your mind, you can either learn to be a civil engineer or a psychotic. Or how there really isn’t a lot of difference between being a physicists and being a schizophrenic (his reason is that they both talk about things you can’t see, conveniently ignoring that physicists have theories that other’s can verify).

His techniques are mostly moronic, and I can summarize them for you in a few lines. Think of a memory. Now, change that image (like making it brighter). You now associate happiness to that memory. Using more or less these techniques (with a lot of variety, changing the size, etc), you can change year old phobias in MINUTES. Fuck you, Richard Bandler.

I will admit that there might be something in thinking deeply about your experiences, and I am sure there is something interesting there, but merely thinking of image and changing its height or size or color. I am an imaginative person, but I do not see feelings in clear pictures that I can manipulate.

Here is a brief example of one his techniques, “Now I want you to run a movie of exactly the same event, but from the point of view of looking over that other person's shoulder, so that you can see yourself as that argument takes place. Go through the same movie from beginning to end, watching from this viewpoint. . . .”

Another one is, “First I want you to imagine that you're sitting in the middle of a movie theater, and up on the screen you can see a blackand-white snapshot in which you see yourself in a situation just before you had the phobic response. . .”

Nothing irritates me more than reading a book like this and have the author constantly praise himself. Here are some of the most annoying examples,

“…and you'll save another thousand dollars worth of therapy. Believe me, when this stuff gets known, we're going to put traditional therapists out of business. They'll be out there with the people selling magic spells and powdered bat wings.” (this was written twenty years back, and I’d wish I could feel a certain satisfaction knowing he is wrong, but I can’t, because I’m sure he doesn’t give a shit, as he just wanted to make money at that time, he probably didn’t believe his own bullshit.”

“…so he had actually invested about $140,000 [and sixteen years] trying to change something that took me ten minutes to change.”

“In a recent seminar there was a woman in the front row moaning and groaning about having tried to quit smoking for eleven years. I changed her in less than eleven minutes.”

Even his explanations are stupid. At one part he talks about the reason we don’t remember things from school, is because school is a bad experience, so we forget it. “Since he doesn’t want to feel bad, he is not likely to remember it.” This is moronic on so many levels. Schools are sometimes a lot of fun for some people who fuck around all day, and terrifying for some of the nerds, but I bet the nerds remember more years later. And if people did not remember things that made them feel bad, then we’d all be okay, but we always DO remember things that makes us feel back.

If all of that does not seem bad enough, the book seems to be just a written from a seminar, since it participants ask questions. This means, fucking Bandler has not even taken the effort to actually put any effort to write it. I’m just slightly glad I stole it from the internet, and did not have to pay for Bandler’s cocaine habit.

Cocaine habit? I’m not joking. This is what turns me most into the Incredible Hulk. That these fuckers steal money from people, pretend they have certain answers, and then can not use them themselves. He filed for divorce with his wife, sued his partner against the ownership of the name, NLP, and used cocaine, and was involved with the murder of a prostitution (he was not acquitted though).

Yet people always get fooled. These pieces of shit fuckers charges for books, tapes, seminars, personal talks, and so on, and people always buy it. People being morons would not concern me so much, if it were not for the fact that gullibility is DANGEROUS. If you are willing to pay big money to someone to tell you bullshit, then it would not take much effort for your government or your religion to do what it wants with you.

0/5

[sulphurhead]

LOL....0/5?  mad, you doing reviews for self-help books is like a nun reviewing gay porn
I'm not saying you're wrong. It's still an interesting reveiw and the part about Bandler's life is stunning.
It is quite intriguing how many self-help authors and religous figures tend to be hypocrites of the extreme order.

[X.]

I'm finding Mad's book reviews an absolute joy to read: these self-help books, especially!

Keep 'em coming.

[madali]

I really should look into that genre to make tons of money

[sulphurhead]

Maybe you should write one as well and make tons of money

[madali]

Why are you asking me to make tons of money when you can ask YOURSELF to make tons of money?

Here is an idea that is on the cutting-edge of bio-informational-association technology, that I have only recently examined, and will now show you. USE THIS BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE DOES. Make a new name on this board, call it the anything for now (choosing names is extremely important, and I’ll discuss that in my book), and then post in this thread. Then have this name of yours tell your other name to make tons of money. Do this several times every day, and you will be SHOCKED about how effective it works.

I was driving a 1987 Toyota, until I kept posting to myself and emailing myself (this technique will also be explained later) about how “you” should get tons of money and get a new car, and four months later, I won a lottery, and now I’m driving around with my new Porsche. I’m not telling you this to impress you but to impress UPON you.

[madali]

I could do this all day.

[X.]

You know what? That's sounds so fucking crazy, it might actually work.

[fizz]

Lol...mad that is fucking hilarious!

I want to read more posts...

[theoddball]

I feel impressed already. In fact, I now look like Wile E. Coyote after being flattened by a large boulder.

[madali]

All I need to is to get to a few white people in Dubai, and then the ball will roll, and I'll be interviewed by the shitty radio dj's, and they'll suck my dick on-air, and I'll charged tens of thousands so that corporations in dubai will lots of money can send their executives to listen to two hours, spending 500,000 thousand on 10 executives, so they'll go back to office, and break the back on the rest of the 500 employees over 20 dhs.

And maybe I'll pretend my work is a fusion of western scientific study and thousand year old eastern philosophy practiced by Buddha and Ghandi.

[madali]

I dont know if you guys have heard of the show, "Penn & Teller: Bullshit", but its basically about bullshit things people believe in. Anyway, the episode i just saw was about self-help, and its funny, how moronic people are, specially things like firewalk and glasswalking, which just LOOKS impossible.

(Penn introducing, through V.O., a self-help guy who is selling a book) "If your problem is you have 295 bucks too much, this guy can surely solve it"

[X.]

That sounds like a fun show.

[theoddball]

I love Penn & Teller's show. They have dealt with some of the most outrageous bullshit that people believe, such as 9/11 conspiracy theories, alien abductions, Feng Shui, "life coaching" and "alternative" medicine.

You can find some excerpts on..... well, you guessed it.... YouTube.

[theoddball]

"The only way to get rich from a self-help book is to write one."

Quote by Christopher Buckley (author of "Thank You for Smoking"), taken from his book "God is my Broker", in which he criticized the self-help industry.