Introducing Mind Games
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Before we get started, I want to take a minute to introduce you to a podcast we think many of you will find genuinely fascinating and unsettling in the way only a good investigation can be. If you listen to Sequestered, you know we're interested not in just what happened, but how it happened. The systems, the psychology behind things, the power dynamics, the moments where something meant to help quietly crosses a line. Mind Games follows that thread all the way down. It's an investigative series about neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP, which is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology that promises transformation.
How does Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) promise transformation?
It's control over your emotions, control over your life, and in some cases, control over other people. What begins as an experimental therapeutic movement in the 1970s slowly expands into something much bigger, touching self-help culture, corporate training, high control groups, and eventually a murder trial that raises serious ethical questions about influence, consent, and power.
What ethical questions are raised about NLP and its practices?
The episode you're about to hear explores the early days of NLP.
What were the early days of NLP like in the 1970s?
when therapy itself was still controversial. Boundaries were loose, and young people trusted authority figures who claimed they could change lives overnight. For some, those experiences felt profound. For others, they were deeply unsettling. Like the storylines in Sequestered, Mind Games doesn't rush to easy conclusions. It listens closely to the people who were there, asks hard questions about harm and intention, and lets the complexity sit where it belongs. This is a special preview of Mind Games, and if this episode pulls you in, trust me, you'll want to hear the others.
How did Bandler and Grinder's techniques impact their clients?
New episodes drop Tuesdays, so be sure to follow Mind Games wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get into this preview episode.
Richard was my first real therapist. Debra Cantor Morton was a student and one of their first guinea pigs.
I actually did quite a bit of my personal work with the both of them.
That was extremely powerful. Debra experienced therapeutic breakthroughs with Bandler and Grinder. But by the end of her time... I plotted revenge. I thought of suing them. I thought about putting sugar in their gas tanks.
What was the atmosphere like in the NLP therapy groups?
Debra first met Bandler when they were both volunteering at a peer counseling center. And Bandler was the trainer. Richard Bandler was in there training you. You're both undergraduate students. How did he get in the position where he was training anyone to work on people with real problems?
I have no idea. how that happened. There must have been some kind of supervision. God, you'd hope so. What were the trainings like?
What controversial events occurred during the NLP Christmas party?
It was, I use the word wholesome, but I use the word wholesome in contrast to where I feel like it went later.
When I met them, they knew what they were doing.
Jodi Bruce met Bandler and Grinder when she enrolled in a linguistics course they were teaching together.
They were developing it with us. I mean, they were doing their research with us.
What are the implications of NLP's influence on therapy and personal development?
Jodi joined the workshops Bandler and Grinder were running off campus. The students would arrive and chat a bit, but it wasn't a party. They were there to work. Bandler and Grinder would make a dramatic entrance and ask the group, who wants to make a deep change tonight? A few volunteers would step up. They were the patients. Everyone else became their doctors.
That's who we worked on. We worked on ourselves with each other, which was pretty brave now that I say that. When I think about it, you know, just these other people, these other students who happen to be interested in the same thing, we were suddenly bearing our hearts to each other.
Therapy is everywhere today, but in the 1970s, therapy was still controversial. So it was pretty radical for these kids to be working on each other, exploring new forms of care.
And we did do a lot of sharing. The big phrase that comes back to me as I think about NLP is, what stops you from doing that? So if I said, I feel afraid, that would be dissected into who I feel afraid of and how and what. I can't tell my father that I'm mad at him.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:06–0:50
2
How does Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) promise transformation?
0:50–1:20
3
What ethical questions are raised about NLP and its practices?
1:20–1:24
4
What were the early days of NLP like in the 1970s?
1:24–2:05
5
How did Bandler and Grinder's techniques impact their clients?
2:05–2:46
6
What was the atmosphere like in the NLP therapy groups?
2:46–3:15
7
What controversial events occurred during the NLP Christmas party?
3:15–3:42
8
What are the implications of NLP's influence on therapy and personal development?
3:42–17:37