To John Grinder: For my PhD I'm currently researching the sources of NLP metaprograms.  I notice that the meta-programs are not mentioned in Whispering in the Wind and I've been told by various sources that you do not consider metaprograms as part of NLP. I have two questions for you: 1/ Can you elborate on why metaprogramls wouldn't be part of NLP? 2/ Can you help me find something or can you explain me in more detail what happened between 1977 and 1983 as far as metaprograms are concerned: Here is what I've found so far: The source outside NLP is the book "programming and metaprogramming the human biocomputer" (1967). Some things which are now called metaprograms are embedded in the early NLP books: e.g. the V-A-K-Ad distincions starting in Structure of Magic, Part II (1975), the self-other distinction in "Changing with Families", the internal-external source distintion in "Patterns II" (1997) as well as "time/space", etc.  However, one cannot call these sources the "metaprogram model" as it is currently known in NLP. In his Encyclopedia, Robert Dilts writes that "metaprograms emerged as a part of NLP in the late 1970s.  A number of the patterns were initially proposed by Richard Bandler as ways in which people kept 'coherency' in their mental programming.  Further research into these and other patterns was spearheaded by Leslie Cameron-Bandler (together with David Gordon, Robert Dilts and Maribeth Meyers-Anderson)."   This matches with what Brian Van der Horst has been telling me: namely that Leslie Cameron did a great deal of work on the topic of meta-programs starting around 1978 or so.  According to Brian van der Horst, Ross Steward's & Rodger Bailey's adaptation of what they (only Rodger?) learned from the NLP training with Leslie.  Unfortunately, I only have Leslie's practitioner manual of 1983 and that one doesn't mention meta-programs. The oldest written source I have referring to metaprograms in a form which is very much as we know them today in NLP context is the article "Who, what, when and where of hiring" in Dallas magazine, December 1983.  It refers to the IPU Profile.  The IPU profile presents 13 meta-program categories, together with the questions needed for eliciting them, how they work as influencing language and their applications in management, recruitment and sales.  The article says that Dr. Ross Steward is "the PhD behind the profile". The first written sources from NLP books mentioning metaprograms as such (as a model, not even using the word “meta-programs”) comes around 1985. (The first books, to some extend are "Emotional Hostage" & "Know How" Around the same period, Joseph Yeager, author of “Thinking about Thinking with NLP (1985) was probably the first to mention McClelland’s Power-affiliation-Achievement model in an NLP context. ).  The first full presentation of the model, strongly resembling the IPU profile and its successor the LAB Profile, appears in “Time Line Theraphy and the Basics of Personality” by Tad James & Wyatt Woodsmall (1988).  At the same time, the model also appears in “Beyond Selling” by Dan S. Bagley and Edward J. Reese (1988), but there it’s presented under the name “sorting groups” which are part of their “sorting criteria grid”.