Thomas The simple answer is NO, not all applications are therapeutic - all applications of NLP coded patterns to business (you mention sales as a legitimate example) sports (choice of state and state maintenance issue, for example) medicine... are legitimate and powerful applications. The modeling/applications distinction is roughly the distinction between the discovery and coding of a pattern (modeling) and its use in various contexts (application). In some applications - sales, for example, - clearly the saleperson will engage in content in the sense of offering the potential customer, content about the product or service on offer. However in such contexts the effectiveness of the salesperson is determined more by their effectiveness in influencing the processes of decision making than any of the content involved. We focused heavily on the therapeutic applications for several reasons, including the fact that the vast majority of readers have such experiences and the fact that the (for us) supremely important issues surrounding the ethical applications of NLP patterning occurs with the highest frequency in the therapeutic context. We will mention that we have done extremely successful consulting without the use of content, and as you say, this is (from a converntional point of view at least) a bit tricky. All the best, Carmem and John