Hi Stephen, Thanks for your response.  Only time for a few brief remarks unfortunately.  You quoted the clinical psychologist with whom you corresponded as saying: "Also, some of the methods (e.g. observing eye movements to determine what is going on in the mind) sounded a little weird and didn't seem to be especially good treatment techniques."  I wonder if he considers EMDR a little weird and not an especially good treatment technique?  You also quote him as saying that NLP: "only has a cult-like, almost evangelistic, following and that has killed it as a scientific treatment method."  Largely, perhaps, but ONLY has a cult-like following? I disagree.  I can think of a few contributors to this forum who I consider to be counterexamples to that claim (as if I'm the final authority on the matter).  I agree, however, that NLP training in general, seems largely money-oriented. Finally, you wrote: "I often get the impression (although I have no specific examples to hand) that NLP advocates generally disregard such constraints and sometimes think of NLP as indepentent of its historical influences."  I often get a similar impression.  I would like to add to that charge that the NLP advocates that I've encountered are for the most part, to borrow Ellis' colorful description, self-misled musturbators, who "MUST have this" and "MUST have that" and then act as if they've been short changed when their wonder cure technology fails to produce the results that they demanded (as if they themselves had nothing to do with the outcome elicited).  Maybe it's due in part to their goal obsession, who knows. e_lie