1
00:00:11,880 --> 00:00:13,200
Speaker 1: Take a deep breath in.

2
00:00:19,440 --> 00:00:20,320
Speaker 2: And breathe out.

3
00:00:22,680 --> 00:00:25,520
Speaker 3: Your conscious mind is going to go totally away so

4
00:00:25,560 --> 00:00:28,640
Speaker 3: that I can speak privately of your unconscious mind.

5
00:00:29,880 --> 00:00:33,879
Speaker 4: From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. This is episode five of

6
00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:34,680
Speaker 4: mind Games.

7
00:00:35,200 --> 00:00:37,720
Speaker 5: I'm Zoe Lascas, I'm Alice Hines.

8
00:00:42,280 --> 00:00:43,080
Speaker 2: You don't know how you did it?

9
00:00:43,280 --> 00:00:43,920
Speaker 6: Can do you?

10
00:00:43,920 --> 00:00:49,120
Speaker 2: You're going to a little time to STARSI stake and

11
00:00:49,159 --> 00:00:49,680
Speaker 2: you're out of it.

12
00:00:51,720 --> 00:00:55,000
Speaker 4: In a previous episode, we met Tony Robbins, the six

13
00:00:55,040 --> 00:00:58,160
Speaker 4: foot seven self help tycoon who built his empire on

14
00:00:58,240 --> 00:01:03,600
Speaker 4: neurolinguistic programming NLP. We mentioned his work with Bill Clinton,

15
00:01:04,120 --> 00:01:08,320
Speaker 4: celebrities ranging from Pitbull to Princess Diana, and that he's

16
00:01:08,319 --> 00:01:11,120
Speaker 4: introduced NLP to millions of everyday people.

17
00:01:11,920 --> 00:01:15,360
Speaker 5: But there's one client we didn't tell you about. It's

18
00:01:15,400 --> 00:01:18,600
Speaker 5: probably the biggest organization Tony's ever worked for.

19
00:01:19,360 --> 00:01:23,920
Speaker 4: We're talking annual budget just shy of two hundred billion dollars. Big.

20
00:01:25,040 --> 00:01:28,560
Speaker 2: We do more before nine am than most people do

21
00:01:28,920 --> 00:01:30,280
Speaker 2: all day.

22
00:01:32,640 --> 00:01:33,080
Speaker 3: Made for a.

23
00:01:33,120 --> 00:01:41,720
Speaker 4: Sergeant YEP the US Army, and in the nineteen seventies,

24
00:01:41,760 --> 00:01:46,679
Speaker 4: the Army began searching for new technologies to enhance human

25
00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:50,440
Speaker 4: performance in nineteen eighty one, members of the Intelligence and

26
00:01:50,480 --> 00:01:55,200
Speaker 4: Security Command began to investigate how they might operationalize NLP.

27
00:01:56,080 --> 00:01:58,680
Speaker 4: It may seem weird that the military would look twice

28
00:01:58,720 --> 00:02:03,680
Speaker 4: at nlpchild of some California lefties, but the Army was,

29
00:02:03,840 --> 00:02:07,920
Speaker 4: in many ways the ideal self help customer, an organization

30
00:02:08,200 --> 00:02:12,919
Speaker 4: struggling with insecurity and some serious baggage. Public perception of

31
00:02:12,960 --> 00:02:16,079
Speaker 4: the military had tanked with the Vietnam War, and officials

32
00:02:16,120 --> 00:02:19,720
Speaker 4: worried the Soviets were outpacing the US. They were desperate

33
00:02:19,760 --> 00:02:21,720
Speaker 4: for anything that would give them an edge.

34
00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:26,320
Speaker 5: Didn't they also look into alien communication technologies in this era?

35
00:02:26,520 --> 00:02:28,880
Speaker 4: What didn't they look into? They were all over the

36
00:02:28,919 --> 00:02:32,360
Speaker 4: new ag map. They were doing like long distance viewing,

37
00:02:32,600 --> 00:02:36,040
Speaker 4: like psychic viewing experiments that continued until the nineties. By

38
00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:39,840
Speaker 4: the way, anyway, the Army Intelligence and Security Command hired

39
00:02:39,919 --> 00:02:43,520
Speaker 4: Richard Bandler, John Grinder, and some of their NLP friends

40
00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:46,239
Speaker 4: to run a whole bunch of experiments. We're going to

41
00:02:46,280 --> 00:02:49,680
Speaker 4: focus on one. One of the trainers in charge was

42
00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:53,120
Speaker 4: none other than Tony Robbins. His job was to see

43
00:02:53,120 --> 00:02:56,239
Speaker 4: if he could improve the standard pistol training for new recruits.

44
00:02:56,400 --> 00:02:57,920
Speaker 6: And I can take any training you do in the

45
00:02:58,000 --> 00:02:59,959
Speaker 6: entire army. Cut the training time in half an increase

46
00:03:00,120 --> 00:03:02,480
Speaker 6: the competency. He said, you're crazy, and I said, no,

47
00:03:02,520 --> 00:03:04,639
Speaker 6: I'm expensive, and we negotiated this deal.

48
00:03:05,240 --> 00:03:08,440
Speaker 4: Tony said that only seventy percent of new recruits passed

49
00:03:08,480 --> 00:03:11,960
Speaker 4: the standard forty five caliber pistol training. He also said

50
00:03:12,040 --> 00:03:13,720
Speaker 4: it took way too long.

51
00:03:14,280 --> 00:03:16,679
Speaker 6: So I said, I'll turn that around. I'll cut it

52
00:03:16,720 --> 00:03:17,120
Speaker 6: in half.

53
00:03:17,639 --> 00:03:21,320
Speaker 4: According to Tony, that's exactly what he did. One hundred

54
00:03:21,360 --> 00:03:24,640
Speaker 4: percent of the soldiers in the new NLP pistol training passed.

55
00:03:25,200 --> 00:03:27,919
Speaker 4: It took half the time, and the participants used half

56
00:03:27,960 --> 00:03:29,919
Speaker 4: the usual Ammo and the Colonel.

57
00:03:29,720 --> 00:03:31,080
Speaker 6: Ret a letter of the general saying it's the first

58
00:03:31,080 --> 00:03:33,200
Speaker 6: breakthrough in pistol shooting since World War One.

59
00:03:33,600 --> 00:03:35,800
Speaker 4: I traveled down to the suburbs of Washington, d C.

60
00:03:36,040 --> 00:03:38,760
Speaker 4: To meet the guy who ran the pistol experiment with Tony.

61
00:03:39,200 --> 00:03:44,560
Speaker 1: Okay, this this is a dirty hairy special. This is

62
00:03:44,600 --> 00:03:46,600
Speaker 1: the gun he uses in the movie.

63
00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:49,640
Speaker 4: Wyatt Wouod Small is now in his eighties. He's had

64
00:03:49,640 --> 00:03:52,640
Speaker 4: a long career as a prominent NLP trainer who's worked

65
00:03:52,640 --> 00:03:56,560
Speaker 4: with some predition Azi clients, including several medal winning athletes

66
00:03:56,600 --> 00:03:59,760
Speaker 4: on the US Olympic dive team and major companies like

67
00:03:59,760 --> 00:04:02,880
Speaker 4: pul Lloyd and Avery Denison. At the time of the

68
00:04:02,920 --> 00:04:08,040
Speaker 4: pistol experiment, Wyatt was interpreting incoming intelligence. Richard Bandler was

69
00:04:08,080 --> 00:04:10,880
Speaker 4: one of his NLP teachers, so I figured we could

70
00:04:10,960 --> 00:04:13,760
Speaker 4: run a little experiment of our own. I wanted to

71
00:04:13,800 --> 00:04:16,240
Speaker 4: see if NLP could make me a sharpshooter in just

72
00:04:16,320 --> 00:04:16,920
Speaker 4: three days.

73
00:04:17,920 --> 00:04:20,719
Speaker 5: This would be using NLP to do something that's very

74
00:04:20,760 --> 00:04:24,800
Speaker 5: easy to measure objectively, marksmanship. Either you hit the target

75
00:04:24,920 --> 00:04:25,479
Speaker 5: or you don't.

76
00:04:26,760 --> 00:04:27,080
Speaker 7: Okay.

77
00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:32,120
Speaker 1: This is a forty four magnum with an eight and

78
00:04:32,200 --> 00:04:33,479
Speaker 1: three a tents barrel.

79
00:04:33,800 --> 00:04:36,839
Speaker 4: Smith and Weston I met Wyatt at his home, where

80
00:04:36,839 --> 00:04:38,960
Speaker 4: we took a look at his gun collection, which he

81
00:04:39,040 --> 00:04:43,400
Speaker 4: keeps upstairs in two safes, the size of refrigerators. From

82
00:04:43,440 --> 00:04:47,560
Speaker 4: the outside, Wyatt's house looks pretty normal, red bricks, white trim,

83
00:04:47,800 --> 00:04:51,880
Speaker 4: a two car garage, but right inside there is a

84
00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:55,240
Speaker 4: giant black and gold sculpture of an Egyptian god with

85
00:04:55,320 --> 00:04:58,760
Speaker 4: the head of a bird. Also many pictures of angels

86
00:04:58,800 --> 00:05:01,560
Speaker 4: throughout the house, most of which are memorials to his

87
00:05:01,640 --> 00:05:05,119
Speaker 4: late wife. As we looked at his guns, I found

88
00:05:05,120 --> 00:05:08,760
Speaker 4: myself a little distracted by the decor. You mentioned that

89
00:05:09,160 --> 00:05:14,480
Speaker 4: she had had past life experience in ancient Egypt. Did

90
00:05:14,520 --> 00:05:16,800
Speaker 4: she also what was her connection to angels?

91
00:05:17,200 --> 00:05:20,600
Speaker 1: She came from the angelic realm.

92
00:05:20,960 --> 00:05:23,320
Speaker 4: Wyatt handed me a gun and walked me through basic

93
00:05:23,360 --> 00:05:26,200
Speaker 4: firearm safety, so neither of us ended up in the

94
00:05:26,240 --> 00:05:27,680
Speaker 4: angelic realm.

95
00:05:28,200 --> 00:05:34,280
Speaker 8: So put your finger on the trigger, Okay, squeeze slowly.

96
00:05:36,480 --> 00:05:40,599
Speaker 1: So that gives you an idea of what the trigger pressure.

97
00:05:40,360 --> 00:05:41,200
Speaker 6: Is going to be.

98
00:05:42,360 --> 00:05:45,479
Speaker 4: After shooting laser bullets in his kitchen, we graduated to

99
00:05:45,560 --> 00:05:49,000
Speaker 4: live ammunition and hit the local shooting range. Okay, and

100
00:05:49,120 --> 00:05:52,000
Speaker 4: could we fraw on another box of nine milimeter? Thanks?

101
00:05:52,320 --> 00:05:55,200
Speaker 4: And could we do one more red dot target bullets

102
00:05:55,240 --> 00:05:58,720
Speaker 4: in hand, we donned our goggles and went inside Are Ready.

103
00:06:00,560 --> 00:06:03,200
Speaker 4: There was a line of booths separated by bulletproof glass,

104
00:06:03,360 --> 00:06:06,600
Speaker 4: and the floors were littered with brass shells. It was busy,

105
00:06:06,839 --> 00:06:09,960
Speaker 4: even on a Monday afternoon. It was tough to dial

106
00:06:10,000 --> 00:06:13,920
Speaker 4: into Whyatt's advice with guns going off constantly and unpredictably.

107
00:06:14,839 --> 00:06:16,320
Speaker 3: Read dot and the X and.

108
00:06:20,680 --> 00:06:26,400
Speaker 1: Lean forward slightly okay, the imbalance like you were, and

109
00:06:26,920 --> 00:06:28,200
Speaker 1: squeeze the tree.

110
00:06:28,400 --> 00:06:33,640
Speaker 4: Okay. Whyatt kept moving the target back?

111
00:06:35,640 --> 00:06:37,880
Speaker 1: Okay, right in the middle.

112
00:06:37,920 --> 00:06:41,200
Speaker 4: Right in the middle, perfect, not bad for my first

113
00:06:41,200 --> 00:06:47,159
Speaker 4: time out with a pistol coll of a teacher. Why

114
00:06:49,080 --> 00:06:52,440
Speaker 4: we celebrated with lunch at Red Lobster. I was feeling

115
00:06:52,440 --> 00:06:59,680
Speaker 4: pretty hyped about my progress, but I was beginning to wonder. Okay,

116
00:06:59,720 --> 00:07:05,240
Speaker 4: so my big question is, how is this NLP versus

117
00:07:05,839 --> 00:07:08,120
Speaker 4: just teaching someone how to shoot a gun?

118
00:07:09,120 --> 00:07:10,040
Speaker 5: You read my mind?

119
00:07:10,760 --> 00:07:13,400
Speaker 4: I pressed Wyat to explain what he was doing with

120
00:07:13,480 --> 00:07:15,400
Speaker 4: me and how it came out of his work with

121
00:07:15,440 --> 00:07:15,840
Speaker 4: the Army.

122
00:07:16,440 --> 00:07:16,640
Speaker 3: Why.

123
00:07:16,680 --> 00:07:20,440
Speaker 4: It says he developed these methods by modeling expert marksmen

124
00:07:20,920 --> 00:07:24,600
Speaker 4: champion shooters from the Army Marksmanship Unit. The premise is

125
00:07:24,600 --> 00:07:26,600
Speaker 4: that people who are really good at what they do

126
00:07:27,200 --> 00:07:32,400
Speaker 4: usually can't explain what exactly makes them exceptional. Modeling involves

127
00:07:32,400 --> 00:07:36,280
Speaker 4: observing and interviewing experts until you decode what they're doing

128
00:07:36,600 --> 00:07:39,400
Speaker 4: physically and mentally. That gives them an edge.

129
00:07:40,120 --> 00:07:44,480
Speaker 1: And we noticed that their eyes would flick up into

130
00:07:45,400 --> 00:07:46,440
Speaker 1: visual remembered.

131
00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:50,920
Speaker 4: Visual remembered in NLP terms, that means the expert's eyes

132
00:07:51,120 --> 00:07:53,720
Speaker 4: flicked up and to the left before they took a shot.

133
00:07:53,960 --> 00:07:57,160
Speaker 9: If you're constructing pictures. Your eyes would go up here,

134
00:07:57,640 --> 00:08:02,880
Speaker 9: he glanced up. If you're feeling sensations and feelings, your

135
00:08:02,920 --> 00:08:04,280
Speaker 9: eyes would go down here.

136
00:08:04,920 --> 00:08:06,880
Speaker 4: He looked down and to his left.

137
00:08:07,200 --> 00:08:10,200
Speaker 1: If you're talking to yourself, your eyes would go down here.

138
00:08:11,280 --> 00:08:14,400
Speaker 5: NLP is really big on eye movements. You're gonna hear

139
00:08:14,440 --> 00:08:16,920
Speaker 5: more about them later in this episode.

140
00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:20,160
Speaker 4: Wyatt noticed that right before each marksman pulled the trigger,

141
00:08:20,520 --> 00:08:24,000
Speaker 4: he pictured perfect side alignment, the small bits of iron

142
00:08:24,040 --> 00:08:27,000
Speaker 4: at the end of the barrel framing the bullseye. So

143
00:08:27,080 --> 00:08:30,200
Speaker 4: why didn't Tony created a kind of mantra routine for

144
00:08:30,240 --> 00:08:31,400
Speaker 4: the trainees.

145
00:08:31,480 --> 00:08:35,240
Speaker 8: Side alignment, side align with side alignment trigger squeeze trigger shige,

146
00:08:35,240 --> 00:08:40,320
Speaker 8: trigger squeeze, bang recover, side aligne on sideline on side alignment,

147
00:08:40,400 --> 00:08:43,000
Speaker 8: trigger squeeze, trigger, squeeze, bang recover.

148
00:08:43,559 --> 00:08:47,400
Speaker 4: Whyatt taught me this mantra and it did seem to help?

149
00:08:48,360 --> 00:08:52,679
Speaker 4: What Day three of the Great Shooting Experiment. How are

150
00:08:52,720 --> 00:08:54,199
Speaker 4: you feeling about how it's gone so far?

151
00:08:55,840 --> 00:09:01,240
Speaker 1: I think it's going superbly well. I am surprised at

152
00:09:01,240 --> 00:09:02,240
Speaker 1: how well you're doing.

153
00:09:10,320 --> 00:09:13,199
Speaker 5: Okay, so Zoe's a sharpshooter now.

154
00:09:13,360 --> 00:09:17,760
Speaker 4: Alice, No one is more surprised than this reporter, but yeah,

155
00:09:18,080 --> 00:09:22,040
Speaker 4: kind of. By day three, I was consistently hitting bullseyes

156
00:09:22,160 --> 00:09:25,079
Speaker 4: at twenty five yards, which is far. It's like the

157
00:09:25,160 --> 00:09:27,400
Speaker 4: length of a tennis court. It's also one of the

158
00:09:27,400 --> 00:09:30,480
Speaker 4: standard distances the Army uses in their pistol training courses.

159
00:09:31,080 --> 00:09:34,120
Speaker 4: So if I did it with accuracy, I would qualify

160
00:09:34,160 --> 00:09:34,960
Speaker 4: as an expert.

161
00:09:35,520 --> 00:09:38,640
Speaker 5: So the funny thing about this whole experiment is that, Okay, yes,

162
00:09:38,760 --> 00:09:41,439
Speaker 5: on the surface, it's like wow, NLP worked, but also

163
00:09:41,640 --> 00:09:43,880
Speaker 5: like low, Ki's always really good at everything.

164
00:09:44,000 --> 00:09:49,000
Speaker 4: Excuse me, look at who is talking google her? Uh sure,

165
00:09:49,679 --> 00:09:52,160
Speaker 4: except not blushing apparently Alice.

166
00:09:53,440 --> 00:09:56,280
Speaker 5: Okay, So, but here's the thing. This proves absolutely nothing

167
00:09:56,320 --> 00:09:56,960
Speaker 5: about NLP.

168
00:09:57,640 --> 00:10:00,680
Speaker 4: No, it doesn't. We have no idea if I would

169
00:10:00,720 --> 00:10:04,600
Speaker 4: have done any better or worse with another type of training.

170
00:10:05,400 --> 00:10:07,560
Speaker 4: And we're not the only ones who struggled to find

171
00:10:07,559 --> 00:10:12,080
Speaker 4: hard evidence for whether NLP works. In nineteen eighty four,

172
00:10:12,240 --> 00:10:15,800
Speaker 4: the Army Research Institute asked the National Academy of Sciences

173
00:10:15,880 --> 00:10:20,319
Speaker 4: to review the various human enhancement technologies it had been pursuing,

174
00:10:20,920 --> 00:10:25,280
Speaker 4: and a group of researchers in cognitive neuroscience, social psychology,

175
00:10:25,440 --> 00:10:28,000
Speaker 4: and a bunch of other related fields took a hard

176
00:10:28,160 --> 00:10:29,400
Speaker 4: look at NLP.

177
00:10:29,880 --> 00:10:33,040
Speaker 5: And they were pretty damning. Here's what the National Academy

178
00:10:33,040 --> 00:10:36,880
Speaker 5: of Sciences said about that marksmanship experiment. The design of

179
00:10:36,960 --> 00:10:40,880
Speaker 5: the study was experimentally flawed and no valid conclusions can

180
00:10:40,880 --> 00:10:41,600
Speaker 5: be drawn from it.

181
00:10:42,160 --> 00:10:45,720
Speaker 4: Basically, the NAS said the Army's pistol experiment was too

182
00:10:45,760 --> 00:10:50,200
Speaker 4: informal to matter. NLP trainers boasted about the apparent improvement

183
00:10:50,320 --> 00:10:53,840
Speaker 4: over the standard training, but it was impossible to compare them.

184
00:10:54,040 --> 00:10:57,240
Speaker 5: Yeah, because the two trainings took place in completely different locations.

185
00:10:57,600 --> 00:11:01,040
Speaker 5: Real experiments are supposed to eliminate variables like this. In

186
00:11:01,080 --> 00:11:03,360
Speaker 5: this one, there were a million factors that could have

187
00:11:03,360 --> 00:11:06,400
Speaker 5: affected shooter performance, like how hot the room was, how

188
00:11:06,440 --> 00:11:08,040
Speaker 5: much sleep the recruits had, etc.

189
00:11:08,320 --> 00:11:08,520
Speaker 1: Etc.

190
00:11:09,360 --> 00:11:13,160
Speaker 4: So the Army never implemented the new NLP pistol training methods,

191
00:11:13,440 --> 00:11:15,880
Speaker 4: and it discontinued its other NLP programs too.

192
00:11:16,200 --> 00:11:19,680
Speaker 5: The NAS report probably didn't help this, quotes the Kicker

193
00:11:19,720 --> 00:11:24,080
Speaker 5: for me. Overall, there is little or no empirical evidence

194
00:11:24,080 --> 00:11:30,520
Speaker 5: to date to support either NLP assumptions or NLP effectiveness

195
00:11:30,559 --> 00:11:31,359
Speaker 5: so harsh.

196
00:11:31,760 --> 00:11:34,760
Speaker 4: This is partly why people began to see NLP as

197
00:11:34,800 --> 00:11:39,200
Speaker 4: a pseudoscience. But to be fair. The NAS researchers were

198
00:11:39,280 --> 00:11:42,000
Speaker 4: only looking at a few aspects of NLP that seemed

199
00:11:42,000 --> 00:11:45,840
Speaker 4: important at the time. They reviewed twenty papers mostly focused

200
00:11:45,880 --> 00:11:50,080
Speaker 4: on whether you can persuade people using NLP, specifically by

201
00:11:50,080 --> 00:11:51,480
Speaker 4: clocking their eye movements.

202
00:11:51,800 --> 00:11:54,920
Speaker 5: That's this idea in NLP that your eye movements provide

203
00:11:54,960 --> 00:11:56,559
Speaker 5: a cheat code to your thoughts.

204
00:11:57,240 --> 00:12:00,839
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the NAS said that just doesn't work. There's

205
00:12:01,160 --> 00:12:05,840
Speaker 4: zero correlation between visualizing something and glancing upwards, for instance.

206
00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:14,160
Speaker 5: But eye movements didn't go away. In fact, they inspired

207
00:12:14,240 --> 00:12:19,240
Speaker 5: one of the most prevalent trauma therapies on the market today, EMDR.

208
00:12:19,760 --> 00:12:23,680
Speaker 5: I dug into the secret backstory of EMDR and realized

209
00:12:23,760 --> 00:12:28,679
Speaker 5: something like NLP is still being used by veterans, albeit

210
00:12:28,960 --> 00:12:30,000
Speaker 5: under a different name.

211
00:12:40,480 --> 00:12:43,600
Speaker 7: You are looking at a radical new form of psychotherapy.

212
00:12:44,320 --> 00:12:47,760
Speaker 7: The key is the patient's eyes shifting back and forth

213
00:12:47,800 --> 00:12:51,640
Speaker 7: in a process that mysteriously unlocked the trauma of times

214
00:12:51,679 --> 00:12:53,920
Speaker 7: past trauma like war.

215
00:12:54,480 --> 00:12:57,520
Speaker 5: This is a twenty twenty investigation from nineteen ninety four

216
00:12:57,640 --> 00:13:02,720
Speaker 5: into I movement desensitization therapy, better known as EMDR.

217
00:13:03,600 --> 00:13:07,240
Speaker 7: It's being practiced by some seven thousand therapists across the country,

218
00:13:07,640 --> 00:13:11,479
Speaker 7: and the numbers are growing. It's a combination of traditional

219
00:13:11,600 --> 00:13:14,319
Speaker 7: talk therapy with something that sounds bizarre.

220
00:13:15,040 --> 00:13:18,920
Speaker 5: Here's how EMDR works. A therapist moves their fingers or

221
00:13:18,960 --> 00:13:22,600
Speaker 5: an object in front of the patient's eyes. The patient

222
00:13:22,720 --> 00:13:27,160
Speaker 5: follows those movements while thinking of an upsetting or traumatic memory.

223
00:13:28,040 --> 00:13:31,000
Speaker 5: By twenty twenty four, over seven million people had been

224
00:13:31,040 --> 00:13:35,160
Speaker 5: successfully treated by more than one hundred thousand therapists, according

225
00:13:35,200 --> 00:13:39,080
Speaker 5: to the EMDR Association, the military is one of the

226
00:13:39,080 --> 00:13:43,280
Speaker 5: biggest proponents of EMDR. It's one of only three quote

227
00:13:43,440 --> 00:13:48,040
Speaker 5: evidence based treatments for PTSD endorsed by the Veterans Affairs

228
00:13:48,120 --> 00:13:52,199
Speaker 5: Health Administration. Here's an official video from the Veterans Administration

229
00:13:52,440 --> 00:13:53,760
Speaker 5: PTSD portal.

230
00:13:54,679 --> 00:13:57,400
Speaker 10: If the belief you hold that's attached to your trauma

231
00:13:57,480 --> 00:14:00,480
Speaker 10: is that I'm worthless, and that's been true for however

232
00:14:00,520 --> 00:14:03,880
Speaker 10: long you've been surviving this trauma, as we move through

233
00:14:03,880 --> 00:14:07,280
Speaker 10: the treatment, that belief is going to stop feeling so true,

234
00:14:07,360 --> 00:14:09,200
Speaker 10: and we're going to bring it in a positive belief.

235
00:14:09,960 --> 00:14:13,959
Speaker 5: EMDR was invented in nineteen eighty seven by Francine Shapiro,

236
00:14:14,360 --> 00:14:18,440
Speaker 5: a PhD student in psychology. Here's how she describes her

237
00:14:18,440 --> 00:14:21,800
Speaker 5: eureka moment. She was on a walk one day in

238
00:14:21,840 --> 00:14:25,880
Speaker 5: the park. She was thinking about something disturbing and she

239
00:14:26,040 --> 00:14:29,920
Speaker 5: noticed her eyes moving in a certain way. Then the

240
00:14:30,040 --> 00:14:34,040
Speaker 5: thought no longer upset her. Here's Shapiro on twenty twenty.

241
00:14:34,480 --> 00:14:36,440
Speaker 7: If I had seen you that day in the park,

242
00:14:36,680 --> 00:14:38,960
Speaker 7: what would I have noticed about your eyes?

243
00:14:39,120 --> 00:14:41,960
Speaker 2: That they were moving very rapidly in a diagonal, just

244
00:14:42,440 --> 00:14:45,320
Speaker 2: flickering up and down, very very rapidly. So I thought

245
00:14:45,360 --> 00:14:49,640
Speaker 2: I stumbled upon some mind process that worked with thoughts,

246
00:14:50,080 --> 00:14:52,480
Speaker 2: And that's what was so fascinating, because I hadn't been

247
00:14:52,520 --> 00:14:54,960
Speaker 2: doing it deliberately, but I noticed it happening.

248
00:14:55,520 --> 00:14:57,760
Speaker 4: So she's saying she noticed her own eyes moving when

249
00:14:57,760 --> 00:15:01,080
Speaker 4: she was thinking about something disturbing, and eye movements are

250
00:15:01,080 --> 00:15:02,000
Speaker 4: connected to thought.

251
00:15:02,680 --> 00:15:07,160
Speaker 5: Sounds familiar, and turns out it's not a coincidence. Shapiro

252
00:15:07,480 --> 00:15:11,400
Speaker 5: was an NLP trainer, not something she often promoted about herself.

253
00:15:12,320 --> 00:15:15,880
Speaker 5: Her whole story about inventing EMDR at the park struck

254
00:15:15,920 --> 00:15:18,640
Speaker 5: some people as a little fishy. I've read that eye

255
00:15:18,680 --> 00:15:22,280
Speaker 5: movements are hard to notice yourself. They're really small and subtle.

256
00:15:22,840 --> 00:15:26,280
Speaker 5: So what seems likely is that Shapiro was inspired by

257
00:15:26,360 --> 00:15:29,720
Speaker 5: NLP and primed to notice eye movements.

258
00:15:30,720 --> 00:15:33,840
Speaker 4: One of the findings of the neuro linguistic programming research.

259
00:15:34,040 --> 00:15:37,640
Speaker 5: Here's Zoe reading an article Shapiro wrote in nineteen eighty five,

260
00:15:38,200 --> 00:15:41,240
Speaker 5: two years before she created EMDR.

261
00:15:41,320 --> 00:15:44,760
Speaker 4: Is that all people cross culturally with the exception of

262
00:15:44,800 --> 00:15:48,000
Speaker 4: the Bosque nationality, show how they are thinking by the

263
00:15:48,080 --> 00:15:52,600
Speaker 4: way their eyes move. Using neuro linguistic programming, people are

264
00:15:52,680 --> 00:15:56,080
Speaker 4: shown how to tap into their personal power, change their

265
00:15:56,120 --> 00:15:59,360
Speaker 4: state of mind and psychology at will, and access a

266
00:15:59,400 --> 00:16:03,640
Speaker 4: state of total confidence whenever they encounter a situation that

267
00:16:03,680 --> 00:16:06,160
Speaker 4: they would otherwise find frightening or upsetting.

268
00:16:08,600 --> 00:16:11,920
Speaker 5: Gerald Rosen is a psychologist and clinical professor at the

269
00:16:12,040 --> 00:16:17,360
Speaker 5: University of Washington, Seattle. He's written about EMDR's secret origins.

270
00:16:17,760 --> 00:16:22,920
Speaker 3: Their theory was pseudoscientific, and bizarrely in their theory was

271
00:16:22,920 --> 00:16:26,680
Speaker 3: that their statements about these eye patterns didn't apply to

272
00:16:26,760 --> 00:16:30,440
Speaker 3: the Bosque people. What kind of crazy thing is this?

273
00:16:31,040 --> 00:16:33,600
Speaker 5: You mean, like people from the Basque country in space?

274
00:16:33,720 --> 00:16:33,840
Speaker 2: Right?

275
00:16:34,000 --> 00:16:38,040
Speaker 3: Yes, to give you the overview. EMDR is a novel

276
00:16:38,080 --> 00:16:41,600
Speaker 3: technique that focuses on eye movements. The foundation of it

277
00:16:41,680 --> 00:16:43,800
Speaker 3: was discovered by Shapiro when she was going for a

278
00:16:43,840 --> 00:16:47,520
Speaker 3: walk in nineteen eighty seven. By good chance, she needed

279
00:16:47,520 --> 00:16:51,360
Speaker 3: a dissertation, and it's a great thing for the clinical world.

280
00:16:51,480 --> 00:16:56,800
Speaker 3: That's a positive overview. The other overview is that Shapiro

281
00:16:57,040 --> 00:17:02,880
Speaker 3: was a manipulative marketer who took off from NLP and

282
00:17:03,080 --> 00:17:04,919
Speaker 3: developed her method.

283
00:17:05,359 --> 00:17:09,080
Speaker 5: Gerald is uniquely sensitive to snake oil. As a young

284
00:17:09,119 --> 00:17:13,040
Speaker 5: clinical psychologist, he researched phobia cures and published in peer

285
00:17:13,040 --> 00:17:16,919
Speaker 5: reviewed journals. Then he wrote a self help book summarizing

286
00:17:16,960 --> 00:17:21,080
Speaker 5: his research for the general public, and his publisher exaggerated

287
00:17:21,119 --> 00:17:23,880
Speaker 5: the results on the book jacket to sell more copies.

288
00:17:24,720 --> 00:17:28,280
Speaker 5: Gerald's been on a mission to expose gurus who overpromise

289
00:17:28,560 --> 00:17:29,200
Speaker 5: ever since.

290
00:17:29,800 --> 00:17:34,760
Speaker 3: The paradigm in psychology is that gurus are developing their

291
00:17:34,800 --> 00:17:39,760
Speaker 3: treatments frequently, if not always. It involves elements that are

292
00:17:39,800 --> 00:17:44,240
Speaker 3: known to be effective ingredients to intervene and help people.

293
00:17:44,960 --> 00:17:47,480
Speaker 3: They package it in a way. They have a name,

294
00:17:47,960 --> 00:17:50,680
Speaker 3: and then they have their acronym, and then they give

295
00:17:50,720 --> 00:17:53,679
Speaker 3: workshops and then you can get certified in it. And

296
00:17:53,720 --> 00:17:57,159
Speaker 3: it's just the model that's based on gurus. It attracts

297
00:17:57,359 --> 00:18:01,159
Speaker 3: charismatic people. We sell the public on this idea that

298
00:18:01,160 --> 00:18:05,160
Speaker 3: they got to be buying these products to get happy.

299
00:18:05,480 --> 00:18:09,520
Speaker 3: No one's talking to the insensibly about just the difficult

300
00:18:09,520 --> 00:18:14,320
Speaker 3: state of the human situation and how we're coping with

301
00:18:14,359 --> 00:18:17,479
Speaker 3: all these things. Here are some good tools we know about.

302
00:18:19,640 --> 00:18:22,560
Speaker 4: Okay, So it does seem like Shapiro may have been

303
00:18:22,560 --> 00:18:27,360
Speaker 4: interested in eye movements because of NLP. But nlpiers generally

304
00:18:27,480 --> 00:18:30,880
Speaker 4: don't direct eye movements, they observe them. It's the way

305
00:18:30,880 --> 00:18:32,160
Speaker 4: of reading people's thoughts.

306
00:18:32,680 --> 00:18:36,080
Speaker 5: Yes, so at the time Shapiro developed EMDR, there was

307
00:18:36,119 --> 00:18:39,679
Speaker 5: nothing in the NLP literature on using eye movements to

308
00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:44,080
Speaker 5: treat trauma. It was mostly a diagnostic So this could

309
00:18:44,119 --> 00:18:46,560
Speaker 5: have been a real innovation by Shapiro even if she

310
00:18:46,680 --> 00:18:51,680
Speaker 5: wore influenced by NLP, although NLP co founder John Grinder

311
00:18:52,040 --> 00:18:55,040
Speaker 5: did claim to have invented EMDR after it got.

312
00:18:54,880 --> 00:18:57,520
Speaker 4: Big another day, another NLP turf.

313
00:18:58,119 --> 00:19:02,120
Speaker 5: Yeah, so Grinder says Shapiro stole EMDR from him, and

314
00:19:02,240 --> 00:19:06,400
Speaker 5: he wasn't happy that Shapiro, his former office assistant, went

315
00:19:06,440 --> 00:19:10,119
Speaker 5: and copyrighted it. So juicy Grinder's account doesn't line up

316
00:19:10,119 --> 00:19:14,040
Speaker 5: with Shapiro's story. Of course, she claims she discovered EMDR

317
00:19:14,160 --> 00:19:16,920
Speaker 5: during a walk in the park, and Shapiro died in

318
00:19:16,960 --> 00:19:19,480
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen, so we couldn't ask her about all of

319
00:19:19,520 --> 00:19:22,560
Speaker 5: these claims, but we did reach out to the EMDR

320
00:19:22,600 --> 00:19:25,119
Speaker 5: Foundation for comment and they didn't get back to us.

321
00:19:25,520 --> 00:19:25,600
Speaker 2: Oo.

322
00:19:26,240 --> 00:19:29,800
Speaker 4: Let's back up, though, everything I've read indicates the NLP

323
00:19:29,960 --> 00:19:34,200
Speaker 4: theories of eye movements are bogus, but they are apparently

324
00:19:34,400 --> 00:19:35,960
Speaker 4: helpful in EMDR.

325
00:19:36,440 --> 00:19:39,760
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, it depends on who you ask. Gerald says,

326
00:19:39,960 --> 00:19:43,040
Speaker 5: you don't need the eye movements for EMDR to work.

327
00:19:45,080 --> 00:19:49,840
Speaker 5: So in the case of EMDR, the element that you

328
00:19:50,040 --> 00:19:55,360
Speaker 5: think is effective is the exposure therapy portion of it. Right, like,

329
00:19:55,440 --> 00:19:59,120
Speaker 5: that seems like it could be helping people with trauma.

330
00:20:00,359 --> 00:20:04,720
Speaker 3: Wonderful structure. I give her credit, except for the fact

331
00:20:05,280 --> 00:20:08,480
Speaker 3: that other people were reporting this structure at the.

332
00:20:08,400 --> 00:20:13,199
Speaker 5: Same time when EMDR came out. Exposure therapy, which is

333
00:20:13,280 --> 00:20:17,200
Speaker 5: revisiting a traumatic memory repeatedly in detail with a therapist,

334
00:20:17,760 --> 00:20:21,520
Speaker 5: was already a treatment. And so for this reason, Gerald

335
00:20:21,600 --> 00:20:24,360
Speaker 5: calls AMDR a purple hat therapy.

336
00:20:24,720 --> 00:20:29,320
Speaker 4: Sorry, purple hot therapy. The therapist is wearing a purple hat. Fabulous.

337
00:20:29,440 --> 00:20:32,159
Speaker 5: He is a kind of It's a metaphor. Basically, a

338
00:20:32,200 --> 00:20:35,560
Speaker 5: purple hot therapy is what happens when you repackage an

339
00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:39,159
Speaker 5: existing treatment that works with some flashy new element that

340
00:20:39,200 --> 00:20:39,680
Speaker 5: does nothing.

341
00:20:40,240 --> 00:20:43,159
Speaker 3: The basic idea is that the treatment works because of

342
00:20:43,240 --> 00:20:48,960
Speaker 3: known ingredients, and you add this inerd element as a

343
00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:53,479
Speaker 3: way to promote or market or claim that you have

344
00:20:53,520 --> 00:20:54,800
Speaker 3: a new and novel treatment.

345
00:20:55,280 --> 00:20:57,560
Speaker 5: So it's basically a placebo effect.

346
00:20:57,920 --> 00:21:01,879
Speaker 3: Well, no, a placebo effect is where you're taking something

347
00:21:01,960 --> 00:21:06,360
Speaker 3: that has no known active ingredient other than the very

348
00:21:07,160 --> 00:21:13,280
Speaker 3: general specific impact of suggestion and telling someone it's a treatment.

349
00:21:14,200 --> 00:21:16,600
Speaker 3: And here you really have a treatment effect. So if

350
00:21:16,640 --> 00:21:19,080
Speaker 3: I have someone with a phobia and I tell them

351
00:21:19,119 --> 00:21:21,920
Speaker 3: how they should practice driving to get over their fear,

352
00:21:22,320 --> 00:21:28,240
Speaker 3: that isn't placebo. That's the real use of guided exposure

353
00:21:28,960 --> 00:21:32,400
Speaker 3: to overcome an anxiety problem.

354
00:21:31,880 --> 00:21:34,840
Speaker 5: Which is a part of cognitive behavioral therapy, which has

355
00:21:34,880 --> 00:21:35,679
Speaker 5: evidence behind it.

356
00:21:35,760 --> 00:21:42,520
Speaker 3: Right absolutely, So it's adding nonsense to an active ingredient.

357
00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:48,040
Speaker 3: And people could do that truly believing in what they're doing,

358
00:21:48,400 --> 00:21:51,280
Speaker 3: or you could have people who know it's a purple hat.

359
00:21:51,800 --> 00:21:53,920
Speaker 3: But this is a way to start a new company.

360
00:21:54,600 --> 00:21:57,879
Speaker 5: According to Gerald, the purple hot in EMDR is the

361
00:21:57,920 --> 00:22:02,720
Speaker 5: eye Movements, which Shapiro mare marketed and copyrighted, selling workshops

362
00:22:02,760 --> 00:22:07,320
Speaker 5: to therapists that today go for several thousand dollars ahead, Zoe,

363
00:22:07,359 --> 00:22:09,919
Speaker 5: I should disclose that Gerald is in the minority as

364
00:22:09,960 --> 00:22:13,600
Speaker 5: a skeptic today. Why I movements work hasn't been proven,

365
00:22:14,000 --> 00:22:17,399
Speaker 5: but the majority of researchers think they actually are an

366
00:22:17,440 --> 00:22:22,800
Speaker 5: active ingredient in EMDR treatment, So not a purple hat.

367
00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:26,360
Speaker 4: So what should we make of this alice? I mean,

368
00:22:26,680 --> 00:22:30,080
Speaker 4: how is it possible that NLP is so scientifically maligned

369
00:22:30,359 --> 00:22:33,240
Speaker 4: while EMDR has not only stood up to scrutiny but

370
00:22:33,320 --> 00:22:36,359
Speaker 4: got in all this mainstream credibility it's endorsed by the

371
00:22:36,359 --> 00:22:40,720
Speaker 4: World Health Organization, when in fact they share some common elements.

372
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:44,480
Speaker 5: So one reason could be that EMDR was a lot

373
00:22:44,560 --> 00:22:50,280
Speaker 5: more savvy in presenting itself to researchers. EMDR's creator, Francine Shapiro,

374
00:22:50,520 --> 00:22:53,240
Speaker 5: took great care in her method to whittle it down

375
00:22:53,320 --> 00:22:56,720
Speaker 5: to a specific, testable theory, and then over a few

376
00:22:56,760 --> 00:23:00,960
Speaker 5: decades researchers did this slow, boring but important work of

377
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:05,359
Speaker 5: actually testing what about eye movements helps or doesn't, and

378
00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:06,399
Speaker 5: they're still testing it.

379
00:23:07,080 --> 00:23:10,280
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, Richard Bandler pulled techniques from a bunch of sources,

380
00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:13,399
Speaker 4: called them NLP and made wild claims about what they

381
00:23:13,440 --> 00:23:17,399
Speaker 4: could achieve like hearing schizophrenics or phobias in ten minutes.

382
00:23:17,680 --> 00:23:21,080
Speaker 5: Yeah, And Bandler didn't stop there. He marketed NLP pretty

383
00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:24,720
Speaker 5: and scrupulously as a sexy new persuasion technology to men

384
00:23:24,800 --> 00:23:27,520
Speaker 5: in suits. He was trying to get rich and it worked.

385
00:23:27,840 --> 00:23:29,639
Speaker 5: Real psychologists noticed.

386
00:23:30,160 --> 00:23:33,080
Speaker 4: And when those researchers from the National Academy of Science

387
00:23:33,200 --> 00:23:37,320
Speaker 4: were trying to study NLP, Richard Bandler basically made it impossible.

388
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:40,919
Speaker 4: They met with him in July nineteen eighty six. They'd

389
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:43,600
Speaker 4: done their homework, they read all of his books to date,

390
00:23:44,160 --> 00:23:47,200
Speaker 4: but when they interviewed him about things like eye movements

391
00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:50,679
Speaker 4: that seemed like a really big deal, Bandler was just like,

392
00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:55,760
Speaker 4: oh yeah, those forget about him. Weird and the scientists

393
00:23:55,800 --> 00:24:00,520
Speaker 4: were equally flaw mixed. Bandler told them NLP's continuously changing.

394
00:24:00,840 --> 00:24:04,320
Speaker 4: He wasn't interested in building up a solid, unchanging theory

395
00:24:04,359 --> 00:24:07,640
Speaker 4: over time. You can just discard elements whenever you get

396
00:24:07,680 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 4: sick of them.

397
00:24:11,800 --> 00:24:14,399
Speaker 5: So if NLP is just a process that can involve

398
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:18,520
Speaker 5: literally any technique at any time, it's impossible to test

399
00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:21,280
Speaker 5: or hold to any scientific standard exactly.

400
00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:25,040
Speaker 4: There aren't any fixed elements or principles. So when people

401
00:24:25,080 --> 00:24:29,040
Speaker 4: try to apply these rigorous scientific standards to NLP bandlers

402
00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:32,240
Speaker 4: like jokes on you nerds. You can fight amongst yourself

403
00:24:32,280 --> 00:24:35,280
Speaker 4: about whether this is scientific or not. I never said

404
00:24:35,320 --> 00:24:35,639
Speaker 4: it was.

405
00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:42,199
Speaker 5: The NAS Report discredited NLP to a lot of important people.

406
00:24:42,840 --> 00:24:45,280
Speaker 5: It was basically the nail in the coffin for NLP

407
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:49,440
Speaker 5: gaining mainstream respect. People have been calling it a pseudoscience

408
00:24:49,560 --> 00:24:50,119
Speaker 5: ever since.

409
00:24:51,119 --> 00:24:53,359
Speaker 4: But it was not the only thing that made people

410
00:24:53,359 --> 00:24:57,160
Speaker 4: wary of NLP. The NAS Report came out in January

411
00:24:57,320 --> 00:24:58,360
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty eight.

412
00:24:58,560 --> 00:25:00,600
Speaker 5: Oh my god, January nighteth eighty eight.

413
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:05,480
Speaker 4: Literally is Bandler's entire life and business is crumbling.

414
00:25:05,760 --> 00:25:08,280
Speaker 5: Yeah, his entire future was hanging in the balance at

415
00:25:08,280 --> 00:25:12,119
Speaker 5: this exact moment. What did you see when you first

416
00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:14,600
Speaker 5: saw the case against Richard Bandler?

417
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:18,639
Speaker 3: At face value, it was the overwhelming evidence of guilt.

418
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:22,640
Speaker 3: You know, it doesn't look good. You got two guys

419
00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:26,040
Speaker 3: in a room with a woman, and you know the

420
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:28,639
Speaker 3: woman instead, and each of the two guys are pointing

421
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:29,240
Speaker 3: at each other.

422
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:36,719
Speaker 5: Richard Bandler stands trial for murder next time on mind Games.

423
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:45,640
Speaker 5: Mind Games is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

424
00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 5: The series is created and hosted by me Alice Hines

425
00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:53,399
Speaker 5: and Zoe Lascause. It's produced by writer Alsop and Dara Lukpotts,

426
00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:58,680
Speaker 5: edited by Kate Osborne. Editorial consulting from Adeza Egan, Original

427
00:25:58,680 --> 00:26:01,600
Speaker 5: composition and mixing by Steve Bone.

428
00:26:01,320 --> 00:26:05,640
Speaker 4: Fact checking by Aman Whylan from Kaleidoscope. Our executive producers

429
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:11,119
Speaker 4: are Oswaloshan, Mangeshatikador and Kate Osborne from iHeart, Our executive

430
00:26:11,119 --> 00:26:15,200
Speaker 4: producers are Katrina Norble and Nikki Etor. Special thanks to

431
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 4: white Wood Small for the shooting lessons and to Chris

432
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:30,840
Speaker 4: and Holly Darling for hosting our team