| Full name | John Grinder |
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| Born | Jan.10, 1940 United States |
| School | Linguistics |
| Main interests | Transformational grammar, NLP modeling, Cybernetic epistemology |
| Notable ideas | Neuro-linguistic programming, New Code of NLP |
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Influenced
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| Website | johngrinder.com |
John Grinder, Ph.D., ( /ˈɡrɪndər/ grin-dər; born January 10, 1940) is an American linguist, author, management consultant, trainer and speaker. Grinder is credited with the co-creation with Richard Bandler of the field of Neuro-linguistic programming. He is co-director of Quantum Leap Inc., a management consulting firm founded by his partner Carmen Bostic St. Clair in 1987 (Grinder joined in 1989). Grinder and Bostic St. Clair also run workshops and seminars on NLP internationally.
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John Thomas Grinder, Jr.[1] graduated from the University of San Francisco with a bachelor degree in psychology in the early 1960s. Grinder then entered the United States Army and served as a Captain in the US Special Forces in Europe during the Cold War; following this he apparently went on to work for a US intelligence agency. In the late 1960s, Grinder returned to college to study linguistics and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 1971.[2] His dissertation, titled On Deletion Phenomena in English, was published by Mouton in 1976.[3]
In the early 1970s, Grinder worked in George A. Miller's laboratory at Rockefeller University.[4] After receiving his Ph.D., Grinder took a full-time position as an assistant professor in the linguistics faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). He engaged in undergraduate and graduate teaching, and research. His research focused on Noam Chomsky's theories of transformational grammar specializing in syntax and deletion phenomena. He published several research papers with Paul Postal on the syntactical structures relating to "missing antecedents"[5] or missing parasitic gaps for the pronoun. They argued that the syntactic structure of a deleted verb phrase (VP) is complete.[6][7][8] Edward Klima, doctoral adviser to both Postal and Grinder at UCSC,[9] became involved in the early development of generative semantics.
Grinder co-authored, with Suzette Elgin, a linguistics text book titled A Guide to Transformational Grammar: History, Theory, Practice.[10] In 2005, Grinder published Steps to an Ecology of Emergence[11] with Tom Malloy and Carmen Bostic St Clair in the journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing.
| NLP |
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| MeSH D020557 |
In 1972 (during Grinder's stint at UCSC) Richard Bandler, an undergraduate student of psychology, approached him for assistance in specific aspects of modeling Gestalt therapy. Bandler had spent much time recording and editing recordings of Fritz Perls (founder of Gestalt therapy) and had learned Gestalt therapy implicitly. Starting with Fritz Perls, followed by a leading figure in family therapy Virginia Satir, and later the leading figure in hypnosis in psychiatry Milton Erickson, Grinder and Bandler modeled the various cognitive behavioral patterns of these therapists, which they published in The Structure of Magic Volumes I & II (1975, 1976), Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, Volumes I & II (1975, 1977) and Changing With Families (1976). This work formed the basis of the methodology that became the foundation of neuro-linguistic programming.
Bandler and Grinder began hosting seminars and practice groups. These served as a place for Bandler and Grinder to practice and test their newly-discovered patterns while allowing them to transfer the skills to the participants. Several books were published based on transcripts of their seminars including Frogs into Princes (1979). During this period, a creative group of students and psychotherapists formed around Grinder and Bandler, who made valuable contributions to NLP, including Robert Dilts, Leslie Cameron-Bandler, Judith DeLozier, Stephen Gilligan and David Gordon.
In the 1980s, Bandler, Grinder and their group of associates split acrimoniously, and stopped working together. Following this, many members of their group went out on their own and took NLP in their own directions. Some of Bandler and Grinder's books went out of print for a while due to legal problems between the co-authors. Structure I & II, and Patterns I & II – considered the foundation of the field – were later republished. Bandler attempted to claim legal ownership of the term Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP); however, it was eventually deemed to be a generic term, and could therefore not be trademarked. Grinder and Bandler settled their claims around 2001, clearing a platform for the future development of NLP as a legitimate field of endeavor.[12]
Between 1982–1987, strongly influenced by anthropologist and systems theorist Gregory Bateson, who had a strong focus on ecology as a psychological construct, Grinder and Judith DeLozier collaborated to develop the "New Code of NLP". (Grinder and Bateson had met during their affiliation with Kresge College at the University of California, Santa Cruz during the 1970s.) Grinder and Delozier presented an aesthetic framework for the "classic code" of NLP that explicates the involvement of ecology and the unconscious mind in change-work. "Ecology" in NLP involves respecting the integrity of a system as a whole when assessing a change to that system; the "system" in this case comprises a person's model of the world and the consequences of that model in the person's environment. Practically speaking, this consideration entails asking questions like "What are the intended effects of this change? What other effects might this change have, and are those effects desirable? Is this change still a good idea?"
The seminars were transcribed and published in 1987 as Turtles All the Way Down; Prerequisites to Personal Genius.
John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair have further developed The New Code of NLP. (Bostic St Clair founded Quantum Leap Inc., a cultural-change consultancy firm.) As of 2010[update] Grinder and Bostic St Clair continue to present some public seminars on NLP internationally. In 2001, Grinder (with Bostic St Clair) published Whispering in the Wind with "[a] set of recommendations as to how specifically NLP can improve its practice and take its rightful place as a scientifically based endeavor with its precise focus on modeling of the extremes of human behavior: excellence and the high performers who actually do it".[13] Grinder has since strongly encouraged the field to make a recommitment to what he considers the core activity of NLP: modeling.