An "Honest Abe's NLP Emporium" Book Review - Reproduced with permission.
Written and Produced by Andy Bradbury; author of "Develop Your NLP Skills", "NLP for Business Success", etc.

As Leslie Cameron-Bandler (now Leslie LeBeau) writes in her brief Preface: "all practitioners of NeuroLinguistic Programming should have the knowledge contained here thoroughly integrated into their every experience and behavior.  Without it, practitioners are merely performing recipes and violating the very tenets from which NeuroLinguistic Programming springs."

The one potential fly in the ointment, as far as I can see, is the emphasis on "Six Step Reframing" and "Contextual Reframing" (pages 80-88).
When this book was first published (1990), the Six Step Reframing process, derived from Virginia Satir's "parts parties", was widely accepted as one of the standard NLP techniques.  During the 1990s, however, a growing number of people have questioned both its usefulness and its safety.  Richard Bandler announced that he had come up with a more effective technique, and a number of NLP therapists suggested the possibility that the Six Step process had the potential to cause personality fragmentation in some clients.
In all fairness, I am aware that many NLPers still find the Six Step process very useful and, as far as I know, there are no officially recognised cases of anyone developing schizoid or schizophrenic symptoms as a result of using this technique.

So, with the one qualification outlined above, this strikes me as being a very useful primer and reference work for newcomers to NLP.
Highly recommended     *   *   *   *   *   *

An "Honest Abe's NLP Emporium" Book Review - Reproduced with permission.
Written and Produced by Andy Bradbury; author of "Develop Your NLP Skills", "NLP for Business Success", etc.

My personal impression is that Principles has an altogether 'gentler' approach than Introducing NLP.  The book is built around two main frameworks - Robert Dilt's so-called neurological levels and the authors' selection of thirteen NLP pre-suppositions.  This works well, giving a sense of coherence and direction to the book as a whole.
Despite having considerably less space to work in (Principles is 60 pages shorter than Introducing NLP), O'Connor and McDermott cover all of the main features of NLP - Rapport, Pacing and Leading, Congruence, 'States', Anchors, mental strategies, maps, representational systems, etc. in perfectly adequate detail for an introductory text.

It would be a rare book indeed which satisfied the needs of every reader, and I don't think this book is going to supplant Introducing NLP.  I do expect that it will take a substantial share of the market as an alternative introduction to NLP.
Highly Recommended (for newcomers) * * * * * *

(By the way, if this really is "The only introduction you'll ever need", does this mean that the publishers - HarperCollins - are going to drop their other publication, the bestselling, award winning Introduction to NLP by O'Connor & Seymour?  I don't think so!)

An "Honest Abe's NLP Emporium" Book Review - Reproduced with permission.
Written and Produced by Andy Bradbury; author of "Develop Your NLP Skills", "NLP for Business Success", etc.

1. Although the official copyright date is given as 1980, the book is said to have been written in 1978.  And in true NLP style, BOTH dates are correct.
   According to Dilts, in response to an e-mail enquiry, the original version of the book was completed in 1978 (when Bandler and Dilts were still working as a team), but it took a year to get the book ready for publication.  The 1980 copyright date refers to the point in time when the book took on its final, published form.
2. Although the book is listed as having four authors - Bandler, Grinder, Judith DeLozier and Dilts, it was actually written by Dilts - as his Behavioral Technology thesis - though he no doubt had copious input and comment from the other three.

I make the second point specifically because this is probably the worst of all of Dilts' books, which makes its precise origin especially relevant.

This is not the first of Dilts' books I have read, but it is surely the most mind boggling for its sheer obtuseness, obfuscation and choice to use several pages of text where a single paragraph would do.  The fact is that a good author can make even complicated material appear straightforward and clear.  Unfortunately, then as now, Dilts seems to be under the impression that "ponderous verbosity" = "profundity".  It doesn't.  It just means that the author isn't equal to the task s/he has embarked upon.

Although it is subtitled "The Study of the Structure of Subjective Experience", this is by no means a comprehensive study of the basics of NLP as of 1978 (just 5 years into the development of NLP).  On the contrary, its 280+ densely packed pages are a rambling and diffuse discussion of the five "rep. systems" (otherwise known as primary thinking styles), and not much else.
Worse yet, the book attempts to attach far more significance to the rep systems that can possibly be justified in retrospect., for example:

"It can be postulated that the simultaneous pairing of two different representations within the same representational system is one of the functions of the two cerebral hemispheres in human beings."
(page 33)

Over 20 years later we know that the "postulate" doesn't hold water.

Elsewhere in the book it is suggested that rep systems are directly related toa person's body type (that is: ectomorph, endomorph and mesomorph).  Were this in fact correct it would be hard to see how people could vary their preferred rep system(s) according to context, as we now know to be the case.

So, obsolete material, presented in a wholly unhelpful, pretentiously pseudo-academic style.  Or to put it bluntly: hard to read, and not worth the effort even if you do make it all the way through.
Definitely NOT recommended.

An "Honest Abe's NLP Emporium" Book Review - Reproduced with permission.
Written and Produced by Andy Bradbury; author of "Develop Your NLP Skills", "NLP for Business Success", etc.

In the first place reframing is not really a complete subject in its own right.  As one of the presenters comments:

"I don't do reframing as a separate chunk except for demonstration purposes in seminars.  It's integrated into everything else that I do; ... Every piece of work I do has reframing as a component part."

Reframing is divided into just six chapters, on Content Reframing, Negotiating between Parts, Creating New Parts, Advanced 6-step Reframing, Reframing Systems and Reframing for Dissociated States.  Chapters 2, 3 and 4 each end with an outline of the technique under discussion.
Personally I found the first four chapters over-long, especially Chapter 4 (where the outline is nearly four times longer than the chapter!), whilst Chapters 5 and 6, by contrast, seemed far too short.  Having said that, readers who enjoy heavy doses of anecdotal material may find the style very much to their liking.

Because of the subject, and the fact that this is original Bandler & Grinder material, I expect that Reframing will continue to enjoy healthy sales for some time to come, which makes it unlikely that the text will be subjected to the kind of thoughtful editing it needs and deserves.
Qualified recommendation * * * * *