Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries

by Jon Ronson

  Sue said Paul McKenna was incredibly nervous about approaching Richard Bandler before he finally did, in 1994, to suggest they go into business together. Since then, NLP has—thanks to McKenna’s skills—become bigger than ever, a vast empire that’s making everyone millions.

  “Paul is an unexpected protégé of Richard’s,” Sue said. “The squeaky-clean DJ and the . . . uh . . .” She paused, not knowing which bits of the Richard Bandler life history to mention, in case I didn’t know the full extent of the horror. “The . . . uh . . . Hells Angel, up for God knows what, CIA . . . But Richard Bandler is a Leonardo of our times. He is one of our living greats.”

  (Much later, by the way, after this story appears in the Guardian, I’ll chance upon a flier advertising a Richard Bandler seminar. It’ll read: “Richard Bandler is a Leonardo of our times. He is one of our living greats—The Guardian.”)

  Now “Purple Haze” booms through the speakers and Richard Bandler climbs onto the stage. He hushes the crowd. They sit down. I am momentarily lost in my thoughts and I remain standing.

  “ARE—YOU—GOING—TO—SIT—DOWN—NOW?” hisses a voice in my ear. I jump. It is one of Paul McKenna’s assistants. I hurriedly sit down.

  “I marched up the Amazon,” Bandler tells the audience. “I threatened gurus to get them to tell me their secrets. They’re pretty cooperative when you hold them over the edge of a cliff.”

  There is laughter.

  “There was one Indian guru,” Bandler continues, “I was holding him over the edge of a cliff. I said to him, ‘My hand is getting tired. You have seven seconds to tell me your secrets.’ Well, he told me them fast and in perfect English!”

  I have to say that had I been tried for murder, I would be less forthcoming with the murder gags. Practically every one of Richard Bandler’s jokes is murder- or at least violent-crime related. I hope—when I finally get to meet him—to ask him about the murder trial, although I’m nervous at the prospect of this.

  Suddenly, we hear a loud noise from somewhere outside.

  “A ghost,” Bandler says. “I do have ghosts that follow me around. And they’re angry ghosts. But I don’t care. The truth is, the ghosts are more afraid of me than I am of them.”

  He is mesmerizing. Two hours pass in a flash. He talks about childhood trauma. He puts on a whiny voice: “When I was five I wanted a pony . . . my parents told me I was ugly . . . ‘Shut the fuck up!’”

  He gets the audience to chant it: “Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up!” If you hear voices in your head, he says, tell the voices to shut the fuck up. “If you suffered childhood abuse, don’t go back and relive it in your mind. Once is enough!”

  He says psychotherapy is nonsense and a racket: Therapists are rewarded for failure. The longer a problem lasts, the more the therapist is paid. Who cares about the roots of the trauma?

  “Don’t think about bad things!” Bandler says. “There’s a machine inside your brain that gets rid of shit that doesn’t need to be there. Use it! I can give myself amnesia. I can just forget.” He clicks his fingers. “Just like that.”

  This seven-day training course is costing delegates £1,500 each. Which means Paul McKenna’s company will rake in almost a million pounds for this one week’s work. The tea and biscuits may be free but we have to buy our own lunch. For all the hero-worship of McKenna and Bandler, there’s still a lot of grumbling about this, especially because whenever we traipse out into the rain to try and find somewhere to eat in this crappy part of town, we’re compelled to traipse past Paul McKenna’s immaculate chauffeur-driven silver Bentley, number plate 75PM, parked up in the ugly forecourt, waiting to swish Richard Bandler off somewhere unimaginably fancier.

  • • •

  IT IS LUNCHTIME NOW. I walk past the Bentley. A delegate sidles up to me. “You’re a very naughty boy!” she says. “Richard will be very cross with you!”

  “What?” I practically yell.

  “You kept writing when Richard was talking even though you know you weren’t supposed to!” she says. “And you didn’t have a smile on your face. Everyone was laughing, but you were scowling.”

  I missed yesterday’s session, which is perhaps why everyone is so far ahead of me in the frenzied-adoration stakes. In fact, earlier today Richard Bandler said he had no unhappy clients. His exact words were “The reason why all my clients are a success is that I killed all the ones who weren’t.”

  Lots of delegates have told me they signed up because of the TV star Paul McKenna but the great revelation has been the man they hadn’t heard of: Richard Bandler.

  • • •

  THREE OF PAUL MCKENNA’S NLP-inspired self-help books (Change Your Life in 7 Days, Instant Confidence—which is dedicated to Bandler—and I Can Make You Thin) are currently in the WHSmith Top 10. So that’s the therapy side. The NLP-can-do-wonders-for-your-business side is thriving too. In fact when I meet Iain Aitken, the managing director of McKenna’s company, he says the phobic delegates are becoming the minority now that NLP has become so widespread in the business world. I ask Iain what is it about NLP that attracts the salespeople. Bandler, he replies, teaches that everyone has a dominant way of perceiving the world through seeing, hearing, or feeling. If a customer says, “I see what you mean,” that makes them a visual person. The NLP-trained salesperson will spot the clue and establish rapport by mirroring the language.

  “I get the picture,” the NLP-trained salesperson can reply, rather than “That rings a bell” or “That feels good to me.”

  • • •

  AFTER LUNCH, we split into small groups to practice NLP techniques on one another. I pair up with Vish, who runs a property company in the Midlands.

  “What did I miss yesterday?” I ask him.

  “It was great,” he says. “We did anchoring. Let me show you how it works.”

  Vish moves his chair closer to mine.

  “How are you enjoying your time here?” he asks me.

  “OK,” I say.

  Vish pokes my elbow.

  “Brilliant!” he says. “Did you have a good lunch?”

  “It was all right,” I say.

  Vish prods my elbow again.

  “Fantastic!” he says. “Have you got kids?”

  “A son,” I say.

  “Did you have fun with him last weekend?” he asks.

  “Yes, I did,” I say.

  Vish pokes my elbow.

  “Brilliant!” he says. “Now. Did you notice what I was doing?”

  “You were poking my elbow every time I expressed positive feeling,” I say.

  “Exactly!” says Vish, although he looks peeved that I spotted the poking, which is supposed to be so subtle as to exist only on the unconscious level.

  “Now,” says Vish. “When I want to sell you something, I’ll touch your elbow and you’ll associate that touch with a good feeling, and you’ll want to buy. That’s deep psychology.” Vish pauses. “What I really like about NLP is how it can hypnotize and manipulate people. But in a good way.”

  • • •

  I STAND UP to stretch my legs and I spot Paul McKenna at the front, near the stage. Even though I’m still supposed to be doing the small-group workshop, I decide to introduce myself. I take a few steps toward McKenna. Instantly, one of his assistants swoops down on me. There are about forty assistants in all, scattered around the room.

  “Do you need help?” she asks me.

  “No,” I say.

  “Have you finished the workshop already?” she asks sarcastically.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Well, you must have finished quicker than everyone else because everyone else is still doing it,” she says.

  “I’m a journalist and I’m going to talk to Paul McKenna,” I say.

  I walk on. Ten steps later, two more assistants appear from nowhere.

  “Aren’t you joining in?” asks one.

  “You’re going to miss all the benefits,” says the other.

 
“I’m OK, honestly,” I say.

  Another assistant appears.

  “Didn’t you understand your instruction?” he says. “Paul explained three times that you’re supposed to do the workshop for fifteen minutes.”

  Finally, exhausted, I reach Paul McKenna. I introduce myself.

  “How did you end up in business with Richard Bandler?” I ask him.

  “I know!” he says. “It seems incredible from the outside. But he’s one of my best friends . . .” Then he excuses himself to do a spot of speed-healing on an overeater.

  • • •

  AN HOUR LATER Paul McKenna’s PR rep, Jaime, tells me in the corridor quite sternly that I am not to hang out with Paul or Richard before, between, or after sessions because they’re far too busy and tired. I can meet them next Wednesday, she says, when the course is over. I go home. I don’t think I have ever, in all my life, had so many people try to control me in one single day. Advocates and critics alike say attaining a mastery of NLP can be an excellent way of controlling people, so I suppose the training courses attract that sort of person. Ross Jeffries, author of How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed, is a great NLP fan, as is Duane Lakin, author of The Unfair Advantage: Sell with NLP! (Both books advocate the “That feels good to me” style of mirroring/rapport-building invented by Bandler.)

  But still, the controlling didn’t work on me. Nobody successfully got inside my head and changed—for their benefit—the way I saw NLP. In fact, quite the opposite happened. This makes me wonder if NLP even works.

  E-mails and telephone calls fly back and forth. I tell Jaime the PR rep that I don’t want to be kept away from Richard Bandler during the sessions. Finally it is agreed I can meet him before he goes onstage on Monday.

  • • •

  THINGS IMPROVE. There’s a nice, normal delegate here called Nick who teaches executives how to be good public speakers.

  “These group things are always a bit creepy,” he says, “but that isn’t the point. The point is that NLP isn’t bogus.”

  I tell Nick about Vish noticeably prodding me in the elbow.

  “Well, he was just doing it badly,” says Nick. “Honestly. NLP is the most sensible thing out there.”

  I corner Paul McKenna and tell him his assistants are driving me crazy.

  “You have to make them leave me alone,” I say.

  He looks mortified and says they’re just overexcited and trying too hard. But, he adds, the course would be a lot worse without them energizing the stragglers into practicing NLP techniques on one another.

  Onstage, Bandler and McKenna cure a stream of delegates of their phobias and compulsions. There’s a woman who’s barely left her home for years, convinced the heater will turn itself on when she’s out and burn the house down.

  “Do they pay you to think like this?” asks Bandler. “It seems like an awful lot of work. Aren’t you fucking sick of it?”

  The woman says a bossy voice in her head tells her the heater will do this.

  Bandler gets her to turn down the knob in her brain that controls the volume of the bossy voice.

  Then he gets the bossy voice to tell her, “If you keep worrying about this heater, you’re going to miss out on everything good in your life.”

  This, Bandler explains, is an invention of his called the Swish technique: You take a bad thought, turn it into a radio or TV image, and then swish it away, replacing it with a good thought.

  “I don’t care about you anymore, heater, because I want to get my life back,” the woman says, and the audience cheers.

  I still don’t quite understand the Swish technique, and so I make a mental note to get Paul McKenna to do it on me when I meet him at his house on Wednesday. I have a whole potpourri of bad thoughts I wouldn’t mind swishing away.

  • • •

  YESTERDAY RICHARD BANDLER cured someone who had a fear of doctors. Now he gets him to stand up.

  “Are you scared of going to the doctor?” he asks.

  “I . . . uh . . . hope not,” the man quietly replies.

  “BOO!” shouts the audience, only half-good-naturedly.

  Suddenly, I feel a poke in my elbow. I spin around. It is Vish. I catch him in the act of giving my elbow a second poke.

  “Did that make you feel good?” he asks me.

  “It made me feel confused,” I say.

  When someone appears cured, Bandler and McKenna seem quietly, sincerely thrilled. I’m sure they derive real pleasure from helping damaged people improve their lives. And the room truly is scattered with NLP success stories. There are the shy salespeople who aren’t shy anymore, the arachnophobes who swish away their spider phobias and stroke the tarantulas Paul McKenna provides one afternoon.

  Onstage each day, McKenna is a mix of entertainer and college lecturer. He tells a joke and then he says, “What was I just doing?”

  “REFRAMING!” the audience yells as one. (Reframing is NLP’s way of putting a miserable person in a good mood. If someone says, “My wife’s always nagging me,” the NLP-trained therapist will “reframe” by replying, “She must really care about you to tell you what she thinks.”) I sit in the audience and watch all this, and back at home in the evenings I talk to friends who, it transpires, secretly listen to Paul McKenna’s CDs and get cured.

  There’s another speaker here: the life coach Michael Neill, author of You Can Have What You Want. One day Michael asks me if I can spot the covert intelligence officers in the audience.

  “I’m not joking,” he says. “There’s always one or two.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Most people who want to get inside your brain,” says Michael, moving closer to me, “have negative reasons.”

  Michael tells me about an oil-executive friend who only ever uses NLP for bad, to “mess people up.” In busy bars his friend frantically “mismatches.” He sits at a crowded table, uses NLP to establish rapport with strangers, and then behaves in the exact opposite way to what he knows would make them feel comfortable. Before long he has the table to himself. Then Michael adds, “Anyone who knows NLP will have an advantage over anyone who doesn’t. My dream is for everyone in the world to know NLP. Then there’d be an even playing field.”

  Paul McKenna, standing nearby, comes over. He scans the room. When the six hundred delegates graduate in a few days, they’ll be given Licensed NLP Practitioner certificates. Some will set up their own NLP training schools. He says he cannot guard against what happens next.

  “Some people teach NLP in a way that makes it sound highly manipulative and coercive,” McKenna says. “You know, ‘I will give you power over others.’ And the people who end up going to those are people with very small penises, frankly. People who think, ‘Oh my God! I’m not enough! I’m so out of control! Maybe if I learned how to have power over others, I’d be a better person!’ So you see that criticizing NLP is like criticizing a hammer.”

  I tell him I’ve read terrible things about NLP on the Internet—how some scientists call it nonsense—and he says, “I know it’s not scientific. Some of the techniques will not always work in the same way in a laboratory every time!” He laughs. “But Louis Pasteur was accused of being in league with the Devil. The Wright brothers were called fraudsters. . . .”

  • • •

  MONDAY. I spot Richard Bandler by the stage, surrounded by fans.

  “Wow,” he says as a woman hands him a rare copy of his book Trance-formations. “That goes for, like, six hundred dollars on eBay.”

  “That’s where I got it,” the woman replies. He autographs it.

  Everything is going fine until someone hands Bandler a blank piece of paper to sign.

  “What’s this?” he says. “I just don’t sign blank paper.” He pauses. “I have a thing about it.”

  Misunderstanding, the woman hands him different blank paper.

  “No, no,” he says. “I just can’t sign blank paper.”

  Some of the fans laugh as if to say, “How can you han
d him blank paper after he’s just told you he doesn’t sign blank paper? Are you nuts to expect him to sign blank paper?”

  But really it is a strange moment: Richard Bandler has just spent the last few days effortlessly convincing us that phobias are nonsense, and here he is, phobic about signing blank paper.

  The moment passes. A woman kisses him and says, “From one child of the sixties to another.” Bandler laughs and replies, “They called us the fringe. We’re fucking mainstream now!” Then I introduce myself, and we go upstairs.

  • • •

  RICHARD BANDLER was born in 1950. He grew up in a rough part of New Jersey. I don’t expect him to talk much about his childhood because several profiles say he never does. The one thing known for sure is that he had language problems and he barely spoke until he was a teenager. So I’m surprised when he says, “I was a compulsive kid.”

  I’m sitting down on a low sofa. He’s standing above me.

  “When I was a kid I took up archery,” he says. “I can remember sitting out by the side of the house, until three a.m., with just a little lightbulb, shooting at a fucking target, over and over, until I got it exactly the way it was supposed to be.”

  “Where did your compulsiveness come from?” I ask him.

  “From being alone most of the time,” he says. “I had to be self-motivated. My mother was always out working, and my father was violent and dangerous.” He pauses. “Well, my first father was gone by the time I was five, and he was very violent. My mother later married a guy who was a drunk and a prizefighter in the navy. He was very violent. Broke a lot of my bones. But in the end I won.”

  “How?” I ask, expecting him to say something like “Look at me now. I’m getting driven around in Paul McKenna’s Bentley.”

  But instead he says, “I electrocuted him.”

  “Really?” I say.

  “I didn’t kill him,” he says, “but I could have.”

  “How did you electrocute him?” I ask.

  “I waited until it was raining,” he says. “I got a wire-mesh doormat. I stripped a lamp cord, put it underneath the doormat, put the other end in the keyhole, and put my hand on the switch. When the key went in, I clicked the switch. There was a loud scream. He went over the railing. Six months in the hospital.”