I'm not anticult, but I practice NLP and can address some of these questions.
As with all communication techniques, the technique itself is basically descriptive but is ethical or not depending on its use and context.
Mirroring someone and anchoring their past best friend could be ethical say in a context where you are meeting someone new, they honestly remind you of your best friend from the past, you are looking for a best friend and so are they, you have a great natural connection, and you are talking about friendship, etc. In fact, I recently had an experience where I felt it would be unethical to not talk about friendship and connect deeply with a man whom I wanted to have a closer friendship with (although I didn't consciously do any anchoring or eliciting of "friendship strategies" etc.).
On the other hand, if you are a salesman who isn't truly wanting a new best friend but just a buyer, doing all these things can be quite manipulative and unethical. It's simply dishonest to act like someone's best friend when you're not and have no intention of being their friend, whether you use fancy techniques or just "act as if."
You seem to think that these techniques don't work, but I know for a fact that they do, and VERY powerfully. Clearly they work, or people in the deadly sweat lodge would simply have walked out instead of puking, passing out, and dying. Nothing physical stopped them from leaving--it was all psychological.
These techniques don't work with 100% success of course (perhaps 40% at best), but as anticult has been pointing out, manipulative types seek out easy targets, those for whom it works very easily. In fact, if you've ever fallen in love, the exact moment could be described and modeled in NLP terms, even though the process was probably unconscious for both of you. Using these techniques consciously, at the right time, and with the right victim (when used unethically) can absolutely recreate such powerful experiences. There are techniques from NLP that can recreate drug states through hypnosis. Tony Robbins basically does this and then signs you up for his advanced course while you are high on your own neurochemicals.
Now if someone came up to you on the street, asked you "have you ever fallen in love?" and "what happened first? and then next?" and then elicited your love strategy and then anchored it to them, chances are you would be creeped out and walk away feeling disgusted. But a sociopath sees that experience as "one more 'no' on the way to a 'yes'" and walks up to the next person and tries again until it works.
I was aware of many of these tactics years ago when I went to Tony Robbins' LGAT Unleash the Power Within. I could see him using them on the 2000 participants to get them to put down a deposit for his multiple thousands of dollars advanced course. Even though I could see a lot of what he was doing, I was still affected by it. I probably would have given a deposit myself had I had the money. Luckily I wasn't stupid enough to write a post-dated check, which Robbins
literally encouraged people to do who didn't have the money, saying "do whatever it takes" to give him the money he wants, or else you have "limiting beliefs" that will keep you poor forever!
Most manipulators simply leave you feeling sleazy, like you need a shower to rinse off the experience. But the worst gurus and salespeople can rope in a target for long periods of time, getting thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of free labor out of a person all for their personal material gain.
"Sociopath" is a descriptive term and a psychological diagnosis. It is very accurate to describe these extremely self-centered ruthless manipulators. It is also a great term to warn others to get the heck away from these folks, for they don't actually behave in the way we've come to expect from ordinary, caring human beings--although they pretend to until they get what they want from you! Only a small percentage of people act consistently like this, but those that do can be very nasty and deceptive. Sometimes they come right out and say things like "I do whatever it takes to get what I want, whether people like it or not," but we usually don't believe such things because we have consciences and believe that everyone does.
Now that said, I'm not sure I'd go as far as anticult in claiming that all these guru-types are using these techniques consciously and deliberately. That's mind reading, and I'm no psychic. Certainly NLP trainers teach how to deliberately and consciously communicate, and don't emphasize ethics nearly as much as I would like (and most NLPers and hypnotists I've met are not sociopaths, but just interested in good communication skills). But really it doesn't matter what someone's intent is, whether it is deliberate or accidental or driven by unconscious motives etc., because the
impact of James Ray's communication specifically is very destructive, and other gurus similarly have been exposed on these forums and elsewhere. As they say in NLP, the meaning of your communication is the response you get, and the response to Ray's communication is 4 dead, 18+ injured and traumatized.
The sad thing to me is that these same techniques can be used for healing, for compassion, for actually empowering people to live independently of any destructive authority. Since these abusive authorities use the same language and say they are empowering you but really are manipulative, victims often have a difficult time ever seeing the positive uses of communication and healing/spiritual techniques ever again. This is not unlike someone in an abusive marriage who never again marries or falls in love because of the past hurt and manipulation.
Quote
CTEL
Hello anticult, thanks for the info in your post, id like to give you an opinion of the subject
you have to know that a lot of it is really con artistry(is that even a word) :p
i personally dont see anything wrong with mirrorring somebody, pretending to be their best friends...
not to mention it does not work, and mirroring is automatic in any human being,
i also dont see the way that some people
i also perferably dont see people as "sociopaths" that seems to me as something judgemental, as if its negative to be a "sociopath", y myself have seen a couple of sociopaths that are quite friendly,
i dont think its good too judge them,
i also disagree with the way you see persuasion, its normal to persuade somebody
much of it is sensory depravasion, hypnosis as a whole doesnt work, there is a lot of junk outhere, nueroscience itself has a lot of garbage
i still dont get nlp.
how would that even work?
"when now" i dont get that..... how would that do any effect?