.... was one of the originators of NLP.

"Richard (Bandler) and I were college kids, studying Fritz Perl and copying what he did. But we didn't really understand what we were doing. Richard was in his early 20s and I was 25 and had recently returned from Vietnam, to be a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Kresge College was an Arts college, what we called touchy feely, it drove us nuts. This was about 1971.

John Grinder was a professor, about 4 years older than Frank was, he had been a Green Beret and been involved behind enemy lines, for the American Government. John had great modeling skills especially for language and he was able to identify patterns for us. As a linguist, he could hear what we were doing. So NLP was born. John had worked with Chomsky at the Rockefeller Center and other special people, and I had experience of Carl Rogers.

It would seem that both Virginia Satir and Fritz Perle were the pre-cursors of NLP. Besides the 3 of us there were 6 or 7 more of the original Meta Kids who joined us. A couple years later people like Dilts, DeLozier, Cameron, Gilligan, and others joined us. This was after the original 'Meta kids' had graduated from UCSC and left."

I was born in Nebraska, but brought up in San Diego and learnt to speak Spanish, to make people laugh, and/or run like hell.

I joined the Navy to avoid being sent to war, but was then trained as a Navy Corpsman, transferred to the Marine Corps, and sent to Vietnam..

We started NLP. After the war I was a broken person and was looking for a way to put myself together.

After Vietnam there were no support groups, no recognition, no post traumatic stress recognition. People spat on us in the street and called us baby killers.

It was just me and 15 guys in the jungle, us and the bad guys. We would be out for 6 weeks @ at time, waiting for our time to die.

I was back from Vietnam and studying ever kind of psyche and Gestalt, then found it began to make money.

I had a fantastically valuable time in the jungle. The jungle destroyed me. I needed to be destroyed. I was not a happy kid. I had often wished I had never been born.

My parents did their best, but my childhood was far from nurturing. I left at 18. I would never go back to those people. But I told myself if I ever had kids, it would be different.

After the war I was gone: ethics gone, values gone, beliefs gone, belief in God destroyed. If he exists, if I ever meet up with him, I'm going to kick his ass. He's no friend of mine. I was brought up as a Catholic, and the Catholic priest after the war, talked to me a lot about our free will. No sale. I saw too many things and did too many things that simply should not have happened.
 

There were lots. But especially I had the privilege to be in the room with a father and son who made contact for the first time in 25 years. He was a strong powerful businessman who said, If I'd have know, you needed a Pop, I'd have thrown away all the money, all the work.

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The most surprising thing was that I survived the war.

I went to the war to die. Joined the navy to avoid it, then they trained me as a corpsman and sent me to Vietnam.

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The times when John (Grinder) gave me feedback, that was not fun to hear. He didn't give a damn about my feelings and it hurt. Things I needed to hear and to change. I am incredibly proud of that. I was more important to him than thinking about my feelings. No politeness. Brass tack, Bang hard. A good friend.

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Leslie taught me to love, to make love, incredible woman. Virginia Satir was a significant teacher. I didn't see her as a woman. She was tall, strong, compassionate, and a force, more than a teacher, inspiration, icon, and yet a real person. She had the ability to be an icon and a real person.

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Honour. Without honour I wouldn't be here! I will go to do the hard things that are right, at any price..

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"Start with each person. If I have the ability to meet each person without knowing what they are, to experience them joyfully. Every person is a walking miracle. Imagine aliens, I don't know anything about them, and so I get to explore a whole new universe. A completely different experience.

Without any judgment, arrogance, or disrespect. It is only possible to listen and learn. The war taught me a lot. War taught me a bullet gets you if it gets you. You can be green, you can be purple, a colonel or a major or a corporal. You're nobody special."

©2010 Christina@wwom.org from informal interview with Frank at NLP Conference 2010