What if someone told you that you could skip years of therapy with a few mental tricks? It sounded impossible… until we found Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP is a form of hypnosis beloved by everyone from sex cults to the U.S. military to fortune 500 companies–yet almost no one knows it exists. 

Long before she co-founded NXIVM, hypnotist Nancy Salzman encountered NLP as a radical method for reprogramming the mind. Her story leads us to its inventor, Richard Bandler, a volatile, self-made guru. As we dig into how it took hold in so many places, we face an unsettling possibility: NLP might actually work.