Richard Bandler

Richard Wayne Bandler (born 1950) is an American self-help author, consultant, and speaker. In the 1970s, he co-created the psychotherapy approach known as neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) alongside John Grinder.

Bandler was born in Teaneck, New Jersey, and attended high school in Sunnyvale, California. He has claimed that as a child he was beaten so severely that every bone in his body was broken. Following his parents' separation, he lived mostly in the San Francisco area with his mother. He earned a BA in philosophy and psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1973, and an MA in psychology from Lone Mountain College in San Francisco in 1975.

While still a student at UC Santa Cruz, Bandler led a Gestalt therapy group. He also helped publisher Robert S. Spitzer edit The Gestalt Approach (1973), based on a manuscript by the late Fritz Perls, and assisted with transcripts for Eye Witness to Therapy (1973). Spitzer noted that Bandler began talking and acting like Perls after the work.

Grinder, a linguistics professor at the university, told Bandler he could explain most of Bandler's questions and comments using transformational grammar. The two then formed a therapist training group, which became the basis for their first book, The Structure of Magic (1975). They later claimed to have codified foundational NLP models by studying the methods of Milton Erickson and Virginia Satir.

In 1986, Bandler was charged with the murder of Corine Ann Christensen, a former girlfriend of his friend and cocaine dealer James Marino. Christensen was shot dead in her Santa Cruz townhouse with a .357 magnum belonging to Bandler. At trial, Bandler testified that he was at the house but that Marino fired the fatal shot. A jury found him not guilty after a short deliberation.