Psycho-Cybernetics 2022 Edition PDF

Psycho-Cybernetics OceanofPDF.com Psycho-Cybernetics UPDATED AND EXPANDED Maxwell Maltz, MD, FICS OceanofPDF.com  First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Souvenir Press, an i...

Psycho-Cybernetics OceanofPDF.com Psycho-Cybernetics UPDATED AND EXPANDED Maxwell Maltz, MD, FICS OceanofPDF.com  First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Souvenir Press, an imprint of Profile Books Ltd 29 Cloth Fair London EC1A 7JQ www.souvenirpress.co.uk First published in 2015 by Tarcher Perigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC Copyright © Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation Inc., 2015 Use of any content by Dr Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics, or Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation is prohibited except with written permission from the Psycho- Cybernetics Foundation Inc. or the publisher. 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 80081 291 8 eISBN 978 1 80081 293 2 OceanofPDF.com  CONTENTS Foreword: How Psycho-Cybernetics Changed My Life—and Can Do the Same for You, by Matt Furey Preface: The Secret of Using This Book to Change Your Life 1. The Self-Image: Your Key to a Better Life 2. Discovering the Success Mechanism Within You 3. Imagination: The First Key to Your Success Mechanism 4. Dehypnotize Yourself from False Beliefs 5. How to Utilize the Power of Rational Thinking 6. Relax and Let Your Success Mechanism Work for You 7. You Can Acquire the Habit of Happiness 8. Ingredients of the “Success-Type” Personality and How to Acquire Them 9. The Failure Mechanism: How to Make It Work for You Instead of Against You 10. How to Remove Emotional Scars, or How to Give Yourself an Emotional Face-Lift 11. How to Unlock Your Real Personality 12. Do-It-Yourself Tranquilizers That Bring Peace of Mind 13. How to Turn a Crisis into a Creative Opportunity 14. How to Get That Winning Feeling 15. More Years of Life and More Life in Your Years Afterword Index OceanofPDF.com FOREWORD How Psycho-Cybernetics Changed My Life—and Can Do the Same for You There are two kinds of self-help books: those you read and say, “What a great book,” and those you experience so profoundly your life is positively changed forever. When you truly experience a great self-help book, you can mark down the date and time you “accidentally” stumbled across it—or who referred you to it. You can also clearly determine the distinction between who you used to be, before you read the book, and who you are now. This is what will happen when you read Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, MD, the recognized classic in the field of self-help books. Since it was first published in 1960, Psycho-Cybernetics has sold more than 35 million copies worldwide. As a result of people experiencing this book, readers in all walks of life have succeeded at higher levels than ever before. The self-help industry itself was changed, too. Today, virtually everything written and discussed about visualization or mental imagery was directly influenced by Maltz’s work and is deeply rooted in the principles of Psycho-Cybernetics. My Introduction to Psycho-Cybernetics In February 1987, shortly after graduating from college and moving to California, I decided to go into business for myself as a personal fitness trainer. Because I had won a national title in college wrestling, and had been trained by Olympic champions Dan Gable and Bruce Baumgartner, I figured I had something valuable to teach young athletes as well as anyone who desired to be more physically fit.  Even as I was embarking on this career, I felt that something was holding me back. There was this inner voice telling me I wasn’t good enough, that I couldn’t make it. To be honest: First, I had no business experience. Second, I had very little money. And third, deep down I felt like a failure—even before I started. Imagine that. I wanted to succeed but felt like a failure. Why did I feel like a failure? When I think about that question, I recall that when I was in high school, my goal was to wrestle for Dan Gable at the University of Iowa. I fulfilled that goal—but I wasn’t the number one guy in my weight class. I was almost always number two. I got a lot of matches in tournaments and dual meets and won the majority of them—but I was not in the driver’s seat. And so, after my sophomore season, I transferred to Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, where I’d be on the varsity. During my junior year at Edinboro, I set a single-season win record for the team (39) and won the NCAA II national title. After winning the Division II title, I was ranked seventh overall in the country and qualified for the Division I tournament. My goals were to not only win the tournament I’d already won, but the Division I tourney as well. Well, I fell short. Way short. I was crushed afterward—yet fully committed to coming back as a senior and making up for my poor showing. During my senior year, despite having far more skill than ever before, I fell short again. I took fifth in the Division II tournament and did not qualify for the Division I meet. There were many reasons I can give now for why I fell short, but at the time I couldn’t put my finger on them. And when I began my business, I suspected that it was these same reasons that were causing me to worry and feel fearful about the future. As fate would have it, in early May of 1987, when I was nearly out of business due to a lack of clientele, Jack, a successful 57-year-old entrepreneur, signed up for 12 lessons. Whenever he showed up to train, he’d scan to see what books I had in my office, which would lead to a lively discussion of what we were reading. During Jack’s fifth session, when he was catching a breather between sets, he asked the following life-changing question: “Matt, have you ever read Psycho-Cybernetics?” “No,” I replied. “Is it good?” “Well, it’s sort of like the bible of self-help. You really need to read it.” Over the next ten minutes Jack talked to me about success and the “self- image.” He told me that Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who figured out that a person cannot rise above how he sees himself. “Our future,” Jack said, “is controlled by a mental blueprint we have inside our subconscious mind, and it dictates where we think we belong. If you want to get more clients and make more money, then you need to expand your self-image before you can have them. Trying to achieve without expanding your self- image doesn’t lead to lasting positive change.” After Jack’s lesson, I got in my car and drove to the nearest bookstore, the Capitola Book Café. I pulled a copy of Psycho-Cybernetics from the shelf and drove back to my office to begin reading. In the preface, which appears in its original version in this edition, Dr. Maltz wrote, “This book has been designed not merely to be read but to be experienced. You can acquire information from reading a book. But to ‘experience’ you must creatively respond to information.” He goes on to advise readers to continue to practice the techniques in the book and reserve judgment for at least 21 days—the amount of time that, in fact, research now confirms it takes to effect change. He cautions readers not to overanalyze the techniques, critique them, or intellectualize about whether they could work. “You can [only] prove them to yourself,” he adds, “by doing them and judging the results for yourself.” Okay, so that’s what I did. And soon I began to see exactly why I felt like a failure and how this poor “self-image” was indeed holding me back in my business. In short, I felt like a failure because I was reliving my disappointments, my losses, my setbacks, my failures. Each day, when I felt badly about myself, it was as if I’d rubbed my face in the manure of bad memories instead of showering my face with clear-water memories of what I’d done well. Here’s a snapshot of what I would say to myself: Yes, I achieved my goal to wrestle at Iowa and be coached by Dan Gable, but I wasn’t a varsity man. I was number two. Yes, I got a full-ride at Edinboro and won a national title, but I didn’t win the Division I national title and I didn’t win the Division II title as a senior. Yes, I set a single-season victory mark, but I didn’t win all my matches. Even though I’d achieved something that almost all athletes who take up any sport will never achieve, I thought I was a failure because I didn’t win everything. Moreover, I didn’t realize that having goals and thinking positively aren’t enough. No one had ever told me about the self-image. Despite my learning self-hypnosis, which I thought would help psych me up, no one ever taught me to go back into the past and relive my best memories. I was never taught to picture what I wanted, let alone to feel I could have it (and I do have it). I was carrying these feelings of failure in my bones, and into my business and everything I did. Once again, I was setting goals for myself. I truly wanted to succeed. At the same time I doubted whether or not I was good enough to train people. After all, who was I? I wasn’t a world champion or an Olympic champion. I was “just” a onetime national champion. As I devoured Psycho-Cybernetics, I discovered and experienced what I needed to be doing on a daily basis. It was something I had never done before. I was to enter this place that Dr. Maltz called the Theatre of the Mind. I’d close my eyes, then remember and relive my best moments— seeing them play out like a mental movie. My victories. My successes. My happiest times. After reliving and reexperiencing myself at my best, I was able to flip a switch and use my imagination in the same way I used my memory. I could imagine and feel that I was achieving a goal in the future but experience it as if it was happening now, almost as if it was the memory of another accomplished goal. Once I mastered this technique, everything began to change for me. Instantly—and yes, I do mean instantly—I felt good. I felt happy. I felt successful. I felt like a winner. It was an odd sensation. Intellectually, it made no sense. How could I be happy now? How could I feel successful now? How could I feel like a winner now? Didn’t I have to achieve those goals in order to feel good, to be happy? And what about all the failures? Were they simply forgotten? Wasn’t I supposed to feel bad forever for not achieving everything I set out to do?  This is where Psycho-Cybernetics cannot be understood by passively reading. This is where it cannot be understood by analysis, argument, debating, or intellectualizing. You must experience the reality of it in order to truly know the truth. The mere reading of words will not show you or give you the experience of truth. Since that glorious day in May of 1987, I’ve achieved a lot. The list of achievements, accomplishments and victories that I can recall is quite long. In the short term, I built a successful personal fitness business. Then, in 1997, at 34 years of age, I won a world championship in kung fu, in Beijing, China, beating the Chinese at their own game, something no other American had ever done. Since then I’ve written books and created fitness and martial arts programs that have found a worldwide audience. In 2003, my friend Dan Kennedy, who headed the Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation at the time, asked me to take charge of the foundation’s website. Two years later I bought the company, and since then I have been running seminars on Psycho-Cybernetics and conducting group and individual coaching in its techniques and principles. The many people with whom I’ve worked will testify that they have succeeded in ways they never thought possible. Entrepreneurs, physicians, salespeople, athletes, lawyers, coaches, teachers, musicians, writers, and others from every walk of life have used the knowledge Dr. Maltz so eloquently taught. They, like the millions of others who have been introduced to Psycho-Cybernetics, have made their lives great in the now—and for the future. As you read this book, one of the many secrets you will come to understand is this: You can be happy now as well as every single day you are working toward achieving your goals. When you discover happiness along the way—instead of expecting that you can only be happy once you’ve achieved a goal—then you’ve already fulfilled the promise of Psycho-Cybernetics. In his book I Can See Clearly Now, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer wrote about the influence that Psycho-Cybernetics had on his career, and it’s easy to understand why he’s so fond of saying, “There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.” In this edition of Psycho-Cybernetics, Dr. Maltz’s words remain as they were originally written for the most part, so the vibration of his message will shine upon you like the sun. The few changes that have been made are minor and meant only to make the text more accessible to the contemporary reader. My contributions to Dr. Maltz’s masterwork comprise this foreword and an afterword, as well as commentary throughout that I believe will give you additional guidance and understanding when using the self-image improvement process. I encourage you to write to me through psycho-cybernetics.com with any questions or comments you may have about this book and Dr. Maltz’s work, as well as for information about coaching, seminars, certification, and opportunities to continue spreading this message across the globe. Matt Furey President of the Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation Inc. OceanofPDF.com PREFACE The Secret of Using This Book to Change Your Life Discovery of the “self-image” represents a breakthrough in psychology and the field of creative personality. The significance of the self-image has been recognized since the early 1950s. Yet there had been little written about it before Psycho-Cybernetics. Curiously enough, this is not because “self-image psychology” has not worked, but because it has worked so amazingly well. As one of my colleagues expressed it, “I am reluctant to publish my findings, especially for the lay public, because if I presented some of the case histories and described the rather amazing and spectacular improvements in personality, I would be accused of exaggerating, or trying to start a cult, or both.” I, too, felt the same sort of reluctance. Any book I might write on the subject would be sure to be regarded as somewhat unorthodox by some of my colleagues for several reasons. In the first place, it is somewhat unorthodox for a plastic surgeon to write a book on psychology. In the second place, it will probably be regarded in some quarters as even more unorthodox to go outside the tight little dogma—the “closed system” of the “science of psychology”—and seek answers concerning human behavior in the fields of physics, anatomy, and the new science of cybernetics. My answer is that any good plastic surgeon is and must be a psychologist, whether he would have it so or not. When you change a man’s face you almost invariably change his future. Change his physical image and nearly always you change the man—his personality, his behavior—and sometimes even his basic talents and abilities. Beauty Is More Than Skin Deep A plastic surgeon does not simply alter a man’s face. He alters the man’s inner self. The incisions he makes are more than skin deep. They frequently cut deep into the psyche as well. I decided a long time ago that this is an awesome responsibility and that I owe it to my patients and to myself to know something about what I am doing. No responsible MD would attempt to perform extensive plastic surgery without specialized knowledge and training. Just so, I feel that if changing a man’s face is going to change the inner man as well, I have a responsibility to acquire specialized knowledge in that field, also. Failures That Led to Success In a previous book, written some 20 years ago (New Faces, New Futures), I published more or less a collection of case histories where plastic surgery, and particularly facial plastic surgery, had opened the door to a new life for many people. That book told of the amazing changes that often occur quite suddenly and dramatically in a person’s personality when you change his face. I was elated at my successes in this respect. But, like Sir Humphry Davy, I learned more from my failures than from my successes. Some patients showed no change in personality after surgery. In most cases a person who had a conspicuously ugly face, or some “freakish” feature, corrected by surgery, experienced an almost immediate (usually within 21 days) rise in self-esteem, self-confidence. But in some cases, the patient continued to feel inadequate and experienced feelings of inferiority. In short, these “failures” continued to feel, act, and behave just as if they still had an ugly face. This indicated to me that reconstruction of the physical image itself was not “the” real key to changes in personality. There was something else, which was usually influenced by facial surgery, but sometimes not. When this “something else” was reconstructed, the person himself changed. When this “something else” was not reconstructed, the person himself remained the same, although his physical features might be radically different. The Face of Personality It was as if personality itself had a “face.” This nonphysical “face of personality” seemed to be the real key to personality change. If it remained scarred, distorted, “ugly,” or inferior, the person himself acted out this role in his behavior regardless of the changes in physical appearance. If this “face of personality” could be reconstructed, if old emotional scars could be removed, then the person himself changed, even without facial plastic surgery. Once I began to explore this area, I found more and more phenomena that confirmed the fact that the “self-image,” the individual’s mental and spiritual concept or “picture” of himself, was the real key to personality and behavior. More about this in the first chapter. Truth Is Where You Find It I have always believed in going wherever it may be necessary to find truth, even if international boundaries must be crossed. When I decided to become a plastic surgeon years ago, German doctors were far ahead of the rest of the world in this field. So I went to Germany. In my search for the “self-image,” I also had to cross boundaries, although invisible ones. Although the science of psychology acknowledged the self-image and its role in human behavior, psychology’s answer to the questions of how the self-image exerts its influence, how it creates a new personality, what happens inside the human nervous system when the self- image is changed, was “somehow.” I found most of my answers in the new science of cybernetics, which restored teleology as a respectable concept in science. It is rather strange that the new science of cybernetics grew out of the work of physicists and mathematicians rather than that of psychologists, especially when it is understood that cybernetics has to do with teleology—the goal-striving, goal-oriented behavior of mechanical systems. Cybernetics explains “what happens” and “what is necessary” in the purposeful behavior of machines. Psychology, with all its vaunted knowledge of the human psyche, had no satisfactory answer for such a simple, goal-oriented, purposeful situation as, for example, how it is possible for a human being to pick up a pen from a desk. But a physicist had an answer. The proponents of many psychological theories were somewhat comparable to men who speculated as to what was in outer space and on other planets, but could not tell what was in their own backyards. The new science of cybernetics made possible an important breakthrough in psychology. I myself take no credit for the breakthrough, other than the recognition of it.  The fact that this breakthrough came from the work of physicists and mathematicians should not surprise us. Any breakthrough in science is likely to come from outside the system. “Experts” are the most thoroughly familiar with the developed knowledge inside the prescribed boundaries of a given science. Any new knowledge must usually come from the outside— not from “experts,” but from what someone has defined as an “inpert.” Pasteur was not an MD. The Wright brothers were not aeronautical engineers but bicycle mechanics. Einstein, properly speaking, was not a physicist but a mathematician. Yet his findings in mathematics completely turned upside down all the pet theories in physics. Madame Curie was not an MD but a physicist, yet she made important contributions to medical science. How You Can Use This New Knowledge In this book I have attempted not only to inform you of this new knowledge from the field of cybernetics but also to demonstrate how you can use it in your own life to achieve goals that are important to you. General Principles The self-image is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self-image and you change the personality and the behavior. But more than this: The self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. It defines what you can and cannot do. Expand the self- image and you expand the “area of the possible.” The development of an adequate, realistic self-image will seem to imbue the individual with new capabilities, new talents, and literally turn failure into success. Self-image psychology has not only been proven on its own merits, but it explains many phenomena that have long been known but not properly understood in the past. For example, there is today irrefutable clinical evidence in the fields of individual psychology, psychosomatic medicine, and industrial psychology that there are “success-type personalities” and “failure-type personalities,” “happiness-prone personalities” and “unhappiness-prone personalities,” “health-prone personalities” and “disease-prone personalities.” Self-image psychology throws new light on these, and many other observable facts of life. It throws new light on “the power of positive thinking” and, more importantly, explains why it “works” with some individuals and not with others. (“Positive thinking” does indeed “work” when it is consistent with the individual’s self-image. It literally cannot “work” when it is inconsistent with the self-image—until the self- image itself has been changed.) In order to understand self-image psychology, and use it in your own life, you need to know something of the mechanism it employs to accomplish its goal. There is an abundance of scientific evidence that shows that the human brain and nervous system operate purposefully in accordance with the known principles of cybernetics to accomplish goals of the individual. Insofar as function is concerned, the brain and nervous system constitute a marvelous and complex “goal-striving mechanism,” a sort of built-in automatic guidance system that works for you as a “success mechanism,” or against you as a “failure mechanism,” depending on how “YOU,” the operator, operate it and the goals you set for it. It is also rather ironic that cybernetics, which began as a study of machines and mechanical principles, goes far to restore the dignity of man as a unique, creative being. Psychology, which began with the study of man’s psyche, or soul, almost ended by depriving man of his soul. The behaviorist, who understood neither the man nor his machine, and thereby confused the one with the other, told us that thought is merely the movement of electrons and consciousness merely a chemical action. “Will” and “purpose” were myths. Cybernetics, which began with the study of physical machines, makes no such mistake. The science of cybernetics does not tell us that man is a machine but that man has and uses a machine. Moreover, it tells us how that machine functions and how it can be used. Experiencing Is the Secret The self-image is changed, for better or worse, not by intellect alone, or by intellectual knowledge alone, but by “experiencing.” Wittingly or unwittingly you developed your self-image by your creative experiencing in the past. You can change it by the same method. It is not the child who is taught about love but the child who has experienced love that grows into a healthy, happy, well-adjusted adult. Our present state of self-confidence and poise is the result of what we have experienced rather than what we have learned intellectually. Self-image psychology also bridges the gap and resolves apparent conflicts between the various therapeutic methods used today. It furnishes a common denominator for direct and indirect counseling, clinical psychology, psychoanalysis, and even auto-suggestion. All in one way or another use creative experiencing to build a better self-image. Regardless of theories, this is what really happens, for example, in the “therapeutic situation” employed by the psychoanalytical school. The analyst never criticizes, disapproves, or moralizes, is never shocked, as the patient pours out his fears, his shames, his guilt-feelings, and his “bad thoughts.” For perhaps the first time in his life the patient experiences acceptance as a human being; he “feels” that his self has some worth and dignity, and he comes to accept himself, and to conceive of his “self” in new terms. Science Discovers “Synthetic” Experience Another discovery, this time in the field of experimental and clinical psychology, enables us to use “experiencing” as a direct and controlled method of changing the self-image. Actual, real-life experiences can be a hard and ruthless teacher. Throw a man in water over his head and the experience may teach him to swim. The same experience may cause another man to drown. The Army “makes a man” out of many young boys. But there is no doubting that Army experience also makes many psycho- neurotics. For centuries it has been recognized that “Nothing succeeds like success.” We learn to function successfully by experiencing success. Memories of past successes act as built-in “stored information,” which gives us self-confidence for the present task. But how can a person draw upon memories of past successful experiences when he has experienced only failure? His plight is somewhat comparable to the young man who cannot secure a job because he has no experience, and cannot acquire experience because he cannot get a job. This dilemma was solved by another important discovery that, for all practical purposes, allows us to synthesize experience, to literally create experience and control it, in the laboratory of our minds. Both experimental and clinical psychology have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail. Although this may appear to be a rather extravagant statement, in this book we will examine some controlled laboratory experiments where this type of “synthetic” experience has been used in very practical ways to improve skill in dart throwing and shooting basketball goals. We will see it at work in the lives of individuals who have used it to improve their skill in public speaking, overcome fear of the dentist, develop social poise, develop self-confidence, sell more goods, become more proficient in chess—and in practically every other conceivable type of situation where “experience” is recognized to bring success. We will take a look at an amazing experiment in which two prominent psychologists arranged things so that neurotics could experience “normally,” and thereby cured them! Perhaps most important of all, we will learn how chronically unhappy people have learned to enjoy life by “experiencing” happiness! The Secret of Using This Book to Change Your Life This book has been designed not merely to be read but to be experienced. You can acquire information from reading a book. But to “experience” you must creatively respond to information. Acquiring information itself is passive. Experiencing is active. When you “experience,” something happens inside your nervous system and your midbrain. New “engrams” and “neural” patterns are recorded in the gray matter of your brain. This book has been designed to force you literally to “experience.” Tailor-made, prefabricated case histories have been kept intentionally to a minimum. Instead, you are asked to furnish your own “case histories” by exercising imagination and memory. I have not supplied summaries at the end of each chapter. Instead, you are asked to jot down the most important points that appeal to you as key points that should be remembered. You will digest the information in this book better if you do your own analysis and summaries of the chapters. Finally, you will find throughout the book certain things to do and certain practice exercises that you are asked to perform. These exercises are simple and easy to perform, but they must be done regularly if you are to derive maximum benefit from them. Reserve Judgment for 21 Days Do not allow yourself to become discouraged if nothing seems to happen when you set about practicing the various techniques outlined in this book for changing your self-image. Instead, reserve judgment—and go on practicing—for a minimum period of 21 days. It usually requires a minimum of about 21 days to effect any perceptible change in a mental image. Following plastic surgery it takes about 21 days for the average patient to get used to his new face. When an arm or leg is amputated, the “phantom limb” persists for about 21 days. People must live in a new house for about three weeks before it begins to “seem like home.” These and many other commonly observed phenomena tend to show that it requires a minimum of about 21 days for an old mental image to dissolve and a new one to jell.  Therefore you will derive more benefit from this book if you will secure your own consent to reserve critical judgment for at least three weeks. During this time, do not be continually looking over your shoulder, so to speak, or trying to measure your progress. During these 21 days do not argue intellectually with the ideas presented, do not debate with yourself as to whether they will work or not. Perform the exercises, even if they seem impractical to you. Persist in playing your new role, in thinking of yourself in new terms, even if you seem to yourself to be somewhat hypocritical in doing so, and even if the new self-image feels a little uncomfortable or “unnatural.” You can neither prove nor disprove the ideas and concepts described in this book with intellectual argument, or simply by talking about them. You can prove them to yourself by doing them and judging results for yourself. I am only asking that you reserve critical judgment and analytical argument for 21 days so that you will give yourself a fair chance to prove or disprove their validity in your own life. The building of an adequate self-image is something that should continue throughout a lifetime. Admittedly we cannot accomplish a lifetime of growth in three weeks’ time. But you can experience improvement within three weeks’ time—and sometimes the improvement is quite dramatic. What Is Success? Since I use the words “success” and “successful” throughout this book, I think it is important at the outset to define those terms. As I use these terms, “success” has nothing to do with prestige symbols, but with creative accomplishment. Rightly speaking, no man should attempt to be a “success,” but every man can and should attempt to be “successful.” Trying to be a “success” in terms of acquiring prestige symbols and wearing certain badges leads to neuroticism, and frustration and unhappiness. Striving to be “successful” brings not only material success, but satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness. Noah Webster defined success as “the satisfactory accomplishment of a goal sought for.” Creative striving for a goal that is important to you as a result of your own deep-felt needs, aspirations, and talents (and not the symbols which the “Joneses” expect you to display) brings happiness as well as success because you will be functioning as you were meant to function. Man is by nature a goal-striving being. And because man is “built that way,” he is not happy unless he is functioning as he was made to function—as a goal striver. Thus true success and true happiness not only go together but each enhances the other. OceanofPDF.com Psycho-Cybernetics OceanofPDF.com ONE The Self-Image: Your Key to a Better Life During the past decade a revolution has been quietly going on in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine. New theories and concepts concerning the “self” have grown out of the work and findings of clinical psychologists, practicing psychiatrists, and cosmetic or so-called plastic surgeons. New methods growing out of these findings have resulted in rather dramatic changes in personality, health, and apparently even in basic abilities and talents. Chronic failures have become successful. “F” students have changed into “straight A” pupils within a matter of days and with no extra tutoring. Shy, retiring, inhibited personalities have become happy and outgoing. Writing in the January 1959 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, T. F. James summarizes the results obtained by various psychologists and MDs as follows: Understanding the psychology of the self can mean the difference between success and failure, love and hate, bitterness and happiness. The discovery of the real self can rescue a crumbling marriage, recreate a faltering career, and transform victims of “personality failure.” On another plane, discovering your real self means the difference between freedom and the compulsions of conformity. Your Key to a Better Life The most important psychological discovery of this century is the discovery of the “self-image.” Whether we realize it or not, each of us carries about with us a mental blueprint or picture of ourselves. It may be vague and ill- defined to our conscious gaze. In fact, it may not be consciously recognizable at all. But it is there, complete down to the last detail. This self-image is our own conception of the “sort of person I am.” It has been built up from our own beliefs about ourselves. But most of these beliefs about ourselves have unconsciously been formed from our past experiences, our successes and failures, our humiliations, our triumphs, and the way other people have reacted to us, especially in early childhood. From all these we mentally construct a “self” (or a picture of a self). Once an idea or a belief about ourselves goes into this picture, it becomes “true,” as far as we personally are concerned. We do not question its validity, but proceed to act upon it just as if it were true. This self-image becomes a golden key to living a better life because of two important discoveries: 1. All your actions, feelings, behaviors—even your abilities—are always consistent with this self-image. In short, you will “act like” the sort of person you conceive yourself to be. Not only this, but you literally cannot act otherwise, in spite of all your conscious efforts or willpower. The man who conceives himself to be a “failure-type person” will find some way to fail, in spite of all his good intentions, or his willpower, even if opportunity is literally dumped in his lap. The person who conceives himself to be a victim of injustice, one “who was meant to suffer,” will invariably find circumstances to verify his opinions. The self-image is a premise, a base, or a foundation upon which your entire personality, your behavior, and even your circumstances are built. Because of this our experiences seem to verify, and thereby strengthen, our self-images and a vicious or a beneficent cycle, as the case may be, is set up. For example, a schoolboy who sees himself as an “F”-type student, or one who is “dumb in mathematics,” will invariably find that his report card bears him out. He then has “proof.” A young girl who has an image of herself as the sort of person nobody likes will indeed find that she is avoided at the school dance. She literally invites rejection. Her woebegone expression, her hangdog manner, her over-anxiousness to please, or perhaps her unconscious hostility toward those she anticipates will affront her—all act to drive away those whom she would attract. In the same manner, a salesman or a businessman will also find that his actual experiences tend to “prove” his self-image is correct. Because of this objective “proof” it very seldom occurs to a person that his trouble lies in his self-image or his own evaluation of himself. Tell the schoolboy that he only “thinks” he cannot master algebra, and he will doubt your sanity. He has tried and tried, and still his report card tells the story. Tell the salesman that it is only an “idea” that he cannot earn more than a certain figure, and he can prove you wrong by his order book. He knows only too well how hard he has tried and failed. Yet, as we shall see later, almost miraculous changes have occurred both in students’ grades and in the earning capacity of salesmen when they were prevailed upon to change their self-images. 2. The self-image can be changed. Numerous case histories have shown that one is never too young or too old to change his self-image and thereby start to live a new life. One of the reasons it has seemed so difficult for a person to change his habits, his personality, or his way of life has been that heretofore nearly all efforts at change have been directed to the circumference of the self, so to speak, rather than to the center. Numerous patients have said to me something like the following: “If you are talking about ‘positive thinking,’ I’ve tried that before, and it just doesn’t work for me.” However, a little questioning invariably brings out that these individuals have employed “positive thinking,” or attempted to employ it, either on particular external circumstances, or on some particular habit or character defect. (“I will get that job,” “I will be more calm and relaxed in the future,” “This business venture will turn out right for me,” etc.) But they have never thought to change their thinking about the “self” that was to accomplish these things. Jesus warned us about the folly of putting a patch of new material on an old garment, or of putting new wine into old bottles. “Positive thinking” cannot be used effectively as a patch or a crutch to the same old self-image. In fact, it is literally impossible to really think positively about a particular situation as long as you hold a negative concept of your “self.” And numerous experiments have shown that once the concept of self is changed, other things consistent with the new concept of self are accomplished easily and without strain. One of the earliest and most convincing experiments along this line was conducted by the late Prescott Lecky, one of the pioneers in self-image psychology. Lecky conceived of the personality as a “system of ideas,” all of which must seem to be consistent with one another. Ideas that are inconsistent with the system are rejected, “not believed,” and not acted on. Ideas that seem to be consistent with the system are accepted. At the very center of this system of ideas—the keystone—the base upon which all else is built, is the individual’s “ego ideal,” his “self-image,” or his conception of himself. Lecky was a schoolteacher and had an opportunity to test his theory on thousands of students. Lecky theorized that if a student had trouble learning a certain subject, it could be because (from the student’s point of view) it would be inconsistent for him to learn it. Lecky believed, however, that if you could change the student’s self-conception, which underlies this viewpoint, his attitude toward the subject would change accordingly. If the student could be induced to change his self-definition, his learning ability should also change. This proved to be the case. One student, who misspelled 55 words out of 100 and flunked so many subjects that he lost credit for a year, became one of the best spellers in the school and made a general average of 91 in the next year. A boy who was dropped from one college because of poor grades entered Columbia and became a straight “A” student. A girl who had flunked Latin four times, after three talks with the school counselor, finished with a grade of 84. A boy who was told by a testing bureau that he had no aptitude for English won honorable mention the next year for a literary prize. The trouble with these students was not that they were dumb, or lacking in basic aptitudes. The trouble was an inadequate self-image (“I don’t have a mathematical mind”; “I’m just naturally a poor speller”). They “identified” with their mistakes and failures. Instead of saying “I failed that test” (factual and descriptive), they concluded, “I am a failure.” Instead of saying “I flunked that subject,” they said, “I am a flunk-out.” For those who are interested in learning more about Lecky’s work, I recommend securing a copy of his book, Self-Consistency: A Theory of Personality. (Note: This book is now out of print.) Lecky also used the same method to cure students of such habits as nail biting and stuttering. My own files contain case histories just as convincing: the man who was so afraid of strangers that he seldom ventured out of the house, and who now makes his living as a public speaker. And there was the salesman who had already prepared a letter of resignation because he “just wasn’t cut out for selling,” and six months later was number one man on a force of 100 salesmen. The minister who was considering retirement because “nerves” and the pressure of preparing a sermon a week were getting him down, and now delivers an average of three “outside talks” a week in addition to his weekly sermons, and doesn’t know he has a nerve in his body. How a Plastic Surgeon Became Interested in Self-Image Psychology Offhand, there would seem to be little or no connection between surgery and psychology. Yet it was the work of plastic surgeons that first hinted to me of the existence of the “self-image” and raised certain questions that led to important psychological knowledge. When I first began the practice of plastic surgery many years ago, I was amazed by the dramatic and sudden changes in character and personality that often resulted when a facial defect was corrected. Changing the physical image in many instances appeared to create an entirely new person. In case after case the scalpel that I held in my hand became a magic wand that not only transformed the patient’s appearance, but transformed his whole life. The shy and retiring became bold and courageous. A “moronic,” “stupid” boy changed into an alert, bright youngster who went on to become an executive with a prominent firm. A salesman who had lost his touch and his faith in himself became a model of self-confidence. And perhaps the most startling of all was the habitual “hardened” criminal who changed almost overnight from an incorrigible, who had never shown any desire to change, into a model prisoner who won a parole and went on to assume a responsible role in society. I reported many such case histories in my book New Faces, New Futures. Following its publication, and similar articles in leading magazines, I was besieged with questions by criminologists, psychologists, sociologists, and psychiatrists. They asked questions that I could not answer. But they did start me upon a search. Strangely enough, I learned as much if not more from my failures as from my successes. It was easy to explain the successes, such as the boy with the too-big ears, who had been told that he looked like a taxicab with both doors open. He had been ridiculed all his life—often cruelly. Association with playmates meant humiliation and pain. Why shouldn’t he avoid social contacts? Why shouldn’t he become afraid of people and retire into himself? Terribly afraid to express himself in any way, it was no wonder he became known as a moron. When his ears were corrected, it would seem only natural that the cause of his embarrassment and humiliation had been removed and that he should assume a normal role in life—which he did. Or consider the salesman who suffered a facial disfigurement as the result of an automobile accident. Each morning when he shaved he could see the horrible disfiguring scar of his cheek and the grotesque twist to his mouth. For the first time in his life he became painfully self-conscious. He was ashamed of himself and felt that his appearance must be repulsive to others. The scar became an obsession with him. He was “different” from other people. He began to wonder what others were thinking of him. Soon his ego was even more mutilated than his face. He began to lose confidence in himself. He became bitter and hostile. Soon almost all his attention was directed toward himself—and his primary goal became the protection of his ego and the avoidance of situations that might bring humiliation. It is easy to understand how the correction of his facial disfigurement and the restoration of a “normal” face would overnight change this man’s entire attitude and outlook, his feelings about himself, and result in greater success in his work. But what about the exceptions who didn’t change? The duchess who all her life had been terribly shy and self-conscious because of a tremendous hump in her nose? Although surgery gave her a classic nose and a face that was truly beautiful, she still continued to act the part of the ugly duckling, the unwanted sister who could never bring herself to look another human being in the eye. If the scalpel itself was magic, why did it not work on the duchess? Or what about all the others who acquired new faces but went right on wearing the same old personality? Or how to explain the reaction of those people who insist that the surgery has made no difference whatsoever in their appearance? Every plastic surgeon has had this experience and has probably been as baffled by it as I was. No matter how drastic the change in appearance may be, there are certain patients who will insist that, “I look just the same as before—you didn’t do a thing.” Friends, even family, may scarcely recognize them, may become enthusiastic over their newly acquired “beauty,” yet the patients themselves insist that they can see only slight or no improvement, or in fact deny that any change at all has been made. Comparison of “before” and “after” photographs does little good, except possibly to arouse hostility. By some strange mental alchemy the patient will rationalize, “Of course, I can see that the hump is no longer in my nose—but my nose still looks just the same,” or, “The scar may not show anymore, but it’s still there.” Scars That Bring Pride Instead of Shame Still another clue in search of the elusive self-image was the fact that not all scars or disfigurements bring shame and humiliation. When I was a young medical student in Germany, I saw another student proudly wearing his “saber scar” much as an American might wear the Medal of Honor. The duelists were the elite of college society, and a facial scar was the badge that proved you a member in good standing. To these boys, the acquisition of a horrible scar on the cheek had the same psychological effect as the eradication of the scar from the cheek of my salesman patient. In old New Orleans, a Creole wore an eye patch in much the same way. I began to see that a knife itself held no magical powers. It could be used on one person to inflict a scar and on another to erase a scar with the same psychological results. The Mystery of Imaginary Ugliness To a person handicapped by a genuine congenital defect, or suffering an actual facial disfigurement as a result of an accident, plastic surgery can indeed seemingly perform magic. From such cases it would be easy to theorize that the cure-all for all neuroses, unhappiness, failure, fear, anxiety, and lack of self-confidence would be wholesale plastic surgery to remove all bodily defects. However, according to this theory, persons with normal or acceptable faces should be singularly free from all psychological handicaps. They should be cheerful, happy, self-confident, free from anxiety and worry. We know only too well this is not true. Nor can such a theory explain the people who visit the office of a plastic surgeon and demand a “face-lift” to cure a purely imaginary ugliness. There are the 35- or 45-year-old women who are convinced that they look “old” even though their appearance is perfectly “normal” and in many cases unusually attractive.  There are the young girls who are convinced that they are “ugly” merely because their mouth, nose, or bust measurement does not exactly match that of the currently reigning movie queen. There are men who believe that their ears are too big or their noses too long. No ethical plastic surgeon would even consider operating on these people, but unfortunately the quacks, or so-called beauty doctors whom no medical association will admit to membership, have no such qualms. Such “imaginary ugliness” is not at all uncommon. A recent survey of college co-eds showed that 90 percent were dissatisfied in some way with their appearance. If the words “normal” and “average” mean anything at all, it is obvious that 90 percent of our population cannot be “abnormal” or “different” or “defective” in appearance. Yet similar surveys have shown that approximately the same percentage of our general population finds some reasoning to be ashamed of their body image. These people react just as if they suffered from an actual disfigurement. They feel the same shame. They develop the same fears and anxieties. Their capacity to really “live” fully is blocked and choked by the same sort of psychological roadblocks. Their “scars,” though mental and emotional rather than physical, are just as debilitating. The Self-Image: The Real Secret Discovery of the self-image explains all the apparent discrepancies we have been discussing. It is the common denominator—the determining factor in all our case histories, the failures as well as the successes. The secret is this: To really “live,” that is, to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can live with. You must find your self acceptable to “you.” You must have a wholesome self-esteem. You must have a self that you can trust and believe in. You must have a self that you are not ashamed to “be,” and one that you can feel free to express creatively, rather than hide or cover up. You must have a self that corresponds to reality, so that you can function effectively in a real world. You must know yourself—both your strengths and your weaknesses—and be honest with yourself concerning both. Your self-image must be a reasonable approximation of “you,” being neither more than you are nor less than you are.  When this self-image is intact and secure, you feel good. When it is threatened, you feel anxious and insecure. When your self-image is adequate and one that you can be wholesomely proud of, you feel self- confident. You feel free to “be yourself” and to express yourself. You function at your optimum. When it is an object of shame, you attempt to hide it rather than express it. Creative expression is blocked. You become hostile and hard to get along with. If a scar on the face enhances the self-image (as in the case of the German duelist), self-esteem and self-confidence are increased. If a scar on the face detracts from the self-image (as in the case of the salesman), loss of self-esteem and self-confidence results. When a facial disfigurement is corrected by plastic surgery, dramatic psychological changes result only if there is a corresponding correction of the mutilated self-image. Sometimes the image of a disfigured self persists even after successful surgery, much the same as the “phantom limb” may continue to feel pain years after the physical arm or leg has been amputated. I Begin a New Career These observations led me into a new career. Some years ago I became convinced that the people who consult a plastic surgeon need more than surgery and that some of them do not need surgery at all. If I were to treat these people as patients, as a whole person rather than as merely a nose, ear, mouth, arm, or leg, I needed to be in a position to give them something more. I needed to be able to show them how to obtain a spiritual face-lift, how to remove emotional scars, how to change their attitudes and thoughts as well as their physical appearance. This study has been most rewarding. Today I am more convinced than ever that what each of us really wants, deep down, is more life. Happiness, success, peace of mind, or whatever your own conception of supreme good may be, is experienced in its essence as more life. When we experience expansive emotions of happiness, self-confidence, and success, we enjoy more life. And to the degree that we inhibit our abilities, frustrate our God- given talents, and allow ourselves to suffer anxiety, fear, self-condemnation, and self-hate, we literally choke off the life force available to us and turn our backs on the gift which our Creator has made. To the degree that we deny the gift of life, we embrace death. Your Program for Better Living In my opinion, during the past 30 years psychology has become far too pessimistic regarding man and his potentiality for both change and greatness. Since psychologists and psychiatrists deal with so-called abnormal people, the literature is almost exclusively taken up with man’s various abnormalities, his tendencies toward self-destruction. Many people, I am afraid, have read so much of this type of thing that they have come to regard such things as hatred, the “destructive instinct,” guilt, self- condemnation, and all the other negatives as “normal human behavior.” The average person feels awfully weak and impotent when he thinks of the prospect of pitting his puny will against these negative forces in human nature, in order to gain health and happiness. If this were a true picture of human nature and the human condition, “self-improvement” would indeed be a rather futile thing. However, I believe, and the experiences of my many patients have confirmed the fact, that you do not have to do the job alone. There is within each one of us a “life instinct,” which is forever working toward health, happiness, and all that makes for more life for the individual. This “life instinct” works for you through what I call the “Creative Mechanism” or, when used correctly, the “Success Mechanism” built into each human being. New Scientific Insights into “Subconscious Mind” The new science of cybernetics has furnished us with convincing proof that the so-called subconscious mind is not a “mind” at all, but a mechanism—a goal-striving “servo-mechanism” consisting of the brain and nervous system, which is used by, and directed by the mind. The latest and most usable concept is that man does not have two “minds,” but a mind, or consciousness, that operates an automatic, goal-striving machine. This automatic, goal-striving machine functions very similarly to the way that electronic servo-mechanisms function, as far as basic principles are concerned. But it is much more marvelous, much more complex, than any computer or guided missile ever conceived by man. Today, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that all electronic gadgets and computerized technology of any sort, from the Internet to cell phone technology or satellites bringing us hundreds of channels on television, were programmed and made functional by human beings who formed a mental picture of something they thought was possible, then made it happen. We human beings not only have the capacity to create cybernetic systems outside of ourselves, but also the ability to learn how we can run our own cybernetic systems in ourselves. This Creative Mechanism within you is impersonal. It will work automatically and impersonally to achieve goals of success and happiness, or unhappiness and failure, depending on the goals that you yourself set for it. Present it with “success goals,” and it functions as a Success Mechanism. Present it with negative goals, and it operates just as impersonally, and just as faithfully, as a Failure Mechanism. Dr. Maltz makes it clear that all of us have goals, whether we intentionally articulate them or not. The brain and nervous system are continually leading us in the direction of images we think about consciously, or images that are so much a part of us that we’re led toward them on autopilot. The alcoholic or drug addict has goals just as much as the entrepreneur, politician, professional athlete, or mother-to-be. With this in mind, we can become aware of what’s “under the hood”—and whether or not we want the goals we’re unconsciously moving toward, or the ones that we consciously choose and work toward. Like any other servo-mechanism, it must have a clear-cut goal, objective, or “problem” to work on. The goals that our own Creative Mechanism seeks to achieve are mental images, or mental pictures, which we create by the use of imagination.  The key goal-image is our self-image. Our self-image prescribes the limits for the accomplishment of any particular goals. It prescribes the “area of the possible.” Like any other servo-mechanism, our Creative Mechanism works on information and data that we feed into it (our thoughts, beliefs, interpretations). Through our attitudes and interpretations of situations, we “describe” the problem to be worked on. If we feed information and data into our Creative Mechanism to the effect that we ourselves are unworthy, inferior, undeserving, incapable (negative self-image), this data is processed and acted on as is any other data in giving us the “answer” in the form of objective experience. Like any other servo-mechanism, our Creative Mechanism makes use of stored information, or “memory,” in solving current problems and responding to current situations. Your program for getting more living out of life consists in, first of all, learning something about this Creative Mechanism, or automatic guidance system within you and how to use it as a Success Mechanism, rather than as a Failure Mechanism. The method itself consists in learning, practicing, and experiencing new habits of thinking, imagining, remembering, and acting in order to (1) develop an adequate and realistic self-image, and (2) use your Creative Mechanism to bring success and happiness in achieving particular goals. If you can remember, worry, or tie your shoe, you can succeed. As you will see later, the method to be used consists of creative mental picturing, creatively experiencing through your imagination, and the formation of new automatic reaction patterns by “acting out” and “acting as if.” I often tell my patients, “If you can remember, worry, or tie your shoe, you will have no trouble applying this method.” The things you are called upon to do are simple, but you must practice and “experience.” Visualizing (creative mental picturing) is no more difficult than what you do when you remember some scene out of the past, or worry about the future. Acting out new action patterns is no more difficult than “deciding,” then following through on tying your shoes in a new and different manner each morning, instead of continuing to tie them in your old habitual way, without thought or decision. Dr. Maltz’s words “If you can remember, worry, or tie your shoe” are key to understanding how easy it is to get results using Psycho- Cybernetics, provided you allow yourself to believe that even a seemingly small victory (learning to tie your shoe or write your name for the first time) is all you need to reverse the course of negativity in your life. In order to direct your servo-mechanism toward success instead of failure, all you need is one experience that made you feel good about yourself. Remembering and then using that modest accomplishment will be instrumental in improving your self-image. You do not need a huge success experience to alter your self-image for the better. You do not need an experience that is a mirror of what you’re trying to create or accomplish. All you need is an experience like tying your shoe or learning to write your name for the first time, wherein you can say, “Yes, I’m glad I learned that skill. Yes, I remember the first day I could do it. Yes, I was happy.” This one memory, this one positive experience, no matter how long ago it took place, is all you need to begin changing the course of your life in the present. KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER – Write down 5 key points from this chapter CASE HISTORY – List an experience from your past that is explained by the principles given in this chapter OceanofPDF.com TWO Discovering the Success Mechanism Within You It may seem strange, but it is nevertheless true that up until ten years prior to this writing, scientists had no idea of just how the human brain and nervous system worked “purposely” or to achieve a goal. They knew what happened from having made long and meticulous observations. But no single theory of underlying principles tied all these phenomena together into a concept that made sense. R. W. Gerard, writing in Scientific Monthly in June 1946, on the brain and imagination, stated that it was sad but true that most of our understanding of the mind would remain as valid and useful if, for all we knew, the cranium were stuffed with cotton wadding. However, when man himself set out to build an “electronic brain,” and to construct goal-striving mechanisms of his own, he had to discover and utilize certain basic principles. Having discovered them, these scientists began to ask themselves: Could this be the way that the human brain worked also? Could it be that in making man, our Creator had provided us with a servo-mechanism more marvelous and wonderful than any computer or guidance system ever dreamed of by man, but operating according to the same basic principles? In the opinion of famous Cybernetic scientists like Dr. Norbert Wiener, Dr. John von Neumann, and others, the answer was an unqualified yes. Your Built-In Guidance System Every living thing has a built-in guidance system or goal-striving device, put there by its Creator to help it achieve its goal—which is, in broad terms —“to live.” In the simpler forms of life the goal “to live” simply means physical survival for both the individual and the species. The built-in mechanism in animals is limited to finding food and shelter, avoiding or overcoming enemies and hazards, and procreation to insure the survival of the species. In man, the goal “to live” means more than mere survival. For an animal “to live” simply means that certain physical needs must be met. Man has certain emotional and spiritual needs that animals do not have. Consequently for man “to live” encompasses more than physical survival and procreation of the species. It requires certain emotional and spiritual satisfactions as well. Man’s built-in Success Mechanism also is much broader in scope than an animal’s. In addition to helping man avoid or overcome danger, as well as the sexual instinct, which helps keep the race alive, the Success Mechanism in man can help him get answers to problems, invent, write poetry, run a business, sell merchandise, explore new horizons in science, attain more peace of mind, develop a better personality, or achieve success in any other activity that is intimately tied in to his “living” or makes for a fuller life. The Success Instinct A squirrel does not have to be taught how to gather nuts. Nor does it need to learn that it should store them for winter. A squirrel born in the spring has never experienced winter. Yet in the fall of that year it can be observed busily storing nuts to be eaten during the winter months when there will be no food to be gathered. A bird does not need to take lessons in nest- building. Nor does it need to take courses in navigation. Yet birds do navigate thousands of miles, sometimes over open sea. They have no newspapers or TV to give them weather reports, no books written by explorer or pioneer birds to map out for them the warm areas of the earth. Nonetheless the bird “knows” when cold weather is imminent and the exact location of a warm climate even though it may be thousands of miles away. In attempting to explain such things, we usually say that animals have certain instincts that guide them. Analyze all such instincts and you will find they assist the animal to successfully cope with its environment. In short, animals have a Success Instinct. We often overlook the fact that man, too, has a Success Instinct, much more marvelous and much more complex than that of any animal. Our Creator did not shortchange man. On the other hand, man was especially blessed in this regard. Animals cannot select their goals. Their goals (self-preservation and procreation) are preset, so to speak. And their success mechanism is limited to these built-in goal-images, which we call “instincts.” Man, on the other hand, has something animals don’t: Creative Imagination. Thus man of all creatures is more than a creature, he is also a creator. With his imagination he can formulate a variety of goals. Man alone can direct his Success Mechanism by the use of imagination, or imaging ability. We often think of Creative Imagination as applying only to poets, inventors, and the like. But imagination is creative in everything we do. Although they did not understand why, or how, imagination sets our Creative Mechanism into action, serious thinkers of all ages, as well as hardheaded practical men, have recognized the fact and made use of it. “Imagination rules the world,” said Napoléon Bonaparte. And Glenn Clark, author of The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe, said, “Imagination of all man’s faculties is the most Godlike.” Dugold Stewart, the famous Scottish philosopher, also observed, “The faculty of imagination is the great spring of human activity, and the principal source of human improvement. … Destroy this faculty, and the condition of man will become as stationary as that of the brutes.” Henry J. Kaiser, the industrialist considered the father of American shipbuilding, attributed much of his success in business to the constructive, positive use of Creative Imagination with these words: “You can imagine your future.” How Your Success Mechanism Works You are not a machine. But discoveries in the science of cybernetics all point to the conclusion that your physical brain and nervous system make up a servo-mechanism that you use, and that operates very much like a computer and a mechanical goal-seeking device. Your brain and nervous system constitute a goal- striving mechanism that operates automatically to achieve a certain goal, very much as a self-aiming torpedo or missile seeks out its target and steers its way to it. Your built-in servomechanism functions both as a “guidance system” to automatically steer you in the right direction to achieve certain goals, or make correct responses to your environment, and also as an “electronic brain,” which can function automatically to solve problems, give you needed answers, and provide new ideas or “inspirations.” In his book The Computer and the Brain, Dr. John von Neumann says that the human brain possesses the attributes of both the analog and the digital computer. The word “cybernetics” comes from a Greek word that means, literally, “the steersman.” Servo-mechanisms are so constructed that they automatically “steer” their way to a goal, target, or “answer.” Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Concept of How Your Brain Works When we conceive of the human brain and nervous system as a form of servo-mechanism, operating in accordance with Cybernetic principles, we gain a new insight into the why and wherefore of human behavior. I choose to call this new concept Psycho-Cybernetics: the principles of cybernetics as applied to the human brain. I must repeat: Psycho-Cybernetics does not say that man is a machine. Rather, it says that man has a machine that he uses. Let us examine some of the similarities between mechanical servo-mechanisms and the human brain. The Two General Types of Servo-Mechanisms Servo-mechanisms are divided into two general types: (1) where the target, goal, or answer is known and the objective is to reach it or accomplish it, and (2) where the target or answer is not known and the objective is to discover or locate it. The human brain and nervous system operate in both ways. An example of the first type is the self-guided torpedo, or the interceptor missile. The target or goal is known—an enemy ship or plane. The objective is to reach it. Such machines must “know” the target they are shooting for. They must have some sort of propulsion system that propels them forward in the general direction of the target. They must be equipped with “sense organs” (radar, sonar, heat perceptors, etc.), which bring information from the target. These “sense organs” keep the machine informed when it is on the correct course (positive feedback) and when it commits an error and gets off course (negative feedback). The machine does not react or respond to positive feedback. It is doing the correct thing already and “just keeps on doing what it is doing.” There must be a corrective device, however, that will respond to negative feedback. When negative feedback informs the mechanism that it is “off the beam,” too far to the right, the corrective mechanism automatically causes the rudder to move so that it will steer the machine back to the left. If it “overcorrects” and heads too far to the left, this mistake is made known through negative feedback, and the corrective device moves the rudder so it will steer the machine back to the right. The torpedo accomplishes its goal by going forward, making errors, and continually correcting them. By a series of zigzags it literally gropes its way to the goal. Dr. Norbert Wiener, who pioneered the development of goal-seeking mechanisms in World War II, believes that something very similar to the foregoing happens in the human nervous system whenever you perform any purposeful activity—even in such a simple goal-seeking situation as picking up a pen from a desk. We are able to accomplish the goal of picking up the pen because of an automatic mechanism, and not by “will” and forebrain thinking alone. All that the forebrain does is to select the goal, trigger it into action by desire, and feed information to the automatic mechanism so that your hand continually corrects its course. In the first place, said Dr. Wiener, only an anatomist would know all the muscles involved in picking up the pen. And if you knew, you would not consciously say to yourself, “I must contract my shoulder muscles to elevate my arm, now I must contract by triceps to extend my arm, etc.” You just go ahead and pick up the pen, and are not conscious of issuing orders to individual muscles, or of computing just how much contraction is needed. When you select the goal and trigger it into action, an automatic mechanism takes over. First of all, you have picked up the pen, or performed similar movements, before. Your automatic mechanism has “learned” something of the correct response needed. Next, your automatic mechanism uses feedback data furnished to the brain by your eyes, which tells it “the degree to which the pen is not picked up.” This feedback data enables the automatic mechanism to continually correct the motion of your hand, until it is steered to the pen. For a baby, just learning to use its muscles, the correction of the hand in reaching for a rattle is very obvious. The baby has little stored information to draw upon. Its hand zigzags back and forth and gropes obviously as it reaches. It is characteristic of all learning that as learning takes place, correction becomes more and more refined. We see this in a person just learning to drive a car, who “overcorrects” and zigzags back and forth across the street. Once, however, a correct or “successful response” has been accomplished, it is “remembered” for future use. The automatic mechanism then duplicates this successful response on future trials. It has “learned” how to respond successfully. It forgets its failures, and repeats the successful action without any further conscious thought—that is, as a habit. How Your Brain Finds Answers to Problems Now let us suppose that the room is dark so that you cannot see the pen. You know, or hope, there is a pen on the table, along with a variety of other objects. Instinctively, your hand will begin to “grope” back and forth, performing zigzag motions (or “scanning”), rejecting one object after another, until the pen is found and “recognized.” This is an example of the second type of servo-mechanism. Recalling a name temporarily forgotten is another example. A “scanner” in your brain scans back through your stored memories until the correct name is “recognized.” A computer solves problems in much the same way. First of all, a great deal of data must be fed into the machine. This stored (or recorded) information is the machine’s “memory.” A problem is posed to the machine. It scans back through its memory until it locates the only “answer” that is consistent with and meets all the conditions of the problem. Problem and answer together constitute a “whole” situation or structure. When part of the situation or structure (the problem) is given to the machine, it locates the only “missing parts,” or the right size brick, so to speak, to complete the structure. The more that is learned about the human brain, the more closely it resembles—insofar as function is concerned—a servo-mechanism. For example, Dr. Wilder Penfield, who was the director of the Montreal Neurological Institute, reported at a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences that he had discovered a recording mechanism in a small area of the brain that apparently faithfully records everything that a person has ever experienced, observed, or learned. During a brain operation in which the patient was fully awake, Dr. Penfield happened to touch a small area of the cortex with a surgical instrument. At once the patient exclaimed that she was “reliving” an incident from her childhood, which she had consciously forgotten. Further experiments along this line brought the same results. When certain areas of the cortex were touched, patients did not merely “remember” past experiences, they “relived” them, experiencing as very real all the sights, sounds, and sensations of the original experience. It was just as if past experiences had been recorded on a tape recorder and played back. It is still a mystery how a mechanism as small as the human brain can store such a vast amount of information. British neurophysicist W. Grey Walter has said that at least ten billion electronic cells would be needed to build a facsimile of man’s brain. These cells would occupy about a million and a half cubic feet, and several additional millions of cubic feet would be needed for the “nerves” or wiring. Power required to operate it would be one billion watts. A Look at the Automatic Mechanism in Action We marvel at the awesomeness of interceptor missiles that can compute in a flash the point of interception of another missile and “be there” at precisely the correct instant to make contact. Yet are we not witnessing something just as wonderful each time we see a center fielder catch a fly ball? In order to compute where the ball will fall, or where the “point of interception” will be, he must take into account the speed of the ball, its curvature of fall, its direction, the wind’s speed and direction, the initial velocity, and the rate of progressive decrease in velocity. He must make these computations so fast that he will be able to “take off” at the crack of the bat. Next, he must compute just how fast he must run, and in what direction, in order to arrive at the point of interception at the same time the ball does. The center fielder doesn’t even think about this. His built-in goal-striving mechanism computes it for him from data that he feeds through his eyes and ears. The computer in his brain takes this information and compares it with stored data (memories of other successes and failures in catching fly balls). All necessary computations are made in a flash and orders are issued to his leg muscles—and he “just runs.” Science Can Build the Computer but Not the Operator Dr. Wiener has said that at no time in the foreseeable future will scientists be able to construct an “electronic brain” (computer) anywhere near comparable to the human brain. “I think that our gadget-conscious public has shown an unawareness of the special advantages and special disadvantages of electronic machinery, as compared with the human brain,” he says. “The number of switching devices in the human brain vastly exceeds the number in any computing machine yet developed, or even thought of for design in the near future.” But even should such a machine be built, it would lack an “operator.” A computer does not have a forebrain, nor does it have an “I.” It cannot pose problems to itself. It has no imagination and cannot set goals for itself. It cannot determine which goals are worthwhile and which are not. It has no emotions. It cannot “feel.” It works only on new data fed to it by an operator, by feedback data it secures from its own “sense organs” and from information previously stored. Is There an Infinite Storehouse of Ideas, Knowledge, and Power? Many great thinkers of all ages have believed that man’s “stored information” is not limited to his own memories of past experiences and learned facts. “There is one mind common to all individual men,” said Emerson, who compared our individual minds to the inlets in an ocean of universal mind. Edison believed that he got some of his ideas from a source outside himself. Once, when complimented for a creative idea, he disclaimed credit, saying that “ideas are in the air,” and if he had not discovered it, someone else would have.  In writing his doctoral thesis, Dr. Tom Hanson, author of Play Big, interviewed Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Stan “the Man” Musial, who stated, “When I was concentrating, something used to tell me what this guy’s going to throw … and this thing never deceived me.” When Dr. Hanson referred to this ability as ESP, Musial immediately agreed that ESP was the correct term. Dr. J. B. Rhine, as head of Duke University’s Parapsychology Laboratory, proved experimentally that man has access to knowledge, facts, and ideas other than his own individual memory or stored information from learning or experience. Telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition have been established by scientific laboratory experiments. Dr. Rhine’s finding, that man possesses some “extra-sensory factor,” which he calls “Psi,” is no longer doubted by scientists who have seriously reviewed his work. As Professor R. H. Thouless of Cambridge University, author of Straight and Crooked Thinking, has stated, “The reality of the phenomena must be regarded as proved as certainly as anything in scientific research can be proved.” “We have found,” said Dr. Rhine, “that there is a capacity for acquiring knowledge that transcends the sensory functions. This extra-sensory capacity can give us knowledge certainly of objective and very likely of subjective states, knowledge of matter and most probably of minds.” Schubert is said to have told a friend that his own creative process consisted in “remembering a melody” that neither he nor anyone else had ever thought of before. Many creative artists, as well as psychologists who have made a study of the creative process, have been impressed by the similarity between creative inspiration, sudden revelation, intuition, etc., and ordinary human memory. Searching for a new idea, or an answer to a problem, is in fact very similar to searching memory for a name you have forgotten. You know that the name is “there,” or else you would not search. The scanner in your brain scans back over stored memories until the desired name is “recognized” or “discovered.” The Answer Exists Now In much the same way, when we set out to find a new idea, or the answer to a problem, we must assume that the answer exists already—somewhere— and set out to find it. Dr. Norbert Wiener wrote in The Human Use of Human Beings, “Once a scientist attacks a problem which he knows to have an answer, his entire attitude is changed. He is already some 50 percent of his way toward that answer.” When you set out to do creative work— whether in the field of selling, managing a business, writing a sonnet, improving human relations, or whatever, you begin with a goal in mind, an end to be achieved, a “target” answer, which, although perhaps somewhat vague, will be “recognized” when achieved. If you really mean business, have an intense desire, and begin to think intensely about all angles of the problem—your Creative Mechanism goes to work—and the “scanner” we spoke of earlier begins to scan back through stored information, or “grope” its way to an answer. It selects an idea here, a fact there, a series of former experiences, and relates them—or “ties them together” into a meaningful whole that will “fill out” the uncompleted portion of your situation, complete your equation, or “solve” your problem. When this solution is served up to your consciousness—often at an unguarded moment when you are thinking of something else—or perhaps even as a dream while your consciousness is asleep—something “clicks” and you at once “recognize” this as the answer you have been searching for. In this process, does your Creative Mechanism also have access to stored information in a universal mind? Numerous experiences of creative workers would seem to indicate that it does. How else, for example, to explain the experience of Louis Agassiz, told by his wife: He had been striving to decipher the somewhat obscure impression of a fossil fish on the stone slab in which it was preserved. Weary and perplexed, he put his work aside at last and tried to dismiss it from his mind. Shortly after, he waked one night persuaded that while asleep he had seen his fish with all the missing features perfectly restored. He went early to the Jardin des Plantes, thinking that on looking anew at the impression he would see something to put him on the track of his vision. In vain —the blurred record was as blank as ever. The next night he saw the fish again, but when he waked it disappeared from his memory as before. Hoping the same experience might be repeated, on the third night he placed a pencil and paper beside his bed before going to sleep. Towards morning the fish reappeared in his dream, confusedly at first, but at last with such distinctness that he no longer had any doubt as to its zoological characters. Still half dreaming, in perfect darkness, he traced these characters on the sheet of paper at the bedside.  In the morning he was surprised to see in his nocturnal sketch features which he thought it impossible the fossil itself would reveal. He hastened to the Jardin des Plantes and, with his drawing as a guide, succeeded in chiseling away the surface of the stone under which portions of the fish proved to be hidden. When wholly exposed, the fossil corresponded with his dream and his drawing, and he succeeded in classifying it with ease. PRACTICE EXERCISE Get a New Mental Picture of Yourself The unhappy, failure-type personality cannot develop a new self-image by pure willpower, or by arbitrarily deciding to. There must be some grounds, some justification, some reason for deciding that the old picture of the self is in error, and that a new picture is appropriate. You cannot merely imagine a new self-image, unless you feel that it is based on truth. Experience has shown that when a person does change his self-image, he has the feeling that, for one reason or another, he “sees,” or realizes, the truth about himself. The truth in this chapter can set you free of an old, inadequate self-image, if you read it often, think intently about the implications, and “hammer home” its truths to yourself. Science has now confirmed what philosophers, mystics, and other intuitive people have long declared: Every human being has been literally “engineered for success” by his Creator. Every human being has access to a power greater than himself. This means you. As Emerson said, “There are no great and no small.” If you were engineered for success and happiness, then the old picture of yourself as unworthy of happiness, a person who was “meant” to fail, must be in error. Read this chapter through at least three times per week for the first 21 days. Study it and digest it. Look for examples in your experiences, and the experiences of your friends, that illustrate the Creative Mechanism in action. Memorize the following basic principles by which your Success Mechanism operates. You do not need to be an electronic engineer, or a physicist, to operate your own servo-mechanism, any more than you have to be able to engineer an automobile in order to drive one, or become an electrical engineer in order to turn on the light in your room. You do need to be familiar with the following concepts, however, because when you have memorized them, they will throw new light on what is to follow: 1. Your built-in Success Mechanism must have a goal or “target.” This goal, or target, must be conceived of as “already in existence—now” either in actual or potential form. It operates by either (1) steering you to a goal already in existence or (2) “discovering” something already in existence. 2. The automatic mechanism is teleological, that is, it operates or must be oriented to “end results” goals. Do not be discouraged because the “means whereby” may not be apparent. It is the function of the automatic mechanism to supply the means whereby when you supply the goal. Think in terms of the end result, and the means whereby will often take care of themselves. 3. Do not be afraid of making mistakes, or of temporary failures. All servo-mechanisms achieve a goal by negative feedback, or by going forward, making mistakes, and immediately correcting course. 4. Skill learning of any kind is accomplished by trial and error, mentally correcting aim after an error, until a “successful” motion, movement, or performance has been achieved. After that, further learning, and continued success, is accomplished by forgetting the past errors, and remembering the successful response, so that it can be imitated. 5. You must learn to trust your Creative Mechanism to do its work and not “jam it” by becoming too concerned or too anxious as to whether it will work or not, or by attempting to force it by too much conscious effort. You must “let it” work, rather than “make it” work. This trust is necessary because your Creative Mechanism operates below the level of consciousness, and you cannot “know” what is going on beneath the surface. Moreover, its nature is to operate spontaneously according to present need. Therefore, you have no guarantees in advance. It comes into operation as you act and as you place a demand on it by your actions. You must not wait to act until you have proof—you must act as if it is there, and it will come through. “Do the thing and you will have the power,” said Emerson. The means by which your Success Mechanism works often take care of themselves and do so effortlessly when you supply the goal to your brain. The precise action steps will come to you without stress, tension, or worry about how you are going to accomplish the result you seek. Many people make the mistake of interfering with their Success Mechanism by demanding a how before a goal is clearly established. After you’ve formed a mental image of the goal you seek to create, the how will come to you—not before. Remain calm and relaxed and the answers will arrive. Any attempt to force the ideas to come will not work. As Brian Tracy wrote, “In all mental workings, effort defeats itself.” KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER – Write down 5 key points from this chapter CASE HISTORY – List an experience from your past that is explained by the principles given in this chapter OceanofPDF.com THREE Imagination: The First Key to Your Success Mechanism Imagination plays a far more important role in our lives than most of us realize. I have seen this demonstrated many times in my practice. A particularly memorable instance of this fact concerned a patient who was literally forced to visit my office by his family. He was a man of about 40, unmarried, who held down a routine job during the day and kept to himself in his room when the workday was over, never going anywhere, never doing anything. He had had many such jobs and never seemed able to stay with any of them for any great length of time. His problem was that he had a rather large nose and ears that protruded a little more than is normal. He considered himself “ugly” and “funny looking.” He imagined that the people he came into contact with during the day were laughing at him and talking about him behind his back because he was so “odd.” His imaginings grew so strong that he actually feared going out into the business world and moving among people. He hardly felt “safe” even in his own home. The poor man even imagined that his family was “ashamed” of him because he was “peculiar looking,” not like “other people.” Actually, his facial deficiencies were not serious. His nose was of the “classical Roman” type, and his ears, though somewhat large, attracted no more attention than those of thousands of people with similar ears. In desperation, his family brought him to me to see if I could help him. I saw that he did not need surgery … only an understanding of the fact that his imagination had wrought such havoc with his self-image that he had lost sight of the truth. He was not really ugly. People did not consider him odd and laugh at him because of his appearance. His imagination alone was responsible for his misery. His imagination had set up an automatic, negative failure mechanism within him, and it was operating full blast, to his extreme misfortune. Fortunately, after several sessions with me, and with the help of his family, he was able gradually to realize that the power of his own imagination was responsible for his plight, and he succeeded in building up a true self-image and achieving the confidence he needed by applying Creative Imagination rather than destructive imagination. Dr. Maltz shows how we have goals and are using our imagination whether we think we are or not. We either use our imaginations constructively or destructively. The key is becoming aware of which way you’re using yours—and improving on it daily. Creative Imagination is not something reserved for the poets, the philosophers, the inventors. It enters into our every act. For imagination sets the goal “picture” that our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of “will,” as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination. A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment. This is a basic and fundamental law of mind. It is the way we are built. When we see this law of mind graphically and dramatically demonstrated in a hypnotized subject, we are prone to think that there is something occult or supra-normal at work. Actually, what we are witnessing is the normal operating processes of the human brain and nervous system. For example, if a good hypnotic subject is told that he is at the North Pole, he will not only shiver and appear to be cold, his body will react just as if he were cold and goose pimples will develop. The same phenomenon has been demonstrated on wide-awake college students by asking them to imagine that one of their hands is immersed in ice water. Thermometer readings show that the temperature does drop in the “treated” hand. Tell a hypnotized subject that your finger is a red hot poker, and he will not only grimace with pain at your touch, but his cardiovascular and lymphatic systems will react just as if your finger were a red hot poker and produce inflammation and perhaps a blister on the skin. When college students, wide awake, have been told to imagine that a spot on their foreheads is hot, temperature readings have shown an actual increase in skin temperature.  Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a real experience. In either case, it reacts automatically to information that you give to it from your forebrain. Your nervous system reacts appropriately to what you think or imagine to be true. The Secret of Hypnotic Power Dr. Theodore Xenophon Barber conducted extensive research into the phenomena of hypnosis, both when he was associated with the psychology department of American University in Washington, DC, and also after becoming associated with the Laboratory of Social Relations at Harvard. Writing in Science Digest, he said: We found that hypnotic subjects are able to do surprising things only when convinced that the hypnotist’s words are true statements. … When the hypnotist has guided the subject to the point where he is convinced that the hypnotist’s words are true statements, the subject then behaves differently because he thinks and believes differently. The phenomena of hypnosis have always seemed mysterious because it has always been difficult to understand how belief can bring about such unusual behavior. It always seemed as if there must be something more, some unfathomable force or power, at work. However, the plain truth is that when a subject is convinced that he is deaf, he behaves as if he is deaf; when he is convinced that he is insensitive to pain, he can undergo surgery without anesthesia. The mysterious force or power does not exist. (“Could You Be Hypnotized?” Science Digest, January 1958.) A little reflection will show why it is a very good thing for us that we do feel and act according to what we believe or imagine to be true. Truth Determines Action and Behavior The human brain and nervous system are engineered to react automatically and appropriately to the problems and challenges in the environment. For example, a man does not need to stop and think that self-survival requires that he run if he meets a grizzly bear on a trail. He does not need to decide to become afraid. The fear response is both automatic and appropriate. First, it makes him want to flee. The fear then triggers bodily mechanisms that “soup up” his muscles so that he can run faster than he has ever run before. His heart beat is quickened. Adrenaline, a powerful muscle stimulant, is poured into the bloodstream. All bodily functions not necessary to running are shut down. The stomach stops working and all available blood is sent to the muscles. Breathing is much faster and the oxygen supply to the muscles is increased manifold. All this, of course, is nothing new. Most of us learned it in high school. What we have not been so quick to realize, however, is that the brain and nervous system that react automatically to the environment are the same brain and nervous system that tell us what the environment is. The reactions of the man meeting the bear are commonly thought of as due to “emotion” rather than to ideas. Yet it was an idea—information received from the outside world, and evaluated by the forebrain—that sparked the so-called emotional reactions. Thus, it was basically idea or belief that was the true causative agent, rather than emotion—which came as a result. In short, the man on the trail reacted to what he thought or believed or imagined the environment to be. The “messages” brought to us from the environment consist of nerve impulses from the various sense organs. These nerve impulses are decoded, interpreted, and evaluated in the brain and made known to us in the form of ideas or mental images. In the final analysis it is these mental images that we react to. You act, and feel, not according to what things are really like, but according to the image your mind holds of what they are like. You have certain mental images of yourself, your world, and the people around you, and you behave as though these image