servo mechanisms, messaging, and self-image

When it comes to self-image, Dr Maxwell Maltz is considered to be a luminary in this area of psychology. Actually he was a platic surgeon and he wrote a landmark book called Psychocybernetics (1960) which documented many of his observations and conclusions from working with his patients.He concluded that the human mind could be likened to a "servo mechanism" that could be programmed with predictable effect. More specifically, he opined that messaging determined what a person believed and that a person would act out to bring those beliefs to fruition.Recently I posted a the following status update. It was basically a brain dump of a cognition that occurred to me while I was driving home one day...

"Authority, Repetition, Intensity. These are the 3 things that empower messages to formulate beliefs in our psyche - which propel our actions and precipitate the corresponding results in our lives. If you want to eliminate limiting beliefs, 1). Question Authority, 2) Notice Repetition, 3) Evaluate high-Intensity messaging with lucid rationality"

What had been on my mind when I wrote this was actually how people are manipulated by mass media and I was trying to think of an antidote.Fortunately one of my friends, in a very diplomatic and indirect way, pointed out to me that my statement was of no use to him and it occurred to me that I hadn't had a decent frame of reference in the quote to make it at all meaningful. So I decided to expand on it with this short essay.Initially I thought I would respond with a useful link to a page which neatly summarized those of Dr Maltz's theories which were relevant to what I was attempting to say. What I found was a lot of references to marketing doctrine. These authors were of course advocating the application of Dr Maltz's findings to the field of marketing. In this context, marketing is then basically an exercise in coercing a target [person] into a particular belief. Usually this is a belief associated with inadequacy. The kind of inadequacy that can only be satiated with the purchase of the marketer's product. On a higher level, you can see this as a perverse attempt at coercing people to participate more fully with a corrupted monetary system that has grown to despise them. Fotunately there are those in the self-help industry who use Dr Malz's findings to help people become aware of how they function on this level, with a view to empowering them with more choices and thereby having more freedom in the determination of their own personal destiny. This knowledge allows people to think critically about incoming messaging and it allows them to apply their imagination to creating the messaging they need to create the results that they want in their lives. I highly recommend a modern edition of the book Psychosybernetics which has stood the test of time.


Where I find this knowledge most applicable in a political sense is for people to wake up from the cultural and social coma that the vast majority of western populations are under. If people can understand their servo mechanism in the most basic way, they would logically use this knowledge to evaluate incoming messages in a whole new light. This, in turn, would lead to critical thinking and a whole lot more people saying:

"wait a minute... what's wrong with this picture???"

Of course that status update statement needn't be applied in a political sense. It applies generally in a personal sense and could form the basis for a range of self-determined responses to the experience of the individual. A lot of the time, messaging comes from ourselves. We often take on board messages at a young age and repeat them to ourselves (consciously or sub-consciously) well into adulthood. We give these messages power by conferring authority to them, repeating them to ourselves, associating them with intense experiences. Harmful messages create beliefs which impose needless self-limitation. These limiting beliefs are at the cause of immense dysfunction and subsequent suffering. Tracking down limiting beliefs is not always easy and can be a lifetime pursuit. Being analytical about messaging we give ourselves and messaging we receive from our environment and personal experience gives an individual a huge advantage in tracking down and eliminating limiting beliefs. But it also bolsters our cognitive immune system which raises alarm when someone is attempting to subvert our intellectual defenses. We live in a time when we need this immunity more than ever and it starts with some basic knowledge of how our minds process and are affected by [potentially coercive] messaging.Those three steps that I mentioned in my status update are my personal suggestions on how a person can develop and enhance their critical thinking. Obviously they correlate directly with Dr Malz's theories about the power of messaging. Naturally this can be a deep and complicated subject, but it needn't be. If you find it interesting, I highly recommend the book.I hope this constitutes a useful message.