Psychocybernetics is the Original science of Self-Improvement

In many ways, psychocybernetics is the original science of self-improvement. I make that statement for three principal reasons;

First, Dr. Maltz was the first researcher and author to understand and explain how the self-image, a term used to describe the self-image, is a problem. he popularized for certain processes within the subconscious mind, has complete control over an individual's ability to achieve, or fail to achieve, any goal. Second, everything written, said, recorded, or taught about self-improvement since Maltz wrote has derived from his work. Try and find any book on success or self-improvement written since 1960, right through to yesterday, that does not include a discussion of self-image and the techniques for improving and managing it, notably including visualization, mental rehearsal, and relaxation, and you'll realize how crucial the work of Maltz still is. The relatively young science of sports psychology, relied on heavily by professional golfers, sports franchises, coaches, and Olympians, owes an enormous debt, occasionally acknowledged, to psychocybernetics. Third, unlike philosophies, and philosophical musings about success, psychocybernetics is, in fact, scientific. It provides practical things to do, not just think about, that yield quantifiable results.

What is unique about psychocybernetics is that it offers techniques that help make whatever was once difficult, easy. In short, whether you set out to lose weight and keep it off, lower your golf score, double

your income in selling, become a confident public speaker, write the great American novel, or achieve any other imaginable goal.

In order to succeed, you will use psychocybernetics techniques, either directly from Dr. Maltz, or some other source influenced by his work.

By acquiring this program, you have gone to the first, and still foremost, source. It is significant that, with very little publicity or marketing, the original psychocybernetics book has had such amazing longevity, and is now a classic in its field. Today, just as 10, 20, and 30 years ago, sales managers tell their customers that they are the best.

Coaches tell athletes, consultants tell clients, get and read this book. Now I dare to update the classic. In doing so, I have set out to preserve much of the original content.

Much of it, in fact, is unchanged. Some has been modestly updated in language or example. To integrate it with other works of Dr. Maltz, I have added my own observations and lessons learned from teaching psychocybernetics techniques, along with examples and stories submitted by many users of these books. I have also made a list of the techniques I have used, and culled from others' books referencing these techniques.

Throughout, I have tried to maintain Maltz's original voice. Over the years since 1960, Dr. Maltz and those who followed him devoted increasing emphasis to translating the principles and concepts of psychocybernetics into actual, practical mental training exercises, and I have included a number of those as well.

All things combined, this is the most complete psychocybernetics work ever published. I sincerely believe that you hold in your hands one of the most powerful tools for self-improvement and goal achievement available anywhere, at any time, at any price. It has been my privilege to have a small part in bringing it to you.

If you aren't achieving everything you want in life, it is probably because your goals are being ineffectively communicated to or rejected by your self-image, and your servo mechanism is underutilized and uninspired.

This statement may initially strike you as something that you are not. It may sound like psychobabble and gobbledygook, but by the time you listen to this program just once, you will fully understand that this single statement reveals the master key to all personal achievement, including whatever improvement in performance and outcomes you desire in any area of life, personal, health, relationships, career, business, or finance.

Dr. Maxwell Maltz died in 1975, yet he is the primary author of this program, written in 2001. And he contributed in a very active and lively way.

In addition to writing the original Psycho-Cybernetics, on which the new edition is based, Dr. Maltz was a remarkably prolific researcher and writer.

By the time of his death, he had written over a dozen books and three complete courses of study on different aspects of Psycho-Cybernetics, thousands of pages of unpublished counseling session notes, interviews, speeches, and radio broadcasts, and more. All of this material was put into a computer, carefully sorted and organized. So that Dr. Maltz could continue contributing to new works even today.

Although Mr. Kennedy has also contributed to this program to prevent confusion and clutter, you are hearing everything spoken by one voice, Dr. Maltz's. It reads as if Dr. Maltz wrote it today, in its entirety.

We are certain he would be proud of this work, and that you will benefit from it enormously.

The Self- Your Key to Living Without Limits.

Bruce Barton wrote, Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.

A revolution in psychology began in the late 1960s and exploded in the 1970s. When I wrote the first edition of Psycho-Cybernetics in 1960, I was at the forefront of a sweeping change in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine. New theories and concepts concerning the self began emerging.

In health, and even in basic abilities and talents. Chronic failures became successful. F students changed into straight A pupils with no extra tutoring.

Shy, retiring, inhibited personalities became happy and outgoing. At the time, I was quoted in the January 1959 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine

in which T.F. James summarized these results obtained by various psychologists and M.D.s as follows. Quote, 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, transform victims of personality failure.

On another plane, discovering your real self means the difference between freedom and the compulsions of conformity. Unquote. This was barely predictive of everything that has occurred in the four decades of my life.

This was only the first in the four decades that followed. When Psycho-Cybernetics was first published, if you visited a bookstore to obtain a copy, you might have found it nestled on an obscure shelf with only a dozen or so other so-called self-help books.

Today, of course, self-help is one of the largest sections in the entire bookstore. Psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists have proliferated.

New specialists have emerged, such as sports psychologists and corporate performance coaches. And the stigma of seeking such help has disappeared to such an extent that it has become a part of the history of self-help. That in some circles, doing so is trendy.

Self-help psychology has become so popular, it even has found a place in television infomercials. Once difficult, now easy.

I'm gratified that much of this modern explosion of ideas, information and people to assist you with everything from conquering procrastination to shaving strokes off your golf score appears to be based on Psycho-Cybernetics.

You might say that my original work was ahead of its time. Or you might say that it is age-related. Or you might say that it is age-related. Whatever you conclude, the most important thing for you, personally, is that the fundamental promise of Psycho-Cybernetics has been proven true beyond any doubt or argument. That is, once difficult, now easy. Whatever is now difficult for you, whatever may have prompted your listening to this program, can be transformed from difficult to easy through the use of certain sound psychological concepts, easily understood and mastered mental training techniques, and a few practical steps.

Your Secret Blueprint I would argue that the most important psychological discovery of modern times is the discovery of the self-image. By understanding your self-image, and by learning to modify it and manage it to suit your purposes, you gain incredible confidence and power. Whether we realize it or not, each of us carries within 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, 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. 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 truth, 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. The self-image then controls what you can and cannot accomplish, what is difficult or easy for you, even how others respond to you, just as certainly and scientifically as a thermostat controls the temperature in your home. Specifically, all your actions, feelings, behavior, even your abilities, are always consistent with this self-image.

Note the word always. In short, you will act like the sort of person you conceive yourself to be. More important, you literally cannot act otherwise, in spite of all your conscious efforts or willpower. This is why trying to achieve something difficult with teeth gritted is a losing battle. Willpower is not the answer. Self-image management is.

The snapback effect. The person who has a fat self-image, whose self-image claims to have a sweet tooth, to be unable to resist junk food, who cannot find the time to exercise, will be unable to lose weight and keep it off, no matter what he tries to do consciously in opposition to that self-image. You cannot long outperform or escape your self-image. If you do escape briefly, you'll be snapped back, like a rubber band extended between two fingers coming loose from one. The person who perceives 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 opinion.

You can insert any specific into this, your golf game, sales career, public speaking, weight loss, relationships. The control of your self-image is absolute, and pervasive. The snapback effect is universal.

The self-image is a premise, a base or a foundation upon which your entire personality, your behavior, and even your circumstances are built.

As a result, our experiences seem to verify and thereby strengthen our self-images, and either a vicious or a beneficent cycle, as the case may be, is set up.

For example, a student 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.

In the same manner that a sales professional or an entrepreneur will also find that her actual experiences tend to prove that her self-image is correct. Whatever is difficult for you, whatever frustrations you have in your life, they are likely proving and reinforcing something ingrained in your self-image like a groove in a record. Because of this objective proof, it very seldom occurs to us that we have to prove something.

It is only when we have proved something that our trouble lies in our self-image or our own evaluation of ourselves. Tell the student that he only thinks he cannot master algebra and he'll doubt your sanity. He has tried and tried, and still his report card tells the story.

Tell the sales agent that it's only an idea that she cannot earn more than a certain figure, and she can prove you wrong by her order book. She knows only too well how hard she has tried and failed.

Yet, as we shall see, almost miraculous changes have occurred. Both in grades of students and the earning capacity of salespeople, once they were prevailed upon to change their self-images.

Obviously, it's not enough to say it's all in your head. In fact, that's insulting. It is more productive to explain that it is based on certain ingrained, possibly hidden patterns of thought that, if altered,

will free you to tap more of your potential and experience vastly different results. This brings me to the most important truth about the self-image. It can be changed.

Numerous case histories have shown that you are never too young or too old to change your self-image and start to live a new, amazingly different life. Here is another illustration of how the self-image operates.

Picture yourself living inside two boxes, one smaller than the other. The bigger box, farthest away from you, represents real or realistic limits.

The box within, the smaller one, the smaller one, that is tightly confining yourself, represents self-imposed limits.

The area between the two boxes is your area or range of underutilized potential. As you discover the means of strengthening and liberating your self-image, you expand the smaller box, bringing it closer to the size of the larger one, permitting greater use of your true potential. Success from the inside out, not the outside in.

One of the reasons it seems so difficult for a person to change habits, personality, or a way of life, has been that 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're 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 employed positive thinking or attempted to employ it, either on particular occasions, or 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, and so on. But they never thought to change their thinking of 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 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 self.

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. A system of ideas.

One of the earliest and most convincing experiments along this line was conducted by the late Prescott, one of the pioneers in self-image psychology. Leckie conceived of the personality as a system of ideas, all of which must be consistent with each other. 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 or the base on which all else is built is the individual's self-image or his conception of self.

Leckie was a schoolteacher and had an opportunity to test his theory on thousands of students. He 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. Leckie believed, however, that 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 out of class, flunked so many subjects that he lost credit for a year, made a general average of 91 the next year and became one of the best spellers in school.

A girl who was dropped from one college because of poor grades entered Columbia and became a straight A student. 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, which is 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 of Leckie's work,

try to find a copy of his book, Self-Consistency, A Theory of Personality. Leckie 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 woman who was so afraid of strangers that she seldom ventured out of the house and who now makes her living as a public speaker.

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 salespeople.

The minister who was considering retirement because nerves and the pressure of preparing a sermon every week were getting him down. And who 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. Following Dr. Leckie's breakthrough thinking on this subject, born from observation, as well as my own observations and thoughts chronicled in the earlier editions of this book, a mountain of more sophisticated scientific research and anecdotal evidence has led to the acceptance of the controlling mind. And to the growing self-image by most of the academic psychological community.

How a plastic surgeon became interested in self-image psychology. My story. Offhand there would seem to be little or no connection between surgery and psychology.

Yet it was the work of the plastic surgeon that first hinted at 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 transformed not only patients' appearance, but their whole life. The shy and retiring became bold and courageous. A 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.

Some 60 years ago, I reported many such case histories in my book, New Faces, New Futures, written more for my peers than the public. .

, 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 on a search. Strangely enough, I learned as much from my failures as from my successes, if not more.

It was easy to explain the successes. The boy with the two big ears who had been told that he looked like a taxi cab with both doors open had been ridiculed all his life, often cruelly. Association with others meant humiliation and pain.

Why shouldn't he avoid social contact? Why shouldn't he become afraid of people and retire into himself? Terribly afraid to express himself in any way, he became known as stupid.

When his ears were corrected, it would seem only natural that since the cause of his embarrassment and humiliation had been removed, 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 on 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 self-image was even more mutilated than his face. He began to lose confidence in himself. He became bitter and hostile. He became a coward.

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, resulting in greater success in his work. The mystery inspired me. If the scalpel was magic, why did some people who acquired new faces go right on wearing their old personalities? What about the exceptions, those who didn't change?

What about 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 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? How to explain the reaction of people who insist that the surgery has made no difference whatever 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, certain patients will insist that,

I look just the same as before, you didn't do anything to me. 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, and may even 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 ugly. It's 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 is the fact that not all scars or disfigurements bring shame and humiliation.

When I was a young medical student in Germany, I saw many a student proudly wearing his sabre scar, much as an American might wear the Medal of Honor. The dualists were the elite of college society,

and a facial scar was the badge that proved that a person with a facial scar 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.

I began to see that a knife itself held no magical powers. It could be used on one person to inflict the 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 cosmetic surgeon and demand a facelift to cure a purely imaginary ugliness.

There are, for example, the 35 to 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 current reigning Hollywood celebrity, teen pop star, or the most popular girl in their school.

There are the men who believe that their ears are too big, or their nose is too long. Such imagined ugliness is not at all uncommon. Surveys of everyone from teenagers and college students to mature men and women consistently show high numbers, 70, 80, even 90%, dissatisfied in some way with their appearance. If the words normal or average mean anything at all, it is obvious that 90% of our population cannot be average.