Announces that according to claims made by Joel Weinberger on the
effectiveness of subliminal messages, subliminal psychodynamic activation
is the answer. Psychotherapy boost; Visual approach; Intelligence of the
unconscious; Seriousness of subliminal research.
By
PT Staff, published on January 01, 1993
SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES
OUR UNCONSCIOUS is a lot smarter than we think.
And that's why, if we approach it right, subliminal messages work,
claims Joel Weinberger, Ph.D. Not the run-of-the-mill audio self-help
tapes, says the Adelphi University professor. Rather, subliminal
psychodynamic activation is the really effective technique.
It tosses a sort of emotional curveball at the mind, a lovingly
loaded message that bypasses all active defenses to get at the emotional
bedrock of the psyche - messages such as "Mommy and I are one." Mothers
mean love, nurturing, and other deeply cozy things.
Thirty years of research have proved that such a message works - it
boosts psychotherapy, Weinberger insists. On its own, it doesn't do
anything; but it improves people's moods to enhance treatment
effectiveness.
Weinberger disputes claims by others that the unconscious is too
dumb to process subliminal messages. If such sentences haven't worked
before it's only because they're the wrong ones. The message has got to
get a rise out of someone in order to have subliminal oomph. A simpler,
less-meaningful sentence such as "People are walking" just doesn't do
it.
Subliminal psychodynamic activation works visually, while standard
subliminal tapes are targeted aurally. In studies, as subjects view a
card, occasional flickers of light are projected on to it some containing
the sweet-mommy message, others nothing. Neither subjects nor
experimenters know which. But when the data are analyzed, the subliminal
message has an effect almost as strong as a year's worth of school
instruction has on reading.
Weinberger thinks it's time psychologists got serious about
subliminal research. But the cognitivists, who rule today, minimize the
unconscious, while those who pay it its due - psychoanalysts - shun this
type of research. "We need to really start investigating these
unconscious processes," says Weinberger. "They're more important than
people - and the whole field of psychology - realize."
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