Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded (The Psycho-Cybernetics Series)

by Maxwell Maltz

Our trouble is that we ignore the automatic Creative Mechanism and try to do everything and solve all our problems by conscious thought, or “forebrain thinking.” The forebrain is comparable to the “operator” of a computer, or any other type of servo-mechanism. It is with the forebrain that we think “I,” and feel our sense of identity. It is with the forebrain that we exercise imagination, or set goals. We use the forebrain to gather information, make observations, and evaluate incoming sense-data, form judgments. But the forebrain cannot create. It cannot “do” the job to be done, any more than the operator of a computer can “do” the work. It is the job of the forebrain to pose problems and to identify them—but by its very nature it was never engineered to solve problems.