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

by Maxwell Maltz

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.

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.

Psycho-Cybernetics does not say that man is a machine. Rather, it says that man has a machine that he uses.

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.

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.

Cybernetics regards the human brain, nervous system, and muscular system as a highly complex servo-mechanism: an automatic goal-seeking machine that “steers” its way to a target or goal by use of feedback data and stored information, automatically correcting course when necessary. As stated earlier, this concept does not mean that you are a machine, but that your physical brain and body functions as a machine that you operate.

God did not create a standard person and in some way label that person by saying “this is it.” He made every human being individual and unique just as He made every snowflake individual and unique.