Conversations with Dr Maxwell Maltz

Conversations with Dr Maxwell Maltz

Overview of Creative Psycho-Cybernetics
(Texts from video clips of the interview)

M: I remember the story of Helen. She was 6 years of age. She was playing the piano. And
unbeknown to her parents, she overheard them saying: "Oh, she was clumsy. She'll never
play the piano well." So, thereafter, whenever Helen played the piano she played clumsily,
to prove that what her parents said about her was true. When she grew up, when she was
13 or 14, she always played clumsily to prove to the world that what her parents said was
true. Not only that, when she used her fingers to sew or to cook, she was clumsy, to prove
to the world that what her parents said about her was true.
I said to her: "My dear child, you can't be held responsible for the actions of other people,
even if they be your parents. Your parents probably meant that you are clumsy at that time.
You weren't thinking of your piano playing. They didn't meant to say that you are clumsy
forever."
She got the message. So she removed that little scar within her because a year later she
played better.

Q: Why is self-image so important?

M: The self-image sets the boundaries of human accomplishment. It is the key to your
personality, to your behaviour, to your character. It enlarges the scope of your self-image
through confidence and you enlarge the scope of what you can do in this world to reach
self-fulfilment. Most people have an idea that they are either born to succeed or born to fail,
that they are happiness-prone or unhappiness-prone.
That is not true!!
Many years ago a beautiful young girl of 18 Anna Pining came to my office. She was in an
auto accident and her left cheek was disfigured. I gave her back her beauty. She looked in
the mirror and said, “I don’t see any difference.”
I showed her the picture taken immediately after the accident, showing her scars. She
looked at the pictures, leant into the mirror and finally said, “Well, I see the difference but I
don’t feel any difference.”
I probed into her background, into her past and ascertained that 2 years before the accident
she was engaged to a young man who suddenly ran off and married someone else. That left
her with hurt feeling, with feeling of depression and resentment that she was nobody.
In other words, she had an inner scar long before she had a scar on her face. I said to her,
“My dear child, you can’t be held responsible for the actions of someone else.”
She got the message. A year later she married another man.

It suddenly dawned on me then that as a plastic-surgeon it might be a wonderful idea if I

can write a book for the 90 per cent of the people all the world over who have normal faces
but some inner emotional scars. Write a book for them, to show them that they can be their
own plastic surgeons and remove the scars within them that they put there. Remove it like
…… And so I wrote the book, Psycho-Cybernetics.

Q: What does psycho-cybernetics mean?

M: Well, "Cybernetics" comes from a Greek word which means a helmsman, a man who
steers a ship to port. And Psycho-Cybernetics means steering your mind to a productive
useful goal so that you too can reach port.
And what is your port?

Peace of mind.

My friend Salvador Dali, the famous Spanish painter, gave me a painting of his concept of
Psycho-Cybernetics. In the centre of this painting is a world divided in 2 parts. The left is a
world in shadow from frustrations. Here, you have a man's image tucked to the side of a
small potato, moving away from reality, from the world towards the black angel of
destruction. Below you see a ship without any sail about to capsize in the rough sea of
frustration.
The other half of man’s inner world is a world of sunlight to confidence. Here is a man 10
feet tall and he is walking towards the sun. A swallow is flying towards the sun. Below you
see a ship in calm water about to reach a port. And what is this port? Peace of mind.
And so we, as individuals, must realise that we have two worlds within us: a world in
shadow from frustration and a world in sunlight , from confidence.
And we can easily learn to walk away from this shadow world of frustration into the dawn of
a new world, to confidence.
Therefore the first fundamental important lesson of Psycho-Cybernetics is that you have a
self-image and that you can change your self-image.

Q: I’ve heard that people are going to be the way they always are going to be by
the time they are in grade school. How can older people change?

M: Age doesn’t mean anything. Because at any age if you learn that negative feeling makes
your image shrink to the size of a small potato. And if you learn to turn your back on the
failures of the past and concentrate on the confidence of yesterday and use that confidence
today, now, N-O-W, in your present undertaking. You will learn how to succeed in life.
There are 11 other lessons or steps and the second one is that you have a success-
mechanism within you, a self servo-mechanism that will steer your mind to a productive
goal if you only let it. For example, when I want to pick up this pen, I pick it up successfully
without effort. But as a child I zigzagged many many times before I knew how to do it
successfully. I forgot the failures. And as a child I just remembered the past successes and
used it now as an adult. In the same way you can learn to pick up success and happiness by
forgetting your failures….
If in the present undertaking you want to achieve a goal, you call upon your past
experiences, the sum total of which is in a tiny electronic computer, a tiny tape-recorder in
your mid-brain. If you call upon your past successes, you'll succeed. If, on the other hand,
you call upon your past failures, you'll fail even before you start, simply because you cannot
think positively with negative feeling more than you can think negatively with positive
feeling.

Therefore your first two lessons of creative Psycho-Cybernetics are :

One that you have a self-image and that you can improve it.

The second step or lesson is that you have a self servo-mechanism or success mechanism
that steers your mind to a productive goal, which is what Psycho-Cybernetics really is.

Your third important lesson teaches you that you can use your imagination either
constructively or destructively.

Q: How can a person make his imagination either positive or negative?

M: Well, because you are the product of your imagination; win, lose or draw. If a boy at
school thinks he is stupid because he was told he is stupid, he will act and prove to the
world that he is stupid. If a salesman who has failed in one undertaking feels that he is a
failure, he will always act as a failure to prove to the world he is a failure.
When people who are in the habit of short-changing themselves realise the potential within
them, that they can rise to their full stature of self-respect as somebody. The results are
fantastic. They realise that they are better than what they think they are to Psycho-
Cybernetics. The whole secret of reaching self-fulfilment and self-respect and success as a
human being by remembering and remembering only this, that is:

the opinion of your “self” that counts!

If you think well of yourself because of some accomplishment and have that confidence,
which brings a smile to your self-image, you will succeed. On the other hand if you think in
negative term because of some frustration, believing that you are a failure because of that
one error, you will fail unless you change your self-image like….

Q: Can a person do this by themselves or do they need some sort of help?

M: They can do that absolutely by themselves if they realise that most people short-change
themselves. They think because they fail they are failures. A mistake doesn’t make a failure.
The business of living is to rise above a mistake. That’s what success is, not just being
successful. The whole business of success is the capacity to rise above a blunder, a failure.
And that’s how you do it by using your imagination constructively.

The fourth lesson of Psycho-Cybernetics teaches you not only to think creatively but act
creatively. You learn to reach your goal by exercising your servo-mechanism, your success-
mechanism, refusing to be side-tracked by negative feeling. You learn to do one thing at a
time. You learn to live in a present. The past is forgotten, lost in the tomb of time. If a
situation in the present defies solution, you sleep on it, not with it. And that’s where you
permit your success mechanism to work subconsciously while you sleep.

Q: Will this work on everyone?

M: It’ll work on anyone who has negative feeling. And all of us sometime have negative
feeling. But I’d like to stress one point, when I talk about frustration I don’t mean
frustration during the day. Everyone has that. What I am talking specifically about is chronic
frustration, the problems of yesterday that you continuingly bring in to everyday where you
carry 45 pounds of extra mental weight on your mental bag. It’s the repetition of this kind
of negative feeling of the past that you carry into the present that makes it chronic
frustration that I am opposed to. And that you can turn your back on these negative
feelings by concentrating on the past, only if you remember the confidence of the past.
You live in the present now, N-O-W.
And you also learn the art of relaxation, which is the fifth important lesson of Psycho-
Cybernetics.

Q: How do you relax with confidence so you can achieve success?

M: You can programme success by a computerised programme. And you do that by

forgetting your past failures, refusing to permit negative feelings of yesterday to dominate
your chance for successes today. Instead, you concentrate on your successes, on the
confidence of past successes that you use in the present.

You improve your self-image when you learn the important aspects of relaxation.

One, you forgive others with no strings attached.

Two, you forgive yourself.

Three, you see yourself at your best, as a person of confidence.

Four, you learn to keep up with yourself not with someone else.

The sixth lesson teaches you of the power of beliefs. Now these beliefs can be either true or
false. But if you believe them, you act that part.

Beliefs become habits. And habits are nothing more than self-hypnosis, just like you learn to
brush your teeth.

The important aspect of the sixth lesson is that you learn to de-hypnotise yourself from
negative beliefs as ……………… you learn to live happily and successfully.
There are 3 eight-hour periods to a day: 8 hours for work, 8 hours for relaxation, and 8
hours for sleep. And those 8-hour period, those middle 8-hour period is very vital to you.
You are either a king or a queen during those 8 hours.

Who ask you to bring the trouble of your office into your home?

Who ask you to bring the trouble of your home into the office?

During those middle 8-hour period you learn to improve your self-image by concentrating
on your success and you make your image grow as tall as you want it to be.
Which bring us to the seventh lesson: the quest for happiness.

Believe it or not happiness is a habit.

Q: You mean unhappiness is a habit too?

M: It’s just as much a habit as happiness and it’s just as easy to be happy as unhappy. You
must learn that happiness belongs to you, like your eyes, like your heart, like your pulse.
You reach for it. But when you reach for it you must remember that you must not step on
other people’s toes. And as equally important, you must not step on your own toes with
negative feeling. Regardless of your age, regardless of your calling, regardless of your
training, experience or education, one thing common to every human being is the desire to
be happy.

The eighth lesson or step in creative Psycho-Cybernetics teaches you the various phases of
the success mechanism, which will make your image grow as tall as you want it to be.

S-U-C-C-E-S-S that spells success:

S = a sense of direction, your goal

U = understanding, where you understand your own needs and the needs of other people

C = courage

C = compassion

E = esteem, self-respect

S = self-acceptance, that you are somebody even though you made a mistake, your rise
above it. And finally

S = self-confidence

These are the seven aspects of success that will make your image to grow as tall as you
want to be.

The ninth lesson in creative Psycho-Cybernetics teaches you about the failure mechanism
which scars your self-image. And you learn about it only to realize the enemy within you in
order to avoid it.
F-A-I-L-U-R-E which spells “failure”:

F = frustration, which brings…

A = aggressiveness of a wrong kind, which brings ….

I = insecurity, which brings..

L = loneliness, the great scourge of mankind, which brings..

U = uncertainty, which brings ….

R = resentment, which brings ….

E = emptiness, which makes you walk away from life, from reality.

You remember F-A-I-L-U-R-E in order to avoid it and concentrate on the success

mechanism within.

The tenth lesson in creative Psycho-Cybernetics teaches you how to be your own plastic
surgeon, where you learn to remove the emotional scar within you that you put there
yourself. You learn to be your own plastic surgeon by remembering to be too big to be
threatened. By remembering to be self-reliance. And by remembering to relax.

The eleventh lesson in creative Psycho-Cybernetics teaches you how to stand up under
stress, how to change a crisis into an opportunity.

Q: You mean, doctor, by positively approaching a stress one can overcome this
stress?

M: Yes, by not only positively thinking about it, but doing something creatively about it. You
learn how to stand up under stress when you learn to practise without pressure like money-
players in sports. You tackle a problem realistically by exercising your servo-mechanism,
your success mechanism within you that will steer your mind to the productive goal.

The twelfth and final lesson of creative Psycho-Cybernetics teaches you that you can be a
winner just as easily as can be a loser. You can change your luck deliberately. How?
By simply concentrating on these two important points:

One, you refuse, absolutely refuse to let your negative feeling like frustration make your
image shrink and shrink and shrink to the size of a microbe. You concentrate on your
confidences of the past and use it continually in the present undertaking until it becomes
second nature to you. You can use it whenever you want to and it’s like instant confidence.
You become a winner when you learn to be yourself by understanding your rights that you
came into this world to succeed and not to fail.
By selecting realistic goals to reach fulfilment, by exercising your creative success
mechanism to achieve these goals.

Now these are the twelve fundamental points in creative Psycho-Cybernetics that will teach
you to reach self-fulfilment as a human being to be successful and happy.
Q: Can you tell me how we can be ourselves?

M: Yes, regardless of age or career, whether you are a student or a teacher, a doctor or a
nurse, a lawyer or a secretary, a salesman or a manager, the important thing to realise is
that you can’t be a friend to others unless you are a friend to yourself first.
You can’t be successful with others unless you are successful with yourself first. You can’t
have the love of other people unless you have the love of yourself first.
Even though you’ve made a blunder, you must learn to rise above it.
It means hard work but it is the greatest adventure in your whole life, something worth
fighting for. You prove.. yourself for countless goals. And when you reach one goal, the
business of creative living is to reach for another.

Q: How does this differ from positive thinking?

M: That’s a very good question. Now positive thinking, says what it means, think positively.
Now creative Psycho-Cybernetics means more than thinking. You think creatively but you
change that thought into a creative performance. In other words, Psycho-Cybernetics
means DOING, DOING, that , NOW,NOW.

Q: Is this a form of psychoanalysis?

M: No, it isn’t. But it goes further than that. Psychoanalysis delves into the past, which is
perfectly all right. But what is vital is that, suppose you know about the past, what are you
going to do about your life now, N-O-W. And creative psycho-cybernetics means living
creatively NOW regardless of what the past is.

About “frustration”

M: All of us are frustrated sometimes during the day. I am not talking about that. That’s the
human characteristic. And it’s there for a definite reason, to stimulate one to rise above it.
And that’s what success is. I am talking about chronic frustrations, some hurt feelings,
some agonies of the stress, some heartaches, some grieves, some guilt of the past that we
carry on in our mental bags day in and day out, many, many years thereafter. So that,
that’s the “frustration” I am talking about.
And if we know these red-light signs and we can avoid them.
They have fear involvement.
We come into this world in uncertainty. We live in it. And we pass on in uncertainty. But the
business of living is to rise above uncertainty, to bend it to our will. Frustration has an
element of retreat. Just because you make a mistake you retreat from life. You can’t do
that! In that instance, you sort of surrender your self-image, your dignity. You can’t do that
either because the only treasure house you have within yourself is your “self-respect”. If
you’re going to deny its expression, no one else will help you.
So that when you practise this chronic frustration, dramatically speaking, you are like a
traitor to yourself.
You take a knife and symbolically “kill” yourself.
And you needn’t do that!
So that when you refuse to turn your back on negative feelings, you put yourself in that
position where you’re permitting termites within you to bore holes in your spiritual being,
letting the fluids of your life-force disappear down the drain.
But when people realise these dramatic aspects of it, that when you just hold on to negative
feelings constantly and that you are no more than a failure just because you failed.
In these instances, you practise chronic frustration.
And you become much less than what you are capable of being.