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Pop muckraker Vance Packard wrote a book called "The Hidden Persuaders," suggesting that subliminal advertising was everywhere, that all advertising agencies practiced it, and that consumers were being brainwashed around the clock into buying stuff they didn't need. Talk about far-fetched. My favorite was the Scotch ad with the gleam from the ice cubes in the glass spelling out the word "sex" backwards.
Anyway, subliminal manipulation is back, only this time it's working on the side of the angels. A self-improvement program called Subliminal Power for Windows (Moss Bay Software, 1-800-762-9937, $29.95) allows users to create their own subliminal regimens and beam them into their subconsciousnesses while they work.
Teri Mahaney, the PhD trainer who developed the CD-ROM, hints in her ads that subliminal power can be adapted to lose weight, stop smoking, save money, get a promotion, improve your love life, read faster, remember better, and stride through life confidently and at peace with yourself.
Subliminal Power flashes your choice of messages relating to any of those goals, or you can tailor one to meet your own unique situation ("I will not wear twenty pairs of pants to a funeral"). The program also plays specially selected pieces of Baroque music, which is said to be conducive to alpha brain waves, which is said to be the bridge to your subconscious.
I'm inclined to believe it, because I am partial to the split-brain theory. This states that your mind has two halves, The first is conscious but very ditzy. The other mind, submerged from view, is where our will power is. Get through to that mysterious center and anything is possible, from boosting popcorn sales to engendering world peace.
But the theory poses four logical hurdles, which I will stumble over here.
First, why does the message have to be undetectable? Why do messages flashed for 1/18th of a second, or muttered below audible levels, register, whereas normal messages don't? I keep a poor man's subliminal suggestion on my office wall, an index card on which I wrote, "Keep it simple." I believe that it has helped me stay out of the kinds of byzantine corners I used to write myself into. But we all do that, whether it's Post-it notes or marquee screen savers or bumper stickers or strings around the finger to remind us of things we're working on.
Second, if subliminal self-improvement works as it's supposed to, won't it split society down the middle? Subliminal people will enjoy a towering advantage over everyone else. They will be like gods and they will get all the great jobs and go to all the great parties and their kids will all go to terrific schools. Whatever they want will happen instantly, and whatever the rest of us want will occur at the traditional glacial rate. And they will have subliminal mind power over us. When they rear-end you at a stop light, they will twirl their index finger at you like Samantha in Bewitched and you'll say, Gee, I hope I didn't scratch your grill.
On the other hand, if people have been successfully using subliminal power to make the world a better place for the last 30 years, why isn't it a better place? Where is the super-race? Why aren't people plugging quarters in my parking meter? Why did California have a recession?
Fourth, if subliminal power is real, why does Dr. Mahaney have to advertise it? To paraphrase Claude Rains, a subliminal man could rule the world. Mahaney could cast a subliminal spam-spell over the entire Internet and within days her product would be bookmarked (www.troubador.com/~mossbay) by the entire zombified world. This is a variation of the objection I have toward the Psychic Friends Network. Why does your psychic friend need to know your Visa number? Wouldn't they already know it?
No, I'm afraid that what we have here is another gimmick to help people change without pain and without having to consciously do anything to change. So if you like this sort of thing, it may be just the sort of thing you'll like. Otherwise ...
My personal theory is that we have the structure of the mind wrong. Yes, there is the utterly useless conscious level, which no number of refrigerator-magnetized reminder notes can quite penetrate through to. Beneath that is the subconscious, which is mildly more suggestible than the conscious, but still no great shakes.
Then there's a third level, a sub-subconscious that retains everything it has ever learned. Oh, the things you could indelibly inscribe on it, if you could only get at it.
Problem is, no one has ever figured out how to get through to it. I call it bone. x
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