Do subliminal messages work?
It’s a question that must accompany another:
Does hypnosis work?
What do you say about the second one?
In fact there is no doubt that hypnotism works. Now it’s another matter whether you justify the effect of its working the way it affects the human personality or you reject the way it does so.
It being a mild form of hypnotism, same is true about the first question too.
The only difference between the two is that the subliminal phenomenon is much more recent as compared to the phenomenon of hypnotism.
When hypnosis was first ‘discovered’ by Dr. Franz Mesmer around 1770 with the name of “animal magnetism” or “mesmerism”, the medical community challenged him.
The French king got involved in the controversy and ordered a Board of Inquiry to resolve the matter.
Interestingly, the board included scientists of a caliber no less than Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin. The third member was a pathologist named Joseph Ignace Guillotin.
Mesmer refused to be investigated by a board who he thought was prejudiced against his findings. So his disciple Dr d’Eslon took the onus on his shoulders.
Franklin designed a psycho-physical experiment to ascertain the validity of Mesmer’s findings. A blindfolded man was asked to respond first to a ‘non-prepared’ tree and then to a ‘magnetized’ tree, magnetized by d’Eslon himself.
The blindfolded man responded to both of them in the same way. Mesmer’s claim was rejected by the board saying it all worked by imagination only.
Mesmer retired to Switzerland, and died an obscure death there in 1815.
But Mesmerism remained alive, braving all the real time tests of the actual effects that it had on its patients.
Today, clinical hypnosis is part of the mainstream psychiatric treatment all over the world. The scientific community no more asks the question ‘does hypnosis work’. It only has changed the question with ‘do subliminal messages work’ now.
What had happened with ‘animal magnetism’ as seed of the modern day hypnotism is being repeated by the scientific community today for subliminal phenomenon as well, though to a much milder level of ‘scientific dogmatic resistance’ as compared with the assessment of the French board comprising scientists of the stature like Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin.
Today the scientific community is equally divided in its assessment when it comes to the question:
Do subliminal messages work?
Half of the scientists consider it does, as far as affecting human behavior and subconscious attitude is concerned.
The rest half still stick to the opinion that even if there is an obvious effect, it must be attributed to the placebo effect.
Exactly the kind of assessment that the French board had come up with when it was officially authorized to assess the question:
Does hypnosis work?
Hypnosis works on the idea of being suggested in the state of a hypnotic sleep when the conscious self is not taking the suggestion in, and only the subconscious mind accepts what it is suggested to accept.
Subliminal phenomenon works on the idea of being suggested without even going to a hypnotic sleep with the kinds of messages that the conscious self is not able to take, and hence only the subconscious part of the mind can take them in and accept them without offering any conscious resistance on its part.
A lot of similarity appears to be there between the two phenomena!
Moreover, if some smoke has appeared somewhere there must be some fire in the vicinity for sure. If the question ‘do subliminal messages work’ has sprung up, it must have come out of some real-time observations having some statistical weight of repeatability in them and not only as absolutely sporadic incidents few and far between.
Exactly the same way that the question ‘does hypnosis work’ had sprung up around 340 years ago!
Why don’t YOU decide it for YOURSELF too? (Don’t take MY word for it!)
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One of them is for relaxation, another for learning, and the third one is for personal development.
This can be an ideal starter course with 3 powerful Subliminal Audio Albums at a value of nearly $50 from SubliminalMP3s for FREE.
You may leave any of these 3 switched on while you sleep and feel the benefits yourself to answer the question ‘do subliminal messages work’ if you have already answered the question ‘does hypnosis work’ to you.
