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Chapter ONE

The Self-Image: Your Key to a Better Life

During the past decade a revolution has been quietly going on in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine.

New theories and concepts concerning the “self” have grown out of the work and findings of clinical psychologists, practicing psychiatrists, and cosmetic or so-called plastic surgeons. New methods growing out of these findings have resulted in rather dramatic changes in personality, health, and apparently even in basic abilities and talents. Chronic failures have become successful. “F” students have changed into “straight A” pupils within a matter of days and with no extra tutoring. Shy, retiring, inhibited personalities have become happy and outgoing.

Writing in the January 1959 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, T. F. James summarizes the results obtained by various psychologists and MDs as follows: Understanding the psychology of the self can mean the difference between success and failure, love and hate, bitterness and happiness. The discovery of the real self can rescue a crumbling marriage, recreate a faltering career, and transform victims of “personality failure.” On another plane, discovering your real self means the difference between freedom and the compulsions of conformity.

Your Key to a Better Life

The most important psychological discovery of this century is the discovery of the “self-image.” Whether we realize it or not, each of us carries about with us a mental blueprint or picture of ourselves. It may be vague and ill-defined to our conscious gaze. In fact, it may not be consciously recognizable at all. But it is there, complete down to the last detail. This self-image is our own conception of the “sort of person I am.” It has been built up from our own beliefs about ourselves. But most of these beliefs about ourselves have unconsciously been formed from our past experiences, our successes and failures, our humiliations, our triumphs, and the way other people have reacted to us, especially in early childhood. From all these we mentally construct a “self” (or a picture of a self). Once an idea or a belief about ourselves goes into this picture, it becomes “true,” as far as we personally are concerned. We do not question its validity, but proceed to act upon it just as if it were true.

This self-image becomes a golden key to living a better life because of two important discoveries: 1. All your actions, feelings, behaviors—even your abilities—are always consistent with this self-image. In short, you will “act like” the sort of person you conceive yourself to be. Not only this, but you literally cannot act otherwise, in spite of all your conscious efforts or willpower. The man who conceives himself to be a “failure-type person” will find some way to fail, in spite of all his good intentions, or his willpower, even if opportunity is literally dumped in his lap. The person who conceives himself to be a victim of injustice, one “who was meant to suffer,” will invariably find circumstances to verify his opinions.

The self-image is a premise, a base, or a foundation upon which your entire personality, your behavior, and even your circumstances are built. Because of this our experiences seem to verify, and thereby strengthen, our self-images and a vicious or a beneficent cycle, as the case may be, is set up.

For example, a schoolboy who sees himself as an “F”-type student, or one who is “dumb in mathematics,” will invariably find that his report card bears him out. He then has “proof.” A young girl who has an image of herself as the sort of person nobody likes will indeed find that she is avoided at the school dance. She literally invites rejection. Her woebegone expression, her hangdog manner, her over-anxiousness to please, or perhaps her unconscious hostility toward those she anticipates will affront her—all act to drive away those whom she would attract. In the same manner, a salesman or a businessman will also find that his actual experiences tend to “prove” his self-image is correct.

Because of this objective “proof” it very seldom occurs to a person that his trouble lies in his self-image or his own evaluation of himself. Tell the schoolboy that he only “thinks” he cannot master algebra, and he will doubt your sanity. He has tried and tried, and still his report card tells the story. Tell the salesman that it is only an “idea” that he cannot earn more than a certain figure, and he can prove you wrong by his order book. He knows only too well how hard he has tried and failed. Yet, as we shall see later, almost miraculous changes have occurred both in students’ grades and in the earning capacity of salesmen when they were prevailed upon to change their self-images.

1. The self-image can be changed. Numerous case histories have shown that one is never too young or too old to change his self-image and thereby start to live a new life.

One of the reasons it has seemed so difficult for a person to change his habits, his personality, or his way of life has been that heretofore nearly all efforts at change have been directed to the circumference of the self, so to speak, rather than to the center. Numerous patients have said to me something like the following: “If you are talking about ‘positive thinking,’ I’ve tried that before, and it just doesn’t work for me.” However, a little questioning invariably brings out that these individuals have employed “positive thinking,” or attempted to employ it, either on particular external circumstances, or on some particular habit or character defect. (“I will get that job,” “I will be more calm and relaxed in the future,” “This business venture will turn out right for me,” etc.) But they have never thought to change their thinking about the “self” that was to accomplish these things.

Jesus warned us about the folly of putting a patch of new material on an old garment, or of putting new wine into old bottles. “Positive thinking” cannot be used effectively as a patch or a crutch to the same old self-image. In fact, it is literally impossible to really think positively about a particular situation as long as you hold a negative concept of your “self.” And numerous experiments have shown that once the concept of self is changed, other things consistent with the new concept of self are accomplished easily and without strain.

One of the earliest and most convincing experiments along this line was conducted by the late Prescott Lecky, one of the pioneers in self-image psychology. Lecky conceived of the personality as a “system of ideas,” all of which must seem to be consistent with one another. Ideas that are inconsistent with the system are rejected, “not believed,” and not acted on. Ideas that seem to be consistent with the system are accepted. At the very center of this system of ideas—the keystone—the base upon which all else is built, is the individual’s “ego ideal,” his “self-image,” or his conception of himself. Lecky was a schoolteacher and had an opportunity to test his theory on thousands of students.

Lecky theorized that if a student had trouble learning a certain subject, it could be because (from the student’s point of view) it would be inconsistent for him to learn it. Lecky believed, however, that if you could change the student’s self-conception, which underlies this viewpoint, his attitude toward the subject would change accordingly. If the student could be induced to change his self-definition, his learning ability should also change. This proved to be the case. One student, who misspelled 55 words out of 100 and flunked so many subjects that he lost credit for a year, became one of the best spellers in the school and made a general average of 91 in the next year. A boy who was dropped from one college because of poor grades entered Columbia and became a straight “A” student. A girl who had flunked Latin four times, after three talks with the school counselor, finished with a grade of 84. A boy who was told by a testing bureau that he had no aptitude for English won honorable mention the next year for a literary prize.

The trouble with these students was not that they were dumb, or lacking in basic aptitudes. The trouble was an inadequate self-image (“I don’t have a mathematical mind”; “I’m just naturally a poor speller”). They “identified” with their mistakes and failures. Instead of saying “I failed that test” (factual and descriptive), they concluded, “I am a failure.” Instead of saying “I flunked that subject,” they said, “I am a flunk-out.” For those who are interested in learning more about Lecky’s work, I recommend securing a copy of his book, Self-Consistency: A Theory of Personality. (Note: This book is now out of print.) Lecky also used the same method to cure students of such habits as nail biting and stuttering.

My own files contain case histories just as convincing: the man who was so afraid of strangers that he seldom ventured out of the house, and who now makes his living as a public speaker. And there was the salesman who had already prepared a letter of resignation because he “just wasn’t cut out for selling,” and six months later was number one man on a force of 100 salesmen. The minister who was considering retirement because “nerves” and the pressure of preparing a sermon a week were getting him down, and now delivers an average of three “outside talks” a week in addition to his weekly sermons, and doesn’t know he has a nerve in his body.

How a Plastic Surgeon Became Interested in Self-Image Psychology

Offhand, there would seem to be little or no connection between surgery and psychology. Yet it was the work of plastic surgeons that first hinted to me of the existence of the “self-image” and raised certain questions that led to important psychological knowledge.

When I first began the practice of plastic surgery many years ago, I was amazed by the dramatic and sudden changes in character and personality that often resulted when a facial defect was corrected. Changing the physical image in many instances appeared to create an entirely new person. In case after case the scalpel that I held in my hand became a magic wand that not only transformed the patient’s appearance, but transformed his whole life. The shy and retiring became bold and courageous. A “moronic,” “stupid” boy changed into an alert, bright youngster who went on to become an executive with a prominent firm. A salesman who had lost his touch and his faith in himself became a model of self-confidence. And perhaps the most startling of all was the habitual “hardened” criminal who changed almost overnight from an incorrigible, who had never shown any desire to change, into a model prisoner who won a parole and went on to assume a responsible role in society.

I reported many such case histories in my book New Faces, New Futures. Following its publication, and similar articles in leading magazines, I was besieged with questions by criminologists, psychologists, sociologists, and psychiatrists.

They asked questions that I could not answer. But they did start me upon a search. Strangely enough, I learned as much if not more from my failures as from my successes.

It was easy to explain the successes, such as the boy with the too-big ears, who had been told that he looked like a taxicab with both doors open. He had been ridiculed all his life—often cruelly. Association with playmates meant humiliation and pain. Why shouldn’t he avoid social contacts? Why shouldn’t he become afraid of people and retire into himself? Terribly afraid to express himself in any way, it was no wonder he became known as a moron. When his ears were corrected, it would seem only natural that the cause of his embarrassment and humiliation had been removed and that he should assume a normal role in life—which he did.

Or consider the salesman who suffered a facial disfigurement as the result of an automobile accident. Each morning when he shaved he could see the horrible disfiguring scar of his cheek and the grotesque twist to his mouth. For the first time in his life he became painfully self-conscious. He was ashamed of himself and felt that his appearance must be repulsive to others. The scar became an obsession with him. He was “different” from other people. He began to wonder what others were thinking of him. Soon his ego was even more mutilated than his face. He began to lose confidence in himself. He became bitter and hostile. Soon almost all his attention was directed toward himself—and his primary goal became the protection of his ego and the avoidance of situations that might bring humiliation. It is easy to understand how the correction of his facial disfigurement and the restoration of a “normal” face would overnight change this man’s entire attitude and outlook, his feelings about himself, and result in greater success in his work.

But what about the exceptions who didn’t change? The duchess who all her life had been terribly shy and self-conscious because of a tremendous hump in her nose? Although surgery gave her a classic nose and a face that was truly beautiful, she still continued to act the part of the ugly duckling, the unwanted sister who could never bring herself to look another human being in the eye. If the scalpel itself was magic, why did it not work on the duchess?

Or what about all the others who acquired new faces but went right on wearing the same old personality? Or how to explain the reaction of those people who insist that the surgery has made no difference whatsoever in their appearance? Every plastic surgeon has had this experience and has probably been as baffled by it as I was. No matter how drastic the change in appearance may be, there are certain patients who will insist that, “I look just the same as before—you didn’t do a thing.” Friends, even family, may scarcely recognize them, may become enthusiastic over their newly acquired “beauty,” yet the patients themselves insist that they can see only slight or no improvement, or in fact deny that any change at all has been made. Comparison of “before” and “after” photographs does little good, except possibly to arouse hostility. By some strange mental alchemy the patient will rationalize, “Of course, I can see that the hump is no longer in my nose—but my nose still looks just the same,” or, “The scar may not show anymore, but it’s still there.” Scars That Bring Pride Instead of Shame

Still another clue in search of the elusive self-image was the fact that not all scars or disfigurements bring shame and humiliation. When I was a young medical student in Germany, I saw another student proudly wearing his “saber scar” much as an American might wear the Medal of Honor. The duelists were the elite of college society, and a facial scar was the badge that proved you a member in good standing. To these boys, the acquisition of a horrible scar on the cheek had the same psychological effect as the eradication of the scar from the cheek of my salesman patient. In old New Orleans, a Creole wore an eye patch in much the same way. I began to see that a knife itself held no magical powers. It could be used on one person to inflict a scar and on another to erase a scar with the same psychological results.

The Mystery of Imaginary Ugliness

To a person handicapped by a genuine congenital defect, or suffering an actual facial disfigurement as a result of an accident, plastic surgery can indeed seemingly perform magic. From such cases it would be easy to theorize that the cure-all for all neuroses, unhappiness, failure, fear, anxiety, and lack of self-confidence would be wholesale plastic surgery to remove all bodily defects. However, according to this theory, persons with normal or acceptable faces should be singularly free from all psychological handicaps. They should be cheerful, happy, self-confident, free from anxiety and worry. We know only too well this is not true.

Nor can such a theory explain the people who visit the office of a plastic surgeon and demand a “face-lift” to cure a purely imaginary ugliness. There are the 35- or 45-year-old women who are convinced that they look “old” even though their appearance is perfectly “normal” and in many cases unusually attractive.

There are the young girls who are convinced that they are “ugly” merely because their mouth, nose, or bust measurement does not exactly match that of the currently reigning movie queen. There are men who believe that their ears are too big or their noses too long. No ethical plastic surgeon would even consider operating on these people, but unfortunately the quacks, or so-called beauty doctors whom no medical association will admit to membership, have no such qualms.

Such “imaginary ugliness” is not at all uncommon. A recent survey of college co-eds showed that 90 percent were dissatisfied in some way with their appearance. If the words “normal” and “average” mean anything at all, it is obvious that 90 percent of our population cannot be “abnormal” or “different” or “defective” in appearance. Yet similar surveys have shown that approximately the same percentage of our general population finds some reasoning to be ashamed of their body image.

These people react just as if they suffered from an actual disfigurement. They feel the same shame. They develop the same fears and anxieties. Their capacity to really “live” fully is blocked and choked by the same sort of psychological roadblocks. Their “scars,” though mental and emotional rather than physical, are just as debilitating.

The Self-Image: The Real Secret

Discovery of the self-image explains all the apparent discrepancies we have been discussing. It is the common denominator—the determining factor in all our case histories, the failures as well as the successes.

The secret is this: To really “live,” that is, to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can live with. You must find your self acceptable to “you.” You must have a wholesome self-esteem. You must have a self that you can trust and believe in. You must have a self that you are not ashamed to “be,” and one that you can feel free to express creatively, rather than hide or cover up. You must have a self that corresponds to reality, so that you can function effectively in a real world. You must know yourself—both your strengths and your weaknesses—and be honest with yourself concerning both. Your self-image must be a reasonable approximation of “you,” being neither more than you are nor less than you are.

When this self-image is intact and secure, you feel good. When it is threatened, you feel anxious and insecure. When your self-image is adequate and one that you can be wholesomely proud of, you feel self-confident. You feel free to “be yourself” and to express yourself. You function at your optimum. When it is an object of shame, you attempt to hide it rather than express it. Creative expression is blocked. You become hostile and hard to get along with.

If a scar on the face enhances the self-image (as in the case of the German duelist), self-esteem and self-confidence are increased. If a scar on the face detracts from the self-image (as in the case of the salesman), loss of self-esteem and self-confidence results.

When a facial disfigurement is corrected by plastic surgery, dramatic psychological changes result only if there is a corresponding correction of the mutilated self-image. Sometimes the image of a disfigured self persists even after successful surgery, much the same as the “phantom limb” may continue to feel pain years after the physical arm or leg has been amputated.

I Begin a New Career

These observations led me into a new career. Some years ago I became convinced that the people who consult a plastic surgeon need more than surgery and that some of them do not need surgery at all. If I were to treat these people as patients, as a whole person rather than as merely a nose, ear, mouth, arm, or leg, I needed to be in a position to give them something more. I needed to be able to show them how to obtain a spiritual face-lift, how to remove emotional scars, how to change their attitudes and thoughts as well as their physical appearance.

This study has been most rewarding. Today I am more convinced than ever that what each of us really wants, deep down, is more life. Happiness, success, peace of mind, or whatever your own conception of supreme good may be, is experienced in its essence as more life. When we experience expansive emotions of happiness, self-confidence, and success, we enjoy more life. And to the degree that we inhibit our abilities, frustrate our God-given talents, and allow ourselves to suffer anxiety, fear, self-condemnation, and self-hate, we literally choke off the life force available to us and turn our backs on the gift which our Creator has made. To the degree that we deny the gift of life, we embrace death.

Your Program for Better Living

In my opinion, during the past 30 years psychology has become far too pessimistic regarding man and his potentiality for both change and greatness. Since psychologists and psychiatrists deal with so-called abnormal people, the literature is almost exclusively taken up with man’s various abnormalities, his tendencies toward self-destruction. Many people, I am afraid, have read so much of this type of thing that they have come to regard such things as hatred, the “destructive instinct,” guilt, self-condemnation, and all the other negatives as “normal human behavior.” The average person feels awfully weak and impotent when he thinks of the prospect of pitting his puny will against these negative forces in human nature, in order to gain health and happiness. If this were a true picture of human nature and the human condition, “self-improvement” would indeed be a rather futile thing.

However, I believe, and the experiences of my many patients have confirmed the fact, that you do not have to do the job alone. There is within each one of us a “life instinct,” which is forever working toward health, happiness, and all that makes for more life for the individual. This “life instinct” works for you through what I call the “Creative Mechanism” or, when used correctly, the “Success Mechanism” built into each human being.

New Scientific Insights into “Subconscious Mind”

The new science of cybernetics has furnished us with convincing proof that the so-called subconscious mind is not a “mind” at all, but a mechanism—a goal-striving “servo-mechanism” consisting of the brain and nervous system, which is used by, and directed by the mind. The latest and most usable concept is that man does not have two “minds,” but a mind, or consciousness, that operates an automatic, goal-striving machine. This automatic, goal-striving machine functions very similarly to the way that electronic servo-mechanisms function, as far as basic principles are concerned. But it is much more marvelous, much more complex, than any computer or guided missile ever conceived by man.

Today, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that all electronic gadgets and computerized technology of any sort, from the Internet to cell phone technology or satellites bringing us hundreds of channels on television, were programmed and made functional by human beings who formed a mental picture of something they thought was possible, then made it happen. We human beings not only have the capacity to create cybernetic systems outside of ourselves, but also the ability to learn how we can run our own cybernetic systems in ourselves.

This Creative Mechanism within you is impersonal. It will work automatically and impersonally to achieve goals of success and happiness, or unhappiness and failure, depending on the goals that you yourself set for it. Present it with “success goals,” and it functions as a Success Mechanism. Present it with negative goals, and it operates just as impersonally, and just as faithfully, as a Failure Mechanism.

Dr. Maltz makes it clear that all of us have goals, whether we intentionally articulate them or not. The brain and nervous system are continually leading us in the direction of images we think about consciously, or images that are so much a part of us that we’re led toward them on autopilot. The alcoholic or drug addict has goals just as much as the entrepreneur, politician, professional athlete, or mother-to-be. With this in mind, we can become aware of what’s “under the hood”—and whether or not we want the goals we’re unconsciously moving toward, or the ones that we consciously choose and work toward.

Like any other servo-mechanism, it must have a clear-cut goal, objective, or “problem” to work on.

The goals that our own Creative Mechanism seeks to achieve are mental images, or mental pictures, which we create by the use of imagination.

The key goal-image is our self-image.

Our self-image prescribes the limits for the accomplishment of any particular goals. It prescribes the “area of the possible.” Like any other servo-mechanism, our Creative Mechanism works on information and data that we feed into it (our thoughts, beliefs, interpretations). Through our attitudes and interpretations of situations, we “describe” the problem to be worked on.

If we feed information and data into our Creative Mechanism to the effect that we ourselves are unworthy, inferior, undeserving, incapable (negative self-image), this data is processed and acted on as is any other data in giving us the “answer” in the form of objective experience.

Like any other servo-mechanism, our Creative Mechanism makes use of stored information, or “memory,” in solving current problems and responding to current situations.

Your program for getting more living out of life consists in, first of all, learning something about this Creative Mechanism, or automatic guidance system within you and how to use it as a Success Mechanism, rather than as a Failure Mechanism.

The method itself consists in learning, practicing, and experiencing new habits of thinking, imagining, remembering, and acting in order to (1) develop an adequate and realistic self-image, and (2) use your Creative Mechanism to bring success and happiness in achieving particular goals.

If you can remember, worry, or tie your shoe, you can succeed.

As you will see later, the method to be used consists of creative mental picturing, creatively experiencing through your imagination, and the formation of new automatic reaction patterns by “acting out” and “acting as if.” I often tell my patients, “If you can remember, worry, or tie your shoe, you will have no trouble applying this method.” The things you are called upon to do are simple, but you must practice and “experience.” Visualizing (creative mental picturing) is no more difficult than what you do when you remember some scene out of the past, or worry about the future. Acting out new action patterns is no more difficult than “deciding,” then following through on tying your shoes in a new and different manner each morning, instead of continuing to tie them in your old habitual way, without thought or decision.

Dr. Maltz’s words “If you can remember, worry, or tie your shoe” are key to understanding how easy it is to get results using Psycho-Cybernetics, provided you allow yourself to believe that even a seemingly small victory (learning to tie your shoe or write your name for the first time) is all you need to reverse the course of negativity in your life. In order to direct your servo-mechanism toward success instead of failure, all you need is one experience that made you feel good about yourself. Remembering and then using that modest accomplishment will be instrumental in improving your self-image. You do not need a huge success experience to alter your self-image for the better. You do not need an experience that is a mirror of what you’re trying to create or accomplish. All you need is an experience like tying your shoe or learning to write your name for the first time, wherein you can say, “Yes, I’m glad I learned that skill. Yes, I remember the first day I could do it. Yes, I was happy.” This one memory, this one positive experience, no matter how long ago it took place, is all you need to begin changing the course of your life in the present.