Book Bearings
Psycho-cybernetics
- 270 pages · about 5 hours
- First published 1960
- 78 editions
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1 About this book
Psycho-Cybernetics, first published in 1960, is a self-help book by Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon. Maltz found that many of his patients had expectations that surgery did not satisfy, and concluded that what governed their lives was not their appearance but their self-image, the picture of themselves they carried in their minds. Borrowing from cybernetics, the science of goal-seeking machines, he describes the mind as a mechanism that steers toward whatever target it is given. The book teaches techniques for changing that target, among them relaxation, visualization and the mental rehearsal of a desired outcome.
- Applied Psychology
- Self-help
- Personal growth
- Success
- Psychological aspects of Success
- Self-perception
- Achievement
- Self Concept
2 What to expect
A self-help classic from 1960 by a plastic surgeon who came to think that self-image, not appearance, decides how people live. It treats the mind as a goal-seeking mechanism that can be redirected, and teaches relaxation, visualization and mental rehearsal as the means. The tone is confident and fatherly, the examples are of their era, and many later motivational writers built on its ideas.
Good for readers who want: self-image and confidence, visualization techniques, and a classic of self-help.
3 About Maxwell Maltz
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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