Night Chills Read Online Free PDF Page B

resists analysis. Meanwhile, the inner half of the mind continues to misguide the outer half.”
    “These messages on the movie screen—the conscious mind wasn’t aware of them; therefore, it couldn’t reject them.”
    Salsbury sighed. “Yes. That’s the essence of it. The subconscious saw the messages and caused the outer mind to act on them.”
    Dawson was growing more interested by the minute. “But why did the subliminals sell more popcorn than soda?”
    “The first message—‘Drink Coca-Cola’—was a declarative sentence,” Salsbury said, “a direct order. Sometimes the subconscious obeys an order that’s delivered subliminally—and sometimes it doesn’t. ”
    “Why is that?”
    Salsbury shrugged. “We don’t know. But you see, the second subliminal was not entirely a direct order. It was more sophisticated. It began with a question: ‘Hungry?’ The question was designed to cause anxiety in the subconscious. It helped to generate a need. It established a ‘motivational equation.’ The need, the anxiety, is on the left side of the equals sign. To fill the right side, to balance the equation, the subconscious programs the conscious to buy the popcorn. One side cancels out the other. The buying of the popcorn cancels out the anxiety. ”
    “The method is similar to posthypnotic suggestion. But I’ve heard that a man can’t be hypnotized and made to do something he finds morally unacceptable. In other words, if he isn’t a killer by nature, he can’t be made to kill while under hypnosis.”
    “That’s not true,” Salsbury said. “Anyone can be made to do anything under hypnosis. The inner mind can be manipulated so easily ... For example, if I hypnotized you and told you to kill your wife, you wouldn’t obey me.”
    “Of course I wouldn’t!” Dawson said indignantly.
    “You love your wife.”
    “I certainly do!”
    “You have no reason to kill her.”
    “None whatsoever.”
    Judging by Dawson’s emphatic denials, Salsbury thought the man’s subconscious must be brimming with repressed hostility toward his God-fearing, church-loving wife. He didn’t dare say as much. Dawson would have denied it—and might have tossed him out of the office. “However, if I hypnotized you and told you that your wife was having an affair with your best friend and that she was plotting to kill you in order to inherit your estate, you would believe me and—”
    “I would not. Julia would be incapable of such a thing.”
    Salsbury nodded patiently. “Your conscious mind would reject my story. It can reason. But after I’d hypnotized you, I’d be speaking to your subconscious—which can’t distinguish between lies and truth.”
    “Ah. I see.”
    “Your subconscious won’t act on a direct order to kill because a direct order doesn’t establish a motivational equation. But it will believe my warning that she intends to kill you. And so believing, it will construct a new behavioral set based on the lies—and it will program your conscious mind for murder. Picture the equation, Leonard. On the left of the equals sign there is anxiety generated by the ‘knowledge’ that your wife intends to do away with you. On the right side, to balance the equation, to banish the anxiety, you need the death of your wife. If your subconscious was convinced that she was going to kill you in your sleep tonight, it would cause you to murder her before you ever went to bed.”
    “Why wouldn’t I just go to the police?”
    Smiling, more sure of himself than he had been when he entered the office, Salsbury said, “The hypnotist could guard against that by telling your subconscious that your wife would make it look like an accident, that she was so clever the police would never prove anything against her.”
    Raising one hand, Dawson waved at the air as if he were shooing away flies. “This is all very interesting,” he said in a slightly bored tone of voice. “But it seems academic to me.”
    Ogden’s