Psych people: What is the origin of the idea that the subconscious...

[Enraged_Ape]

cannot distinguish between a real experience and one that is vividly imagined?

I'd really like to know where (or from whom) this idea originates. I tried Google and all I got was Peter Tork and the "guru" in the 1968 Monkees film "Head"! Surely this was not the origin!

[salvorhardin]

1. Good question

That statement is so often the basis of self help/motivation flim-flams. I suspect you'd have to look deep into the 19th century to find the first use of that assertion. I don't personally know of any real references to it in psychology. I think it's basically pop psychology with its' roots in real science.

[Enraged_Ape]

3. I suspect you're right

The last time I saw this idea presented was in the JZ Knight/Ramtha recruiting film, "What the $%#& Do We Know?" As most of the science in that film was specious, I should have known this notion is of a similarly dubious pedigree.

But I've heard this for many years and always wondered what the source is.

[slackmaster]

2. Plato

The Allegory of the Cave from The Republic.

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/plato.html

[Enraged_Ape]

4. VERY interesting

Thanks for the link. Sounds like this is really sort of an old philosophical idea not really rooted in any modern psychological/neurological theory.

As a hypothesis, it could very well be that the statement, "The mind cannot distinguish between a real experience and one that is vividly imagined", really DOES come directly from the Monkees' movie (which was cowritten by the Monkees and Jack Nicholson, by the way).

I checked out some of the other links on that website. I'm going to have to bookmark it. Lots of cool stuff there.