What do you guys think about reverse speech and reverse speech therapy?

[Droopy]

Here's a link if you are not familiar with the concepts.

http://www.reversespeech.com/home.htm

I'm very interested in this, especially the therapeutic possibilities. There's not much doubt that reverse speech happens, but I'm not sure about reverse speech therapy. I do have a mental illness and I see a psychiatrist on a regular basis. I gave talk therapy and honest try, but it was just a waste of time and money for me. Group therapy was better, but my schedule won't permit it now.

I've been plagued by low self esteem and low self confidence my entire life, but it got worse with the onset of a mental illness. Even though my symptoms are under control and I feel much better now, I'm still lacking self confidence and self esteem. It would be interesting to see if that was due to something in my unconscious world and if that could be changed with reverse speech therapy. David John Oates, the guy who discovered all of this, borrows somewhat from Carl Jung and his explanations of how the unconscious mind uses symbolism and metaphors to communicate with the conscious world.

[Jamastiene]

1. It probably cannot hurt to try it.

If nothing else has really worked and it doesn't cost too much, go for it.

I'd say a better bet is to surround yourself with uplifting positive people for your self esteem. My self esteem gets low when I am around negative people, but when I am around friends who are positive and compassionate, my self esteem seems to become non issue. That is what helped me. I don't know if you have already tried it or even think it will work, but I thought I would throw the idea out there.

In any case, best of luck for your continued progress toward a happier life. Mental illness is not easy to live with AT ALL. :hug:

[Droopy]

2. Thanks

I don't have much of a social life right now, but I'm trying to change that. I work from 11pm to 10am from Monday night to Saturday morning. Being a trucker has pretty much killed my social life, but I'm looking for a partner right now and there is a possibility. And she is a positive, upbeat kind of person so she might help me out quite a bit in the self esteem area if what has worked for you will work for me. We'll see.

The cost of the therapy sessions is about $1200 American total. I've blown a lot more than that on traditional talk therapy that didn't get me anywhere, but $1200 is still a pretty good chunk of money to be throwing around and I'm not a rich man.

[Droopy]

3. If anything, check out the site just for the reversals

But I'd really be interested in all of your opinions on the reverse speech therapy. Kick.

:dem:

[Systematic Chaos]

8. Hello again my friend, long time no see!

Yeah, I actually heard about this guy on Art Bell back when I worked graveyard at a lonely gas station and listened nightly for entertainment. This was over 10 years ago now.

I truly believe the guy who pushes this is onto something, and some of the evidence he presented is amazing! I say go for it, man. If you have someone helping you out who isn't just in it for the money, trying to score off some new "fad", it could reveal a lot about you, I think.

If you choose to do this, please keep us posted, preferably over in WL/M. :)

[Droopy]

9. Good to see you. GG

I hang out here in the lounge on the weekends. I don't have much time for DU through the week. I quit smoking 5 months ago and put on a lot of the weight I had lost, but I can work on that later. Right now I just need to become comfortable being a non-smoker. I think I'm almost there. I can be around smokers now without totally flipping out and running for cover with my breath held. :)

Thanks for your input on reverse speech. It seems that some here are passing judgment before they actually take in the information on the site.

[ElboRuum]

4. Si ti tahw wonk t'nod I, erus ton.

Esaelp, nialpxe?

[Droopy]

5. Reverse speech is

Reverse speech is words and phrases, sometimes whole sentences, that are discovered when listening to a recording in reverse of someone speaking or singing. The owner of the website I have listed in my OP says that these are utterances of the unconscious mind and that we can communicate with it and possibly change our lives.

For more info and a better explanation check out the link in my OP.

[Monk06]

6. Tahw a hcnub fo tihsllub. Join a Pentecostal church it's cheaper.

[Droopy]

7. Check out the link. There is no doubt that reverse speech occurs

The controversy is in whether it means anything.

Oh, and any Christian church urges you to tithe 10% of your income for as long as you are a member. That's not cheap. :)

[ElboRuum]

10. Oh. That.

Pardon my skepticism, but didn't we go through this already... you know, with the Beatles?

[Droopy]

11. Read the site

That's what I have the link up there for. There are many examples of reverse speech there from world leaders to average joes. They are not to be taken literally all of the time. I don't blame you for being skeptical. I do blame you for passing judgment without viewing the facts first.

[ElboRuum]

12. I did not pass judgment on anything...

...or are you reading something in it that I didn't actually come out and say?

[Droopy]

13. Your last post seemed condescending to me

My apologies if that was not your intent.

[Pale Blue Dot]

14. "There's not much doubt that reverse speech happens"

:rofl:
It's a load of crap. Our brains are hard-wired to make sense of random bits of information.

The term pareidolia (pronounced /pæraɪˈdoʊliə/), referenced in 1994 by Steven Goldstein, <1> describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hidden messages on records played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek para- —"beside", "with" or "alongside"—and eidolon—"image" (the diminutive of eidos—"image", "form", "shape"). Pareidolia is a type of apophenia...

In 1971, Konstantin Raudive wrote Breakthrough, detailing what he believed was the discovery of electronic voice phenomenon (EVP). EVP has been described as auditory pareidolia.<2>

The allegations of backmasking in popular music have also been described as pareidolia.<2>

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan hypothesized that as a survival technique, human beings are "hard-wired" from birth to identify the human face. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces from a distance and in poor visibility but can also lead them to interpret random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces.<6>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradolia

[Droopy]

15. Have you listened to the examples on the web site?

Some are open to interpretation, but many of them are clear as a bell.

[Pale Blue Dot]

17. ...

:rofl:

[Droopy]

19. You aren't looking at the other side of the story.

I thought Democrats were supposed to be open-minded.

[salvorhardin]

23. Open minded sure

But being open minded doesn't mean that ideas and claims shouldn't be scrutinized. And frankly, the John Oates' ideas and claims are laughable at best.

[Rabrrrrrr]

26. I'm willing to be open-minded, but I'm not willing to leave my brain at the door

[Codeine]

35. "Open-minded" does not equal "dumber than dogshit." nt

[Runcible Spoon]

28. I agree. Humans will find patterns in any amount of data.

The real issue is whether or not the filtering process yields anything significant. This sounds like a bunch of crap and given enough audio samples played backwards you could get Shakespear.

[RadiationTherapy]

16. I reversed an old answering machine message my daughter sang when she was four.

It is all gibberish until the very end when you can clearly hear her say "I love you thief".

Meaningless.

[Droopy]

18. That's the question

It happens, but does it mean anything? Is it just a chance occurence or does it have some significance?

[RadiationTherapy]

21. Well, unless my daughter is the fated bride of Lucifer, Cthulu or worse

I fail to see how it can have any relevance.

I think our subconscious is very astute; I learn a lot through astrology, tarot and similar archetypal symbols. They mean a lot to me, but I acknowledge that they are but tools for me to see patterns within myself. If reverse speech is what triggers self enlightement of some kind for you, then it "works".

I don't think any objective science can come of it though.

[SoxFan]

20. Apparently, I always recite old Ozzy lyrics

[salvorhardin]

22. "There's not much doubt that reverse speech happens"

You said:

There's not much doubt that reverse speech happens...

Are you sure about that?

As with his other claims, Oates provides no support for these notions. However, there is considerable evidence against him.

Some of his claims are empirical and can be checked against what neuroscientists and physiologists have discovered in their study of the brain and speech development. For example, his notion about reverse speech occurring in the right brain is not supported by empirical study. In any case, if the right brain were a source of reverse speech functioning, as Mr. Oates claims, one would expect to see brain activity in the right brain just prior to the activity in the left brain when speech occurs. Where is the evidence that this happens? And where is the evidence for his claims about infants and speech, claims which contradict everything that is known about the development of the human brain and speech in children? To believe Mr. Oates is to reject science or, at the very least, it is to reveal one's ignorance about some fundamental neurological and physiological facts.

One must also wonder what evolutionary value reverse speech would have. It is estimated that it was about 100,000 years ago that humans developed spoken language. One has no difficulty in seeing the utility of speech to the survival of the species. But what possible utility could there be in reverse speech? It is difficult to imagine something so useless taking up a good portion of the history of the evolving brain. Furthermore, if there is a reverse speech, there must be a reverse speech grammar. What is it and how is it known?

Some of Oates' claims are quasi-empirical. For example, his beliefs about the unconscious mind seem to have an empirical grounding in the fact that a person's behavior can be affected by memories of which the person is unconscious. There is substantial evidence of implicit memory in the neuroscientific literature. But the claim that 95% of our thoughts are below the level of consciousness--which implies that most of our memories are implicit memories--seems non-falsifiable. How would one test such a claim? The claim that the unconscious mind contains data which reveal hidden truths about a person's behavior and personality, as well as one's physical and spiritual health, is highly questionable. It seems to be based on wishful thinking rather than scientific evidence.
http://skepdic.com/reversespeech.html

Seems like a whole lot of bunk to me, or pseudo-science to be more kind.

[varkam]

24. What do I think? Unmitigated woo.

Here's the key:

A significant proportion of speech reversals speak in metaphoric language, using phrases such as “The wolf has fallen in the lake,” or “My goddess has a spear in her heart.” At first the meaning of these phrases were a mystery to me but as the years of research passed I began to notice a trend with these metaphors. For example, every time someone used the word wolf in reverse, they were usually talking forward about motivation or the desire to get ahead. The word Goddess often occurred when someone was talking forward about hope for the future, and lake frequently occurred when they were talking forwards about emotions. (From the "long article" on RS.com)

Interpretation. At first I thought that what was happening is that if you listen long and hard enough to gibberish, you will probably hear things that sound significant (much like the whole satanic-messages-in-music sort of thing) and then you can try to retrofit that onto a given situation. It seems even worse than that, though, as what he's saying is that a "significant proportion" of reverse speech "reveals speak in metaphoric language" - IOW, something that really isn't significant at all on the surface is made to be significant and applicable to a person's life, which is classic woo (i.e. Barnum Effect). It's the stock-in-trade of astrologers, psychics, and fortune tellers.

That aside, there are several other red-flags that one should always be wary of such as endless self-promotion (..."Nobel calibre"), and stuff for sale. For example, the man is selling a regular hand-held voice recorder for 360 dollars.

[Rabrrrrrr]

25. Bunch of fucking nutters, if you ask me.

Complete inanity.

[Redstone]

32. "Bunch of fucking nutters," you say? No wonder I like you. It's sometimes dangerous

to state the truth so plainly here, but you do that consistently.

Redstone

[Orrex]

27. Sure--look at all the good it did in Twin Peaks

:eyes:

Jung is 99% hooey, and "reverse speech" is 100%. That makes a total of 199% nonsense.

Don't waste your time, energy, or money on it.

[Heddi]

29. gar.mon.bo.zi.a

sometimes my arms bend back
:)

[RadiationTherapy]

30. I find Jung to be extremely insightful and revelationary.

The collective unconscious and archetypes that reside therein tell very interesting stories about the human condition.

[Orrex]

33. They're lovely as metaphors, sure.

But as objective phenomena? I find spoon-bending and chupacabra sightings more compelling.

[RadiationTherapy]

34. I gave up on objectivity a long time ago.

[Orrex]

36. Then how the heck did you manage to switch on your computer?

I know that your post was intended light-hearted, but too many rich hucksters and charlatans are given a pass on the grounds that "it's all a matter of perception."

Every dime spent on "reverse speech therapy" is another dime thrown into the toilet of far-fringe "alternative" "medicine."

[Redstone]

31. My friend, I'm not going to make light of your problems, but I have to tell you that

you'd be doing nothing but going down a dead-end road if you pursued that "reverse speech" bullshit.

I can understand why you might be desperate for any help or different approach for help with your problems. But trust me, this "reverse speech" business is NOT going to help you.

It's just another of the hundreds of shuck-and-jive "systems" that are so cynically foisted upon those people who really need halp.

Don't fall for the bullshit. There are NO easy ways out.

Redstone

[Phoonzang]

37. Even Art Bell kicked that guy off his show because he was too flaky.

When that happens, you know something's up with the whole thing. B-)