The Logic of Sleep Learning (Part 7)

John Locke, public defender of Tulare County, feels that there has been about 50% effectiveness so far, but adds that the test should continue for four or five years before fully assessing results.

Some of the prisoners reported benefits. One said he always dreamed of liquor, but after sleep-therapy liquor made him sick to his stomach. Another announced a new belief that people were not "down on him." A third said he could now go to sleep with a clear mind. The Tulare County Board of Supervisors have made "Operation Sleep" a permanent fixture.

Aldous Huxley objects, not to the principle of filling people with love and compassion, but to the principle of sleep-teaching by government agencies. He questions whether the treatment would always be on a voluntary basis, and whether the intentions would always be as good as they are in Tulare County.

Despite his concern over possible abuse of power and the resultant threat to freedom, he willingly attests to having seen some remarkable results and concludes that hypnopaedia, or sleep-learning actually works. The period of sleep during which the actual study best reached the mind still eludes him, since there may be a technical question as to whether the learning takes place during sleep or during a special kind of waking state which the subject does not remember. (This probably is what the sleep-learning psychologists refer to as Reverie.) What Mr. Huxley is concerned about is the would-be dictators and mind manipulators.

Undoubtedly caution should be exercised. The Federal Trade Commission is keeping close watch. However, most sleep-learning people are sincere in their claims, with honest stipulations as to the actual merits of sleep-study and therapy. Certainly, it is to be understood that the ability to learn, either consciously or through sleep-study varies from person to person.

Age is no barrier to sleep-learning, if the student is conscientious in application, and in reasonably good health (in order that the mental block of bad health should not interfere with the processes of learning). There have been many tests that determine positively that people of any age can learn by this method.

It should also be logically assumed that using sleep-therapy for the removal of pain should not be attempted without the advice of a competent medical authority.

The practice of sleep-study has not, as far as is known, produced any harmful effects and, when proper instruction procedures are followed, it is extremely unlikely that any harm could develop.

The method is used widely in secondary schools in Soviet Russia, as well as in the treatment of the mentally ill, and even more extensively in other fields of medicine. There, the treatment is based on Pavlov's discoveries. Most certainly the progress of sleep-learning can be raised, because everyone possesses an infinite capacity to learn; this, combined with sleep-learning will produce this result, just as a relatively high I.Q. can fall if the brain stagnates through inactivity.

In this country, interest has been growing steadily, as are sales among manufacturers of equipment and recordings. It is fairly safe to assume that both will continue to grow. Certainly great strides have been made since the psychophone was marketed in 1920 for sleep-teaching. (This was a spring driven device that required winding by hand and was soon shown to be ineffective for extensive research.)

The advances made by the electronic industry offer advanced equipment and recordings, noiseless and trouble free, that will further the actions and develop to an increasingly greater degree, the technique of sleep learning.

Certainly the science of making useful the third of our lives normally spent in sleep, is worth investigating.