ecosophia | Old Technologies: Sleep Learning

I'm having fun just now exploring one of the odd corners of early 20th century learning technology, the practice of hypnopedia or sleep learning. As with a good many of my recent adventures, this one began in a thrift shop, where I picked up an odd record from 1952. It claimed to be able to teach deep relaxation; it was made of transparent yellow vinyl and came from a company calling itself the Stanford Institute (no relation to the university); it was narrated by Franklyn MacCormack, a Midwestern radio personality of the day; it had one side meant to be played while you're awake, and the other side meant to be played while you were asleep. $2.99 didn't seem like an excessive price for such an oddity, so it came home with me.

Research followed. I already knew that hypnopedia played a significant role as a plot engine and handwavionic technology all through 20th century science fiction, but I didn't know that it had been wildly popular in the 1920s and again in the 1950s. Research back in the day suggested that it wasn't especially useful for passing on detailed factual information but it seemed to work tolerably well for changing attitudes, removing or establishing mental habits, or dealing with psychosomatic conditions -- roughly the same range of things that responds well to affirmations and other New Thought techniques.

I also found to my great amusement that Wikipedia's entry on sleep learning was given over almost entirely to one of those saliva-flecked faux-skeptical rants about how sleep learning has been disproven once and for all by controlled double blinded experiments, and how dare you think that it might work, you peasant!

At this point in my life, after half a century of watching science sink into decadence and corruption, and discovering over and over again just how often the term "pseudoscience" turns out to mean "works better than the crap the pharmaceutical industry wants to sell you," I treat such rants as a sign that there's something worth investigating. So of course I had to give it a fair try.

After a week of experimentation I can say that it seems to have worked tolerably well. I've purchased three other sleep learning LPs produced by the same firm, all dirt cheap on the used-record market. My best guess at this point is that it's a convenient way to use the affirmation technique while you're dozing, and has comparable effects. No, it's nothing life-changing, but it's interesting, and it complements other techniques that I use.

Old Technologies: Sleep Learning

Brave New World