psy·cho·taxis noun : an involuntary adjustment of one's modes of thought and action for
keeping the agreeable and avoiding the disagreeable as a mechanism of ego
defense
That the brain cells are
directly affected by mental pictures, and that the brain cells in their turn
can affect the entire being, was proven by Prof. Elmer Gates of the Smithsonian
Institution at Washington. MENTAL CHEMISTRY By Charles F(rancis) Haanel
"His work (Prof. Elmer R. Gates)
will revolutionize education and lead to greater intellectual progress in the next quarter of a century than has been achieved in all the centuries before.” Prof. McGee
will revolutionize education and lead to greater intellectual progress in the next quarter of a century than has been achieved in all the centuries before.” Prof. McGee
“I look upon him as one of the great mental leaders upon
whose periodic appearance on the earth the advancement of human thought
depends.” Theodore
Dreiser
"I am profoundly impressed
by his educational ideas and his experimental originality, fertility and
clearness” Prof.Geddes,
of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
“Elmer
Gates I consider one of the most remarkable men of his age, if not the most
remarkable.” Ella
Wheeler Wilcox
Quite famous in his day, Gates was a virtuoso inventor. His better known
inventions include the foam fire extinguisher, an improved electric iron, a
climate-controlling air conditioner, and the educational toy “Box and
Blocks.” (Patent) He was productive in the fields of X-ray, alloy casting,
electrically operated looms, and magnetic separation devices for mining.
He devised instruments for developing muscular skill; he created indoor
replications of weather systems; in the late 1800s he invented an electronic
music synthesizer.
Gates saw himself as a psychologist. He pursued invention primarily to
study the processes of the mind while it engaged in its best work.
Through years of recorded observations, he discovered psychotaxis,
the integrated hierarchy of sensory discriminations required to create a valid
and complete mental representation of a given part of the physical world.
Gates used
psychotaxis to invent. First, he would experience through
each of his senses every piece of sensory data that the subject at hand could
impart, letting his mind classify each datum naturally according to its
perceived likeness to or difference from the other data. Having thus
acquired and categorized all the subject’s sensations, he would then, in
psycho-taxonomic order, recreate each sensation in his mind—moving through the
series over and over until he could execute it at great speed. This might
take several weeks. Finally, he would work his way through the psycho-taxonomic
hierarchy of sensory associations—which associations gave rise to images,
concepts, ideas, and thoughts. Repeated recollection of the
psycho-taxonomic hierarchy increased the blood flow to the areas of the brain
where its data were enregistered and processed. This “refunctioning”
brought into dominance those neurological structures through which subconscious
connections were made. The result was new insights into the subject.
Gates hypothesized that unusual mental activity
produced unusual structural or chemical differences in the brain*. To test his hypothesis, he conducted
many experiments on guinea pigs, rabbits, and dogs—sometimes using electric
shock as a negative reinforcer (reportedly the first person to do so).
Believing that “scientific method is
mental method,” Gates devoted his life to the study of the Art of Mind-Using— “psychurgy,” as he named it.
Dr.
Gates and his system of generating ideas was mentioned in
Napoleon
Hill's popular book Think and Grow Rich. A rough description
of the process is outlined in the "Developing Your Creative Imagination"
section of Chapter 12.
* Quimby had figured that out around 1860.
Sources:
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