THE MIND AT WORK: Page 69

BED WETTING You are starting to get sleepy, Jimmy. (Use name, repeat 10 times) More and more sleepy (repeat 10 times) . . . your eyes feel so ... so ... heavy . . . you are getting so ... so ... so sleepy (repeat 5 times). Jimmy, you are going to stop wetting your bed and make mommy and daddy love you better than ever. While you are in bed you can't let out a single drop of (use exact word that the child uses. Repeat 10 times). Mommy and daddy are so very proud of their big boy for not wetting the bed. We both love you so much. Good night and happy dreams. Discussing the permanence of results, the sleep-therapy advocates say it depends on the individual's degree of suggestibility and desire to overcome the habit or problem. Once broken, the habit should not return, but in the case of a strong compulsion, the message should be replayed for several nights. The physiological explanation for the effects of repetition in sleep-therapy which is offered is that: any persistently duplicated or long sustained repeats of some specific mental picture will eventually bring about vast electronic or sub-molecular shifts within the body and usually eliminate the roots of the disturbance. As to the suggestibility of the individual, everyone is suggestible to some degree, and by conscientious