Science Quote by Maxwell Maltz

Maltz is selling psychology a missing gear: if personality looks stubborn, it may be because we keep treating it as character when it behaves more like a picture. His core move is to relocate causality inward. Actions and emotions aren’t framed as direct reactions to the world, but as outputs of “images and beliefs” we carry like lenses. That phrasing matters. “Images” suggests something semi-conscious, rehearsed, almost cinematic; “beliefs” brings the moral and intellectual scaffolding. Put together, they imply that personality isn’t a fixed essence so much as a feedback loop between what we assume we are and what we then do to confirm it.

The intent is pragmatic and reformist: give psychology “the level” it needs to actually change people. That word choice subtly flatters the reader with agency while critiquing older models as too flat or too fatalistic. If behavior follows self-image, then change stops being a heroic act of willpower and becomes a technical problem: edit the internal model, and the outputs shift.

Context sharpens the pitch. Maltz, a mid-century physician best known for Psycho-Cybernetics, wrote in an era obsessed with systems, control, and engineering metaphors. You can hear it in the architecture of the sentence: inputs (images/beliefs) produce outputs (actions/feelings/behavior), and psychology’s job is to adjust the mechanism. The subtext is optimistic but also disciplining: if your life isn’t changing, the culprit isn’t society or luck, it’s your internal storyboard. That’s empowering, and conveniently marketable.