Reverse speech

 The phenomenon called backwards speech sounds quite mysterious, and it was discovered thanks to an accidental event. Here is how the propagator, Australian hypnotherapist John David Oates, writes about it: 'The whole thing actually started by chance. It was October 1983, I was living in Los Angeles at the time. It all happened a week before my twenty-eighth birthday, at a time when I was in the bathroom getting ready to go out for a night out. I had a portable walkman attached to my trouser belt, from which I was listening to music quite loudly. Suddenly I tripped and the walkman fell straight into the toilet bowl. I got it out of there and, although it was completely wet and broken, I tried to repair it. However, my knowledge of electronics proved inadequate. I therefore only managed to put it back together, but from then on it exhibited one flaw - it only played cassettes backwards. An attempt to repair it so that it played the cassettes as before was unsuccessful. So I had a walkman which in a way was unusable because it only played the cassettes backwards".

This initially insignificant and forgotten incident was compounded a few months later by another issue. It was the initiative of a religious group that began to spread the idea that rock music turned on 'backwards' carried devilish, satanic messages. The promoter of backwards speech combined the two facts - his broken walkman only working 'backwards' and the religious group's 'crusade' against heavy playing - and so the concept of so-called backwards speech (in English referred to as backmasking or reverse speech) was born. The hypnotherapist "fleshed out" the concept with the theory that human speech listened to backwards supposedly reveals hidden information. These are messages sent by our subconscious. This may be considered an interesting theory, but only a theory. It is in no way an assumption based on any scientific basis. There is no reliable scientific data supported by objective research: Susan Brombacher, concluded that "the theories of the discoverer of backwards speech are too difficult to prove (...) Which doesn't stop the author from making quite a bit of money."

And although Oates's website publishes numerous documents with a 'scientific' twist, there is no evidence whatsoever that he has carried out any empirical research into it. Nevertheless, all indications are that the theory is doing quite well. Oates advertises and sells his books on a website, and given that the internet is a generally accessible medium, this is a recipe for a pretty lucrative business. And, in all likelihood, it is: Realistically, it is very difficult to pick up anything meaningful and understand it from the playback of speech. The saviour for the theory-maker and his supporters is suggestion. Given that Oates is a hypnotist and hypnotherapist by profession, this should not come as too much of a surprise. It is easy to suggest a clue to someone; they will follow it further on their own, even if they are presented with something of trace cognitive value. In other words, it is easy to subtly hint at something to someone and that person, convinced that they have come up with it on their own, will stay with the suggested thought. It could also be that someone is attuned to picking up certain messages from the environment, obsessively thinking about something or fearing something. Hence, it was easy to direct the thoughts of people who declared themselves to be believers onto a satanic track if there were words or at least syllables in the texts they listened to that referred in sound to the word devil, satan or other words evoking infernal and demonic associations.

For all intents and purposes, the overwhelming majority of retrograde speech messages are completely incomprehensible, and therefore almost any message, however nonsensical, can be attributed to them. One can turn a blind eye to this if one treats it merely as a game, Worse if it were to serve detective methods along the lines of a new version of a lie detector or as a hypnotherapy method. This should not happen. It is a theory invented for business reasons. Even if one finds the issue of backwards speech intriguing, it is still pseudo-science and should not have a major impact on human destiny.

In an age of ubiquitous marketing, the invention of one commodity entails the creation of a family of derivative products. And if the customer is tricked into believing that he or she needs something, the commodity in question is likely to be bought. Out of curiosity or boredom, people look for hidden meanings in speech that is listened to backwards, attributing to celebrities a philosophy that they may not approve of at all, but so be it - after all, they have "hunted" for hidden content....