#Bruno furst memory course how to#
#Bruno furst memory course series#

#Bruno furst memory course series#

And then there are the passages that would make a more contemporary reader smile, such as when we are invited to study and remember a series of magazine ads (aren't we supposed to forget those?), or some fantastic photographic galleries of post-war faces but those too are part of the colour and the appeal: it is a book of its time, meant to be of practical use, and again I find its broad objectives entirely laudable. One of the most interesting aspects of the book are the testimonials of people from several walks of life - the musician, the theological student, the film critic - applying the system in order to memorise information specific to their particular field. Part of this system involves translating numbers into words - for instance 91 into the word bat, 92 into bean and 93 into beam - then associates these word-number pairs with pictures, and makes the keyword table thus created the springboard for memorising more complex words and sentences: anything that can be expressed through language, in fact. To this end Furst develops a system that leverages the mind's ability to associate and categorise.

I might be inclined to quibble with the title - and I will - but I find nothing wrong whatsoever with the overarching goal, which is to help readers improve their capacity to remember stuff. A forerunner of the self-help books that infest our shops, Stop Forgetting is nonetheless in many respects a fascinating and sympathetic book. At least one of these branches still operates at a place called, in the United Kingdom, and retains the publishing rights of Furst's courses. We know that he used to lecture law in Czechoslovakia before the second world war and that he is credited as founder and director School of the Memory and Concentration, an international organisation devoted to the improvement of memory 'with some twenty branches in the U.S.A., Great Britain and many other English-speaking countries' as of 1949, the date of publication of the book. The author taught many of his memory courses in person, and this provides both value and a good knowledge of the questions you're likely to have.īruno Furst, although it is quite possible that he was a doctor of law, rather than medicine or psychology - what little information one can find about him is rather sketchy on that point. This is taught in a clear, easy-to-understand manner, using many real-world examples of both the benefits of using the system, as well as the dangers of an untrained memory.

#Bruno furst memory course how to#

This classic work on memory, first published in 1943, is really two books in one! The first part, The Mental Filing System, will teach you how to keep up to 100 things straight in your memory. The skill lies in the training of the mind, in conditioning the mind to operate to maximum. They are the best type of equipment you can have, as there is nothing to carry and no apparatus to prepare. From the introduction: In ‘Step Three – Mental Systems’ of the seminal work Thirteen Steps To Mentalism written by the legendary Corinda, he clearly states the value he placed upon memory systems: To the mentalist, Memory Systems are indispensable they are part of his equipment and the means whereby he can be called upon to perform at any time – and give an impressive demonstration.