RESPONSE TO MARK NEWBROOK (MONASH UNIVERSITY)

An article has been published in the ‘Skeptical Humanities’ web site asserting that I have claimed that David Oates stole my ideas, presumably after we wrote ‘Beyond Backward Masking.’ Skeptical Humanities.

The part that I object to is the following sentence: “He [David Oates] decided that these ‘reversals’ were systematic and of great significance; he and his then colleague Greg Albrecht produced the first book on RS. (Albrecht later claimed that Oates had ‘stolen’ his ideas.)” I have never made this claim. Many of the ideas that David applies with Reverse Speech, such as Metaphor Restructuring, Meta Walks, etc. were solely developed by him. I have said that we both combined our ideas. I initially suggested that we explore Jung’s concept of the Collective unconscious. I remember mentioning that to Jane Curtain in a telephone conversation. I DID NOT say David stole ideas from me. Many of the concepts of Reverse Speech, such as ‘Speech Complementarity’, were developed together. David Oates and I engaged in collaborative research. Collaboration means to work together, sharing ideas and tasks. I assume that the author of this article is Mark Newbrook. Having worked at a University, Mr Newbrook should know the meaning of collaboration. I may disagree with David Oates over some matters and likewise he may disagree with me. I have no problem with that and nor does David.

David has been unfairly criticised for making a living from Reverse Speech. Newbrook and Curtain assert that “The RS enterprise has a very overtly commercial nature; for instance, one hour of an analyst’s time working with a tape costs at least US$125.00, the fees for courses run to thousands of dollars and ‘reversing machines’ are sold at around US$200.00.” Out of curiosity, I checked what Monash University charges for a student undertaking a Masters of Applied Linguistics Course, and discovered that the University requires students to pay $28,400. Is this to be paid annually or does the $28,400 cover the whole course? One would hope for the student’s sake it is the latter. David Oates’ course only costs students $2,500. I think it would be fair to say that Monash University has made education into something “overtly commercial.”

Mark Newbrook should thank David Oates for giving him something to write about because without David he wouldn’t have ideas to criticize in his book, ‘Strange Linguistics.’ Check out Amazon.com and you will find Newbrook’s book. He is flogging it for $69.80. Most books sell for around $20 to $30. Am I missing out on something? Perhaps I should get back into Reverse Speech, write my own book, sell it for $69.80, better still round it off at seventy bucks, and watch my bank balance grow!

Greg Albrecht