The retainer analogy.

[_beastie]

Good analogy, but I'd like to add one detail. Some retainers are designed to replace the need for braces, and the retainer is slightly adjusted over time to push the teeth into the desired position, and once it reaches that position, then you switch to a regular retainer.

This reminds me of how LDS leaders try to help its youth "gain testimonies". The children are encouraged to "bear their testimonies", when clearly they're just repeating what their parents have trained them to say. Young missionaries are told that it is in the bearing of one's testimony that one GAINS a testimony. And if often works, the missionary suddenly realizes that when he bears his testimony now, he really DOES believe it!

From the outside, it's so obvious that this is a way to manipulate people into believing something they might not otherwise believe. Gad used the word "hypnotizing", and in a way it is self-hypnotizing - the power of suggestion. If the "mantra" is designed to help one believe in something that doesn't have solid evidence behind it, then of course one will have to keep repeating the mantra, over and over.