OK, this morning i discovered in my Hotmail inbox an Email Reply from Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) and i have replicated it here, for anyone whos interested.

Hi Richard,

Everything I know about affirmations is in The Dilbert Future, Appendix A. Anything else I told you would be a wild guess. That said, here are my wild guesses to the most frequently asked questions:

I don't think it matters what you do with the pieces of paper you write your affirmations on. You can throw them away.

I don't know if having more than one affirmation at a time is a problem. I don't see why it would be.

I don't know if typing affirmations works as well as writing them by hand.

I'm not aware of any 'monkey paw' situation where you get what you wish for but in the process there is a hideous unintended consequence.

I don't know the amount of time you should try affirmations before giving up. I hear reports of people seeing results in days, but other reports of no results for a year.

It doesn't always work. I have no information about how often it works or if it is more than chance.

I don't believe that Satan is involved in granting affirmations.

Researchers such as Dean Radin claim that random number generators can be influenced by human thought from a distance. These studies are considered bunk by skeptics. Both the researchers and the skeptics have too much ego at stake to be credible to me.

The events I describe in The Dilbert Future are accurate, but I don't conclude that affirmations work. All I can know for sure is that I used the process and I got the results I wanted. The reason for affirmations' apparent success is probably a combination of normal human and statistical reality, not a type of magic. For example, the apparent success might be accounted for by a combination of false memory, selective memory, greater focus on a goal, or something equally normal. I do believe that affirmations are useful in achieving your goals but I don't think anything supernatural is happening. See my non-Dilbert book, God's Debris, for more thoughts on why affirmations appear to work.

Affirmations Readings
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My new non-Dilbert book has some thoughts about affirmations that you won't find elsewhere. And here are some other sources contributed by readers. I can't vouch for any of them.

Here's a web site with lots of links regarding Affirmations. I am not affiliated with any of them:

http://newage.about.com/religion/newage/cs/positiveoutlooks/index.htm

I think -- but I'm not certain -- that the book on affirmations that I said I couldn't remember the name of in "The Dilbert Future," was "I Deserve Love," by Sondra Ray. Subtitle: "How Affirmations Can Guide You to Personal Fulfillment."

The two "classics" on the subject are "Creative Visualization," by Shakti Gawain, and "Think and Grow Rich," by Napoleon Hill.

Julia Cameron's books, "The Artist's Way" (with Mark Bryan) and "The Vein of Gold," have sections on the affirmations process.

Larry Block (the well known mystery writer) has a long section on affirmations in his "Write for Your Life."

LOUISE L. HAY, who is the author of many books from the late 1970's on, dealing specifically with affirmations. Her most famous book (I think) is

You Can Heal Your Life. Her website is www.hayhouse.com

PROSPERING POWER OF LOVE (l966) by Catherine Ponder has a section on Affirmations I'm told.

The Magic of Believing" by Claude M. Bristol" Prentice Hall, 1947.

Scott Adams