Anton LaVey: "On the other hand, the 'enlightened' man, who doesn't place any stock in such 'superstition', relegates his instinctive fear of the curse to his unconscious, thereby nourishing it into a phenomenally destructive force that will multiply with each succeeding misfortune. Of course, every time a new setback occurs, the non-believer will automatically deny any connection with the curse, especially to himself. The emphatic conscious denial of the potential of the curse is the very ingredient that will create its success, through setting-up of accident prone situations."
Daniel Goleman: "Every act of perception, we have seen, is an act of selection. In evolution, our survival as a species may have hinged in part on our ability to select shrewdly, and to deceive ourselves just as shrewdly. But the capacity of the unconscious mind to pilot the conscious can backfire. When this faculty for self-deception is mobilized to protect us from anxiety, the trouble begins: we fall prey to blind spots, remaining ignorant of zones of information we might be better off knowing, even if that knowledge brings some pain."
