Mental literacy is a pseudoscientific

Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...

 and popular psychological

Popular psychology

The term popular psychology refers to concepts and theories about human mental life and behavior that are purportedly based on psychology and that attain popularity among the general population...

 term coined by Tony Buzan

Tony Buzan

Anthony "Tony" Peter Buzan is an author and educational consultant. He is a proponent of the techniques of Mind Mapping and mental literacy. He claims to have worked with "corporate entities and businesses all over the world; academics; Olympic athletes; children of all ages; governments; and...

.

Origins

Tony Buzan, the "mind map guru" originated the term mental literacy. The term is directly derived from the computer literacy metaphor

Metaphor

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

 and used to infer how the brain can be used as a "super biocomputer". The metaphor also implies that the mind uses a set of languages in order to operate and that humans often have difficulty utilising them without added aid from methods of organisation, like those presented by Buzan.

The term was invented for the purposes of recruiting with a view to becoming mentally literate and fulfilling the advertised promise of harnessing a purported 99 percent unused brain

Brain

The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...

 power. The desired vision is to spread mental literacy throughout the world. As yet, the vision has succeeded in generating a large following and the sale of handbooks such as the Mind Map Book, by Tony Buzan.

The Mind Map Book

"As knowledge of the alphabet and its permutations and combinations is to traditional literacy, and as a knowledge of numbers and their permutations and combinations is to mathematics, so a knowledge of the biological and conceptual alphabets of the brain and its apparently infinite permutations and combinations is to mental literacy."

"The world is historically mentally illiterate."

"Even traditionally well educated and literate individuals are significantly restricted by the fact that they are able to use only a fraction of the biological and conceptual thinking tools which are available (the mind map)."

The Mind Map Book, Buzan and Buzan 1991

See also

• Radiant thinking
• Metapositive thinking
• Sensual intelligence
• Parabrain