Since we are on the topic of memorization, and since I've taken a few classes on cognitive psychology, let me share with you what I have found to be useful in remembering things.
It is clear, from many experiments in cognitive psychology, that the mind does not work as a record->play type of machine. Take any scene you've seen in a movie, and you only remember pieces, and sometimes distort things. It seems that the way humans store information is usually meaning first. That is to say, that if you hear a story, you're not going to remember what the exact words were, but you can very well remember the meaning of it.
So the meaning gets stored, and then when recall is required, the meaing gets retrieved and content is *generated* from the meaning, rather than remembered. Now in many occasions, the meaning is not available, like technical information for example.
In these cases, I think the brain will store the structure over the content. If you've read Chomsky, you'll be familiar with the notion of a grammar. The brain seems to try to figure out a grammar out of the content, a structure, that it can use as framework to *generate* content from. This is not to say that memorization of pure content does not occurr. That is actually how we store formulas, and other things that have no structure or meaning.
In college I found that if I read the information a once or twice, I'd be moderatley familiar with it. That is, I'd be able to figure out a question that focused on meaning, context, and other generic stuff. But if the question was on content, and higly specific, like history for example, then a simple reading wouldn't "cut it" Different techinques were required. I have no specific one I use, since I use what comes to mind.
As it applies to patterns, I think Sir_Chancealot you're steering in the wrong direction here. I read Ross himself say that canned and memorized patterns were a thing of the past in SS. The "new" SS, as he called it, was focusing more on building responsiveness and - from I gather - "dynamic" pattern generation. This is the ability to create patterns on the spot, that are "customized" to the girl you are talking to.
This is the whole: "find trance words, and link them in with feelings" strategy. I remember that Ross had a newsletter once in pattern creation. It no longer exists in his site, but I was able to find it here on the Web Archive
http://web.archive.org/web/20010208125925/www.seduction.com/gln15.htm
Read the other old nesletters by clicking on the Newsletters link on the left side menu there. You cannot download the pdf files because the Web Archive site does not store those files, but you can select the text from the newsletter and save it as text in WordPad. There's some really good stuff there, but it is dated so use with care.
[This message has been edited by PrinceCharming (edited 11-19-2002).]
