Take every negative thing that Subliminal Dynamics says about PhotoReading and apply it to Subliminal Dynamics. I listened to about five minutes or less of one of their tapes, just to figure out what the hell they were talking about (since they really don't
explain in their advertising the way PhotoReading does).
The real difference is in the theoretical groundwork. Subliminal "Mental Photography" is based on the idea of the subconscious part of the mind reading as if it was hearing a subliminal tape read to it. PhotoReading starts from the framework of the preconscious part of the mind doing the looking. The preconcious part of the mind is what sees everything your eye takes in and then gives the conscious mind a picture of what to look at. Most of what is outside of your fovial vision is handled entirely preconsciously. If you don't need to be aware of something in your visual feild, then you won't notice it even if you see it.
There is a fascinating phenominon that points towards the reality of this modle and the possibility that one can PhotoRead. It's called "Blindsight" and occures when there is damage in the optical lobe in the brain. It results in a blind spot, but the spot has nothing to do with the eye itself. Also, because of the way the brain is wired, information still passes from the eye into the brain. The fascinating thing is that, with training, one can "guess" what is in the blind spot with nearly 100% accuracy, even though one cannot consciously see anything at all. The book, "The Emperor's New Mind" by Sir Roger Penrose touches on this, although the book is more about AI then about strange brain abnormalities.
As to the relationship between the two methods, indeed Paul Scheele did attend a workshop, and was initially impressed. However, due to problems with the paradigm and thus problems with performing efficient and stress-free activation, Paul Scheele went to the much older sources of both methods to develop a new framework. PhotoReading is not a copy of Subliminal Dynamics, but rather something that evolved out of the same source materials.
To use a zoological metaphor for this evolution, Subliminal Dynamics is Pan troglodytes while PhotoReading is Homo sapiens. Related, but not even the same genus of reading technologies.
