In reading this book, be very certain you never go past a word you do not fully understand.
The only reason a person gives up a study or becomes confused or unable to learn is because he or she has gone past a word that was not understood.
The confusion or inability to grasp or learn comes AFTER a word that the person did not have defined and understood.
Have you ever had the experience of coming to the end of a page and realizing you didn't know what you had read? Well, somewhere earlier on that page you went past a word that you had no definition for or an incorrect definition for.
Here's an example. "It was found that when the crepuscule arrived the children were quieter and when it was not present, they were much livelier." You see what happens. You think you don't understand the whole idea, but the inability to understand came entirely from the one word you could not define, crepuscule, which means twilight or darkness.
It may not only be the new and unusual words that you will have to look up. Some commonly used words can often be misdefined and so cause confusion.
This datum about not going past an undefined word is the most important fact in the whole subject of study. Every subject you have taken up and abandoned had its words which you failed to get defined.
Therefore, in studying this book be very, very certain you never go past a word you do not fully understand. If the material becomes confusing or you can't
seem to grasp it, there will be a word just earlier that you have not understood. Don't go any further, but go back to BEFORE you got into trouble, find the misunderstood word and get it defined.
Definitions
As an aid to the reader, words most likely to be misunderstood have been defined in footnotes the first time they occur in the text. Words sometimes have several meanings. The footnote definitions in this book only give the meaning that the word has as it is used in the text. Other definitions for the word can be found in a dictionary.
A glossary including all the footnote definitions is at the back of this book.
Contents
How to Read This Book 1
Book One: The Goal of Man
Chapter One The Scope of Dianetics 9
Chapter Two The Clear 16
Chapter Three The Goal of Man 31
Chapter Four The Four Dynamics 51
Chapter Five Summary 57
Book Two: The Single Source of
All Inorganic Mental and Organic Psychosomatic Ills
Chapter One The Analytical Mind and the
Standard Memory Banks 65 Chapter Two The Reactive Mind 73 Chapter Three The Cell and the Organism 101 Chapter Four The "Demons" 120 Chapter Five Psychosomatic Illness 131 Chapter Six Emotion and the Dynamics 158 Chapter Seven Prenatal Experience and Birth 176 Chapter Eight Contagion of Aberration 193 Chapter Nine Keying In the Engram 203 Chapter Ten Preventive Dianetics 219
Book Three: Therapy
Chapter One The Mind's Protection 235 Chapter Two Release or Clear 242 Chapter Three The Auditor's Role 247 Chapter Four Diagnosis 255 Chapter Five Returning, the File Clerk and
the Time Track 276 Chapter Six The Laws of Returning 293 Chapter Seven Emotion and the Life Force 319 Chapter Eight Some Types of Engrams 367 Chapter Nine Mechanisms and Aspects
of Therapy-Part 1 386
Mechanisms and Aspects of Therapy-Part 2 439 Chapter Ten DianeticsùPast and Future 553
Appendix: Dianetics: The Bridge to Clear 568 About the Author 581
For More Information
Glossary
Index
Bibliography
587
599
640
659
xi
How to Read This Book
Dianetics is an adventure. It is an exploration into terra incognita,1 the human mind, that vast and hitherto unknown realm half an inch back of our foreheads.
The discoveries and developments which made the formulation of Dianetics possible occupied many years of exact research and careful testing. This was exploration, it was also consolidation. The trail is blazed, the routes are sufficiently mapped for you to voyage in safety into your own mind and recover there your full inherent potential, which is not, we now know, low but very, very high.
As you progress in therapy, the adventure is yours to know why you did what you did when you did it, to know what caused those dark and unknown fears which came in nightmares as a child, to know where your moments of pain and pleasure lay. There is much which an individual does not know about himself, about his parents, about his "motives." Some of the things you will find may astonish you, for the most important data of your life may be not memory but engrams2 in the
1. terra incognita: an unknown land; a region or subject of which nothing is known.
2. engrain: a mental image picture which is a recording of an experience containing pain, unconsciousness, and a real or fancied threat to survival. It is a recording in the reactive mind of something which actually happened to an individual in the past and which contained pain and unconsciousness, both of which are recorded in the mental image picture called an engram. It must, by definition, have impact or injury as part of its content. These engrams are a complete recording, down to the last accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of partial or full unconsciousness.
L. RON HUBBARD
hidden depths of your mind, not articulate3 but only destructive.
You will find many reasons why you "cannot get well" and you will know at length, when you find the dictating lines in the engrams, how amusing those reasons are, especially to you.
Dianetics is no solemn adventure. For all that it has to do with suffering and loss, its end is always laughter, so foolish, so misinterpreted were the things which caused the woe.
Your first voyage into your own terra incognita will be through the pages of this book. You will find as you read that many things "you always knew were so" are articulated here. You will be gratified to know that you held not opinions but scientific facts in many of your concepts of existence. You will find, too, many data that have long been known by all, and you will possibly consider them far from news and be prone to under-evaluate them: be assured that underevaluation of these facts kept them from being valuable, no matter how long they were known, for a fact is never important without a proper evaluation of it and its precise relationship to other facts. You are following here a vast network of facts which, reaching out, can be seen to embrace the whole field of man in all his works. Fortunately you do not have to concern yourself with following far any one of these lines until you are done. And then these horizons will stretch wide enough to satisfy anyone.
Dianetics is a large subject, but that is only because man is himself a large subject. The science of his thought cannot but embrace all his actions. By careful compart-menting and relating of data, the field has been kept narrow enough to be easily followed. Mostly this handbook will tell you, without any specific mention, about
3. articulate: well formulated; clearly presented.
2
How TO READ THIS BOOK
yourself and your family and friends, for you will meet them here and know them.
This volume has made no effort to use resounding or thunderous phrases, frowning polysyllables4 or professorial detachment. When one is delivering answers which are simple, he need not make the communication any more difficult than is necessary to convey the ideas. "Basic language" has been used, much of the nomenclature5 is colloquial;6 the pedantic7 has not only not been employed, it has also been ignored. This volume communicates to several strata of life and professions; the favorite nomenclatures of none have been observed since such a usage would impede the understanding of others. And so bear with us, psychiatrist, when your structure is not used, for we have no need for structure here; and bear with us, doctor, when we call a cold a cold and not a catarrhal8 disorder of the respiratory tract. For this is, essentially, engineering, and these engineers are liable to say anything. And "scholar," you would not enjoy being burdened with the summation signs and the Lorentz-FitzGerald-Einstein equations,' so
4. polysyllables: words having several, especially four or more, syllables.
5. nomenclature: the set of terms used to describe things in a particular subject.
6. colloquial: characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather than formal speech or writing; informal.
7. pedantic: having unnecessary stress on minor or trivial points of learning; displaying a scholarship lacking in judgment or sense of proportion.
8. catarrhal: having to do with inflammation of a mucous membrane, especially of the nose or throat, causing an increased flow of mucus.
9. Lorentz-FitzGerald-Einstein equations: mathematical equations developed by Hendrik Lorentz and George Francis FitzGer-ald, closely related to the work of Einstein. These formulas, also known as the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction, contain the hypothesis that a moving body exhibits a contraction in the direction of motion when its velocity is close to the speed of light.
L. RON HUBBARD
we shall not burden the less puristic reader with scientifically impossible Hegelian10 grammar which insists that absolutes exist in fact.
The plan of the book might be represented as a cone which starts with simplicity and descends into wider application. This book follows, more or less, the actual steps of the development of Dianetics. First there was the dynamic principle of existence," then its meaning, then the source of aberration,12 and finally the application of all as therapy and the techniques of therapy. You won't find any of this very difficult. It was the originator who had the difficulty. You should have seen the
10. Hegelian: of Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel [1770-1831], German philosopher) or his philosophy. Hegel put forth a philosophy based on the principle that an idea or event (thesis) generates its opposite (antithesis) leading to the reconciliation of opposites.
11. dynamic principle of existence: survival. The goal of life can be considered to be infinite survival. Man, as a life form, can be demonstrated to obey in all his actions and purposes the one command "Survive!" It is not a new thought that man is surviving. It is a new thought that man is motivated only by survival.
12. aberration: a departure from rational thought or behavior. From the Latin, aberrare, to wander from; Latin, ab, away, errare, to wander. It means basically to err, to make mistakes, or more specifically to have fixed ideas which are not true. The word is also used in its scientific sense. It means departure from a straight line. If a line should go from A to B, then if it is "aberrated" it would go from A to some other point, to some other point, to some other point, to some other point, to some other point and finally arrive at B. Taken in its scientific sense, it would also mean the lack of straightness or to see crookedly as, in example, a man sees a horse but thinks he sees an elephant. Aberrated conduct would be wrong conduct, or conduct not supported by reason. When a person has engrams, these tend to deflect what would be his normal ability to perceive truth and bring about an aberrated view of situations which then would cause an aberrated reaction to them. Aberration is opposed to sanity, which would be its opposite. This is the most fundamental level of aberration: "If the food smells good, go away from it!" This is directly against the survival intention of the organism.
How TO READ THIS BOOK
first equations and postulates" of Dianetics! As research progressed and as the field developed, Dianetics began to simplify. That is a fair guarantee that one is on a straight trail of science. Only things which are poorly known become more complex the longer one works upon them.
It is suggested that you read straight on through. By the time you get into the Appendix, you should have an excellent command of the subject. The book is arranged that way. Every fact related to Dianetic therapy is stated in several ways and is introduced again and again. In this way, the important facts have been pointed up to your attention. When you have finished the book you can come back to the beginning and look through it and study what you think you need to know.
Almost all the basic philosophy and certainly all the derivations of the master subject of Dianetics were excluded here, partly because this volume had to stay under half a million words and partly because they belong in a separate text where they can receive full justice. Nevertheless, you have the scope of the science with this volume in addition to therapy itself.
You are beginning an adventure. Treat it as an adventure. And may you never be the same again.
13. postulates: things assumed to be true, especially as a basis for reasoning.
Book One
The Goal of Man
CHAPTER ONE
The Scope of Dianetics
A science of mind is a goal which has engrossed thousands of generations of man. Armies, dynasties' and whole civilizations have perished for the lack of it. Rome went to dust for the want of it. China swims in blood for the need of it. And down in the arsenal is an atom bomb,2 its hopeful nose full-armed in ignorance of it.
No quest has been more relentlessly pursued or has been more violent. No primitive tribe, no matter how ignorant, has failed to recognize the problem as a problem, nor has it failed to bring forth at least an attempted formulation. Today one finds the aborigine3 of Australia substituting for a science of mind a "magic healing crystal." The shaman4 of British Guyana5 makes shift6 for actual mental laws with his monotonous song and consecrated7 cigar. The throbbing drum of the
1. dynasties: successions of rulers who are members of the same family.
2. atom bomb: a bomb that uses the energy from the splitting of atoms to cause an explosion of tremendous force, accompanied by a blinding light.
3. aborigine: any of the first or earliest known inhabitants of a region; native.
4. shaman: a priest or witch doctor among certain peoples, claiming to have sole contact with the gods, etc.
5. British Guyana: country in northeastern South America: formerly a British colony, it became independent and a member of the Commonwealth in 1966.
6. makes shift: manages or does the best one can (with whatever means are at hand).
7. consecrated: set apart or declared as holy.
L. RON HUBBARD
Goldi" medicine man serves in the stead of an adequate technique to alleviate the lack of serenity in patients.
The enlightened and golden age9 of Greece yet had but superstition in its principal sanitaria10 for mental ills, the Aesculapian" temple. The most the Roman could do for peace of mind for the sick was to appeal to the penates, the household divinities, or sacrifice to Febris, goddess of fevers. And an English king, centuries after, could have been found in the hands of exorcists who sought to cure his deliriums by driving the demons from him.
From the most ancient times to the present, in the crudest primitive tribe or the most magnificently ornamented civilization, man has found himself in a state of awed helplessness when confronted by the phenomena of strange illnesses or aberrations. His desperation, in his efforts to treat the individual, has been but slightly altered during his entire history; and until this twentieth century passed midterm, the percentages of his alleviations, in terms of individual mental derangements,12 compared evenly with the successes of the shamans confronted with the same problems. According to a modern writer, the single advance of psychotherapy was clean quarters for the madman. In terms of brutality in treatment of the insane, the methods of the shaman or
8. Goldi: a people, traditionally hunters and fishermen, who inhabit the valley of the Amur River in southeastern Siberia and northeastern Manchuria (a region and former administrative division of northeast China).
9. golden age: the period in which a nation, etc., is at its highest state of prosperity, or in which some human art or activity is at its most excellent.
10. sanitaria: establishments for treating chronic diseases.
11. Aesculapian: of Aesculapius, the god of medicine and healing in ancient Greek and Roman mythology.
12. derangements: disturbances of the functions of the mind; mental disorders; insanities.
10
THE SCOPE OF DIANETICS
Bedlam13 have been far exceeded by the "civilized" techniques of destroying nerve tissues with the violence of shock and surgeryùtreatments which were not warranted by the results obtained and which would not have been tolerated in the meanest primitive society, since they reduce the victim to mere zombiism,'4 destroying most of his personality and ambition and leaving him nothing more than a manageable animal. Far from an indictment of the practices of the "neurosurgeon" and the ice pick which he thrusts and twists into insane minds, they are brought forth only to demonstrate the depths of desperation man can reach when confronted with the seemingly unsolvable problem of deranged minds.
In the larger sphere of societies and nations, the lack of such a science of mind was never more evident; for the physical sciences, advancing thoughtlessly far in advance of man's ability to understand man, have armed him with terrible and thorough weapons which await only another outburst of the social insanity of war.
These problems are not mild ones; they lie across every man's path; they wait in company with his future. As long as man has recognized that his chief superiority over the animal kingdom was a thinking mind, so long as he understood that his mind alone was his weapon, he has searched and pondered and postulated in efforts to find a solution.
Like a jigsaw puzzle spilled by a careless hand, the equations which would lead to a science of the mind and, above that, to a master science of the universe, were stirred round and round. Sometimes two fragments would be united; sometimes, as in the case of the golden
13. Bedlam: an old insane asylum (in full, St. Mary of Bethlehem) in London, infamous for the brutal ill-treatment inflicted upon the insane.
14. zombiism: existence as a person who seems to have no mind or will, taken from the voodoo word for a corpse said to have been animated by some power and made to obey commands.
11
L. RON HUBBARD
age of Greece, a whole section would be built. Philosopher, shaman, medicine man, mathematician: each looked at the pieces. Some saw they must all belong to different puzzles. Some thought they all belonged to the same puzzle. Some said there were really six puzzles in it, some said two. And the wars went on and the societies sickened or were dispersed, and learned tomes'5 were written about ever-increasing hordes of madmen.
With the methods of Bacon,16 with the mathematics of Newton,17 the physical sciences went on, consolidating and advancing their frontiers. And, like a derelict18 battalion, careless of how many allied ranks it exposed to destruction by the enemy, studies of the mind lagged behind.
But after all, there are just so many pieces in any puzzle. Before and after Francis Bacon, Herbert Spencer" and a very few more, many of the small sections had been put together, many honest facts had been observed.
To adventure into the thousands of variables of which that puzzle was composed, one had only to know right from wrong, true from false, and use all man and nature as his test tube.20
Of what must a science of mind be composed?
1. An answer to the goal of thought.
15. tomes: large or scholarly books.
16. Bacon: Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher and essayist who insisted that investigation should begin with observable facts rather than with theories.
17. Newton: Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), English mathematician and natural philosopher. One of the greatest geniuses the world has known, he made three scientific discoveries of fundamental importance: first, the method of change in varying quantities, which forms the basis of modern calculus; second, the law of the composition of light; third, the law of gravity.
18. derelict: neglectful of duty; delinquent; negligent.
19. Herbert Spencer: (1820-1903), English philosopher. One of the few modern thinkers to attempt a systematic account of all cosmic phenomena, including mental and social principles.
20. test tube: a tube of thin, transparent glass closed at one end, used in chemical experiments, etc. Used figuratively.
12
THE SCOPE OF DIANETICS
2. A single source of all insanities, psychoses,21 neuroses,22 compulsions,23 repressions24 and social derangements.
3. Invariant scientific evidence as to the basic nature and functional background of the human mind.
4. Techniques, the art of application, by which the discovered single source could be invariably cured; ruling out, of course, the insanities of malformed, deleted or pathologically25 injured brains or nervous systems and, particularly, iatro-genic psychoses (those caused by doctors and involving the destruction of the living brain itself).
5. Methods of prevention of mental derangement.
6. The cause and cure of all psychosomatic26 ills, which number, some say, 70 percent of man's listed ailments.
Such a science would exceed the severest terms previously laid down for it in any age, but any computation on the subject should discover that a science of mind ought to be able to be and do just these things.
A science of the mind, if it were truly worthy of that name, would have to rank, in experimental precision, with physics and chemistry. There could be no "special cases" to its laws. There could be no recourse27 to
21. psychoses: severe forms of mental disorder; insanities.
22. neuroses: emotional states containing conflicts and emotional data inhibiting the abilities or welfare of the individual.
23. compulsions: irresistible, repeated, irrational impulses to perform some act.
24. repressions: commands that the organism must not do something.
25. pathologically: in a manner caused by or having to do with disease. See also pathology in the glossary.
26. psychosomatic: psycho refers to mind and somatic refers to body; the term psychosomatic means the mind making the body ill or illnesses which have been created physically within the body by derangement of the mind.
27. recourse: a turning or seeking for aid, safety, etc.
13
L. RON HUBBARD
authority. The atom bomb bursts whether Einstein28 gives it permission or not. Laws native to nature regulate the bursting of that bomb. Technicians, applying techniques derived from discovered natural laws, can make one or a million atom bombs, all alike.
After the body of axioms and technique was organized and working as a science of mind, in rank with the physical sciences, it would be found to have points of agreement with almost every school of thought about thought which had ever existed. This is again a virtue and not a fault.
Simple though it is, Dianetics does and is these things:
1. It is an organized science of thought built on definite axioms (statements of natural laws on the order of those of the physical sciences).
2. It contains a therapeutic technique with which can be treated all inorganic mental ills and all organic psychosomatic ills, with assurance of complete cure in unselected cases.
3. It produces a condition of ability and rationality for man well in advance of the current norm, enhancing rather than destroying his vigor and personality.
4. Dianetics gives a complete insight into the full potentialities of the mind, discovering them to be well in excess of past supposition.
5. The basic nature of man is discovered in Dianetics rather than hazarded29 or postulated, since that basic nature can be brought into action in any individual completely. And that basic nature is discovered to be good.
28. Einstein: Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German physicist, US citizen from 1940; formulated the theory of the conversion of mass into energy, opening the way for the development of the atomic bomb.
29. hazarded: offered (a statement, conjecture, etc.) with the possibility of facing criticism, disapproval, failure or the like; ventured.
14
THE SCOPE OF DIANETICS
6. The single source of mental derangement is discovered and demonstrated, on a clinical or laboratory basis, by Dianetics.
7. The extent, storage capacity and recallability of the human memory is finally established by Dianetics.
8. The full recording abilities of the mind are discovered by Dianetics with the conclusion that they are quite dissimilar to former suppositions.
9. Dianetics brings forth the nongerm theory of disease, complementing biochemistry30 and Pasteur's31 work on the germ theory to embrace the field.
10. With Dianetics ends the "necessity" of destroying the brain by shock or surgery to effect "trac-tability"32 in mental patients and "adjust" them.
11. A workable explanation of the physiological effects of drugs and endocrine33 substances exists in Dianetics, and many problems posed by endocrinology are answered.
12. Various educational, sociological, political, military and other human studies are enhanced by Dianetics.
13. The field of cytology34 is aided by Dianetics, as well as other fields of research.
This, then, is a skeletal sketch of what would be the scope of a science of mind and of what is the scope of Dianetics.
30. biochemistry: the chemistry of living organisms.
31. Pasteur: Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), French chemist and bacteriologist; he proved that decay and putrefaction are caused by bacteria and developed serums and vaccines for such diseases as cholera and rabies.
32. tractability: state of being easy to manage or deal with; docility.
33. endocrine: designating or of any gland producing one or more internal secretions that are introduced directly into the bloodstream and carried to other parts of the body whose functions they regulate or control.
34. cytology: the scientific study of cells.
15
CHAPTER Two
The Clear
Dianetically, the optimum individual is called the Clear. One will hear much of that word, both as a noun and a verb, in this volume, so it is well to spend time here at the outset setting forth exactly what can be called a Clear, the goal of Dianetic therapy.
A Clear can be tested for any and all psychoses, neuroses, compulsions and repressions (all aberrations) and can be examined for any autogenetic (self-generated) diseases referred to as psychosomatic ills. These tests confirm the Clear to be entirely without such ills or aberrations. Additional tests of his intelligence indicate it to be high above the current norm. Observation of his activity demonstrates that he pursues existence with vigor and satisfaction.
Further, these results can be obtained on a comparative basis. A neurotic' individual, possessed also of psychosomatic ills, can be tested for those aberrations and illnesses, demonstrating that they exist. He can then be given Dianetic therapy to the end of clearing these neuroses and ills. Finally, he can be examined, with the above results. This, in passing, is an experiment which has been performed many times with invariable results. It is a matter of laboratory test that all individuals who have organically complete nervous systems respond in this fashion to Dianetic clearing.
Further, the Clear possesses attributes, fundamental and inherent but not always available in an uncleared
1. neurotic: one who is insane or disturbed on some subject (as opposed to a psychotic person, who is just insane in general).
16
THE CLEAR
state, which have not been suspected of man and are not included in past discussions of his abilities and behavior.
First there is the matter of perceptions. Even so-called normal people do not always see in full color, hear in full tone or sense at the optimum with their organs of smell, taste, tactile2 and organic sensation.
These are the main lines of communication to the finite world which most people recognize as reality. It is an interesting commentary that while past observers felt that the facing of reality was an absolute necessity if the aberrated individual wished to be sane, no definition of how this was to be done was set forth. To face reality in the present, one would certainly have to be able to sense it along those channels of communication most commonly used by man in his affairs.
Any one of man's perceptions can be aberrated by psychic3 derangements which refuse to permit the received sensations to be realized by the analytical portion of the individual's mind. In other words, while there may be nothing wrong with the mechanisms of color reception, circuits4 can exist in the mind which delete color before the consciousness is permitted to see the object. Colorblindness can be discovered to be relative or in degrees in such a way that colors appear to be less brilliant, dull or, at the maximum, entirely absent. Anyone is acquainted with persons to whom "loud"5 colors are detestable and with persons who find
2. tactile: of or using the sense of touch.
3. psychic: of or pertaining to the human soul or mind; mental (opposed to physical).
4. circuit: a part of an individual's bank (a colloquial name for the reactive mind) that behaves as though it were someone or something separate from him and that either talks to him or goes into action of its own accord, and may even, if severe enough, take control of him while it operates.
5. "loud": (colloquial) too vivid; flashy.
17
L. RON HUBBARD
them insufficiently "loud" to notice. This varying degree of colorblindness has not been recognized as a psychic factor but has been nebulously6 assumed to be some sort of a condition of mind when it was noticed at all.
There are those persons to whom noises are quite disturbing, to whom, for instance, the insistent whine of a violin is very like having a brace and bit7 applied to the eardrum; and there are those to whom fifty violins, played loudly, would be soothing; and there are those who, in the presence of a violin, express disinterest and boredom; and, again, there are persons to whom the sound of a violin, no matter if it be playing the most intricate melody, is a monotone. These differences of sonic (hearing) perception have, like color and other visual errors, been attributed to inherent nature or organic deficiency or assigned no place at all.
In a like manner, from person to person, smells, tactile sensations, organic perceptions, pain and gravity vary widely and wildly. A cursory check around amongst his friends will demonstrate to a man that there exist enormous differences of perception of identical stimuli.8 One smells a turkey in the oven as wonderful, one smells it with indifference, another may not smell it at all. And somebody else may maintain that roasting turkey smells exactly like hair oilùto be extreme.
Until we obtain Clears it remains obscure why such differences should exist. For in the largest measure, such wild quality and quantity of perception is due to aberration. Because of pleasurable experiences in the past and inherent sensitivity, there will be some difference
6. nebulously: hazily, vaguely, indistinctly or confusedly.
7. brace and bit: a tool for boring, consisting of a removable drill (bit) in a rotating handle (brace).
8. stimuli: things that rouse a person or thing into activity or energy or that produce a reaction in an organ or tissue of the body.
18
THE CLEAR
amongst Clears; and a Clear response should not be assumed automatically to be a standardized, adjusted middle ground, that pallid9 and obnoxious goal of past doctrines. The Clear gets a maximum response compatible with his own desire for the response. Burning cordite10 still smells dangerous to him, but it does not make him ill. Roasting turkey smells good to him if he is hungry and likes turkey, at which time it smells very, very good. Violins play melodies, not monotones, bring no pain and are enjoyed to a fine, full limit if the Clear likes violins as a matter of tasteùif he doesn't, he likes kettledrums, saxophones or, indeed, suiting his mood, no music at all.
In other words, there are two variables at work. One, the wildest, is the variable caused by aberrations. The other, and quite rational and understandable, is caused by the personality.
Thus, the perceptions of an aberree (noncleared individual) vary greatly from those of the cleared (un-aberrated) individual.
Now there are the differences of the actual organs of perception and the errors occasioned" by these. Some of these errors, a minimum, are organic: punctured eardrums are not competent sound-recording mechanisms. The majority of perceptic (sense message) errors in the organic sphere are caused by psychosomatic errors.
Glasses are seen on noses everywhere around, even on children. The majority of these spectacles are perched on the face in an effort to correct a condition which the body itself is fighting to uncorrect again. Eyesight, when the stage of glasses is entered (not because of
9. pallid: lacking in spirit or vitality; dull.
10. cordite: a smokeless explosive used as a propellant in bullets and shells.
11. occasioned: given occasion or cause for; brought about.
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L. RON HUBBARD
glasses), is deteriorating on the psychosomatic principle. And this observation is about as irresponsible as a statement that when apples fall out of trees they usually obey gravity. One of the incidental things which happen to a Clear is that his eyesight, if it had been bad as an aberree, generally improves markedly, and with some slight attention will recover optimum perception in time. (Far from an optician's argument against Dianetics, this assures rather good business, for Clears have been known, at treatment's end, to have to buy, in rapid succession, five pairs of glasses to compensate adjusting eyesight; and many aberrees, cleared late in life, settle down ocularly12 at a maximum a little under optimum.)
The eyesight was reduced in the aberree on an organic basis by his aberrations so that the perceptic organ itself was reduced from optimum operating function. With the removal of aberrations, repeated tests have proven that the body makes a valiant effort to reconstruct back to optimum.
Hearing, in addition to other perceptics, varies organically over a wide range. Calcium deposits, for instance, can make the ears "ring" incessantly. The removal of aberrations permits the body to readjust toward its reachable optimum; the calcium deposit disappears, and the ears stop ringing. But far and beyond this very specific case, there are great differences in hearing on the organic basis. Organically, as well as aberrationally, hearing can become remarkably extended or closely inhibited so that one person may hear footsteps a block away as a normal activity and another would not hear a bass drum thundering on the porch.
That the various perceptions differ widely from individual to individual on an aberrational and psychosomatic basis is the least of the discoveries outlined
12. ocularly: of or relating to the sense of sight.
20
THE CLEAR
here. Ability to recall is far more fantastic in its variation from person to person.
An entirely new recall process which was inherent in the mind but which had not been noticed came to light in the process of observing Clears and aberrees. This recall process is possible in only a small proportion of aberrees in its fullest sense. It is standard, however, in a Clear. Naturally, no intimation13 is made here that the scholars of past ages have been unobservant. We are dealing here with an entirely new and hitherto nonexistent object of inspection, the Clear. What a Clear can do easily, quite a few people have, from time to time, been partially able to do in the past.
An inherent, not a taught, ability of the remembering mechanisms of the mind can be termed, as a technical word of Dianetics, returning. It is used in its dictionary sense, with the addition of the fact that the mind has it as a normal remembering function, as follows: The person can "send" a portion of his mind to a past period on either a mental or combined mental and physical basis and can reexperience incidents which have taken place in his past in the same fashion and with the same sensations as before. Once upon a time, an art known as hypnotism used what was called "regression" on hypnotized subjects, the hypnotist sending the subject back, in one of two ways, to incidents in his past. This was done with trance techniques, drugs and considerable technology. The hypnotic subject could be sent back to a moment "entirely" so that he gave every appearance of being the age to which he was returned with only the apparent faculties and recollections he had at that moment: this was called revivification (reliving). Regression was a technique by which part of the individual's self remained in the present and
13. intimation: hint; indirect suggestion.
21
L. RON HUBBARD
part went back to the past. These abilities of the mind were supposed native only in hypnotism and were used only in hypnotic technique. The art is very old, tracing back some thousands of years and existing today in Asia as it has existed, apparently, from the dawn of time.
Returning is substituted for regression here because it is not a comparable thing and because regression, as a word, has some bad meanings which would interrupt its use. Reliving is substituted for revivification in Dia-netics because, in Dianetics, the principles of hypnotism can be found explained and hypnotism is not used in Dianetic therapy, as will be explained later.
The mind, then, has another ability to remember. Part of the mind can "return" even when a person is wide awake and reexperience past incidents in full. If you want to test this, try it on several people until one is discovered who does it easily. Wide awake, he can "return" to moments in his past. Until asked to do so, he probably will not know he has such an ability. If he had it, he probably thought everybody could do it (the type of supposition which has kept so much of this data from coming to light before). He can go back to a time when he was swimming and swim with full recall of hearing, sight, taste, smell, organic sensation, tactile, etc.
A "learned" gentleman once spent some hours demonstrating to a gathering that the recall of a smell as a sensation, for instance, was quite impossible since "neurology14 had proven that the olfactory15 nerves were not connected to the thalamus."16 Two people in the gathering discovered this ability to return and despite this evidence, the learned gentleman continued the
14. neurology: the science of the nerves and the nervous system, especially the diseases affecting them.
15. olfactory: of or relating to the sense of smell.
16. thalamus: the interior region of the brain where sensory nerves originate.
22
THE CLEAR
dispute that olfactory recall was impossible. A check amongst the gathering on this faculty," independent of returning, brought forth the fact that one-half of those present remembered smell by smelling it again.
Returning is the full performance of imagery recall. The entire memory is able to make the organ areas resense the stimuli in a past incident. Partial recall is common, not common enough to be normal, but certainly common enough to have merited considerable study. For it, again, is a wide variable.
Perception of the present would be one method of facing reality. But if one cannot face the reality of the past, then, in some part, he is not facing some portion of reality. And if it is agreed that facing reality is desirable, then one would have to face yesterday's reality as well if he were to be considered entirely "sane" by contemporary definition. To "face yesterday" requires a certain condition of recall to be available. One would have to be able to remember. But how many ways are there of remembering?
First there is the return. That is new. It gives the advantage of examining the moving pictures and other sense perceptions recorded at the time of the event with all senses present. He can also return to his past conclusions and imaginings. It is of considerable aid in learning, in research, in ordinary living, to be able to be again at the place where the data desired was first inspected.
Then there are the more usual recalls. Optimum recall is by the return method of single or multiple senses, the individual himself remaining in present time.18 In other
17. faculty: an ability, natural or acquired, for a particular kind of action.
18. present time: the time which is now and becomes the past as rapidly as it is observed. It is a term loosely applied to the environment existing in now.
23
L. RON HUBBARD
words, some people, when they think of a rose, see one, smell one, feel one. They see in full color, vividlyùwith the "mind's eye" to use an old colloquialism. They smell it vividly. And they can feel it even to the thorns. They are thinking about roses by actually recalling a rose.
These people, thinking about a ship, would see a specific ship, feel the motion of her if they thought of being aboard her, smell the pine tar19 or even less savory odors and hear whatever sounds there were about her. They would see the ship in full color-motion and hear it in full tone-audio.
These faculties vary widely in the aberree. Some, when told to think of a rose, can merely visualize one. Some can smell one but not see it. Some see it without color or in very pale color. When told to think of a ship some aberrees only see a flat, colorless, still picture, such as a painting of a ship or the photograph of one. Some perceive a vessel in motion without color but with sound. Some hear the sound of a ship but fail to see any picture whatever. Some merely think of a ship as a concept that ships exist and that they know about them, and fail to see, feel, hear, smell or otherwise sense anything on a recall basis.
Some past observers have called this "imagery" but the term is so inapplicable to sound and touch, organic sensation and pain that recall is used uniformly as the technical Dianetic term. The value of recall in this business of living has occupied such scant attention that the entire concept has never been formulated previously. It is therefore detailed at some length here, as above.
It is quite simple to test recalls. If one will ask his fellows what their abilities are, he will gain a remarkable
19. pine tar: a thick, dark liquid obtained by destructive distillation (decomposition by heat in the absence of air) of pine wood, used in ointments, tar paints, etc.
24
THE CLEAR
idea of how widely varied this ability is from individual to individual. Some have this recall, some have that, some have none but operate on concepts of recall only. And remember, if you make a test on those around you, that any perception is filed in the memory and therefore has a recall which is to include pain, temperature, rhythm, taste and weight with the above-mentioned sight, sound, tactile and smell.
The Dianetic names for these recalls are visio (sight), sonic (sound), tactile (touch), olfactory (smell), rhythmic, kinesthetic (weight and motion), somatic (pain), thermal (temperature) and organic (internal sensations and, by new definition, emotion).
Then there is another set of mental activities which can be sum mated under the headings of imagination and creative imagination. Here again is abundant material for testing.
Imagination is the recombination of things one has sensed, thought or intellectually computed into existence, which do not necessarily have existence. This is the mind's method of envisioning desirable goals or forecasting futures. Imagination is extremely valuable as a part of essential solutions in any mental problem and in everyday existence. That it is recombination in no sense deprives it of its vast and wonderful complexity.
A Clear uses imagination in its entirety. There is an imagination impression for sight, smell, taste, soundùin short, for each one of the possible perceptions. These are manufactured impressions on the basis of models in the memory banks combined by conceptual ideas and construction. New physical structures, tomorrow in terms of today, next year in terms of last year, pleasure to be gained, deeds to be done, accidents to avoid: all these are imaginational functions.
The Clear has full color-visio, tone-sonic, tactile, olfactory, rhythmic, kinesthetic, thermal and organic
25
L. RON HUBBARD
imagination in kind.20 Asked to envision himself riding in a gilded coach-and-four,2' he "sees" the equipage,22 moving, in full color, he "hears" all the noises which should be present, he "smells" the smells he thinks should be there and he "feels" the upholstery, the motion and the presence in the coach of himself.
In addition to standard imagination there is creative imagination. This is a very wide undimensional23 ability, quite variable from individual to individual, possessed in enormous quantity by some. It is included here, not as a portion of the operation of the mind treated as a usual part of Dianetics, but to isolate it as an existing entity. In a Clear who possessed creative imagination, even if inhibited as an aberree, it is present and demonstrable. It is inherent. It can be aberrated only by prohibition of its general practice, which is to say, by aberrating the persistence in its application or encysting24 the whole mind. But creative imagination, that possession by which works of art are done, states built and man enriched, can be envisioned as a special function, independent in operation and in no way dependent for its existence upon an aberrated condition in the individual, since the examination of its activity in and use by a Clear possessing it adequately demonstrates its inherent character. It is rarely absent in any individual.
Finally, there is the last but most important activity of the mind. Man is to be regarded as a sentient25 being.
20. in kind: in proper or good condition.
21. coach-and-four: a coach pulled by four horses.
22. equipage: a carriage drawn by horses and attended by servants.
23. undimensional: without measurable extent or limit.
24. encysting: enclosing in or as if in a cyst or sac.
25. sentient: of, having or capable of feeling or perception; conscious.
26
CLEAR
His sentience depends upon his ability to resolve problems by perceiving or creating and understanding situations. This rationality is the primary, high-echelon function of that part of the mind which makes him a man, not just another animal. Remembering, perceiving, imagining, he has the signal26 ability of resolving conclusions and of using conclusions resolved to resolve further conclusions. This is rational man.
Rationality, as divorced from aberration, can be studied in a cleared person only. The aberrations of the aberree give him the appearance of irrationality. Though such irrationality may be given the gentler names of "eccentricity"27 or "human error" or even "personal idiosyncrasy,"28 it is, nevertheless, irrationality. The personality does not depend upon how irrationally a man may act. It is not a personality trait, for instance, to drive while drunk and kill a child on a crosswalkùor even to risk killing a child by driving while drunk. Irrationality is simply thatùthe inability to get right answers from data.
Now, it is a curious thing that although "everybody knows" (and what a horrible amount of misinformation that statement lets circulate) it is "human to err," the sentient portion of the mind, which computes the answers to problems and which makes man man, is utterly incapable of error.
This was a startling discovery when it was made, but it need not have been. It could have been deduced some time before. For it is quite simple and easy to understand. The actual computing ability of man is never in error even in a very severely aberrated person. Observing
26. signal: not average or ordinary; remarkable; notable.
27. eccentricity: unusual or odd behavior, or a peculiar habit.
28. idiosyncrasy: a characteristic, habit, mannerism or the like that is peculiar to an individual.
27
L. RON HUBBARD
the activity of such an aberrated person, one might thoughtlessly suppose that that person's computations were wrong. But that would be an observer error. Any person, aberrated or Clear, computes perfectly on the data stored and perceived.
Take any common calculating machine (and the mind is an exceptionally magnificent instrument far, far superior to any machine it will invent for ages to come) and put a problem on it for solution. Multiply seven times one. It will answer, properly, seven. Now multiply six times one but continue to hold down the seven. Six times one is six but the answer you will get is forty-two. Continue to hold down seven and put other problems on the machine. They are wrong, not as problems, but as answers. Now fix seven so that it stays down no matter what keys are touched and try to give the machine away. Nobody will want it because, obviously, the machine is crazy. It says ten times ten is seven hundred. But is the calculating portion of the machine really wrong or is it merely being fed the wrong data?
In the same way, the human mind, being called upon to resolve problems of a magnitude and with enough variables to confound any mere calculating machine a thousand times an hour, is prey to incorrect data. Incorrect data gets into the machine. The machine gives wrong answers. Incorrect data enters the human memory banks, the person reacts in an "abnormal manner." Essentially, then, the problem of resolving aberration is the problem of finding a "held-down seven." But of that, much, much more later. Right now we have accomplished our immediate ends.
These are the various abilities and activities of the human mind in its constant task of resolving and putting into solution a multitude of problems. It perceives, it recalls or returns, it imagines, it conceives and then resolves. Served by its extensionsùthe perceptics and
28
THE CLEAR
the memory banks and the imaginationsùthe mind brings forth answers which are invariably accurate, the solutions modified only by observation, education and viewpoint.
And the basic purposes of that mind and the basic nature of man, as discoverable in the Clear, are constructive and good, uniformly constructive and uniformly good, modified only by observation, education and viewpoint.
Man is good.
Take away his basic aberrations and with them go the evil of which the scholastic29 and the moralist were so fond. The only detachable portion of him is the "evil" portion. And when it is detached, his personality and vigor intensify. And he is glad to see the "evil" portion go because it was physical pain.
Later there are experiments and proofs for these things and they can be measured with the precision so dear to the heart of the physical scientist.
The Clear, then, is not an "adjusted" person, driven to activity by his repressions now thoroughly encysted. He is an unrepressed person, operating on self-determinism.30 And his abilities to perceive, recall, return, imagine, create and compute are outlined as we have seen.
The Clear is the goal in Dianetic therapy, a goal which some patience and a little study and work can bring about. Any person can be cleared unless he has been so unfortunate as to have had a large portion of his brain removed or to have been born with a grossly malformed nervous structure.
29. scholastic: one who narrowly adheres to traditional teachings, doctrines or methods.
30. self-determinism: the state wherein the individual can or cannot be controlled by his environment according to his own choice. He is confident in his interpersonal relationships. He reasons but does not need to react.
29
L. RON HUBBARD
We have seen the goal of Dianetics here. Let us now inspect the goal of man.
Editor's Note: Live demonstrations of Dianetics procedure and public lectures given by L. Ron Hubbard have been reproduced on cassette, providing real examples of the practice and results of these techniques. See page 590.
30
CHAPTER THREE
The Goal of Man
The goal of man, the lowest common denominator of all his activities, the dynamic principle of his existence, has long been sought. Should such an answer be discovered, it is inevitable that from it many answers would flow. It would explain all phenomena of behavior; it would lead toward a solution of man's major problems; and, most of all, it should be workable.
Consider all knowledge to fall above or below a line of demarcation. Everything above this line is not necessary to the solution of man's aberrations and general shortcomings and is inexactly known. Such a field of thought could be considered to embrace such things as metaphysics1 and mysticism.2 Below this line of demarcation could be considered to lie the finite universe. All things in the finite universe, whether known or as yet unknown, can be sensed, experienced or measured. The known data in the finite universe can be classified as scientific truth when it has been sensed, experienced and measured. All factors necessary to the resolution of a science of the mind were found within the finite universe and were discovered, sensed, measured and experienced and became scientific truth. The finite universe contains time, space, energy and life. No other factors were found necessary in the equation.
Time, space, energy and Me have a single denominator
1. metaphysics: a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of existence and of truth and knowledge.
2. mysticism: the beliefs or practices of those who claim to have experiences based on intuition, meditation, etc., of a spiritual nature, by which they learn truths not known by ordinary people.
31
L. RON HUBBARD
in common. As an analogy3 it could be considered that time, space, energy and life began at some point of origin and were commanded to continue to some nearly infinite destination. They were told nothing but what to do. They obey a single order and that order is "Survive!"
The Dynamic Principle of Existence Is Survival
The goal of life can be considered to be infinite survival. Man, as a life form, can be demonstrated to obey in all his actions and purposes the one command: "Survive!"
It is not a new thought that man is surviving. It is a new thought that man is motivated only by survival.
That his single goal is survival does not mean that he is the optimum survival mechanism which life has attained or will develop. The goal of the dinosaur was also survival and the dinosaur isn't extant anymore.
Obedience to this command, "Survive!" does not mean that every attempt to obey is uniformly successful. Changing environment, mutation and many other things militate4 against any one organism attaining infallible survival techniques or form.
Life forms change and die as new life forms develop just as surely as one life organism, lacking immortality in itself, creates other life organisms, then dies as itself. An excellent method, should one wish to cause life to survive over a very long period, would be to establish means by which it could assume many forms, and death itself would be necessary in order to facilitate the survival of the life force itself, since only death and decay could clear away older forms when new changes in the environment necessitated new forms. Life, as a force, existing over a nearly infinite period, would need
3. analogy: explanation of something by comparing it point by point with something similar.
4. militate: are directed (against)', operate or work (against or, rarely, for): said of facts, evidence, actions, etc.
32
THE GOAL OF MAN
a cyclic aspect in its unit organisms and forms.
What would be the optimum survival characteristics of various life forms? They would have to have various fundamental characteristics, differing from one species to the next just as one environment differs from the next.
This is important, since it has been but poorly considered in the past that a set of survival characteristics in one species would not be survival characteristics in another.
The methods of survival can be summed under the headings of food, protection (defensive and offensive) and procreation.5 There are no existing life forms which lack solutions to these problems. Every life form errs, one way or another, by holding a characteristic too long or developing characteristics which may lead to its extinction. But the developments which bring about successfulness of form are far more striking than their errors. The naturalist and biologist are continually resolving the characteristics of this or that life form by discovering that need rather than whim governs such developments. The hinges of the clamshell, the awesome face on the wings of the butterfly, have survival value.
Once survival was isolated as the only dynamic* of
* In order to establish nomenclature in Dianetics which would not be too complex for the purpose, words normally considered as adjectives or verbs have occasionally been pressed into service as nouns. This has been done on the valid principle that existing terminology, meaning so many different things, could not be used by Dianetics without making it necessary to explain away an old meaning to bring forth a new. To remove the step of explaining the old meaning and saying then that one doesn't mean that, thus entangling our communications inextricably, and to obviate the ancient custom of compounding ponderous and thundering syllables from the Greek and Roman tongues, this principle and some others have been adopted for nomenclature. Dynamic is here used as a noun and will so continue to be used throughout this volume. Somatic, perceptic and some others will be noted, defined when used. ù LRH
5. procreation: bringing living things into existence by the natural process of reproduction.
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L. RON HUBBARD
a life form which would explain all its activities, it was necessary to study further the action of survival. And it was discovered that when one considered pain and pleasure, he had at hand all the necessary ingredients with which to formulate the action life takes in its effort to survive.
As will be seen in the accompanying graph, a spectrum of life has been conceived to span from the zero of death or extinction toward the infinity of potential immortality. This spectrum was considered to contain an infinity of lines, extending ladderlike toward the potential of immortality. Each line as the ladder mounted was spaced a little wider than the last, in a geometric progression.6
The thrust of survival is away from death and toward immortality. The ultimate pain could be conceived as existing just before death and the ultimate pleasure could be conceived as immortality.
Immortality could be said to have an attractive type of force and death a repelling force in the consideration of the unit organism or the species. But as survival rises higher and higher toward immortality, wider and wider spaces are encountered until the gaps are finitely impossible to bridge. The urge is away from death, which has a repelling force, and toward immortality, which has an attracting force; the attracting force is pleasure, the repelling force is pain. j
For the individual, the length of the arrow could be j considered to be at a high potential within the fourth zone. Here the survival potential would be excellent and the individual would enjoy existence. I
From left to right could be graphed the years. f ùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùùù i
6. geometric progression: a sequence of terms, such as 1, 3, 9, j 27, 81, etc., each of which is a constant multiple of the immediately preceding term.
34
D n POTENTIAL
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L. RON HUBBARD
The urge toward pleasure is dynamic. Pleasure is the reward, and the seeking of the rewardùsurvival goals ùwould be a pleasurable act. And to ensure that survival is accomplished under the mandate "Survive!" it seems to have been provided that reduction from a high potential would bring pain.
Pain is provided to repel the individual from death, pleasure is provided to call him toward optimum life. The search for and the attainment of pleasure is not less valid in survival than the avoidance of pain. In fact, on some observed evidence, pleasure seems to have a much greater value in the cosmic scheme than pain.
Now, it would be well to define what is meant by pleasure, aside from its connection with immortality. The dictionary states that pleasure is "gratification; agreeable emotions, mental or physical; transient enjoyment; opposed to pain." Pleasure can be found in so many things and activities that a catalog of all the things and activities man has, does and may consider pleasurable alone could round out the definition.
And what do we mean by pain? The dictionary states: "physical or mental suffering; penalty."
These two definitions, in passing, are demonstrative of an intuitive type of thought which runs through the language. Once one has a thing which leads to the resolution of hitherto unsolved problems, even the dictionaries are found to have "always known it."
If we wished to make this graph for a life-form cycle, it would be identical except that the value of the years would be increased to measure eons. For there is no difference, it seems, except magnitude, in the scope of the individual and the scope of the species. This inference could be drawn even without such remarkable evidence as the fact that a human being, growing from
36
THE GOAL OF MAN
zygote7 to adult, evolutes8 through all the forms which the whole species is supposed to have evolved through.
Now, there is more in this graph than has been remarked as yet. The physical and mental state of the individual varies from hour to hour, day to day, year to year. Therefore, the level of survival would form either a daily curve or the curve of a life on a measure of hourly or yearly position in the zones. And there would be two curves made possible by this, the physical curve and the mental curve. When we get toward the back of the book, the relationships between these two curves will be found vital and it will also be seen that, ordinarily, a sag in the mental curve will precede a sag in the physical curve.
The zones, then, can apply to two things: the physical being and the mental being. Therefore, these four zones can be called zones of the states of being. If a person is happy mentally, the survival level can be placed in zone 4. If the person is extremely ill physically, he might be plotted, on estimation of his illness, in zone 1 or close to death.
Very unprecise, but nevertheless descriptive, names have been assigned to these zones. Zone 3 is one of general happiness and well-being. Zone 2 is a level of bearable existence. Zone 1 is one of anger. Zone 0 is the zone of apathy. These zones can be used as a Tone Scale9 by which a state of mind can be graded. Just above death, which is 0, would be the lowest mental apathy or lowest level of physical life, 0.1. A tone 1,
7. zygote: the first cell of a new individual.
8. evolutes: evolves; develops.
9. Tone Scale: a scale which shows the emotional tones of a person. These, ranged from the highest to the lowest, are, in part, serenity (the highest level), enthusiasm (as we proceed downward), conservatism, boredom, antagonism, anger, covert hostility, fear, grief, apathy.
37
L. RON HUBBARD
where the body is fighting physical pain or illness or where the being is fighting in anger, could be graded from 1.0, which would be resentment or hostility, through tone 1.5, which would be a screaming rage, to a 1.9, which would be merely a quarrelsome inclination. From tone 2.0 to tone 3.0 there would be an increasing interest in existence, and so forth.
It so happens that the state of physical being or mental being does not long remain static. Therefore, there are various fluctuations. In the course of a single day an aberree may run from 0.5 to 3.5, up and down, as a mental being. An accident or illness could cause a similar fluctuation in a day.
These are, then, figures which can be assigned to four things: the mental state on an acute10 basis and the mental state on a general, average basis, and the physical being on an acute basis and the physical being on a general basis. In Dianetics, we do not much employ the physical Tone Scale. The mental Tone Scale, however, is of vast and vital importance!
These values of happiness, bearable existence, anger and apathy are not arbitrary" values. They are deduced from observation of the behavior of emotional states. A Clear is usually found varying around tone 4, plus or minus, in an average day. He is a general tone 4, which is one of the inherent conditions of being Clear. A norm in current society, at a wild guess, is probably around a general tone 2.8.
In this descriptive graph, which is two-dimensional, the vital data for the solution of the problem of the life dynamic are workably combined. The horizontal lines are in terms of geometric progression beginning with
10. acute: brief and severe.
11. arbitrary: based on one's preference, notion, whim, etc.; capricious.
38
GOAL OF MAN
the zero line immediately above death. There are ten lines for each zone and each zone denotes a mental or physical state of being, as noted. Geometric progression, so used, leaves ever-increasing spaces between the lines. The width of this space is the survival potential existing at the moment the top point of the survival dynamic arrow is within that space. The further away from death the top point of the survival dynamic arrow is, the better chance the individual has of survival. Geometric progression reaches up toward the impossible of infinity and cannot, of course, reach infinity. The organism is surviving through time from left to right. Survival optimumùimmortalityùlies in terms of time to the right. Potential only is measured vertically.
The survival dynamic actually resides within the organism as inherited from the species. The organism is part of the species as a railroad tie might be said to be part of a railroad as seen by an observer on a train, the observer being always in nowùalthough this analogy is not perhaps the best.
Within itself the organism possesses a repulsive force toward pain sources. The source of the pain is not a driving force any more than the thorn bush which tears the hand was a driving force; the organism repulses the potential pain of a thorn.
At the same time the organism has at work a force which attracts it to the sources of pleasure. Pleasure does not magnetize the organism into drawing near. It is the organism which possesses the attraction force. It is inherent.
The repulsion of pain sources adds to the attraction for pleasure sources to operate as a combined thrust away from death and toward immortality. The thrust away from death is no more powerful than the thrust toward immortality. In other words, in terms of the survival
39
L. RON HUBBARD
dynamic, pleasure has as much validity as pain.
It should not be read here that survival is always a matter of keeping an eye on the future. Contemplation of pleasure, pure enjoyment, contemplation of past pleasures: all combine into harmonies which, while they operate automatically as a rise toward the survival potential, by their action within the organism physically, do not demand the future as an active portion of the mental computation in such contemplation.
A pleasure which reacts to injure the body physically, as in the case of debauchery,12 discovers at work a ratio between the physical effect (which is depressed toward pain) and the mental effect of experienced pleasure. There is a consequent lowering of the survival dynamic. Averaging out, the future possibility of strain because of the act, added to the state of being at the moment the debauchery was experienced, again depresses the survival dynamic. Because of this, various kinds of debauchery have been in indifferent odor'3 with man throughout his history. This is the equation of "immoral pleasures." And any action which has brought about survival suppression or which can bring it about, when pursued as a pleasure, has been denounced at some time or another in man's history. Immorality is originally hung as a label upon some act or class of actions because they depress the level of the survival dynamic. Future enforcement of moral stigma14 may depend largely upon prejudice and aberration and there is, consequently, a continuous quarrel over what is moral and what is immoral.
Because certain things practiced as pleasures are
12. debauchery: indulgence in harmful or immoral pleasures.
13. odor: repute; esteem.
14. stigma: a mark of shame, a stain on a person's good reputation.
40
THE GOAL OF MAN
actually painsùand how easy it will be to trace out why when you've finished this volumeùand because of the moral equation as above, pleasure itself, in any aberrated society, can become decried.15 A certain kind of thinking, of which more later, permits poor differentiation between one object and another. Confusing a dishonest politician with all politicians would be an example of this. In ancient times, the Roman was fond of his pleasures and some of the things he called pleasure were a trifle strenuous on other species, such as Christians. When the Christian overthrew the pagan16 state, the ancient order of Rome was in a villain's role. Anything, therefore, which was Roman was villainous. This went to such remarkable lengths that the Roman love of bathing made bathing so immoral that Europe went unwashed for some fifteen hundred years. The Roman had become a pain source so general that everything Roman was evil and it stayed evil long after Roman paganism perished. Immorality, in such a fashion, tends to become an involved subject. In this case it became so involved that pleasure itself was stigmatized.
When half the survival potential is struck from the list of lawful things, there is a considerable reduction in survival indeed. Considering this graph on a racial scale, the reduction of survival potential by one-half would forecast that direful17 things lay in wait for the race. Actually, because man is after all man, no set of laws, however enforced, can completely wipe away the attraction of pleasure. But in this case enough was removed and banned to occasion precisely what
15. decried: spoken out against strongly and openly; denounced.
16. pagan: non-Christian; refers to those peoples who worshipped many gods, such as the Greeks and the Romans.
17. direful: dreadful; awful; terrible.
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L. RON HUBBARD
happened: the Dark Ages18 and the recession of society. Society brightened only in those periods such as the Renaissance,19 in which pleasure became less unlawful.
When a race or an individual drops into the second zone, as marked on the chart, and the general tone ranges from the first zone barely into the third, a condition of insanity ensues. Insanity is irrationality. It is also a state in which nonsurvival has been so closely approached continually that the race or the organism engages in all manner of wild solutions.
In further interpretation of this descriptic20 graph there is the matter of the survival suppressor. This, it will be seen, is a thrust downward out of potential immortality at the race or organism represented as the survival dynamic. The survival suppressor is the combined and variable threats to the survival of the race or organism. These threats come from other species, from time, from other energies. These are also engaged in the contest of survival to potential immortality in terms of their own species or identities. Thus there is a conflict involved. Every other form of life or energy could be plotted in a descriptic as the survival dynamic. If we were to use a duck's survival dynamic in a descriptic graph, we would see the duck seeking a high survival level and man would be a part of the duck's suppressor.
18. Dark Ages: the Middle Ages, especially the earlier part from about A.D. 476 to about the end of the 10th century: so called from the idea that this period in Europe was characterized by intellectual stagnation, widespread ignorance and poverty, and cultural decline.
19. Renaissance: the great revival of art, literature and learning in Europe in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, based on classical (Greek and Roman) sources. It began in Italy and spread gradually to other countries and marked the transition from the medieval world (from about A.D. 500 to 1450) to the modern.
20. descriptic: representing or delineating by a picture or figure.
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THE GOAL OF MAN
The balance and nature of things do not permit the infinity of the goal of immortality to be reached. In fluctuating balance and in almost unlimited complexity, life and energies ebb and flood, out of the nebulous, into forms and, through decay, into the nebulous once more.* Many equations could be drawn concerning this, but it is outside the sphere of our present interest.
In terms of the zones of the descriptic, it is of relative concern what the extent of the force of the suppressor is against the survival dynamic. The dynamic is inherent in individuals, groups and races, evolved to resist the suppressor through the eons. In the case of man, he carries with him another level of offensive and defensive techniques, his cultures. His primary technology of survival is mental activity governing physical action in the sentient echelon. But every life form has its own technology, formed to resolve the problems of food, protection and procreation. The degree of workability of the technology any life form develops (armor or brains, f leetness of foot or deceptive form) is a direct index of the survival potential, the relative immortality, of that form. There have been vast upsets in the past; man, when he developed into the world's most dangerous animal (he can and does kill or enslave any life form, doesn't he?), overloaded the suppressor on many other life forms and they dwindled in number or vanished.
* The Veda;1' also Lucretius'22 Nature of Things. ùLRH
21. Veda: the most ancient sacred writings of the Hindus.
22. Lucretius: (987-55 B.C.) Roman poet who was the author of the unfinished On the Nature of Things, a didactic (instructional) poem in six books, setting forth in outline a complete science of the universe. The purpose of the work was to prove, by investigating the nature of the world in which man lives, that all thingsù including manùoperate according to their own laws and are not in any way influenced by supernatural powers.
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A great climatic change, such as the one which packed so many mammoths in Siberian23 ice, may overload the suppressor on a life form. A long drought in the American Southwest in not too ancient times wiped out the better part of an Indian civilization.
A cataclysm24 such as an explosion of the core of the Earth, if that were possible, or the atom bomb or the sudden cessation of burning on the sun would wipe out all life forms on Earth.
And a life form can even overload the suppressor on itself. A dinosaur destroys all his food and so destroys the dinosaur. A bubonic plague25 bacillus26 attacks its hosts with such thorough appetite that the whole generation of Pasteurella pestis27 vanishes. Such things are not intended by the suicide to be suicide; the life form has run up against an equation which has an unknown variable, and the unknown variable unfortunately contained enough value to overload the suppressor. This is the "didn't know the gun was loaded" equation.
And if the bubonic plague bacillus overloads its own suppressor in an area and then ceases to trouble its food and shelterùthe animalsùthen the animals consider themselves benefited.
Reckless and clever and well-nigh28 indestructible, man has led a course which is a far cry29 from "tooth
23. Siberian: of Siberia, a part of the Soviet Union in north Asia, extending from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific.
24. cataclysm: any great upheaval that causes sudden and violent changes, as an earthquake, war, etc.
25. bubonic plague: a very dangerous contagious disease, accompanied by fever, chills and swelling of the lymphatic glands. It is carried to humans by fleas from rats or squirrels.
26. bacillus: loosely, any of the bacteria, especially those causing a disease.
29. a far cry: only remotely related; very different.
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THE GOAL OF MAN
and claw" in every sphere. And so have the redwood tree and the shark. Just as a life form, man, like every life form, is "symbiotic."30 Life is a group effort. Lichens" and plankton32 and algae33 may do very well on sunlight and minerals alone, but they are the building blocks. Above such existence, as the forms grow more complex, a tremendous interdependence exists.
It is very well for a forester to believe that certain trees willfully kill all other varieties of trees around them and then conclude a specious34 "attitude" of trees. Let him look again. What made the soil? What provides the means of keeping the oxygen balance? What makes it possible for rain to fall in other areas? These willful and murderous trees. And squirrels plant trees. And man plants trees. And trees shelter trees of another kind. And animals fertilize trees. And trees shelter animals. And trees hold the soil so less well-rooted plants can grow. Look anywhere and everywhere and we see life as an assist for life. The multitude of the complexities of life as affinities35 for life is not dramatic. But they are the steady, practical, important reason life can continue to exist at all.
30. symbiotic: having to do with the living together of similar or dissimilar organisms for mutual benefit.
31. lichens: any of a large group of plants that look somewhat like moss and grow in patches on trees, rocks, etc.
32. plankton: the small animal and plant organisms that float or drift in water, especially at or near the surface. Plankton serves as an important source of food for larger animals, such as fish.
33. algae: a group of plants, either one-celled or many-celled, often growing in colonies. Algae contain chlorophyll (the green coloring matter of plants) and other pigments, but have no true root, stem or leaf. They are found in water or damp places and include seaweed, pond scum, etc.
34. specious: seeming to be good, sound, correct, logical, etc., without really being so; plausible but not genuine.
35. affinities: the attractions which exist between two human beings, or between human beings and other life organisms.
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L. RON HUBBARD
A redwood tree may be first out for redwood trees and although it does an excellent job of seeming to exist as redwood alone, a closer glance will show it has dependencies and is depended upon.
Therefore, the dynamic of any life form can be seen to be assisted by many other dynamics and combines with them against the suppressive factors. None survive alone.
Necessity has been declared to be a very wonderful thing. But necessity is a word which has been taken rather loosely for granted. Opportunism36 seems to have been read largely into necessity. What is necessity? Besides being the "mother of invention," is it a dramatic, sudden thing which excuses wars and murders, which touches a man only when he is about to starve? Or is necessity a much gentler and less dramatic quantity? "Everything," according to Leucippus,37 "is driven by necessity." This is a keynote of much theorizing down through the ages. Driven: that is the key to the error. Driven, things are driven. Necessity drives. Pain drives. Necessity and pain, pain and necessity.
Recalling the dramatic and overlooking the important, man has conceived himself, from time to time, to be an object of chase by necessity and pain. These were two anthropomorphic (manlike) things which, in full costume, stuck spears at him. It can be said to be a wrong concept merely because it does not work to produce more answers.
Whatever there is of necessity is within him. Nothing is driving him except his original impetus to survive. And he carries that within himself or his group. Within
36. opportunism: the policy or practice, as in politics, business or one's personal affairs, of adapting actions, decisions, etc., to expediency or effectiveness regardless of the sacrifice of ethical principles.
37. Leucippus: Greek philosopher of the 5th century B.C.
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THE GOAL OF MAN
him is the force with which he fends off pain. Within him is the force with which he attracts pleasure.
It chances to be a scientific fact that man is a self-determined organism to the outermost limit that any form of life can be, for he still depends upon other forms of life and his general environment. But he is self-determined. This is a matter which will be covered later. But right here it is necessary to indicate that he is not inherently a determined organism in the sense that he is driven on this wonderful stimulus-response basis which looks so neat in certain textbooks, and works so completely unworkably in the world of man. The happy little illustrations about rats do not serve when we are talking about man. The more complex the organism, the less reliably the stimulus-response equation works. And when one reaches that highest complexity, man, he has reached a fine degree of variability in terms of stimulus-response. The more sentient, the more rational an organism, the more that organism is self-determined. Self-determinism, like all things, is relative. Compared to a rat, however, man is very self-determined indeed. This is only a scientific fact because it can easily be proven.
The more sentient the man, the less he is a "pushbutton" instrument. Aberrated and reduced, he can, of course, in a limited degree, be made to perform like a marionette; but then it is understood that the more aberrated a person is, the closer he approaches the intelligence quotient of an animal.
Given this self-determinism, it is interesting to observe what a man does with it. While he can never escape the "didn't know it was loaded" equation in terms of cataclysm or the unexpected gain of some other life form, he operates in a high zone level of survival potential. But here he is, self-determined, rational, his primary weaponùhis mindùin excellent
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L. RON HUBBARD
working order. What are his necessity instincts?
Necessity, according to that very sentient if rapidly subject-changing article, the dictionary, is "the state of being necessary; that which is unavoidable; compulsion." It also adds that necessity is "extreme poverty," but we don't want that. We are talking about survival.
The compulsion mentioned can be reevaluated in terms of the survival dynamic. That is interior in the organism and the race. And what is "necessary" to survival?
We have seen and can prove clinically that there are two factors at work. The necessity of avoiding pain is a factor because degree by degree, little things, not much in themselves, can amount to large pains which, compounded in that rapid geometric progression, bring on death. Pain is the sadness of being bawled out38 for poor work, because that may lead to being fired, which may lead to starvation, which may lead to death. Run any equation into which pain has entered and it can be seen that it reduces down to possible nonsurvival. And if this were all there were to surviving and if necessity were a vicious little gnome39 with a pitchfork, it seems rather obvious that there would be scant reason to go on living. But there is the other part of the equation: pleasure. That is a more stable part than pain, Stoics40 to the contrary, as clinical tests in Dianetics prove.
There is therefore a necessity for pleasure, for working, as happiness can be defined, toward known goals over not unknowable obstacles. And the necessity for
38. bawled out: (slang) scolded angrily.
39. gnome: (folklore) any of a race of small, misshapen, dwarf-like beings, supposed to dwell in the earth and guard its treasures.
40. Stoics: people who maintain or affect the mental attitude advocated by the Stoics, a Greek school of philosophy, founded by Zeno about 308 B.C. , holding that human beings should be free from passion and calmly accept all occurrences as the unavoidable result of divine will.
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THE GOAL OF MAN
pleasure is such that a great deal of pain can be borne to attain it. Pleasure is the positive commodity. It is enjoyment of work, contemplation of deeds well done; it is a good book or a good friend; it is taking all the skin off one's knees climbing the Matterhorn;41 it is hearing the kid first say "Daddy"; it is a brawl on the Bund42 at Shanghai or the whistle of amour43 from a doorway; it's adventure and hope and enthusiasm and "someday I'll learn to paint"; it's eating a good meal or kissing a pretty girl or playing a stiff game of bluff on the stock exchange. It's what man does that he enjoys doing; it's what man does that he enjoys contemplating; it's what man does that he enjoys remembering; and it may be just the talk of things he knows he'll never do.
Man will endure a lot of pain to obtain a little pleasure. Out in the laboratory of the world, it takes very little time to confirm that.
And how does necessity fit this picture? There is a necessity for pleasure, a necessity as live and quivering and vital as the human heart itself. He who said that a man who had two loaves of bread should sell one to buy white hyacinth,44 spoke sooth.45 The creative, the constructive, the beautiful, the harmonious, the adventurous, yes, and even escape from the maw46 of oblivion: these things are pleasure and these things are necessity. There was a man once who had walked a thousand miles just to see an orange tree and another who was a
41. Matterhorn: a mountain on the border of Switzerland and Italy.
42. Bund: a street running along the waterfront in Shanghai (a seaport in eastern China).
43. amour: (French) love.
44. hyacinth: a plant of the lily family, widely cultivated for its cylindrical cluster of fragrant flowers in a variety of colors.
45. sooth: truth.
46. maw: anything thought of as consuming, devouring, etc., without end.
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L. RON HUBBARD
mass of scars and poor-set bones who was eager just to get a chance to "fan47 another bronc."
It is very well to dwell in some Olympian48 height and write a book of penalties and very well to read to find what writers said that other writers said, but it is not very practical.
The pain-drive theory49 does not work. If some of these basics of Dianetics were only poetry about the idyllic50 state of man, they might be justified in that, but it happens that out in the laboratory of the world, they work.
Man, in affinity with man, survives, and that survival is pleasure.
47. fan: (Western US, chiefly cowboy use) slap the flanks (of a horse or other animal) repeatedly with a hat to get it to move or move faster.
48. Olympian: of, resembling, characteristic of or suitable to the gods of Olympus (mountain in northeastern Greece); majestic or aloof.
49. pain-drive theory: the theory that pain, deprivation or other unpleasant consequence imposed on or experienced by an organism responding incorrectly under specific conditions establishes, through avoidance, the desired learning or behavior.
50. idyllic: pleasing and simple; pastoral (characteristic of rural life, idealized as peaceful, simple and natural) or picturesque.
50
CHAPTER FOUR
The Four Dynamics
In the original equations of Dianetics, when the research was young, it was believed that survival could be envisioned in personal terms alone and still answer all conditions. A theory is only as good as it works. And it works as well as it explains observed data and predicts new material which will be found, in fact, to exist.
Survival in personal terms was computed until the whole activity of man could be theoretically explained in terms of self alone. The logic looked fairly valid. But then it was applied to the world. Something was wrong: it did not solve problems. In fact, the theory of survival in personal terms alone was so unworkable that it left a majority of behavior phenomena unexplained. But it could be computed and it still looked good.
Then it was that a nearly intuitive idea occurred. Man's understanding developed in ratio to his recognition of his brotherhood with the universe. That was high-flown but it yielded results.
Was man himself a brotherhood of man? He had evolved and become strong as a gregarious' being, an animal that hunted in packs. It seemed possible that all his activities could be computed in terms of the survival of the group. That computation was made. It looked good. Man survived, it was postulated, solely in terms of the survival of his group. It looked good but it left a majority of observed phenomena unexplained.
1. gregarious: living in herds or flocks.
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L. RON HUBBARD
It was attempted, then, to explain man's behavior in terms of mankind alone; which is to say, it was assumed that mankind survived for mankind in a highly altruistic2 way. This was straight down the sylvan3 path of Jean Jacques Rousseau.4 It could be computed that man lived alone for the survival of all mankind. But when addressed to the laboratoryùthe worldùit did not work.
Finally, it was recalled that some had thought that man's entire activity and all his behavior could be explained by assuming that he lived for sex alone. This was not an original assumption. But some original computations were made upon it and it is true that, by a few quick twists of the equation, his survival activity can be made to resolve on only the sexual basis. But when this was applied to observed data, again it failed to explain every phenomenon.
An examination was made of what had been attempted. It had been assumed that man survived only for himself as an individual; it had been computed that he survived only for the group, the pack, for society; it had been postulated that he survived only for mankind; and finally, it had been theorized that he lived only for sex. None worked alone.
A new computation was made on the survival dynamic. Exactly for what was man surviving? All four of these factorsùself, sex, group and mankindùwere entered into a new equation. And now it was found, a theory was in hand which worked. It explained all observed phenomena and it predicted new phenomena
2. altruistic: having unselfish concern for the welfare of others.
3. sylvan: of or characteristic of the woods or forests. Used figuratively, as Rousseau's philosophy of the "natural man."
4. Jean Jacques Rousseau: (1712-1778) Swiss-born French philosopher, author, political theorist and composer, who argued that nature is good and civilization bad.
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THE FOUR DYNAMICS
which were discovered to exist. It was a scientific equation, therefore!
From the survival dynamic, in this fashion, were evolved the four dynamics. By survival dynamic was meant the basic command Survive! which underlay all activity. By dynamic was meant one of the four purpose divisions of the entire dynamic principle. The four dynamics were not new forces; they were subdivisions of the primary force.
Dynamic one is the urge toward ultimate survival on the part of the individual and for himself. It includes his immediate symbiotes,* the extension of culture for his own benefit and name immortality.
Dynamic two is the urge of the individual toward ultimate survival via the sex act, the creation of and the rearing of children. It includes their symbiotes, the extension of culture for them and their future provision.
Dynamic three is the urge of the individual toward ultimate survival for the group. It includes the symbiotes of the group and the extension of its culture.
Dynamic four includes the urge of the individual toward ultimate survival for all mankind. It includes the symbiotes of mankind and the extension of its culture.
Life, the atom and the universe and energy itself are included under the symbiotic classification.
It will be seen immediately that these four dynamics are actually a spectrum without sharp division lines. The survival dynamic can be seen to sweep out from the individual to embrace the entire species and its symbiotes.
None of these dynamics is necessarily stronger than any of the others. Each is strong. They are the four
* The Dianetic meaning of symbiote is extended beyond the dictionary definition to mean "any or all life or energy forms which are mutually dependent for survival." The atom depends on the universe, the universe on the atom. ùLRH
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roads a man takes to survival. And the four roads are actually one road. And the one road is actually a spectrum of thousands of roads contained within the four. They are all in terms of past, present and future in that the present may be a sum of the past and the future may be the product of the past and present.
All the purposes of man can be considered to lie within this spectrum and all behavior becomes explained.
That man is selfish is a valid statement when one means an aberrated man. That man is antisocial is an equally valid statement if one adds the modifier, aberration. And other such statements resolve equally.
Now, it happens that these four dynamics can be seen to compete, one with another, in their operation within an individual or a society. There is a rational reason for this. The phrase "social competition" is a compound of aberrated behavior and sentient difficulties.
Any man, group or race may be in contest with any race, group or man and even in contest with sex on an entirely rational level.
The equation of the optimum solution would be that a problem has been well resolved which portends* the maximum good for the maximum number of dynamics. That is to say that any solution, modified by the time available to put the solution into effect, should be creative or constructive for the greatest possible number of dynamics. The optimum solution for any problem would be a solution which achieved the maximum benefit in all the dynamics. This means that a man, determining upon some project, would fare best if he benefited everything concerned in the four dynamics as his project touched them. He would then have to benefit himself as well for the solution to be optimum. In other words, the
5. portends: is an indication of; signifies.
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THE FOUR DYNAMICS
benefiting of the group and mankind dynamics but the blocking of the sex dynamic and the self dynamic would be much poorer than the best solution. The survival conduct pattern is built upon this equation of the optimum solution. It is the basic equation of all rational behavior and is the equation on which a Clear functions. It is inherent in man.
In other words, the best solution to any problem is that which will bring the greatest good to the greatest number of beings, including self, progeny,6 family associates, political and racial groups, and at length to all mankind. The greatest good may require, as well, some destruction, but the solution deteriorates in a ratio to the destructiveness employed. Self-sacrifice and selfishness are alike reductive of the optimum action equation and alike have been suspected and should be.
This is entirely a matter of does it work? Even on an unaberrated basis there are times when one or another of these dynamics have to be dropped from the computation of some activity or other and indeed, few problems are so entirely intense that they must take into account all the dynamics. But when a problem achieves such intensity, and time is not an important factor, serious errors can follow the omission of one or another of the dynamics from the factors considered.
In the case of a Napoleon7 "saving France" at the expense of the remainder of mankind in Europe, the equation of the optimum solution was so far neglected that all the revolutionary gains of the French people
6. progeny: children, descendants or offspring collectively.
7. Napoleon: Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), French military leader and emperor of France (1804-1815). He led a brilliant campaign of French domination in Europe but ended in ruin, spending the last years of his life as a prisoner on a lonely British island.
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were lost. In the case of Caesar8 "saving Rome," the equation was so poorly done that the survival of Rome was impeded.
But there are special cases when the equation of the optimum solution becomes so involved with time that certain dynamics must be neglected to permit other dynamics to persist. The case of a sailor giving his own life to save his ship answers the group dynamic. Such an action is a valid solution to a problem. But it violates the optimum solution because it did not answer for dynamic one: self.
Many examples of various kinds could be cited where one or another of the dynamics must, of necessity, receive priority, all on an entirely rational basis.
On an aberrated basis, the equation is still valid but complicated by irrationalities which have no part of the situation. Many solutions are bad merely because of false educational data or no data at all. But these are still solutions. In the case of aberrated solutions, the dynamics are actually and actively impeded, as will later be outlined in full.
8. Caesar: Julius Caesar (1007-44 B.C.), Roman general and statesman. As part of his military conquests, he invaded Britain in 55 and 54 B.C. Became Roman dictator in 49 B.C.
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CHAPTER FIVE
Summary
The dynamic principle of existence is survival.
This survival can be graduated into four zones, each one progressively portending a better opportunity of reaching the potential of immortality. Zone 0 borders from death and includes apathy; zone 1 borders from apathy and includes violent effort; zone 2 borders from violence into mediocre, but not entirely satisfactory, success; zone 3 borders from the mediocre to the excellent chance. These zones are each occasioned by the ratio of the suppressor to the survival dynamic. In apathy, zone 0, the suppressor appears too great to be overcome. In the area of violence, zone 1, the suppressor more or less overbalances the survival dynamic, requiring enormous effort which, when expended without result, drops the organism into the zero zone. In the area of mediocrity, zone 2, the suppressor and the survival dynamic are more or less evenly balanced. In the area of zone 3, the survival dynamic has overcome the suppressor and, the chances of survival being excellent, is the area of high response to problems. These four zones might be classed as the zone of no hope, the zone of violent action, the area of balance and the area of high hope. Clinical experiment is the basis of these zones since they follow a progress of mental or physical being as it rises from the death area into high existence.
The four dynamics are subdivisions of the survival dynamic and are, in mankind, the thrust toward potential survival in terms of entities. They embrace all the purposes, activities and behavior of mankind. They
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could be said to be a survival conduct pattern. The first of these, but not necessarily the most important nor yet the one which will receive priority in various efforts, is the individual dynamic, Dynamic one, which includes the personal survival of the individual as a living person and the survival of his personal symbiotes. Dynamic two is the thrust toward potential immortality through children and includes all sexual activity as well as the symbiotes of the children. Dynamic three is survival in terms of the group, which term may include such things as a club, a military company, a city, a state, a nation; this would include the symbiotes of the group. Dynamic four is the thrust toward potential immortality of mankind as a species and the symbiotes of mankind. Embraced within these classifications are any part of existence, any form of matter and, indeed, the universe.
Any problem or situation discoverable within the activities or purposes of mankind is embraced within these dynamics.
The equation of the optimum solution is inherent within the organism and, modified by education or viewpoint and modified further by time, is the operating method of unaberrated individuals, groups or mankind. The equation of the optimum solution is always present even in severely aberrated individuals and is used as modified by their education, viewpoint and available time. The aberration does not remove activity from the dynamics of survival. Aberrated conduct is irrational survival conduct and is fully intended to lead to survival. That the intent is not the act does not eradicate the intent.
These Are the Fundamental Axioms of Dianetics:
The dynamic principle of existenceùSurvive!
58
SUMMARY
Survival, considered as the single and sole purpose, subdivides into four dynamics.
Dynamic one is the urge of the individual toward survival for the individual and his symbiotes. (By symbiote is meant all entities and energies which aid survival.)
Dynamic two is the urge of the individual toward survival through procreation; it includes both the sex act and the raising of progeny, the care of children and their symbiotes.
Dynamic three is the urge of the individual toward survival for the group or the group for the group and includes the symbiotes of that group.
Dynamic four is the urge of the individual toward survival for mankind or the urge toward survival of mankind for mankind as well as the group for mankind, etc., and includes the symbiotes of mankind.
The absolute goal of survival is immortality or infinite survival. This is sought by the individual in terms of himself as an organism, as a spirit or as a name or as his children, as a group of which he is a member or as mankind and the progeny and symbiotes of others as well as his own.
The reward of survival activity is pleasure.
The ultimate penalty of destructive activity is death or complete nonsurvival, and is pain.
Successes raise the survival potential toward infinite survival.
Failures lower the survival potential toward death.
The human mind is engaged upon perceiving and retaining data, composing or computing conclusions
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and posing and resolving problems related to organisms along all four dynamics; and the purpose of perception, retention, concluding and resolving problems is to direct its own organism and symbiotes and other organisms and symbiotes along the four dynamics toward survival.
Intelligence is the ability to perceive, pose and resolve problems.
The dynamic is the tenacity to life and vigor and persistence in survival.
Both the dynamic and intelligence are necessary to persist and accomplish and neither is a constant quantity from individual to individual, group to group.
The dynamics are inhibited by engrams, which lie across them and disperse life force.
Intelligence is inhibited by engrams which feed false or improperly graded data into the analyzer.1
Happiness is the overcoming of not unknown obstacles toward a known goal and, transiently, the contemplation of or indulgence in pleasure.
The analytical mind is that portion of the mind which perceives and retains experience data to compose and resolve problems and direct the organism along the four dynamics. It thinks in differences and similarities.
The reactive mind is that portion of the mind which files and retains physical pain and painful emotion and seeks to direct the organism solely on a stimulus-response basis. It thinks only in identities.
The somatic mind is that mind which, directed by the analytical or reactive mind, places solutions into effect on the physical level.
1. analyzer: see analytical mind in the glossary.
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SUMMARY
A training pattern is that stimulus-response mechanism resolved by the analytical mind to care for routine activity or emergency activity. It is held in the somatic mind and can be changed at will by the analytical mind.
Habit is that stimulus-response reaction dictated by the reactive mind from the content of engrams and put into effect by the somatic mind. It can be changed only by those things which change engrams.
Aberrations, under which is included all deranged or irrational behavior, are caused by engrams. They are stimulus-response, pro- and contrasurvival.
Psychosomatic ills are caused by engrams.
The engram is the single source of aberrations and psychosomatic ills.
Moments of "unconsciousness," when the analytical mind is attenuated2 in greater or lesser degree, are the only moments when engrams can be received.
The engram is a moment of "unconsciousness" containing physical pain or painful emotion and all perceptions, and is not available to the analytical mind as experience.
Emotion is three things: engramic response to situations, endocrine metering of the body to meet situations on an analytical level, and the inhibition or the furtherance of life force.
The potential value of an individual or a group may be expressed by the equation
PV = ID" where I is Intelligence and D is Dynamic.
2. attenuated: weakened or reduced in force, intensity, effect, quantity or value.
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The worth of an individual is computed in terms of the alignment, on any dynamic, of his potential value with optimum survival along that dynamic. A high PV may, by reversed vector,3 result in a negative worth as in some severely aberrated persons, A high PV on any dynamic assures a high worth only in the unaberrated person.
3. vector: a physical quantity with both magnitude and direction, such as a force or velocity.
62
Book Two
The Single Source of All Inorganic Mental
and Organic Psychosomatic Ills
CHAPTER ONE
The Analytical Mind and the Standard Memory Banks
This chapter begins the search for human error and tells where it is not.
The human mind can be considered to have three major divisions. First, there is the analytical mind; second, there is the reactive mind; and third, there is the somatic mind.
Consider the analytical mind as a computing machine. This is analogy because the analytical mind, while it behaves like a computing machine, is yet more fantastically capable than any computing machine ever constructed and infinitely more elaborate. It could be called the "computational mind" or the "egsusheyftef." But for our purposes, the analytical mind, as a descriptive name, will do. This mind may live in the prefrontal lobes'ùthere is some hint of thatùbut this is a problem of structure, and nobody really knows about structure. So we shall call this computational part of the mind the "analytical mind" because it analyzes data.
The monitor can be considered part of the analytical mind. The monitor could be called the center of awareness of the person. It, inexactly speaking, is the person. It has been approximated by various names for thousands of years, each one reducing down to "I." The monitor is in control of the analytical mind. It is not in control because it has been told to be but only because it is, inherently. It is not a demon who lives in the skull nor a little man who vocalizes one's thoughts. It is "I."
1. prefrontal lobes: portion of the brain directly behind the forehead.
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No matter how many aberrations a person may have, "I" is always "I." No matter how "clear" a person becomes, "I" is still "I." "I" may be submerged now and then in an aberree, but it is always present.
The analytical mind shows various evidences of being an organ, but as we know in this age so little of structure, the full structural knowledge of the analytical mind must come after we know what it does. And in Dianetics we know precisely that for the first time. It is known and can be proven with ease that the analytical mind, be it one organ of the body or several, behaves as you would expect any good computing machine to behave.
What would you want in a computing machine? The action of the analytical mindùor analyzerùis everything anyone could want from the best computer available. It can and does do all the tricks of a computer. And over and above that, it directs the building of computers. And it is as thoroughly right as any computer ever was. The analytical mind is not just a good computer, it is a perfect computer. It never makes a mistake. It cannot err in any way so long as a human being is reasonably intact (unless something has carried away a piece of his mental equipment).
The analytical mind is incapable of error, and it is so certain that it is incapable of error that it works out everything on the basis that it cannot make an error. If a person says, "I cannot add," he either means that he has never been taught to add or that he has an aberration about adding. It does not mean that there is anything wrong with the analytical mind.
While the whole being is, in an aberrated state, grossly capable of error, still the analytical mind is not. For a computer is just as good as the data on which it operates and no better. Aberration, then, arises from the nature of the data offered to the analytical mind as a problem to be computed.
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THE ANALYTICAL MIND AND THE STANDARD MEMORY BANKS
The analytical mind has its standard memory banks. Just where these are located structurally is again no concern of ours at this time. To operate, the analytical mind has to have percepts2 (data), memory (data) and imagination (data).
There are another data storage bank and another part of the human mind which contain aberrations and are the source of insanities. These will be fully covered later and should not be confused with either the analytical mind or the standard memory banks.
Whether the data contained in the standard memory banks is evaluated correctly or not, it is all there. The various senses receive information and this information files straight into the standard memory banks. It does not go through the analyzer first. It is filed and the analyzer then has it from the standard banks.
There are several of these standard banks and they may be duplicated in themselves so that there are several of each kind of bank. Nature seems generous in such things. There is a bank, or set of banks, for each perception. These can be considered racks of data filed in a cross-index system which would make an intelligence officer3 purple with envy. Any single percept is filed as a concept. The sight of a moving car, for instance, is filed in the visio-bank in color and motion, at the time seen; cross-indexed to the area in which seen; cross-indexed to all data about cars; cross-indexed to thoughts about cars; and so forth and so forth, with the additional filing of conclusions (thought stream) of the moment and thought streams of the past with all their conclusions. The sound of that car is similarly filed from the ears straight into the audio-bank, and
2. percepts: recognizable sensations or impressions received by the mind through the senses.
3. intelligence officer: a military officer responsible for collecting and processing data on hostile forces, weather and terrain.
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cross-indexed multitudinously as before. The other sensations of that moment are also filed in their own banks.
Now, it may be that the whole filing is done in one bank. It would be simpler that way. But this is not a matter of structure but mental performance. Eventually somebody will discover just how they are filed. Right now the function of filing is all that interests us.
Every perceptùsight, sound, smell, feeling, taste, organic sensation, pain, rhythm, kinesthesia (weight and muscular motion) and emotionùis each properly and neatly filed in the standard banks in full. It does not matter how many aberrations a physically intact person has or whether he thinks he can or cannot contain this data or recall it; the file is there and is complete.
This file begins at a very early period, of which more later. It then runs consecutively, whether the individual is asleep or awake, except in moments of "unconsciousness,"* for an entire lifetime. It apparently has an infinite capacity.
The numbers of these concepts (concept means "that which is retained after something has been perceived") would stagger an astronomer's computer. The existence and profusion of memories retained were discovered and studied in a large number of cases, and they can be examined in anyone by certain processes.
Everything in this bank is correct insofar as the single action of perception is concerned. There may be organic errors in the organs of perception, such as blindness or deafness (when physical, not aberrational), which would leave blanks in the banks; and there may
* Unconsciousness throughout this work means a greater or lesser reduction of awareness on the part of "I"ùan attenuation of working power of the analytical mind.
-LRH
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be organic impairment, such as partial organic deafness, which would leave partial blanks. But these things are not errors in the standard memory banks; they are simply absence of data. Like the computer, the standard memory banks are perfect, recording faithfully and reliably.
Now, part of the standard banks is audio-semantic,4 which is to say, the recordings of words heard. And part of the banks is visio-semantic, which is to say, the recordings of words read. These are special parts of the sound and sight files. A blind man who has to read with his fingers develops a tactile-semantic file. The content of the speech files is exactly as heard without alteration.
Another interesting part of the standard memory banks is that they apparently file the original and hand forward exact copies to the analyzer. They will hand out as many exact copies as are demanded without diminishing the actual file original. And they hand out these copies each in kind with color-motion sight, tone-audio, etc.
The amount of material which is retained in the average standard memory banks would fill several libraries. But the method of retention is invariable. And the potentiality of recall is perfect.
The primary source of error in "rational" computation comes under the headings of insufficient data and erroneous data. The individual, daily facing new situations, is not always in possession of all the material he requires to make a decision. And he may have been told something on "good authority" which was not true and yet which did not find counterevidence in the banks.
Between the standard banks, which are perfect and reliable, and the computerùthe analytical mindùwhich
4. semantic: of, pertaining to or arising from the different meanings of words or other symbols.
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is perfect and reliable, there is no irrational concourse.5 The answer is always as right as it can be made to be in the light of data at hand, and that is all anyone can ask of a computing device or a recording device.
The analytical mind goes even further in its efforts to be right than one would suppose. It constantly checks and weighs new experience in the light of old experience, forms new conclusions in the light of old conclusions, changes old conclusions, and generally is very busy being right.
The analytical mind might be considered to have been given a sacred post of trust by the cells to safeguard the colony, and it does everything within its power to carry out that mission. It has correct data, as correct as possible; and it does correct computations on them, as correct as they can be made. When one considers the enormous number of factors which one handles, for instance, in the action of driving a car ten blocks, he can appreciate how very, very busy on how very many levels that analytical mind can be.
Now, before we introduce the villain of this piece, the reactive mind, it is necessary to understand something about the relation of the analytical mind to the organism itself.
The analytical mind, charged with full responsibility, is far from without authority to carry out its actions and desires. Through the mechanisms of the life function regulator (which handles all the mechanical functions of living), the analytical mind can affect any function of the body it desires to affect.
In excellent working orderùwhich is to say, when the organism is not aberratedùthe analytical mind can influence the heartbeat, the endocrines (such things as
5. concourse: concurrence in action or causation, cooperation; combined action.
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calcium and sugar in the blood, adrenaline," etc.), selective blood flow (stopping it in the limbs or starting it at will), urine, excreta,7 etc. All glandular, rhythm and fluid functions of the body can be at the command of the analytical mind. This is not to say that in a cleared person they always are. That would be very uncomfortable and bothersome. But it does say that the analytical mind can effect changes at desire when it skills itself to do so. This is a matter of laboratory proof, very easy to do.
People have long been intuitive about the "full power of the mind." Well, the full power of the mind would be the analytical mind working with the standard memory banks, the life function regulator and one other thing.
The last and most important thing is, of course, the organism. It is in the charge of the analytical mind. And the analytical mind controls it in other ways than life function. All muscles and the remainder of the organism can be under the full command of the analytical mind.
In order to keep it and its circuits free of bric-a-brac and minor activities, the analytical mind is provided with a learned training pattern regulator. Into this, by education, it can place the stimulus-response patterns necessary for the performance of tasks like talking, walking, piano playing, etc. These learned patterns are not unchangeable. Because they are selected by the analytical mind after thought and effort, there is seldom any need to change them; if new situations arise, a new pattern is trained into the muscles. None of these are "conditionings"; they are simply training patterns
6. adrenaline: a hormone secreted by the adrenal gland, that stimulates the heart, increases muscular strength, etc.
7. excreta: waste matter excreted from the body, as sweat or urine.
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which the organism can use without attention of any magnitude from the analyzer. An uncountable number of such patterns can be laid into the organism by this method. And they are not the source of any trouble since they file by time and situation, and a very little thought will serve to annul old ones in favor of new ones.
All muscles, voluntary and "involuntary," can be at the command of the analytical mind.
Here, then, is the composite of a sentient being. There is no chance for error beyond the errors incident to insufficient data and erroneous but accepted data (and the last will be used by the analyzer just once if that once proves the data to be wrong). Here is the realm of pleasure, emotion, creation and construction and even destruction, if the computation on the optimum solution says something has to be destroyed.
The dynamics underlie the activities of the analytical mind. The urge toward survival explains all its actions. That we can understand the fundamental simplicity of the functional mechanism does not, however, mean that a man operating this way alone is cold or calculating or intent on "tooth and claw." The nearer man approaches this optimum, in an individual or in a whole society, the quicker and warmer is that society, the more honest may be its moods and actions.
Sanity depends upon rationality. Here is optimum rationality and therefore optimum sanity. And here also are all the things man likes to think man should be like or, for that matter, what he has represented his better gods to be like. This is the Clear.
This is sanity. This is happiness. This is survival.
Where is the error?
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CHAPTER Two
The Reactive Mind
It is fairly well accepted in these times that life in all forms evolved from the basic building blocks: the virus1 and the cell. Its only relevance to Dianetics is that such a proposition worksùand actually that is all we ask of Dianetics. There is no point to writing here a vast tome on biology and evolution. We can add some chapters to those things, but Charles Darwin did his job well and the fundamental principles of evolution can be found in his and other works.
The proposition on which Dianetics was originally entered was evolution. It was postulated that the cells themselves had the urge to survive and that that urge was common to life. It was further postulated that organismsùindividualsùwere constructed of cells and were in fact aggregations2 of colonies of cells.
As went the building block, so went the organism. In the finite realms and for any of our purposes, man could be considered to be a colonial aggregation of cells and it could be assumed that his purpose was identical with the purpose of his building blocks.
The cell is a unit of life which is seeking to survive and only to survive.
Man is a structure of cells which are seeking to survive and only to survive.
Man's mind is the command post of operation and is
1. virus: a microscopic agent that can reproduce only within the cells of living hostsùmainly bacteria, plants and animals.
2. aggregations: groups or masses of distinct things or individuals.
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constructed to resolve problems and pose problems related to survival and only to survival.
The action of survival, if optimum, would lead to survival.
The optimum survival conduct pattern was formulated and then studied for exceptions, and there were no exceptions found.
The survival conduct pattern was discovered to be far from sterile and barren but was full of rich and most pleasant activity.
None of these postulates outlawed any concept concerning the human soul or divine or creative imagination. It was understood perfectly that this was a study in the finite universe only and that spheres and realms of thought and action might very well exist above this finite sphere. But it was also discovered that none of these factors were needed to resolve the entire problem of aberration and irrational conduct.
The human mind was discovered to have been most grossly maligned,3 for it was found to be possessed of capabilities far in excess of any heretofore imagined, much less tested.
Basic human character was found to have been pilloried4 because man had not been able to distinguish between irrational conduct derived from poor data and irrational conduct derived from another far more vicious source.
If there ever was a devil, he designed the reactive mind.
This functional mechanism managed to bury itself from view so thoroughly that only inductive5 philosophy,
3. maligned: spoken evil of; defamed; slandered.
4. pilloried: held up to public ridicule or scorn.
5. inductive: of or using induction, logical reasoning that a general law exists because particular cases that seem to be examples of it exist.
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traveling from effect back to cause, served to uncover it. The detective work which was invested in the location of this archcriminal of the human psyche occupied many years. Its identity can now be certified by any technician in any clinic or in any group of men. Two hundred and seventy-three individuals have been examined and treated, representing all the various types of inorganic mental illness and the many varieties of psychosomatic ills. In each one this reactive mind was found operating, its principles unvaried. This is a long series of cases and will soon become longer.
The reactive mind is possessed by everyone. No human being examined anywhere was discovered to be without one or without aberrative content in his engram bank, the reservoir of data which serves the reactive mind.
What does this mind do? It shuts off hearing recall. It places vocal circuits in the mind. It makes people tone-deaf. It makes people stutter. It does anything and everything that can be found in any list of mental ills: psychoses, neuroses, compulsions, repressions . . .
What can it do? It can give a man arthritis,6 bursi-tis,7 asthma,8 allergies, sinusitis,9 coronary10 trouble, high blood pressure and so on, down the whole catalog of psychosomatic ills, adding a few more which were never specifically classified as psychosomatic, such as the common cold.
And it is the only thing in the human being which
6. arthritis: a condition causing inflammation, pain and stiffness in the joints.
1. bursitis: inflammation of a bursa, a pouch between joints or between muscles or skin, etc., and bones, for lessening friction.
8. asthma: a generally chronic disorder characterized by wheezing, coughing, difficulty in breathing and a suffocating feeling.
9. sinusitis: inflammation of one or more sinus cavities in the skull.
10. coronary: of or pertaining to the human heart, with respect to health.
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can produce these effects. It is the thing which uniformly brings them about.
This is the mind which made Socrates" think he had a "demon" that gave him answers. This is the mind that made Caligula'2 appoint his horse to a government post. This is the mind which made Caesar cut the right hands from thousands of Gauls,13 which made Napoleon reduce the height of Frenchmen one inch.
This is the mind which keeps war a thing of alarm, which makes politics irrational, which makes superior officers snarl, which makes children cry in fear of the dark. This is the mind which makes a man suppress his hopes, which holds his apathies, which gives him irresolution when he should act and kills him before he has begun to live.
If there ever was a devil, he invented it.
Discharge the content of this mind's bank and the arthritis vanishes, myopia14 gets better, heart illness decreases, asthma disappears, stomachs function properly and the whole catalog of ills goes away and stays away.
Discharge the reactive engram bank and the schizophrenic15 faces reality at last, the manic-depressive16
11. Socrates: (ca. 469-399 B.C.) Greek philosopher and teacher who believed in a "demon" whose voice warned him whenever he was about to make a wrong decision.
12. Caligula: (A.D. 12-41) Roman emperor (A.D. 37-41). His reign was marked by extreme cruelty and tyranny.
13. Gauls: any of the Celtic-speaking people of Gaul, ancient region in western Europe consisting of what is now mainly France and Belgium.
14. myopia: inability to see clearly what is far awayùnearsighted-ness.
15. schizophrenic: (psychiatry) person suffering from schizophrenia, a mental illness in which an individual is being two people madly inside of himself. It is a psychiatry classification derived from the Latin schizo, meaning "split," and the Greek phren, meaning "mind."
16. manic-depressive: (psychiatry) having a mental disorder marked by alternating extremes of excitement and depression.
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sets forth to accomplish things, the neurotic stops clinging to books which tell him how much he needs his neuroses and begins to live, the woman stops snapping at her children, and the dipsomaniac17 can drink when he likes and stop.
These are scientific facts. They compare invariably with observed experience.
The reactive mind is the entire source of aberration. It can be proved and has been repeatedly proven that there is no other, for when that engram bank is discharged, all undesirable symptoms vanish and a man begins to operate on his optimum pattern.
If one were looking for something like demons in a human mindùsuch as those one observes in some inmates of madhousesùhe could find them easily enough. Only they are not demons. They are bypass circuits from the engram bank. What prayers and exhortations have been used against these bypass circuits!
If one did not believe in demons, if one supposed that man were good after all (as a postulate, of course), how would the evil get into him? What would be the source of these insane rages? What would be the source of his slips of the tongue?'8 How would he come to know irrational fear?
Why is it that one does not like his boss although his boss has always been pleasant? Why is it that suicides smash their bodies to bits?
Why does man behave destructively, irrationally, fighting wars, killing, ruining whole sections of mankind?
What is the source of all neuroses, psychoses, insanities?
17. dipsomaniac: a person suffering from an uncontrollable craving for alcohol.
18. slips of the tongue: mistakes in speaking, as inadvertent remarks.
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Let us return to a brief examination of the analytical mind. Let us examine its memory banks. Here we find all the sense concepts on file. Or so it appears at first glance. Let us take another look, a look at the time factor. There is a time sense about these analytical mind banks. It is very accurate, as though the organism were equipped with a fine watch. But there is something wrong here about timeùit has gaps in it! There are moments when nothing seems to be filed in these standard banks. These are gaps which take place during moments of "unconsciousness"ùthat state of being caused by anesthesia, drugs, injury or shock.
This is the only data missing from a standard bank. If in hypnotic trance you examine a patient's memory of an operation, these incidents are the only periods in the banks you will not find. You can find these if you care to look and don't care what happens to your patientùof which more later. But the point is that there is something missing which has always been considered by one and all in any age never to have been recorded.
One and all in every age have never been able to put a finger on insanity either. Are these two data in agreement and do they have relationship? They definitely do.
There are two things which appear to beùbut are notùrecorded in the standard banks: painful emotion and physical pain.
How would you go about the building of a sensitive machine upon which the life and death affairs of an organism depended, which was to be the chief tool of an individual? Would you leave its delicate circuits prey to every overload, or would you install a fuse19 system?
19. fuse: a wire or strip of easily melted metal, usually set in a plug, placed in a circuit as a safeguard: if the current becomes too strong, the metal melts, thus breaking the circuit.
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If a delicate instrument is in circuit with a power line, it is protected by several sets of fuses. Any computer would be so safeguarded.
It happens that there is some small evidence to support the electrical theory of the nervous system. In pain there are very heavy overcharges in the nerves. It may well have beenùand elsewhere some Dianetic computations have been made about thisùthat the brain is the absorber for overcharges of power resulting from injury, the power itself being generated by the injured cells in the area of injury. That is theory and has no place here save to serve as an example. We are dealing now only with scientific fact.
The action of the analytical mind during a moment of intense pain is suspended. In fact, the analytical mind behaves just as though it were an organ to which vital supply is shut off whenever shock is present.
As an example, a man struck in the side by a car is knocked "unconscious" and, on regaining "consciousness," has no record of the period when he was "knocked out." This would be a nonsurvival circumstance. It means that there would be no volition on the part of anyone who was injured, and this is the time when the organism most requires volition. So this is nonsurvival if the whole mind cuts out whenever pain appears. Would an organism with more than a billion years of biological engineering behind it leave a problem like this unsolved?
Indeed, the organism solved the problem. Maybe the problem is very difficult, biologically, and maybe the solution is not very good, but large provision has been made for those moments when the organism is "unconscious."
The answer to the problem of making the organism react in moments of "unconsciousness" or near "unconsciousness" is also the answer to insanity and psychosomatic illnesses and all the strange mental quirks to
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which people are liable and which gave rise to that fable "it is human to err."
Clinical tests prove these statements to be scientific facts:
1. The mind records on some level continuously during the entire life of the organism.
2. All recordings of the lifetime are available.
3. "Unconsciousness," in which the mind is oblivious of its surroundings, is possible only in death and does not exist as total amnesia in life.
4. All mental and physical derangements of a psychic nature come about from moments of "unconsciousness."
5. Such moments can be reached and drained of charge20 with the result of returning the mind to optimum operating condition.
"Unconsciousness" is the single source of aberration. There is no such action as "mental conditioning" except on a conscious training level (where it exists only with the consent of the person).
If you care to make the experiment you can take a man, render him "unconscious," hurt him and give him information. By Dianetic technique, no matter what information you gave him, it can be recovered. This experiment should not be carelessly conducted because you might also render him insane.
A pale shade of this operation can be obtained by hypnosis, either by its usual techniques or drugs. By installing "positive suggestions" in a subject, he can be made to act like an insane person. This test is not a new one. It has been well known that compulsions or repressions can be so introduced into the psyche. The ancient
20. charge: harmful energy or force accumulated and stored in the reactive mind, resulting from the conflicts and unpleasant experiences that a person has had.
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Greek was quite familiar with it and used it to produce various delusions.
There is what is known as a "posthypnotic suggestion." An understanding of this can assist an understanding of the basic mechanism of insanity. The actions under both circumstances are not identical, but they are similar enough in their essence.
A man is placed in a hypnotic trance by standard hypnotic technique or some hypnotic drug. The operator then may say to him, "When you awaken there is something you must do. Whenever I touch my tie you will remove your coat. When I let go my tie, you will put on your coat. Now you will forget that I have told you to do this."
The subject is then awakened. He is not consciously aware of the command. If told he had been given an order while "asleep," he would resist the idea or shrug, but he would not know. The operator then touches his tie. The subject may make some remark about its being too warm and so take his coat off. The operator then releases his tie. The subject may remark that he is now cold and will put his coat back on. The operator then touches his tie. The subject may say that his coat has been to the tailor's and with much conversation finally explain why he is taking it off, perhaps to see if the back seam had been sewn properly. The operator then releases his tie and the subject says he is satisfied with the tailor and so replaces his coat. The operator may touch his tie many times and each time receive action on the part of the subject.
At last, the subject may become aware, from the expressions on people's faces, that something is wrong. He will not know what is wrong. He will not even know that the touching of the tie is the signal which makes him take off his coat. He will begin to grow uncomfortable. He may find fault with the operator's appearance
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and begin to criticize his clothing. He still does not know the tie is a signal. He will still react and remain in ignorance that there is some strange reason he must take off his coatùall he knows is that he is uncomfortable with his coat on whenever the tie is touched, uncomfortable with his coat off every time the tie is released.
These various actions are very important to an understanding of the reactive mind. Hypnotism is a laboratory tool. It is not used to any extent in Dianetic therapy, but it has served as a means of examining minds and getting their reactions. Hypnotism is a wild variable. A few people can be hypnotized, many cannot be. Hypnotic suggestions will sometimes "take" and sometimes they won't. Sometimes they make persons well and sometimes they make them illùthe same suggestion reacting differently in different people. An engineer knows how to make use of a wild variable. There is something which makes it unpredictable. Finding out the basic reason hypnotism was a variable helped to discover the source of insanity. And understanding the mechanism of the posthypnotic suggestion can aid an understanding of aberration.
No matter how foolish a suggestion is given to a subject under hypnosis, he will carry it out one way or another. He can be told to remove his shoes or call someone at ten the following day or to eat peas for breakfast and he will. These are direct orders and he will comply with them. He can be told that his hats do not fit him and he will believe that they do not. Any suggestion will operate within his mind unbeknownst to his higher levels of awareness.
Very complex suggestions can be given. One such would be to the effect that he was unable to utter the word /. He would omit it from his conversation, using remarkable makeshifts without being "aware" that he was having to avoid the word. Or he could be told that
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he must never look at his hands and he will not. These are repressions. Given to the subject when drugged or in a hypnotic sleep, these suggestions operate when he is awake. And they will continue to operate until released by the hypnotic operator.
He can be told that he has an urge to sneeze every time he hears the word rug and that he will sneeze when it is spoken. He can be told that he must jump two feet in the air every time he sees a cat and he will jump. And he will do these things after he has been awakened. These are compulsions.
He can be told that he will think very sexual thoughts about a certain girl but that when he thinks them he will feel his nose itch. He can be told that he has a continual urge to lie down and sleep and that every time he lies down he will feel that he cannot sleep. He will experience these things. These are neuroses.
In further experiments he can be told, when he is in his hypnotic "sleep," that he is the president of the country and that the secret service agents are trying to murder him. Or he can be told that he is being fed poison in every restaurant in which he attempts to eat. These are psychoses.
He can be informed that he is really another person and that he owns a yacht and answers to the name of "Sir Reginald." Or he can be told that he is a thief, that he has a prison record and that the police are looking for him. These would be schizophrenic and paranoid-schizophrenicÖ insanities, respectively.
21. paranoid-schizophrenic: (psychiatry) of or concerning a mental condition resembling paranoia (form of psychosis in which a person imagines that he is being persecuted or that he is very great or important) but also characterized by autistic (concerning a state of mind characterized by daydreaming, hallucinations and disregard of external reality) behavior and gradual deterioration of the personality.
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The operator can inform the subject that the subject is the most wonderful person on Earth and that everybody thinks so. Or that the subject is the object of adoration of all women. This would be a manz'c-type insanity.
He can be convinced, while hypnotized, that when he wakes he will feel so terrible that he will hope for nothing but death. This would be the depressive-type insanity.
He can be told that all he can think about is how sick he is and that every malady of which he reads becomes his. This would make him react like a hypochondriac.n
Thus we could go down the catalog of mental ills and by concocting positive suggestions to create the state of mind, we could bring about, in the awakened subject, a semblance to every insanity.
Understood that these are semblances. They are similar to insanity in that the subject would act like an insane person. He would not be an insane person. The moment the suggestion is relievedùthe subject being informed that it was a suggestionùthe aberration (and all these insanities, etc., are grouped under the heading of aberration) theoretically vanishes.*
* An injunction here. These are tests. They have been made on people who could be hypnotized and people who could not be but who were drugged. They brought forth valuable data for Dianetics. They can be duplicated only when you know Dianetics, unless you want to actually drive somebody insane by accident. For these suggestions do not always vanish. Hypnotism is a wild variable. It is dangerous and belongs in the parlor in the same way you would want an atom bomb there. -LRH
22. hypochondriac: a person who continually shows unnecessary anxiety about his health.
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The duplication of aberrations of all classes and kinds in subjects who have been hypnotized or drugged has demonstrated that there is some portion of the mind which is not in contact with the consciousness but which contains data.
It was the search for this portion of the mind which led to the resolution of the problem of insanity, psychosomatic ills and other aberrations. It was not approached through hypnotism, and hypnotism is just another tool, a tool which is of only occasional use in the practice of Dianetics and is, indeed, not needed at all.
Here we have an individual who is acting sanely, who is given a positive suggestion and who then temporarily acts insanely. His sanity is restored by the release of the suggestion into his consciousness, at which moment it loses its force upon him. But this is only a semblance of the mechanism involved. The actual insanity, one not laid now by some hypnotist, does not need to emerge into the consciousness to be released. There is this difference and others between hypnotism and the actual source of aberration; but hypnotism is a demonstration of its working parts.
Review the first example of the positive suggestion. The subject was "unconscious," which is to say, he was not in possession of complete awareness or self-determinism. He was given something he must do and the something was hidden from his consciousness. The operator gave him a signal. When the signal occurred, the subject performed an act. The subject gave reasons for the act which were not the real reasons for it. The subject found fault with the operator and the operator's clothing but did not see that it was the tie which signaled the action. The suggestion was released and the subject no longer felt a compulsion to perform the act.
These are the parts of aberration. Once one knows exactly what parts of what are aberrations, the whole
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problem is very simple. It seems incredible at first glance that the source could have remained so thoroughly hidden for so many thousands of years of research. But at second glance, it becomes a wonder that the source was ever discovered. For it is hidden cunningly and well.
"Unconsciousness" of the nonhypnotic variety is a little more rugged. It takes more than a few passes of the hand to cause "unconsciousness" of the insanity-producing variety.
The shock of accidents, the anesthetics used for operations, the pain of injuries and the deliriums of illness are the principal sources of what we call "unconsciousness."
The mechanism, in our analogue23 of the mind, is very simple. In comes a destructive wave of physical pain or a pervading poison such as ether24 and out go some or all of the fuses of the analytical mind. When it goes out, so go what we know as the standard memory banks.
The periods of "unconsciousness" are blanks in the standard memory banks. These missing periods make up what Dianetics calls the reactive mind bank.
The times when the analytical mind is in full operation plus the times when the reactive mind is in operation are a continuous line of consecutive recording for the entire period of life.
During the periods when the analytical mind is cut out of circuit in full or in part, the reactive mind cuts in, in full or in part. In other words, if the analytical mind is unfused so that it is half out of circuit, the reactive mind is half in circuit. No such sharp percentages
23. analogue: thing or part that is similar or comparable in certain respects.
24. ether: a drug used to produce anesthesia, as before surgery.
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are actually possible, but this is to give an approximation.
When the individual is "unconscious" in full or in part, the reactive mind is cut in, in full or in part. When he is fully conscious, his analytical mind is fully in command of the organism. When his consciousness is reduced, the reactive mind is cut into the circuit just that much.
The moments which contain "unconsciousness" in the individual are contrasurvival moments, by and large. Therefore it is vital that something take over so that the individual can go through motions to save the whole organism. The fighter who fights half out on his feet, the burned man who drags himself out of the fireùthese are cases when the reactive mind is valuable.
The reactive mind is very rugged. It would have to be in order to stand up to the pain waves which knock out other sentience in the body. It is not very refined. But it is most awesomely accurate. It possesses a low order of computing ability, an order which is submoron, but one would expect a low order of ability from a mind which stays in circuit when the body is being crushed or fried.
The reactive bank does not store memories as we think of them. It stores engrams.* These engrams are a complete recording, down to the last accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of partial or full "unconsciousness." They are just as accurate as any other recording in the body. But they have their own force. They are like phonograph records or motion pictures, if these contained all perceptions of sight, sound, smell, taste, organic sensation, etc.
* The word engram, in Dianetics is used in its severely accurate sense as a "definite and permanent trace left by a stimulus on the protoplasm of a tissue." It is considered as a unit group of stimuli impinged solely on the cellular being. ù LRH
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The difference between an engram and a memory, however, is quite distinct. An engram can be permanently fused into any and all body circuits and behaves like an entity.
In all laboratory tests on these engrams they were found to possess "inexhaustible" sources of power to command the body. No matter how many times one was reactivated in an individual, it was still powerful. Indeed, it became even more able to exert its power in proportion to its reactivation.
The only thing which could even begin to shake these engrams was the technique which developed into Dianetic therapy, which will be covered in full in the third section of this volume.
This is an example of an engram: A woman is knocked down by a blow. She is rendered "unconscious." She is kicked and told she is a faker, that she is no good, that she is always changing her mind. A chair is overturned in the process. A faucet is running in the kitchen. A car is passing in the street outside. The engram contains a running record of all these perceptions: sight, sound, tactile, taste, smell, organic sensation, kinetic sense, joint position, thirst record, etc. The engram would consist of the whole statement made to her when she was "unconscious": the voice tones and emotion in the voice, the sound and feel of the original and later blows, the tactile of the floor, the feel and sound of the chair overturning, the organic sensation of the blow, perhaps the taste of blood in her mouth or any other taste present there, the smell of the person attacking her and the smells in the room, the sound of the passing car's motor and tires, etc.
These would all be considered something on the order of a "positive suggestion." But there is something else here which is new, something which is not in the standard banks except by context: pain and painful emotion.
THE REACTIVE MIND
These things are what make the difference between the standard banks and the reactive engram banks: physical pain and painful emotion. Physical pain and painful emotion are the difference between an engram, which is the cause of aberrationùall aberrationùand a memory.*
We all have heard that bad experience is helpful to living and that without bad experience, man never learns. This may be very, very true. But it doesn't embrace the engram. That isn't experience. That is commanded action.
Perhaps before man had a large vocabulary, these engrams were of some use to him. They were survival in ways which will be developed later. But when man acquired a fine, homonymic (words that sound the same but mean different things) language, and indeed, when he acquired any language, these engrams were much more a liability than a help. And now, with man well evolved, these engrams do not protect him at all but make him mad, inefficient and ill.
The proof of any assertion lies in its applicability. When these engrams are deleted from the reactive mind bank, rationality and efficiency are enormously heightened, health is greatly increased and the individual computes rationally on the survival conduct pattern, which is to say, he enjoys himself and the society of those around him and is constructive and creative. He is destructive only when something actually threatens the sphere of his dynamics.
These engrams, then, are entirely negative in value
* In Dianetics, a memory is considered to be any concept of perceptions stored in the standard memory banks which is potentially recallable by the "I." A scene beheld by the eyes and perceived by the other senses becomes a record in the standard memory banks and later may be recalled by "I" for reference. ùLRH
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in this stage of man's development. When he was nearer the level of his animal cousins (who have, all of them, reactive minds of this same kind), he might have had use for the data. But language and his changed existence make any engram a distinct liability, and no engram has any constructive value.
The reactive mind was provided to secure survival. It still pretends to act in that fashion. But its wild errors now lead only in the other direction.
There are actually three kinds of engrams, all of them aberrative: First is the contrasurvival engrain. This contains physical pain, painful emotion, all other perceptions and menace to the organism. A child knocked out by a rapist and abused receives this type of engram. The contrasurvival engram contains apparent or actual antagonism to the organism.
The second engram type is the prosurvival engram. A child who has been abused is ill. He is told, while he is partially or wholly "unconscious," that he will be taken care of, that he is dearly loved, etc. This engram is not taken as contrasurvival but prosurvival. It seems to be in favor of survival. Of the two this last is the most aberrative since it is reinforced by the law of affinity which is always more powerful than fear. Hypnotism preys on this characteristic of the reactive mind, being a sympathetic address to an artificially unconscious subject. Hypnotism is as limited as it is because it does not contain, as a factor, physical pain and painful emotion: things which keep an engram out of sight and moored25 below the level of "consciousness."
The third is the painful emotion engram which is similar to the other engrams. It is caused by the shock of sudden loss, such as the death of a loved one.
The reactive mind bank is composed exclusively of
25. moored: fixed firmly; secured.
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these engrams. The reactive mind thinks exclusively with these engrams. And it "thinks" with them in a way which would make Korzybski26 swear, for it thinks in terms of full identification, which is to say identities, one thing identical to another.
If the analytical mind did a computation on apples and worms, it could be stated, probably, as follows: some apples have worms in them, others don't; when biting an apple one occasionally finds a worm unless the apple has been sprayed properly; worms in apples leave holes.
The reactive mind, however, doing a computation on apples and worms as contained in its engram bank, would calculate as follows: apples are worms are bites are holes in apples are holes in anything are apples and always are worms are apples are bites, etc.
The analytical mind's computations might embrace the most staggering summations of calculus,27 the shifty turns of symbolic logic,28 the computations requisite to bridge-building or dressmaking. Any mathematical equation ever seen came from the analytical mind and might be used by the analytical mind in resolving the most routine problems.
But not the reactive mind! That's so beautifully,
26. Korzybski: Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950), American scientist and writer; developed the subject of general semantics, a methodology that attempts to improve human behavior through a critical use of words and symbols.
27. calculus: (mathematics) a method of calculation in higher mathematics; a way of making calculations about quantities which are continually changing, such as the speed of a falling stone or the slope of a curved line. Calculus measures little bits of things in order to find out what the whole thing will do. That is the whole theory of calculus.
28. symbolic logic: a modern type of formal logic using special mathematical symbols to stand for propositions and for the relationships among propositions.
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wonderfully simple that it can be stated, in operation, to have just one equation: A = A = A = A = A.
Start any computation with the reactive mind. Start it with the data it contains, of course. Any datum is just the same to it as any other datum in the same experience.
An analytical computation done on the woman being kicked, as mentioned, would be that women get themselves into situations sometimes when they get kicked and hurt and men have been known to kick and hurt women.
A reactive mind computation about this engram, as an engram, would be: the pain of the kick equals the pain of the blow equals the overturning chair equals the passing car equals the faucet equals the fact that she is a faker equals the fact that she is no good equals the fact that she changes her mind equals the voice tones of the man equals the emotion equals a faker equals a faucet running equals the pain of the kick equals organic sensation in the area of the kick equals the overturning chair equals changing one's mind equals . . . But why continue? Every single perception in this engram equals every other perception in this engram. What? That's crazy? Precisely!
Let us further examine our posthypnotic positive suggestion of the touched tie and the removed coat. In this we have the visible factors of how the reactive mind operates.
This posthypnotic suggestion needs only an emotional charge and physical pain to make it a dangerous engram. Actually it is an engram of a sort. It is laid in by sympathy between the operator and subject, which would make it a sympathy engramùprosurvival.
Now, we know that the operator had only to touch his tie to make the awakened subject remove his coat. The subject did not know what it was which caused him
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to remove his coat and found all manner of explanation for the action, none of which was the right one. The engram, the posthypnotic suggestion in this case, was actually placed in the reactive mind bank. It was below the level of consciousness, it was compulsion springing from below the level of consciousness. And it worked upon the muscles to make the subject remove his coat. It was data fused into the circuits of the body below the command level of the analytical mind and operated not only upon the body but also upon the analytical mind itself.
If this subject took off his coat every time he saw somebody touch a necktie, society would account him slightly mad. And yet there was no power of consent about this. If he had attempted to thwart the operator by refusing to remove the coat, the subject would have experienced great discomfort of one sort or another.
Let us now take an example of the reactive mind's processes in a lower echelon of life: A fish swims into the shallows where the water is brackish,29 yellow and tastes of iron. He has just taken a mouthful of shrimp when a bigger fish rushes at him and knocks against his tail.
The small fish manages to get away but he has been physically hurt. Having negligible analytical powers, the small fish depends upon reaction for much of his choice of activity.
Now he heals his tail and goes on about his affairs. But one day he is attacked by a larger fish and gets his tail bumped. This time he is not seriously hurt, merely bumped. But something has happened. Something within him considers that in his choice of action he is now being careless. Here is a second injury in the same area.
29. brackish: somewhat salty, as the water of some marshes near the sea.
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The computation on the fish reactive level was: shallows equals brackish equals yellow equals iron taste equals pain in tail equals shrimp in mouth, and any one of these equals any other.
The bump in the tail on the second occasion keyed in10 the engram. It demonstrated to the organism that something like the first accident (identity thought) could happen again. Therefore beware!
The small fish, after this, swims into brackish water. This makes him slightly "nervous." But he goes on swimming and finds himself in yellow and brackish water. And still he does not turn back. He begins to get a small pain in his tail. But he keeps on swimming. Suddenly he gets a taste of iron and the pain in his tail turns on heavily. And away he goes like a flash. No fish was after him.
There were shrimp to be had there. But away he went anyway.
Dangerous place! And if he had not turned away, he would have really gotten himself a pain in the tail.
The mechanism is survival activity of a sort. In a fish it may serve a purpose. But in a man, who takes off a coat every time somebody touches a tie, the survival mechanism has long outlived its time. But it is there!
Let us further investigate our young man and the coat. The signal for the coat removal was very precise. The operator touched his tie. This is equivalent to any or all of the perceptions the fish received and which made the fish turn back. The touch of the tie could have been a dozen things. Any one of the dozen might have signaled the removal of the coat.
30. key in: make active. A key-in is a moment when the environment around the awake but fatigued or distressed individual is itself similar to the dormant (inactive) engram. At that moment the engram becomes active.
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In the case of the woman who was knocked out and kicked, any perception in the engram she received has some quality of restimulation.^ Running water from a faucet might not have affected her greatly. But water running from a faucet plus a passing car might have begun some slight reactivation of the engram, a vague discomfort in the areas where she was struck and kicked, not enough yet to cause her real pain, but there all the same. To the running water and the passing car we add the sharp falling of a chair and she experiences a shock of mild proportion. Add now the smell and voice of the man who kicked her and the pain begins to grow. The mechanism is telling her that she is in dangerous quarters, that she should leave. But she is not a fish, she is a highly sentient being, to our knowledge the most complex mental structure so far evolved on Earthùorganism of the species, man. There are many other factors in the problem than this one engram. She stays. The pains in the areas where she was abused become a predisposition32 to illness or are chronic illness in themselves, minor, it is true, in the case of this one incident, but illness just the same. Her affinity with the man who beat her may be so high that the analytical level, being assisted by a normally high general tone, may counter against these pains. But if that level is low, without much to assist it, then the pains can become major.
The fish that was so struck and received an engram did not disavow33 shrimp. Shrimp might have made him
31. restimulation: the reactivation of a past memory due to similar circumstances in the present approximating circumstances of the past.
32. predisposition: a state of mind or body that renders a person liable to act or behave in a certain way or to be subject to certain diseases.
33. disavow: deny any knowledge or approval of, or responsibility for; disclaim; disown.
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a little less enthusiastic afterwards, but the survival potential of shrimp eating made shrimp equal far more pleasure than it did pain.
A pleasant and hopeful life in generalùand never think we intimate that the woman stays for food alone, whatever the wits34 say about womenùhas a high survival potential, and that can overcome a very great deal of pain. As the survival potential diminishes, however, the level of pain (zone 0 and zone 1) is more closely approached and such an engram could begin to be reactivated severely.
There is another factor here, however, besides painùin fact, several more factors. If the young man with the detachable coat had been given one of the neurotic positive suggestions as listed a few pages back, he would have reacted to it on signal.
The engram this woman has received contains a neurotic positive suggestion quite in addition to the general restimulators,35 such as the faucet and the car and the overturning chair. She has been told that she is a faker, that she is no good and that she is always changing her mind. When the engram is restimulated in one of the great many ways possible, she has a "feeling" that she is no good, a faker and she will change her mind.
There are several cases to hand which peculiarly illustrate the sadness of this. One case in particular which was cleared had been beaten severely many times and told a similar thing each time, all derogatory. The content inferred that she was very loose morally and
34. wits: persons characterized by the ability to make lively, clever remarks in a sharp, amusing way.
35. restimulators: approximations of the reactive mind's content or some part thereof continually perceived in the environment of the organism.
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would cohabit36 with anyone. She was brought in as a case by her fatherùshe had since been divorcedùwho complained that she was very loose morally and had cohabited with several men in as many weeks. She herself admitted that she was, she could not see how it could be and it worried her, but she just "could not seem to help it." Examination of the engrams in her reactive mind bank brought forth a long series of beatings with this content. Because this was a matter of research, not treatmentùalthough that was givenùher former husband was contacted. An examination, independent of her knowledge, demonstrated his rage dramatization37 to contain these very words. He had beaten his wife into being a morally loose woman because he was afraid of morally loose women.
All cases examined in all this research were checked, the patient's engrams against the engrams in the donor. The contents of the incidents were verified wherever possible and were found uniformly to agree. Every safeguard was made to prevent any other method of communication between donor and patient. Everything found in the "unconscious" periods of every patient, when checked against other sources, was found to be exact.
The analogy between hypnotism and aberration bears out well. Hypnotism plants by positive suggestion one or another form of insanity. It is usually a temporary planting, but sometimes the hypnotic suggestion will not
36. cohabit: live together in a sexual relationship when not legally married.
37. dramatization: the duplication of an engramic content, entire or in part, by an aberree in his present time environment. Aberrated conduct is entirely dramatization. The degree of dramatization is in direct ratio to the degree of restimulation of the engrams causing it. When dramatizing, the individual is like an actor playing his dictated part and going through a whole series of irrational actions.
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"lift" or remove in a way desirable to the hypnotist. The danger of running experiments with hypnosis on uncleared patients is found in another mechanism of the reactive mind.
When an engram such as our example above exists, the woman obviously was "unconscious" at the time she received the engram. She had no standard bank memory (record) of the incident beyond the knowledge that she had been knocked out by the man. The engram was not, then, an experience as we understand the word. It could work from below to aberrate her thinking processes, it could give her strange painsùwhich she attributed to something elseùin the areas injured. But it was not known to her.
The key-in was necessary to activate the engram. But what, precisely, could key it in? At some later time when she was tired the man threatened to strike her again and called her names. This was conscious level experience. It was found to be "mentally painful" by her. And it was "mentally painful" only because there was real, live, physical pain unseen under it which had been "keyed in" by the conscious experience. The second experience was a lock.Ö It was a memory but it had a new kind of action in the standard banks. It had too much power and it gained that power from a past physical blow. The reactive mind is not too careful about its time clock. It can't tell one year old from ninety, in fact, when a key-in begins. The actual en-gram moved up under the standard bank.
She thinks she is worried about what he said in the lock experience. She is actually worried about the
38. lock: an analytical moment in which the perceptics of the engram are approximated, thus restimulating the engram or bringing it into action, the present time perceptics being erroneously interpreted by the reactive mind to mean that the same condition which produced physical pain once before is now again at hand.
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engram. In this way memories become "painful." But pain doesn't store in the standard banks. There is no place in that bank for pain. None. There is a place for the concept of pain and these concepts of what is painful are good enough to keep the sentient organism called man away from all the pain he believes is actually dangerous. In a Clear there are no pain-inducing memories because there is no physical pain record left to ruin the machinery from the reactive mind bank.
The young man with the detachable coat did not know what was worrying him or what made him do what he did. The person with an engram does not know what is worrying him. He thinks it is the lock, and the lock may be a very long way removed from anything resembling the engram. The lock may have similar perceptic content. But it may be on another subject entirely.
It is not very complicated to understand what these engrams do. They are simply moments of physical pain strong enough to throw part or all the analytical machinery out of circuit; they are antagonism to the survival of the organism or pretended sympathy to the organism's survival. That is the entire definition. Great or little "unconsciousness," physical pain, perceptic content and contrasurvival or prosurvival data. They are handled by the reactive mind, which thinks exclusively in identities of everything equals everything. And they enforce their commands upon the organism by wielding the whip of physical pain. If the organism does not do exactly as they say (and believe any Clear, that's impossible!), the physical pain turns on. They steer a person like a keeper steers a tigerùand they can make a tiger out of a man in the process without much trouble, and give him mange39 into the bargain.
39. mange: a skin disease affecting hairy animals, caused by a parasite and characterized by intense itching, scabs and loss of hair.
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If man had not invented language, or, as will be demonstrated, if his languages were a little less homo-nymic and more specific with their personal pronouns, engrams would still be survival data and the mechanism would work. But man has outgrown their use. He chose between language and potential madness and for the vast benefits of the former he received the curse of the latter.
The engram is the single and sole source of aberration and psychosomatic illness.
An enormous quantity of data has been sifted. Not one single exception has been found. In "normal people," in the neurotic and insane, the removal of these engrams wholly or in part, without other therapy, has uniformly brought about a state greatly superior to the current norm. No need was found for any theory or therapy other than those given in this book for the treatment of all psychic or psychosomatic ills.
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CHAPTER THREE
The Cell and the Organism
The reason the engram so long remained hidden as the single source of aberration and psychosomatic ills is the wide and almost infinitely complex manifestations which can derive from simple engrams.
Several theories could be postulated as to why the human mind evolved exactly as it did, but these are theories, and Dianetics is not concerned with structure. A comment or two as a stimulation to future workers in that field might be made, however, wholly as a postulate, that there is a definite connection between any electriclike energy in the body and the energy effusion' of cells undergoing injury. A theory could be constructed along the lines that injured cells, further injuring their neighbors by a discharge of electriclike energy, forced the development of a special cell which would act as a conduit to "bleed off" this painful charge. The conduits of cells might have become neurons2 and the charge might have been better distributed so through the body with less likelihood of local incapacitation at the point of the injury impact. These conduits-neuronsùmight have been started in formation by impacts at the extremity of the body toward the direction of locomotion. This would make the skull the greatest mass of neurons. Man, walking upright, might have had another new point of impact, the forehead, and so gained his prefrontal lobes. And maybe not. That is
1. effusion: a pouring forth.
2. neurons: the main units that make up the nerves. They consist of cell bodies with threadlike parts that carry signals to and from the cells.
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just theory, with only a few data to support it which have a scientific value. And it has not been subjected to experiment of any kind whatever.
This much, however, has to be advanced as theory on structure. The cell is one of the basic building blocks of the body. Cells, the better to survive, seem to have become colonies which, in turn, had the primary interest, survival. And the colonies developed or recruited into aggregations which in turn were organisms, also with the sole purpose of survival. And the organisms developed minds to coordinate the muscles and resolve the problems of survival. Again, this is still theory, and even if it was the track of reasoning which led toward Dianetics, it can be completely wrong. It works. It can be pulled away from Dianetics and Dianetics will remain a science and go on working. The concept of the electronic brain was not vital but only useful to Dianetics and it could be swept away as wellùDianetics would still stand. A science is a changing affair as far as its internal theory goes. In Dianetics we have our wedge into an enormous scope of research. As Dianetics stands, it works and it works every time and without exception. The reasons why it works will undoubtedly be mulled over and changed here and there to its bettermentùif they aren't, an abiding faith in this generation of scientists and the future generations will not have been justified.
Why we talk about cells will become apparent as we progress. The reason we know that past concepts of structure are not correct is because they don't work as function. All our facts are functional and these facts are scientific facts, supported wholly and completely by laboratory evidence. Function precedes structure. James Clerk Maxwell's3 mathematics were postulated
3. James Clerk Maxwell: (1831-1879) Scottish physicist, responsible for the theory that electricity and light are the same in their fundamental nature.
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and electricity was widely and beneficially used long before anyone had any real idea about the structure of the atom. Function always comes before structure. The astounding lack of progress in the field of the human mind during the past thousands of years is partly attributable to its "organ of thought" lying within a field, medicine, which was and long may be an art, not a science. Basic philosophy to explain life will have to come before that art makes much further progress.
What the capabilities of the cell are, for instance, have been but poorly studied. Some work has been carried on in recent years to find out more, but basic philosophy was absent. The cell was being observed, not predicted.
The studies of cells in man have been largely done from dead tissue. An unknown quality is missing from dead tissue, the important qualityùlife.
In Dianetics, on the level of laboratory observation, we discover much to our astonishment that cells are evidently sentient in some currently inexplicable way. Unless we postulate a human soul entering the sperm and ovum at conception, there are things which no other postulate will embrace than that these cells are in some way sentient. Entering a new field with postulates which work in all directionsùand the basic philosophy of survival is a pilot which leads us on and on into further and further realms, explaining and predicting phenomena on every handùit is inevitable that data will turn up which does not agree with past theory. When that data is as scientific as the observation that when an apple is dropped under usual conditions on Earth it falls, one cannot help but accept it. Abandoning past theories may do damage to treasured beliefs and one's nostalgic love of the old school tie,4 but a fact is a fact.
4. school tie: a necktie striped in the colors of a specific English public school, especially as worn by a graduate to indicate his educational background.
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The cells as thought units evidently have an influence, as cells, upon the body as a thought unit and an organism. We do not have to untangle this structural problem to resolve our functional postulates. The cells evidently retain engrams of painful events. After all, they are the things which get injured. And they evidently retain a whip hand5 of punishment for every time the analyzer fails them. The story of the engram seems to be a story of a battle between the troops and the general, every time the general gets some of the troops killed off. The less fortunate this general is in protecting these troops, the more power the troops assume. The cells evidently pushed the brain on an upward evolution toward higher sentience. Pain reverses the process as though the cells were sorry they had put so much power in the hands of a central commander.
The reactive mind may very well be the combined cellular intelligence. One need not assume that it is, but it is a handy structural theory in the lack of any real work done in this field of structure. The reactive en-gram bank may be material stored in the cells themselves. It does not matter whether this is credible or incredible just now. Something has to be said about it to give one a mental hold on what happens during moments of "unconsciousness."
The scientific fact, observed and tested, is that the organism, in the presence of physical pain, lets the analyzer get knocked out of circuit so that there is a limited quantity or no quantity at all of personal awareness as a unit organism. It does this either to protect the analyzer or to withdraw its power in the belief that an engram is best in an emergencyùwith which the analyzer, by the way, on observed experience, does not agree.
5. whip hand: the position of advantage or control.
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Every percept present, including physical pain, is recorded during these nonanalytical moments. Whenever pain is presentùphysical pain, that isùthe analyzer gets shut down to a small or large extent. If the duration of the pain is only an instant, there is still an instant there of analytical reduction. This can be proven very easilyùjust try to recall the last time you were seriously hurt and see if there isn't at least a momentary blank period. Going to sleep under anesthetic and waking up some time later is a more complicated sort of shutdown in that it includes physical pain but is initially caused by a poison (and all anesthetics are poisons, technically). Then there is the condition of suffocating, as in drowning, and this is a shut-down period to greater or lesser extent. And there is the condition caused by blood, for one cause or another, leaving the area or areas which contain analytical powerùwherever they areùand this again causes a greater or lesser degree of analytical shutdown: such incidents include shock (in which the blood tends to lake in the center of the body), the loss of blood by surgery or injury or anemia,6 and the closing of the arteries leading through the throat. Natural sleep causes a reduction of analytical activity but is actually not very deep or serious; by Dianetic therapy any experience occurring during sleep can be recovered with ease.
It can now be seen that there are many ways in which analytical power can be shut down. And it can be seen that there is greater or lesser reduction. When one burns one's finger with a cigarette, there is a small instant of pain and a small amount of reduction. When one undergoes an operation, the duration may be in terms of hours and the amount of shutdown may be
6. anemia: a deficiency in the oxygen-carrying material of the blood resulting in a paleness, generalized weakness, etc. _>-
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extreme. The duration and the amount of reduction are two different things, related but quite dissimilar. This is not so very important but it is mentioned.
We have seen, reading in Dianetics this far, that the principle of the spectrum has been quite useful to us. And it can be seen that the amount of reduction in analytical power can be described in the same way that survival potential can be described. There can be a very little bit and there can be a very great deal. Going back and taking a look at the survival potential range, one can see that there would be death at the bottom and immortality at the top. There is "infinite" survival. Whether or not there can be infinite analytical power is a matter of mysticism. But that there is a definite relationship between individual tone and the amount of analytical shutdown is a scientific fact. Put it this way: with the individual well and happy and enthusiastic, analytical power can be considered to be high (zones 3 and 4). With the individual under the wheels of a truck, "unconscious" and in agony, the analytical power may be considered to be ranging in zone 0. There is a ratio between potential survival and analytical power. As one goes down, so does the other. There is more data to be concluded from this than one would think at first glance. It is a very important ratio.
All the percepts are included in an engram. Two of these percepts are physical pain and painful emotion. A third is organic sensation, which is to say, the condition of the organism during the moment of the engram. And how was the organism when the engram was received? Greater or lesser "unconsciousness" was present. This meant that there was an organic sensation of reduced analytical power, since analytical power derives, evidently, from an organ or organs in the body. If an engram is reactivated by a restimulator or restimulatorsùthat is to say, if the individual with an engram receives something
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in his environment similar to the perceptions in the engramùthe engram puts everything it contains, its percepts such as faucets and words, into greater or lesser operation.
There can be greater or lesser restimulation. An engram can be put into force just a little bit by restimu-lators in the environment of the individual or, with many restimulators present and the body in an already reduced state, the engram can go into a full-force display (which is covered later). But whether the en-gram is slightly restimulated or greatly restimulated, everything in it goes into effect one way or another.
There is just one common denominator of all en-grams, just one thing which every engram has and which is possessed by every other engram. Each contains the datum that the analyzer is more or less shut down. There is a shut-down datum in every engram. Therefore, every time an engram is restimulated, even though physical pain has not been received by the body, some analytical power turns off; the organ or organs which are the analyzer are fused out of circuit in some degree.
This is highly important to an understanding of the mechanics of aberration. It is a scientific fact, susceptible of proof, and it never varies. This always happens: when an engram is received, the analyzer is shut down by the physical pain and emotion; when the engram is restimulated, the analyzer shuts down as part of the commands of the engram. Actually, this is a very mechanical thing. Engram is restimulated, part of the analytical power is shut down. This is as inevitable as turning on and off an electric light. Pull the cord and the light goes off. The reduction of the analyzer is not that sharpùthere are grades of lightùbut it is just as mechanical.
Put a man under ether, hurt him in the chest. He has
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received an engram because his analytical power was turned off first by ether and then by a chest pain. While he was there on the operating table, the reactive mind recorded the click of instruments, everything said, all sounds and smells. Let us suppose that a nurse was holding one of his feet because he was kicking. This is a complete engram.
The engram will be keyed in by something in the future, a similar incident. After this, in greater or lesser degree, whenever he hears clicks like instrument clicks he gets nervous. If he pays attention to what is happening in his body at that minute, he may find that his foot feels slightly as if it were being held. But he is not likely to give any attention to his foot because if he had any attention to give, the chest pain would be found present in some degree. But his analytical ability has been turned off slightly. As the foot felt it was being held, so does the analyzer have the conception of being shut down by ether and pain. The restimulator (the clicking) tended to bring the whole engram slightly into being and part of the engram command is a reduced analytical power.
This is "push button" in its precision. If one knew another's main restimulators (words, voice tones, music, whatever they areùthings which are filed in the reactive mind bank as parts of engrams), one could turn another's analytical power almost completely off, actually render him unconscious.
We all know people who make us feel stupid. There can be two causes for that but both of them are from engrams and one of them is the fact that, no matter what engram is brought into restimulation, part of the analytical power is turned off.
Engrams can, if environment is uniform, be held in chronic restimulation! This means a chronic, partial shutdown of analytical power. The recovery of intelligence by
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a Clear and the rise of that intelligence to such fantastic heights results in part from the relief of word commands in engrams that he is stupid and in a larger part from the relief of this chronic shut-down condition.
This is not theory. This is scientific fact. It is strictly test tube. The engram contains the percept of a shut-down analyzer; when it is restimulated the engram puts that datum back into force in some degree.
Engrams, then, being received in "unconsciousness" cause a partial "unconsciousness" to exist every time they are restimulated. The person who has an engram (any aberree) need not receive new physical pain to have a new moment of partial "unconsciousness" take place. Feeling "dopey"7 or "sleepy" or "dull" results in part from a partially shut-down analyzer. Being "nervous" or in a rage or frightened also carries with it partially shut-off analytical power.
The hypnotist has "success" where he does because he is able, by talking to people about "sleep," to put into restimulation some engram which contains the word sleep and shut-down analytical power. This is one of the reasons hypnotism "works."
The whole society, however, is liable to analytical shutdown in greater or lesser degree by the restimulation of engrams.
The number of engrams a person's reactive bank contains may not, however, establish the amount of analytical reduction to which he is subjected. A person may have engrams and they may not have been keyed in. And if they have been keyed in, he might not be in an environment which contains any great number of res-timulators. Under these conditions his survival zone position may be high even though he is possessed of a great many engrams. And again, he might have educated
7. dopey: tired, sleepy, foggy (as though doped).
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himself over and above these engrams to some slight degree.
But a person who has keyed-in engrams and does exist in the area of many restimulators is liable to an enormous amount of restimulation and analytical shutdown. This is a normal condition. If a person has a large number of engrams, and they are keyed in, and he lives around many restimulators, his condition can vary from normal to insane. And in a single dayùas in the case of a man who experiences moments of rage or a woman who drops into apathiesùthe condition of a person may vary from normal to insane and back to normal. We take here the word insane to mean utter irrationality. So there is temporary or chronic insanity.
The court of law which goes through the lugubrious8 process of having a man pronounced sane or insane after that man has murdered somebody is itself being irrational. Of course the man was insane when he committed the murder. What the court is asking now is whether or not the man is chronically insane. This has little bearing on the matter. If a man has gone insane enough to murder once, he will go insane enough in the future to murder again. Chronic, then, means either a chronic cycle or a continuous condition. The law says sanity is the "ability to tell right from wrong." When man is subject to a mechanism (and all men are) which lets him be rational one minute and restimulated the next, none in the society, if uncleared, can be considered able to always tell right from wrong. This is completely aside from what the law means by right and what it means by wrong.
This is an example of the roller-coaster sanity curve of the aberree. All aberrees possess engrams (the
8. lugubrious: very sad or mournful, especially in a way that seems exaggerated or ridiculous.
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normal number is probably in the hundreds per individual). Analytically, people have a wide latitude9 of choice and they can deal even with philosophic rights and wrongs. But in aberrated persons the engram bank is always susceptible of restimulation. The "sanest" aber-ree of Tuesday may be a murderer on Wednesday if the exactly right situation occurs to trip the exact engram. A Clear is not entirely predictable in any given situationùhe has such a wide power of choice. But an aberrated person transcends10 all predictability for the following reasons: (1) what engrams an aberree has in his reactive engram bank none know including himself; (2) what situation will contain what restimulators is a matter of chance; and (3) what his power of choice will be with the factors in the engrams on a reactive level cannot be established.
The variety of conduct which one can evolve out of these basic mechanics is so wide that it is no wonder that man was considered to be a rather hopeless case by some philosophies.
The cells, if the engram bank is retained on a cellular level, might be theoretically supposed to have made sure that the analyzer did not get too adventurous in this life-and-death matter of living. They therefore could be considered to have copied down all data contained in every moment of physical pain and emotion' resulting in or contained in "unconsciousness." Then when any data similar to this appeared in the environment they could be wary and, with a large number of restimulators in sight, they could be considered to shut down the analyzer and proceed on reaction. This has a crude safety factor. Obviously, if the organism survived
9. latitude: freedom from narrow restrictions; freedom of opinion, conduct or action.
10. transcends: goes beyond the limits of; oversteps; exceeds.
L. RON HUBBARD
through one period of "unconsciousness," it could be theorized by the cells that the placing of the data and action in effect under circumstances which threatened to be similar would result once more in survival. What's good enough for Grandpa is good enough for me. What was good enough in the bus accident is good enough in a bus.
This moronic "thinking" is typical of the reactive mind. It is just the sort of thinking it does. It is the ultimate in conservatism. It misses the point and important data at every turn, it overloads the body with pain, it is a whirlpool of confusion. If there were just one engram per situation, maybe it would get by. But there may be ten engrams with similar data in them (an engram lock chain") and yet the data may be so contradictory that when a new emergency arises which contains the restimulators of the chain, no proper past conduct can be put forth to meet it.
Obviously the x factor is language. The cells, if this is a problem in cells (for recall, this part is theory based on data in an effort to explain what happens, and a theory can be altered without altering the scientific usefulness of the facts), probably do not understand languages very well. If they did they wouldn't evolve such "solutions."
Take two engrams about baseball bats. In the first, the individual is hit on the head and knocked out and somebody yells, "Run! Run! Run!" In the second, the individual is knocked out by the bat in the same environment and somebody yells, "Stay there! You're safe!" Now, what does he do when he hears a baseball bat or smells one or sees one or hears these words? Run or stay there? He has a similar pain for each action.
11. chain: a series of incidents of similar nature or similar subject matter.
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What actually happens? He gets a headache. This is that thing called conflict. This is anxiety. And anxiety can become very acute indeed on a purely mechanical level when one has ninety engrams pulling him south and eighty-nine pulling him north. Does he go north or south? Or does he have a "nervous breakdown"?
The level of brilliance of the reactive mind is about the same as a phonograph. The needle gets put on the record and the record plays. The reactive mind merely puts on the needle. When it tries to select several records out and play them all at once, things happen.
By intentional construction or accident in design or bypass in evolutionùwhere the old, useless organ is still builtùthe cells managed to hide this engram bank fairly well. Man is conscious in his analytical mind. When he is "unconscious," his analytical mind is unable to monitor the incoming data and the data is not to be found in the thing we call, by analogue, the standard banks. Therefore, whatever came in passed by consciousness. And having passed by, consciousness cannot (without Dianetic process) recall it, since there is no channel for recall.
The engram enters when consciousness is absent. It thereafter operates directly into the organism. Only by Dianetic therapy can the analyzer come into possession of this data (and the removal of it does not depend upon the analyzer contacting it at all, despite an old belief that the "realization" of something cures it: "realize" an engram and one is in quick trouble, without Dianetic technique). The engram is received by the cellular body. The reactive mind could be the very lowest level of analytical power, of course, but this does not alter the scientific fact that the engram acts as if it were a soldered-in connection to the life function regulator and the organic coordination and the basic level of the analytical mind itself. By soldered-in is meant "permanent
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connection." This keying-in is the hookup of the en-gram as part of the operating machinery of the body. An analytical thought process is not permanently hooked in but can be thrown in and out of circuit at the will of the analyzer. This is not true of the engram. Thus the term, soldered-in.
The analytical mind lays down a training pattern; on a stimulus-response basis, this training pattern will work smoothly and well whenever it will do the organism the most good. An engram is a training pattern, all complete in a package, "permanently" hooked into the circuits (without Dianetic therapy) and it goes into operation like a training pattern without any consent whatever from the analyzer.
Influenced itself by the engram in the several ways of reduced analytical power and positive suggestion in the engram, the analytical mind is unable to discover any truly valid reason for the conduct of the organism. It therefore makes up a reason, for its job is to make sure the organism is always right. Just as the young man with the detachable coat gave forth a number of silly explanations as to why he was detaching his coat, so does the analytical mindùobserving the body engaged in irrational actions, including speech, for which there seems to be no accountingùjustify the actions. The engram can dictate all the various processes incident to living; it can dictate beliefs, opinions, thought processes or lack of them and actions of all kinds, and can establish conditions remarkable for their complexity as well as their stupidity. An engram can dictate anything it contains and engrams can contain all the combinations of words in the entire language. And the analytical mind is forced, in the light of irrational behavior or conviction, to justify the acts and conditions of the organism, as well as its own strange blunders. This is justified thought.
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There are three kinds of thought, then, of which the organism is capable: (a) analytical thought, which is rational as modified by education and viewpoint; (b) justified thought, analytical thought attempting to explain reactions; and (c) reactive thought, which is wholly in terms of everything in an engram equals everything in an engram equals all the restimulators in the environment and all things associated with those restimulators.
We have all seen somebody make a blunder and then give forth an explanation of just why that blunder had been made. This is justified thought. The blunder was made, unless out of education or viewpoint, by an engram. The analytical mind then had to justify the blunder to make sure that the body was right and that its computations were right.
Now, there are two other conditions which can be caused by engrams. One is dramatization and the other is valence.n
You have seen some child come forth with a tirade, a tantrum. You have seen some man go through a whole rage action. You have seen people go through a whole irrational set of actions. These are dramatizations. They come about when an engram is thoroughly restimu-lated, so thoroughly that its soldered-in aspect takes over the organism. It may come into circuit slightly or wholly, which is to say that there are degrees of dramatization. When it is in full parade, the engram is running off verbatim and the individual is like an actor, puppetlike, playing his dictated part. A person can be given new engrams which will make these old ones take secondary importance. (Society's punishment complex is aimed squarely at giving anti-engram education.)
12. valence: personality. The term is used to denote the borrowing of the personality of another. A valence is a substitute for self taken on after the fact of lost confidence in self. A preclear "in his father's valence" is acting as though he were his father.
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Dramatization is survival conductùin the silly, reactive mind way of thinkingùbased on the premise that the organism, in a "similar" situation, lived through it because these actions were present.
The woman who was knocked down and kicked would dramatize her engram, possibly, by doing and saying exactly the same things done and said to her. Her victim may be her child or another woman. It could or would be the person who gave her the engram if she were strong enough to overcome him. Just because she has this engram does not mean she will use it. She may have a hundred other engrams she can use. But when she dramatizes one it is as if the engram, soldered-in, were taking over a puppet. As much analytical power as she has left may be devoted to altering the pattern. Therefore she can make a similar or an identical dramatization .
This aspect of dramatization is strictly "tooth and claw" survival. This is the sort of thing which made observers think that "tooth and claw" was a primary rule.
In went the engram, bypassing rationality and the standard memory banks. Now it is in the organism but the organism does not know it in the level of consciousness. It is keyed in by a conscious level experience. Then it can be dramatized. And far from becoming milder the more it is used, the more an engram is dramatized the more solid is its hold in the circuits. Muscles, nerves, all must comply.
"Tooth and claw" survival. The cells were making sure. And here we come to valence. Valens means "powerful" in Latin. It is a good term because it is the second half of ambivalent (power in two directions) and exists in any good dictionary. It is a good term because it describes (although the dictionary did not mean it to) the intent of the organism when dramatizing an engram.
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Multivalence would mean "many powerfuls." It would embrace the phenomena of split personality, the strange differences of personality in people in one and then another situation. Valence, in Dianetics, means the personality of one of the dramatic personnel in an engram.
In the case of the woman being knocked out and kicked, there were two valences present: herself and her husband. If another person had been present the en-gram would have contained three valences, providing he took any part: herself, her husband and the third person. In an engram, let us say, of a bus accident where ten people speak or act, there would be, in the "unconscious" person, an engram containing eleven valences: the "unconscious" person and the ten who spoke or acted.
Now, in the case of the woman beaten by her husband, the engram contains just two valences. Who won? Here is the law of "tooth and claw," the aspect of survival in engrams. Who won? The husband. Therefore it is the husband who will be dramatized. She didn't win. She got hurt. Aha! When these restimulators are present, the thing to do is to be the winner, the husband, to talk like him, to say what he did, to do what he did. He survived. "Be like him!" say the cells.
Hence, when the woman is restimulated into this engram by some action, let us say, on the part of her child, she dramatizes the winning valence. She knocks the child down and kicks him, tells him he is a faker, that he is HO good, that he is always changing his mind.
What would happen if she dramatized herself? She would have to fall down, knocking over a chair, pass out and believe she was a faker, no good and was always changing her mind, and she would have to feel the pain of all blows!
"Be yourself" is advice which falls on deaf reactive mind ears. Here is the scheme. Every time the organism
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gets punished by life, the analytical mind, according to the reactive mind, has erred. The reactive mind then cuts the analytical mind out of circuit in ratio to the amount of restimulation present (danger) and makes the body react as if it were the person who won in the earlier, but similar, situation where the organism was hurt.
Now what happens if "society" or the husband or some exterior force told this woman, who is dramatizing this engram, that she must face reality? That's impossible. Reality equals being herself, and herself gets hurt. What if some exterior force breaks the dramatization? That is to say, if society objects to the dramatization and refuses to let her kick and yell and shout? The engram is still soldered-in. The reactive mind is forcing her to be the winning valence. Now she can't be. As punishment, the reactive mind, the closer she slides into being herself, approximates the conditions of the other valence in the engram. After all, that valence didn't die. And the pain of the blows turns on and she thinks she is a faker, that she is no good and that she always changes her mind. In other words, she is in the losing valence. Consistent breaking of dramatization will make a person ill just as certainly as there are gloomy days.
A person accumulates, with the engrams, half a hundred valences before he is ten. Which were the winning valences? You will find him using them every time an engram is kicked into restimulation. Multiple personality? Two persons? Make it fifty to a hundred. In Dianetics, you can see valences turn on and off in people and change with a rapidity which would be awesome to a quick-change artist.
Observe these complexities of conduct, of behavior. If one set out to resolve the problem of aberration by a system of cataloging everything he observed, and were
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unaware of the basic source, he would end up with as many separate insanities, neuroses, psychoses, compulsions, repressions, obsessions and disabilities as there are combinations of words in the English language. Discovery of fundamentals by classification is never good research. And the unlimited complexities possible from the engrams (and the severest, most thoroughly controlled experiments discovered these engrams to be capable of just such behavior as is listed here) are the whole catalog of aberrated human conduct.
There are a few other basic, fundamental things that engrams do. These will be covered under their own headings: parasite circuits, emotional impaction13 and psychosomatic ills. With the few fundamentals listed here, the problem of aberration can be resolved. These fundamentals are simple, they have given rise to as much trouble as individuals and societies have experienced. The institutions for the insane, the prisons for the criminals, the armaments accumulated by nations, yes, and even the dust which was a civilization of yesterday exist because these fundamentals were not understood.
The cells evolved into an organism and in the evolution created what was once a necessary condition of mind. Man has grown up to a point where he creates now the means of overcoming that evolutionary blunder. Examination of the Clear proves he no longer needs it. He is now in a position where he can take an artificial evolutionary step on his own. The bridge has been built across the canyon.
13. impaction: the action of becoming, or condition of being, impacted (pressed closely into or in something) or firmly fixed in.
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CHAPTER FOUR
The "Demons"
For a moment let us leave such scientific things as cells and consider some further aspects of the problem of understanding the human mind.
People <have been working on problems related to man's behavior for a good many millennia. Hindu,1 Egyptian, Greek, Roman and our own philosophers and researchers of the past few hundred years have been struggling against a superabundance of complexity.
Dianetics could be evolved only by the philosophic compartmentation of the problem into its elements and the invention of several dozen yardsticks,2 such as "the introduction of an arbitrary," "the law of affinity," "the dynamic," "the equation of the optimum solution," "the laws of the selection of importances," "the science of organizing sciences," "nullification by comparison of authority to authority," and so forth and so forth. All this is fine matter for a tome on philosophy, but here is Dianetics, which is a science. It should be mentioned, however, that one of the first steps taken was not invented but borrowed and modified: that was the "knowable" and "unknowable" of Herbert Spencer.
Absolutism is a fine road to stagnation and I do not think Spencer meant to be so entirely absolute about his "knowable" and "unknowable." Survive! is the demarcation point between those things which can be experienced
1. Hindu: of Hinduism, a religious and social system which developed in India about 1400 B.C., with belief in reincarnation, worship of several gods, and the caste system (rigid, hereditary social classes) as a basis of society.
2. yardsticks: standards of measurement or judgment.
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by the senses (our old friends Hume3 and Locke4) and those things which cannot necessarily be known through the senses, but which possibly may be known but which one does not necessarily need to solve the problem.
Amongst those things which one did not necessarily need to know (the Dianetic version of the "unknowable") were the realms of mysticism and metaphysics. Many things, in the evolution of Dianetics, were bypassed solely because they had not yielded solution to anyone else. Therefore mysticism got short shrift5 despite the fact that the author studied it, not in the little-understood, secondhand sources commonly used as authority by some Western mental cults, but in Asia where a mystic who can't make his "astral self"6 get out and run errands for him is strictly a second-rate character indeed. Well aware that there were pieces in this jigsaw puzzle which were orange with yellow spots
3. Hume: David Hume (1711-1776), Scottish philosopher and historian. Hume was known for his skepticism. He maintained that all knowledge was based on either the impressions of the senses or the logical relations of ideas.
4. Locke: John Locke (1632-1704), English philosopher who argued against the belief that human beings are born with certain ideas already in their minds. He claimed that, on the contrary, the mind is a tabula rasa (blank slate) until experience begins to "write" on it.
5. short shrift: little attention or consideration in dealing with a person or matter.
6. astral self: also called astral body: a second body, per some forms of philosophical or religious thought, said to belong to each individual, formed of a substance which is above or beyond perception by the senses and which pervades all space. Per these beliefs, the astral body accompanies the individual through life, is able to leave the human body at will, and survives the individual after death. Astral bodies are actually just somebody's delusion. They are usually mock-ups which the mystic then tries to believe real. He sees the astral body as something else and then seeks to inhabit it in the most common practices of "astral walking."
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and purple with carmine7 stripes, one found it necessary to pick up only those pieces which were germane.8 Someday a large number of piecesùabout structure with the restùwill come in and there will be answers to telepathy,9 prescience10 and so on and on. Understand that there are a lot of pieces in the construction of a philosophic universe. But none of the mystic pieces were found necessary to the creation of a uniformly applicable and aberration-resolving science of mind. No opinion will be delivered at this stage of Dianetics about ghosts or the Indian rope trick" beyond the fact they are seen to be multicolored pieces and the only ones we want are white. We have most of the white pieces and it makes a good, solid whiteness where there was blackness before.
Imagine, then, the consternation12 one must have felt when "demons" were discovered. Socrates had a demon, you'll remember. It told him not what to do but whether or not he had made the right decision. Here we had been pursuing a course in the finite universe which would have pleased Hume himself for its tenacity to those things which could be sensed. And up popped "demons."
A thorough examination of a number of subjects (fourteen) revealed that every one apparently had a "demon" of some sort. They were randomly selected subjects in various conditions in society. Therefore the
7. carmine: red or purplish red; crimson.
8. germane: closely or significantly related; relevant; pertinent.
9. telepathy: communication from one mind to another without the use of speech or writing or gestures, etc.
10. prescience: knowledge of events or actions before they happen.
11. Indian rope trick: a magic trick in which the magician makes a rope seem to suspend in midair and either goes up the rope and disappears or sends other things up which disappear.
12. consternation: a sudden, alarming amazement or dread that results in utter confusion; dismay.
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"demon" aspect was most alarming. However, unlike some of the cults (or schools, as they call themselves), the temptation to sail off into romantic, inexplicable and confounding labels was resisted. A bridge had to be built across a canyon and demons are darned bad girders.
Out in the Pacific islandsùBorneo, the PhilippinesùI had seen quite a bit of demonology at work. Demonol-ogy is fascinating stuff. A demon gets into a person and makes him sick. Or it gets in and talks in lieu of him. Or he goes crazy because he has a demon in him and runs around with the demon shouting. This is demonology in a narrow sense. The shaman, the medicine man, these people deal pretty heavily in demonology (it pays well). But, while not skeptical particularly, it had always seemed to me that demons could be explained a little more easily than in terms of ectoplasm13 or some such unsensible material.
To find "demons" living in one's civilized fellow countrymen was disturbing. But there they were. At least there were the manifestations which the shaman and medicine man had said were caused by demons. It was found that these "demons" could be cataloged. There were "commanding demons," "critical demons," ordinary "tell-you-what-to-say demons" and "demons" which stood around and yelled or "demons" which simply occluded things and kept them out of sight. These are not all the classes, but they cover the general field of "demonology."
A few experiments with drugged subjects showed that it was possible to set these "demons" up at will. It was even possible to set up the whole analytical mind as a "demon." So there was something wrong with demonology. Without proper ritual, simply by word of
13. ectoplasm: the luminous substance believed to emanate from a spiritualistic medium.
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mouth, one could make new demons appear in people. So there are no real demons in Dianetics (that's underscored in case some mystic runs around telling people that a new science of mind believes in demons).
A Dianetic demon is a parasitic circuit. It has an action in the mind which approximates another entity than self. And it is derived entirely from words contained in engrams.
How this demon gets there is not very hard to understand once you've inspected one, close up. Papa, while baby is unconscious, yells at Mama that she's got to listen to him and nobody else, by God. The baby gets an engram. It is keyed in some time between babyhood and death. And then there's the demon circuit at work.
An electronics engineer can set up demons in a radio circuit to his heart's content. In human terms, it is as if one ran a line from the standard banks toward the analyzer but before it got there he put in a speaker and a microphone and then continued the line to the plane of consciousness. Between the speaker and the microphone would be a section of the analyzer which was an ordinary, working section but compartmented off from the remainder of the analyzer. "I" on a conscious plane wants data. It should come straight from the standard bank, compute on a sublevel and arrive just as data. Not spoken data. Just data.
With the portion of the analyzer compartmented off and the speaker-microphone installation and the en-gram containing the above words "got to listen to me, by God" in chronic restimulation, another thing happens. The "I" in the upper-level attention units14 wants data. He starts to scan the standard banks with a
14. attention units: quantity of awareness. Any organism is aware to some degree. A rational or relatively rational organism is aware of being aware. Attention units could be said to exist in the mind in varying quantity from person to person.
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sublevel. The data comes to him spoken. Like a voice inside his head.
A Clear does not have any "mental voices"! He does not think vocally. He thinks without articulation of his thoughts and his thoughts are not in voice terms. This will come as a surprise to many people. The "listen to me" demon is common in the society, which is to say this engram circulates widely. "Stay right there and listen to me" fixes the engram in present time (and fixes the individual in the time of the engram, to some extent). After it is keyed in and from there on, the individual thinks "out loud," which is to say, he puts his thoughts into language. This is very slow. The mind thinks out solutions (in a Clear) at such speed that the word stream of consciousness would be left at the post."
Proving this was very easy. In clearing every case, without exception, one or another of these demons was discovered. Some cases had three or four. Some had ten. Some had one. It is a safe assumption that almost every aberree contains a demon circuit.
The type of engram which makes a critical demon is, "You are always criticizing me." There are dozens of such statements contained in engrams, any one of which will make a critical demon, just as any combination of words resulting in a demand to listen and obey orders will make a commanding demon.
All these demons are parasitic. That is to say, they take a part of the analyzer and compartment it off. A demon can think only as well as the person's mind can think. There is no extra power. No benefit. All loss.
It is possible to set up the whole computer (analyzer) as a demon circuit and leave "I" on a tiny and forlorn shelf. This, on the surface, is a pretty good stunt. It
15. post: the starting gate at a racetrack.
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makes it possible for the whole analytical mind to work out computations undisturbed and relay the answer to the "I." But in practice it is very bad, for "I" is the will, the determining force of the organism, the awareness. And very soon "I" becomes so dependent upon this circuit that the circuit begins to absorb him. Any such circuit, to last, would have to have pain and be chronic. It would have to be, in short, an engram. Therefore, it would have to be reductive of the intellect and would victimize the owner by eventually making him ill one way or another.
Of all the engram demon circuits found and removed, those which contained a seemingly all-powerful exterior entity which would solve all problems and answer every want were the most dangerous. As the engram keyed in further and further and was constantly restimulated, it eventually made a spineless puppet out of "I"; because other engrams existed, the sum of the reduction tended toward insanity of a serious sort. If you want a sample, just imagine what you would have to say to a hypnotized person to make him think that he was in the hands of a powerful being who gave him orders and then imagine this as the phrase spoken when an individual had been knocked unconscious one way or another.
There is another full class of demons, the occlusion demons, the demons who shut things off. These are not properly demons because they don't talk. A bona fide16 demon is one who gives thoughts voice or echoes the spoken word interiorly or who gives all sorts of complicated advice like a real, live voice exteriorly. (People who hear voices have exterior vocal demonsùcircuits which have tied up their imagination circuits.) The occlusion demon doesn't have anything to say. It is what
16. bona fide: authentic; true.
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he doesn't permit to be said or done that makes the mental derangement.
An occlusion demon can exist for a single word. For instance, a child receives an engram by falling off her bicycle and losing consciousness; a policeman tries to assist her; she is still unconscious but moving and mutters that she can't move (an old engram at work); the officer says, cheerfully, "Never say can't!" Some time later she has a conscious-level experience such as another fall but without injury. (We keep mentioning this second necessary step, the lock, because it is the thing old-time mystics thought was causing all the troubleùit is "mental anguish.") Now she has difficulty saying "can't." Dangerous in any event. What if she had that common engram expression, "Never say no!"?
Occlusion demons hide things from "I." It is as easy for one to mask many words. The individual having one will then omit these words or alter them or misspell them and make mistakes with them. The demon is not the only reason words get altered but he is a specific case. An occlusion demon can be of a much higher strength and breadth. He can be created with the phrase, "Don't talk!" or "Never talk back to your elders," or "You can't talk here. Who said you could talk?" Any of these phrases might produce a stammerer.
Other things besides speech can be occluded. Any ability of the mind can be inhibited by a demon specifically designed to obstruct that ability. "You can't see!" will occlude visual recall. "You can't hear!" will occlude audio recall. "You can't feel!" occludes pain and tactile recall (homonymic stuff, English).
Any perception can be occluded in recall. And whenever it is occluded in recall, it affects actual perception and the organ of perception as well. "You
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can't see!" may reduce not only recall but the actual organic ability of the eyes, as in astigmatism" or myopia.
One can imagine, with the entire English language (or in other lands with other tongues, any language) susceptible to inclusion within engrams, just how many abilities of the mind's operation can be occluded. An extremely common one is "You can't think!"
So far now, you has been used in illustrations and examples in order to keep the similarity to hypnotic or drug tests. Actually sentences which contain / are more destructive. "I can't feel anything," "I can't think," "I can't remember." These and their thousands and thousands of variations, when spoken within the hearing of an "unconscious" person, are applicable to himself when he gets the engram keyed into circuit.
You has several effects. The statement, "You are no good," to an awake person makes that person feel very angry perhaps when he has an engram to that effect. Within him he feels, possibly, that people think he is no good. He may have a demon that tells him he is no good. And he will dramatize by telling other people that they are no good. It can be sprayed off by being dramatized. A person who has an engram to the effect that he is sexually sterile, for instance, will tell people that they are sexually sterile. ("Don't do as I do, do as I say.") If he has an engram that says, "You are no good, you have to eat with your knife," he may eat with his knife but he gets excited about people eating with their knives, and he would grow very angry if somebody said he ate with his knife.
Thus, there are "compulsion demons" and "confusion demons" and so forth and so on.
The engram has a command value. There is a power
17. astigmatism: a defect in an eye or lens preventing proper focusing.
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of choice exercised in the reactive mind about which and what engrams will be used. But any engram, strongly enough restimulated, will come to the surface to be dramatized. And if dramatization is blocked, it will turn on the individual either temporarily or chronically.
The literalness of this reactive mind, in its interpretation of commands and the literalness of their action within the poor, harassed analytical mind, is a strange thing in itself. "It is too horrible to be borne" might be interpreted to the effect that a baby was in such bad condition that it had better not be born. There are thousands of cliches in any language which, when literally taken, mean quite the opposite from what the speaker intends.
The reactive engram bank takes them, stores them with pain and emotion and "unconsciousness" and with moronic literalness, hands them forth to be law and command to the analytical mind. And when the happy little moron who runs the engram bank sees it possible to use up some analytical mind circuits with some of these confounded18 demons, it is done.
The analytical mind, then, can be seen to be subject to yet another form of attrition." Its circuits, ordinarily intended for smooth, rapid computation, become tied up and overloaded with demon lash-ups. The demons are parasites. They are pieces of analytical mind com-partmented off and denied to larger computation.
Is it any wonder that, when these demons are deleted, IQ soars, as it can be observed to do in a Clear? Add the demon circuits to the shut-down aspect of restimulation, and truth can be seen in the observation that people run on about one-twentieth of their mental
18. confounded: damned; a mild oath.
19. attrition: a wearing down or weakening of resistance, especially as a result of continuous pressure or harassment.
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power. Research and scientific tabulation indicate that with the "unconsciousness" aspect and the demon circuits deleted from the engram bank, and the data restored into the standard bank as experience where it should be, about forty-nine fiftieths of the mind have been placed at the service of "I" which he never could use as an aberree.
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CHAPTER FIVE
Psychosomatic Illness
Psychosomatic illnesses are those which have a mental origin but which are nevertheless organic. Despite the fact that there existed no precise scientific proof of this before Dianetics, an opinion as to their existence has been strong since the days of Greece, and in recent times various drug preparations have been concocted and sold which were supposed to overcome these sicknesses. Some success was experienced, sufficient to warrant a great deal of work on the part of researchers. Peptic ulcers,1 for instance, have yielded to persuasion and environmental change. A drug called ACTH2 has had astonishing but wildly unpredictable results. Allergies have been found to yield more or less to things which depressed histamine3 in the body.
The problem of psychosomatic illness is entirely embraced by Dianetics, and by Dianetic technique such illness has been eradicated entirely in every case.
About 70 percent of the physician's current roster of diseases fall into the category of psychosomatic illness. How many more can be so classified after Dianetics has been in practice for a few years is difficult to predict, but it is certain that more illnesses are psychosomatic than have been so classified to date. That all illnesses
1. peptic ulcers: open sores in the stomach.
2. ACTH: a hormone that was sometimes used to combat symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis; it stimulates the production of other hormones in the body.
3. histamine: a substance released by the tissues in allergic reactions: it dilates blood vessels, stimulates gastric secretion, etc.
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are psychosomatic is, of course, absurd, for there exist, after all, life forms called germs which have survival as their goals.
The work of Louis Pasteur formulated the germ theory of disease. With Dianetics is gained the non-germ theory of disease. These two, with biochemistry, complement each other to form the whole field of pathology4 so far as can be determined at this time, providing of course that the virus is included under the germ theory.
Dianetics adds an additional leaf to the germ theory in that it includes predisposition. There are three stages of pathology: predisposition, by which is meant the factors which prepared the body for sickness; precipitation, by which is meant the factors which cause the sickness to manifest itself; and perpetuation, by which is meant the factors which cause the sickness to continue.
There are two kinds of illness: the first could be called autogenetic, which means that it originated within the organism and was self-generated; and exo-genetic, which means that the origin of the illness was exterior. Actually, although this is good medicine, it is not quite as precise as Dianetics could desire. Mental illness itself is actually exterior in origin. But medically, we consider that the body can generate its own sicknesses (autogenetic) or that the sickness can come from an exterior source such as bacteria (exogenetic). The Pasteur germ theory would be the theory of exogeneticùexteriorly generatedùillness. Psychosomatic illness would be autogenetic, generated by the body itself.
Treatment for accidental injury, surgery for various things such as malformation inherent in the body on a
4. pathology: the science or the study of the origin, nature and course of diseases.
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genetic5 basis, and orthopedics,6 which actually can be classed under both, remain properly outside the field of Dianetics, although it can be remarked in passing that almost all accidents are to be traced to dramatization of engrams and that Clears rarely have accidents.
Psycho, of course, refers to mind and somatic refers to body; the term psychosomatic means the mind making the body ill or illnesses which have been created physically within the body by derangement of the mind. Naturally such diseases, when one has resolved the problem of human aberration, become uniformly susceptible to cure.
Arthritis, dermatitis,7 allergies, asthma, some coronary difficulties, eye trouble, bursitis, ulcers, sinusitis, etc., form a very small section of the psychosomatic catalog. Bizarre aches and pains in various portions of the body are generally psychosomatic. Migraine8 headaches are psychosomatic and, with the others, are uniformly cured by Dianetic therapy. (And the word cured is used in its fullest sense.)
Just how many physical errors are psychosomatic depends upon how many conditions the body can generate out of the factors in the engrams. For example, the common cold has been found to be psychosomatic. Clears do not get colds. Just what, if any, part the virus plays in the common cold is not known, but it is known that when engrams about colds are lifted, no further
5. genetic: of or having to do with genetics, the branch of biology that deals with heredity and the way that animals and plants pass on to their offspring such characteristics as size, color, etc.
6. orthopedics: the branch of surgery dealing with the treatment of deformities, diseases and injuries of the bones, joints, muscles, etc.
7. dermatitis: inflammation of the skin.
8. migraine: a type of intense, periodically returning headache, usually limited to one side of the head and often accompanied by nausea, visual disorders, etc.
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colds appearùwhich is a laboratory fact not so far contradicted by 270 cases. The common cold comes about, usually, from an engram which suggests it and which is confirmed by actual mucus present in another engram. A number of germ diseases are predisposed and perpetuated by engrams. Tuberculosis9 is one.
The engram itself, as has been covered, follows a cycle of action. The body is predisposed to the conduct and conditions contained in the engram when that en-gram is first received. Then a conscious level experience keys in the engram, and other experience or the content of the engram itself may make it chronic. This is predisposition, precipitation and perpetuation in the mental plane.
Engrams and inherited disabilities and accidents and germs are the four ways an organism can be reduced physically from the optimum. Many conditions which have been called "inherited disabilities" are actually engramic. Engrams predispose people to accidents. Engrams can predispose and perpetuate bacterial infections. Therefore the catalog of ills affected by Dianetics is very long. This is not a book listing effects but a book stating causes, and so the reader is asked to call upon his own knowledge or consult a medical text to understand just how many thousands and thousands of conditions result from engrams to disturb or derange the body.
At the present time, Dianetic research is scheduled to include cancer and diabetes.10 There are a number of reasons to suppose that these may be engramic in cause, particularly malignant" cancer. This is remarked so that
9. tuberculosis: an infectious wasting disease affecting various parts of the body.
10. diabetes: a disease in which sugar and starch are not properly absorbed by the body.
11. malignant: causing or likely to cause death, especially by spreading unchecked through the body.
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attention may be given to the possibility; no tests of any kind have been made on cancer or diabetic patients, and the thought is purely theory and is not to be taken as any kind of an avowal about a cancer cure. Those diseases which were cataloged above, however, have been thoroughly tested and have uniformly yielded to Dianetic therapy.
The mechanism by which the mind is able to cause a physical disability or predispose the body to an illness and perpetuate sickness is, in its basic cause, a very simple thing. The complexity arrives when one begins to combine all the factors possible; then a staggering list of potential illnesses can be written.
A series of simple tests can be made on drugged or hypnotic patients which will prove clinically in other laboratories this basic mechanism. A series of these tests were run in the formulation of Dianetics with uniform success.
Let us take first something which is only mildly psychosomatic and scarcely an illness at all. A patient is hypnotized. He is given the positive suggestion that he will be able to hear much more acutely. This is "extended hearing." Controlling out other means of his gaining data (including safeguards against telepathy between operator and subject) the hearing can be found to be amplifiable many times over. In fact, there exist all around aberrees who have "extended hearing." By suggestion, the power of the hearing can be tuned down or up so that a person is nearly deaf or can hear pins fall at a great distance. When the suggestion is removed, the subject's hearing returns to its previous normal state.
Similarly, experiments can be performed on the eyes, using light sensitivity. The patient's sight is tuned up or down so that his eyes are much more or much less sensitive to light than is normal for him. This is done
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entirely on the word-suggestion basis such as "The light will appear very, very bright to you," or "The light will appear so dim it will be hard for you to see." With the former suggestion the patient can be made to see almost as well as a cat, although other people around might think it impossible to see objects the patient can unerringly point out. In the latter suggestion the patient can be placed under light almost blinding and yet can read through a glare with apparent comfort.
The tactile sense can likewise be tuned up or down by verbal suggestion until touch becomes painfully acute or so dull it scarcely registers.
So with the various senses. Here we have simply the spoken word going into the mind and causing physical function to change.
Let us now address the heart. By deep hypnosis or drugs we take a patient into amnesia trance, a state of being wherein the "I" is not in control but the operator is the "I" (and that's all there is, really, to the function of hypnosis: the transfer of analytical power through the law of affinity from subject to operator, a thing which had a racial development and survival value in animals which ran in packs).
A caution should be observed that a patient who has a very sound heart and no heart trouble history be chosen for this experiment, which, even above any other hypnotic experiment, can make a patient very ill if he has a heart history. And none of these hypnotic tests should be performed until one has finished this book and knows how to get rid of the suggestions; for hypnosis, as practiced, is strictly live-fuse stuff and the hypnotist who is unacquainted with Dianetics has no more idea how to get rid of a suggestion he has made than he has of how to peel an atom. He has thought he had the answer, but Dianetics has treated many, many former hypnotic subjects who were thoroughly, as the
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engineers interested in Dianetics say, "loused up."12 This is no criticism of hypnosis or hypnotists, who are often very able people, but it is a comment that there is more to be known about it.
The heart, by positive suggestion alone, can be speeded up, slowed down or otherwise excited. Here are words spoken into the deep strata of the mind which cause physical action. Further, blood flow can be inhibited in some area of the body by suggestion alone. (This experiment, it is warned, particularly overloads the heart.) Blood can be denied to a hand, for instance, so that if you were to cut a vein in that hand it would bleed slightly if at all. A fine swami13 trick, which most amazed the author in India, was the inhibition of blood flow by the awake individual in himself. On command a cut would bleed or not bleed. It looked fantastic and made very good press-agentry14 that here was a swami who had so associated himself with nirvana15 that he was in control of all material matters. Awe faded when the author learned that, via hypnosis, he could make his own body do the same thing and no nirvana involved. The mechanism fades out rapidly and in a few days would have to be renewed: the body has its own optimum operation, and although such a function can be "analytically" handled, it is not an upper-echelon analytical job to keep the blood going in the hand. The point here is that blood flow can be interrupted by verbal suggestion. Words connect up with the physical being.
12. loused up: botched; spoiled; ruined.
13. swami: lord; master: a Hindu title of respect, especially for a Hindu religious teacher.
14. press-agentry: publicity produced by a press agent's work or skill, especially in making a person or thing seem more desirable, admirable or successful.
15. nirvana: in Buddhism, the highest state of consciousness, in which the soul is freed from all desires and attachments.
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How this can come about can be shown by an analogic explanation, such as a schematic16 diagram, but we are not so much interested in structure as in function at this stage of the science of mindùbecause by knowing function alone we can cure aberrations and psychosomatic ills every time, predict new ills and conditions, and generally "work miracles," as such actions were once called before man knew anything about the mind.
Excreta are among the easiest things to regulate by suggestion. Constipation can be caused or cured by positive suggestion with remarkable speed and facility. The urine can also be so controlled. And so can the endocrine system.
It is harder to make tests on some of the more poorly understood functions of the endocrines. Glandular research has not progressed very far at this time. But, by removing engrams and watching the endocrine system rebalance, it has been made obvious that the endocrine system is a part of the control mechanism with which the mind handles the body. The glands are easily influenced. These fluids and secretionsùtestosterone," estro-gen,18 adrenaline, thyroid," parathyroid,20 pituitrin,21 etc.ùare the substances the mind uses as one means of controlling the body. They form relay circuits, so to speak. Each one has its own action within the body.
This experiment tends to prove the fallacy of an
16. schematic: of, or having the nature of, a scheme, schema, plan, diagram, etc.
17. testosterone: a male sex hormone.
18. estrogen: a sex hormone or other substance capable of developing and maintaining female characteristics of the body.
19. thyroid: a hormone that regulates the body's growth and development.
20. parathyroid: a hormone important in controlling of the calcium-phosphate balance of the body.
21. pituitrin: the various substances secreted by the pituitary gland, located at the base of the brain, which have important influences on growth and bodily functions.
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ancient assumption that the mind was controlled by the glands. An aberree is given a shot of 25 mg of testosterone in oil twice a week. There may be some improvement in his physical statusùfor a short time his voice may deepen and he may grow more hair on his chest. Now, without suggestion, we simply delete the engrams from his reactive bank so that they can re-form as experience in the standard bank. Before we have completed this task his body begins to use more of the testosterone. The dose can be markedly reduced and still give more benefit than formerly. Finally, the dose can be eliminated. This experiment has also been performed on people who had not been able to receive benefit from glandular substances such as testosterone and estrogen. And upon people who were made ill by the administration of these hormones. The deletion of the engrams from the reactive bank uniformly brought about a condition where they could receive benefit from the hormones but where such artificial administration was not necessary, save in cases of extreme age. What this means to gerontology (the study of longevity in life) cannot at this time be estimated, but it can be predicted with confidence that the deletion of engrams from the reactive bank has a marked effect upon the extension of life. A hundred years or so from now this data will be available, but no Clears have lived that long as yet.
Just now, to our purpose, it is easy to demonstrate the effect of positive suggestion upon the endocrine system and the lack of effect of artificial hormones upon aberrees.
This sort of an engram has a terribly reductive effect upon testosterone manufacture: "Sex is horrible; it is nasty; I hate it."
The autonomic nervous system,22 which has been
22. autonomic nervous system: a system of nerves in the body which regulates involuntary action, as of the intestines, heart and glands. Autonomic means "self-ruling" or "independent."
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supposed to run without much connection to the mind, can be shown to be influenced in its parts by the mind. There is a dwindling spiral effect (note the lines on the survival potential chart) whereby the engram starts malfunction in the life function regulator; this produces malfunction in the mind, which in turn has further effect on the life function regulator; this again reduces physical activity, and the mind, being part of the organ and, so far as we can tell, organic itself, is further reduced in tone. Mental tone makes body tone go down. Body tone, then being down, makes mental tone go down. This is a matter of inverse geometric progression. A man starts to get sick and, having engrams, he gets sicker. Clears are not subject to this dwindling spiral. Indeed, so entirely superficial is this horrible stuff called psychosomatic illness that it is the first thing which surrenders and can be alleviated without clearing.
Now, the reason why various drug preparations which seek to change psychosomatic illness meet with such uncertain success lies in the fact that the mind, containing these engrams which are "survival" (like a fellow needs a hole in his head), handles the life function regulator to actively produce illnesses. Something comes to take them away (they're "survival," you see, and these confounded cells moronically insist upon it) and the mind has to rapidly reverse the activity and put an illness back in place again. Try to influence the reactive mind by reason or needles and it is not any easier to convince than a drug-crazed man bent on murdering everybody in a bar. He's "surviving," too.
A concoction like ACTH has a slightly different effect. It is too exclusive to have any research done with it, but on reports about it, it seems to affect engrams in the time sense. That is to say, as will be covered under therapy, the individual's reactive location in time is
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shifted by it. ACTH and perhaps many others in its category move the individual from one chronic engram into another. This is about as reliable as changing dictators in Europe. The next one may be twice as bad. It may even be a manic and that's horrible, despite its apparent "euphoria."
Electric shock treatment, the beatings of Bedlam and other things of their ilk,23 including surgical treatment of things psychosomatic in origin, have another effect, but one not dissimilar to drugs like ACTH, in that they give another shock which transfers the engram pattern to another part of the body (and switches around the aberrations; when these things work it is because the new aberration is less violent than the old one). Shocks, blows, surgery and maybe even things like cobra venom change the effect of the engram bank on the body, not necessarily for the worse, not necessarily for the better; they just change them. Like shooting dice: sometimes one gets a seven.24
Then there is the deletion-of-tissue treatment of psychosomatic ills. This simply removes the area which is busy dramatizing in the physical line. This can be the removal of a toe or the removal of a brain. These things are quite commonly used, as this is being written. The removal of the toe is addressed to one part of the engram content, the somatic, and the removal of parts of the brain (as in the transorbital leukotomy25 and the prefrontal lobotomy26 or anything else more recent) is
23. ilk: class; kind; sort.
24. gets a seven: reference to the game of craps (the throwing, or shooting, of dice), in which a first throw of seven wins.
25. transorbital leukotomy: (psychiatry) an operation which, while the patient is being electrically shocked, thrusts an ordinary dime-store ice pick into each eye and reaches up to rip the analyzer apart.
26. prefrontal lobotomy: (psychiatry) an operation in which the white fibers joining the prefrontal and frontal lobes to the interior region of the brain are severed.
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addressed mistakenly to "the removal of" the psycho-aberration. There is a surrender system at work in this as well: the surgeon or the patient has an aberration about "getting rid of it," and so bits of the body are cut up or removed. Some patients surrender anatomy on advice or at their own insistence like old-timers shed blood in a phlebotomy.27 There is a straight parallel between bleeding the patient to make him well and cutting away parts of him to make him well. Both are based on a surrender (get rid of) engram and neither are effective in any way. Barber basin medicine,28 it is hoped, will eventually die out, as did its patients.
These are the five classes of psychosomatic ills: (1) those ills resulting from mentally caused derangement in physical fluid flow, which class subdivides into (a) inhibition of fluid flow and (b) magnification of fluid flow; (2) those ills resulting from mentally caused derangement of physical growth, which class subdivides into (a) inhibition of growth and (b) magnification of growth; (3) those ills resulting from predisposition to disease resulting from a chronic psychosomatic pain in an area; (4) those ills resulting from perpetuation of a disease on account of chronic pain in an area; and (5) those ills caused by the verbal command content of the engrams.
In Class 1 (a) fall such ordinary things as constipation and such extraordinary things as arthritis. Arthritis is a complex mechanism with a simple cause and a relatively simple cure. Remember that there are two things present in an engram: physical pain and verbal
27. phlebotomy: the act or practice of bloodletting as a therapeutic measure.
28. barber basin medicine: reference to the practice of surgery by barbers in earlier centuries. Generally untrained in medical procedures, their "treatments" were very painful with severe infections and often death resulting from unsanitary conditions.
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command. In arthritis both must be present (as in the bulk of psychosomatic ills). There must have been an accident to the joint or area affected, and there must have been a command during the "unconsciousness" which attended the injury which would make the en-gram susceptible to chronic restimulation. (Such commands as "It is always like this" or "It just goes right on hurting" or "I'm stuck" will produce similar results.) Given this engram and given this engram keyed in, there is a chronic pain in the area of the injury. It may be minor, but it is a pain just the same. (It can be a pain but not be felt if the engram contains a command which is anesthetic, such as "He'll never feel this," which produces a similar condition but makes one "unconscious" of the pain there.) This pain in the body probably tells the cells and the blood that this area is dangerous. It is therefore avoided. The command permits the mind to influence, let us say, the parathyroid, which contains the secret of the calcium content in the bloodstream. A mineral deposit then begins to be laid down in the area. The mineral deposit is not necessarily the cause of the pain, but it is an organic restimulator so that the more mineral, the more pain, the more the engram keys in. This is the dwindling spiral. And this is arthritis in action. Understand that the parathyroid and the blood avoidance are theoretical cause; the scientific fact is that when an engram is picked up and deleted about an area containing arthritis, that arthritis vanishes and does not return and this is x-ray plate evidence; it happens every time and does not happen because of any suggestion or medicine; it happens because an engram is picked up and refiled. As the engram goes away, so goes the pain, so vanishes the arthritis. This forms a whole class of ills, of which arthritis is only one. The mechanisms involved vary slightly. All can be headed under "physical derangement caused by reduced body fluid flow."
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Class 1 (b) of psychosomatic ills, magnification of fluid flow, contains such things as high blood pressure, diarrhea, sinusitis, priapism (overactivity of the male sex glands) or any other physical condition resulting from a superabundance of fluid.
Class 2 (a) can cause such things as a withered arm, a foreshortened nose, underdeveloped genital organs or any other underdevelopment of a gland having to do with size (which cross-classes this with 1 [a]), hairless-ness (which also like the rest can be part of the gene pattern and therefore inherent), and, in short, reduction in size of any part of the body.
Class 2 (b) causes such things as oversized hands, a lengthened nose, oversized ears, enlarged organs and other common physical malformations. (Cancer might possibly come under this heading as overheating.)
Class 3 would include tuberculosis (some cases), liver trouble, kidney trouble, rashes, common colds, etc. (cross-classing with others, as do all of these in one way or another).
Class 4 would include those diseases which, arising without psychosomatic influence, yet fix upon, by accident, a previously injured area and, by restimulation, keep an engram keyed in in that area so that a condition becomes chronic. Tuberculosis could be included here. Conjunctivitis,29 all running sores and any condition which refuses to heal, etc.
This fourth class would also include all bizarre pains and sicknesses which cannot be found to have actual pathology.
Class 5 includes an enormously wide catalog of conditions, any one of which may cross-index to other classes or which arise solely out of engrams which
29. conjunctivitis: inflammation of the conjunctiva, the mucous membrane lining the inner eyelid and part of the eye.
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dictate the presence or necessity of an illness. "You always have colds," "I have sore feet," etc., announce a psychosomatic illness and the mechanisms of the body can furnish one.
Any disease whatever can be precipitated by en-grams. The disease may be of germ origin: the individual possesses art engram to the effect that he may become sick and, on this generalization, becomes sick with whatever is to hand. Further and even more general, the engram reduces the physical resistance of the body to disease, and when an engram goes into restimu-lation (perhaps because of a domestic quarrel, an accident or some such thing) the ability of the individual to resist sickness is automatically decreased.
Children, as will be explained, have many more engrams than has been supposed. Almost all childhood illnesses are preceded by psychic disturbance and if psychic disturbance is presentùkeeping an engram restimulatedùsuch illnesses can be far more violent than they should be. Measles, for instance, can be just measles or it can be measles in company with engramic restimulation, in which case it can be nearly or entirely fatal. A check of many subjects on this matter of childhood illness being predisposed by, precipitated by and perpetuated by engrams causes one to wonder just how violent the diseases themselves really are: they have never been observed in a cleared child and there is reason to investigate the possibility that childhood illnesses are in themselves extremely mild and are complicated only by psychic disturbanceùwhich is to say, the restimulation of engrams.
In fact, one could ask this question of the entire field of pathology: What is the actual effect of disease minus the mental equation? How serious are bacteria?
The field of bacteriology has been without dynamic principles until now: the dynamic, survival, is applicable
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to all life forms, and "life forms" include germs. The purpose of the germ is to survive. Its problems are those of food, protection (offense and defense) and procreation. To accomplish these things the germ survives at its optimum efficiency. It mutates, alters with natural selection and changes dynamically from survival necessity (the missing step of the evolution theory, that last) in order to accomplish the maximum survival possible. It makes errors by killing the hosts, but to have a purpose to survive does not mean that a form necessarily survives.
In pathology, the germ, bent on its purpose, acts as a suppressor to the survival dynamic of the human species. How serious this suppressor is in the absence of engram suppression in the human has not been determined; enough data exists to indicate that a human individual with his potential in the fourth zone is not, apparently, very subject to disease: the common cold, for instance, if it is a virus or not, passes him by; chronic infections are absent. What antibodies have to do with this or what this factor is, is yet another question. But it remains that a Clear is not easily made ill. In the aberree illness closely pursues mental depression (depression of the dynamic level).
The aberration of mind and body by engrams leads, then, not only to psychosomatic ills but also to actual pathology, which has hitherto been considered more or less independent of the mental state. As has been proven by clinical research, clearing of engrams does more than remove psychosomatic illness, potential, acute or chronic. The clearing also tends to proof the individual against the receipt of pathology: to what extent, it is not yet known, for such a wide and long-term view is required to establish the actual statistics that the project will require thousands of cases and the observations of medical doctors over a long term.
The amount of aberration which a person manifests,
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which is to say, the position he would occupy on a sanity scale, has little to do with psychosomatic illness. Such illnesses require only one or two engrams of a specific nature to become manifest. These engrams may not be aberrative in any other way than to predispose the individual to illness. Having a psychosomatic illness is not the same as being "crazy" or having hypochondriacal tendencies. The hypochondriac thinks he has illnesses, a special case of Class 5 above.
Derangement falls sharply into two categories: the first is the mental derangementùany irrational conditionùwhich, in Dianetics, we call aberration in order to avoid constant cataloging of the thousands, the millions of manifestations irrationality can have. The other derangement of the individual is somatic: this applies entirely to his physical being and physical ability and health. Both these things are present in every engram: the aberration and the somatic. But the engram can manifest itself chronically as either a somatic (a noun has been made out of an adjective here and it is commonly employed in Dianetics to avoid the use of the word pain, which is not embracive and which is restim-ulative) or as an aberration or as both together.
An engram must contain physical pain. When an engram is restimulated in everyday life, that physical pain may appear or it may not. If it does not appear as pain but as aberration, then the individual is in another valence than his own (the "necessity to manifest his hostilities"). If he is sane enough to be in his own valence, the physical pain will be present. In Dianetics, we say the somatic has appeared. When any somatic appears, unless the individual is a preclear30 in therapy,
30. preclear: from pre-Clear, a person not yet Clear; generally a person being audited, who is thus on the road to Clear; a person who, through Dianetics auditing, is finding out more about himself and life.
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some of the aberration is also appearing. In short, the aberration can appear by itself or the somatic plus some of the aberration can appear. When a person dramatizes another valence than his own, the aberration is present; when the dramatization, running off the engram phonograph-record-wise in one or another valence, is suppressed by some other factor, such as the police or a stronger person or even the individual himself (this has been called repressionùthe term is not used here because it is loaded with other meanings), the somatic most certainly will come into view.
The individual is, then, apparently "better off" (as the cells meant him to be) to occupy the survival role in the engram (the winning valence), for he is, at least, not ill. But how many people have been killed, how many banks have been robbed and how many marital partners have been driven mad by these dramatizations? So the health of the individual would be considered by society, in its effort to protect its members, to be a secondary affair. In fact, "society" has not known about this mechanical aspect, The individual who dramatizes the survival valence in his engrams may do violent things to other people. The individual who will not permit himself such a dramatization or who is forced by society away from such dramatization will most certainly become psychosomatically ill. "Heads I win, tails you lose."31 The answer is in the alleviation or deletion of the engram. For there are many additional aspects to the problem: the man who dramatizes his engrams, society or no society, is not apt to survive; and if he
31. "Heads I win, tails you lose": descriptive of a one-sided arrangement. The phrase comes from a game of flipping a coin into the air and betting on which side will land uppermost. Heads refers to the side of a coin bearing the date and the main design (often a representation of a head); tails refers to the reverse side of a coin.
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dramatizes them, he is subject to whatever slurs were leveled at the valence he is in by another valence in that same engram.
The combinations of the classes and aspects of psychosomatic illness listed and described here lead to some highly complex situations. It is a scientific fact that no psychosomatic ill exists without an aberration. And it is true that no aberration exists without a potential or actual psychosomatic ill. One of the psychosomatic illnesses one would least expect to find as a psychosomatic affair is the illness of sexual perversion.
The sexual pervert (and by this term Dianetics, to be brief, includes any and all forms of deviation in dynamic two such as homosexuality, lesbianism,32 sexual sadism,33 etc., and all down the catalog of Ellis34 and Krafft-Ebing35) is actually quite ill physically. Perversion, as an illness, has so many manifestations that it must be spread through the entire gamut36 of classes from 1 to 5 above. Overdevelopment of sexual organs, underdevelopment, seminal37 inhibition or magnification, etc., are found some in one pervert, some in another. And the sum of it is that the pervert is always a very ill person in one way or another, whether he is conscious of it or not. He is very far from culpable38 for his condition, but he is also so far from normal and so
32. lesbianism: homosexual relations between women.
33. sadism: the getting of sexual pleasure from dominating, mistreating or hurting one's partner.
34. Ellis: Henry Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), English criminolo-gist and psychologist who conducted studies in psychology and sociology of sex.
35. Krafft-Ebing: Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902), German neurologist and author of works on sexual pathology-
36. gamut: the entire range or extent, as of emotions.
37. seminal: pertaining to, containing or consisting of semen.
38. culpable: deserving blame; blameworthy.
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extremely dangerous to society that the tolerance of perversion is as thoroughly bad for society as punishment for it. Lacking proper means prior to this time, society has been caught between tolerance and punishment, and the problem of perversion has, of course, not been resolved. A bit off the subject here, but it can be remarked about perversion that the best previous explanation for it was something about girls becoming envious of Papa's penis or boys becoming upset about that terrible thing, the vulva, which Mama was incautious enough to show one day. It takes a great deal more than this utter tripe39 to make a pervert. It is, rather, something on the order of kicking a baby's head in, running over him with a steamroller, cutting him in half with a rusty knife, boiling him in Lysol,40 and all the while with crazy people screaming the most horrifying and unprintable things at him. The human being is a very tough character. He is so confoundedly tough that he has whipped the whole animal kingdom and he can shake the stars. And when it comes to throwing his second dynamic out of balance, what that takes is straight out of Dante41 and Sax Rohmer42 combined. Hence the pervert, containing hundreds and hundreds of vicious engrams, has had little choice between being dead and being a pervert. But with an effective science to handle the problem, a society which would continue to endure perversion and all its sad and sordid effects doesn't deserve to survive.
40. Lysol: (trademark) a brand of clear, brown, oily solution used as a disinfectant and antiseptic.
41. Dante: originally Durante, Alighieri (1265-1321), Italian poet. Wrote Divina Commedia, recounting an imaginary journey by the author through hell, purgatory and paradise.
42. Sax Rohmer: pseudonym of Arthur Sarsfield Ward (1883-1959), English author of mystery thrillers, especially a series centering about fictional character Dr. Fu Manchu.
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Perversion can have other aspects. In one society examined, these aberrations had multiplied so far that a principal mystic cult had sprung up which contended that all mental illness came from sex; this, of course, gave further impetus to aberrations on the second dynamic (sex), as such a cultic belief must have been originated by an individual who had severe aberrations across the second dynamic. This belief that sex was the only source of human aberration and travail43 naturally attracted as its practitioners individuals who had similar aberrative patterns. And so the cult further enforced existing aberrative factors in the society, since all their activity was leveled at making sex something ogreish44 and dreadful by labeling it the society's primary source of mental illness. The prophet of this god was Man-ichaeus, a Persian of the third century, who taught that all things about the body, especially sex, were evil; the cult of Manichaeus carried on well into the Dark Ages and then vanished, to trouble man no more.
Any dynamic can be blocked: the personal dynamic, the sex dynamic, the group dynamic or the mankind dynamic. Each one has been the target at some time of one cult or another seeking to cure all man's ills and save him. Dianetics is not interested in saving man, but it can do much to prevent him from being "saved." As an organized body of scientific knowledge, Dianetics can draw only the conclusion which it observes in the laboratory.
It can be observed that the Church is entirely correct in doing all in its power to prevent blasphemy.45 Blasphemy
43. travail: (figurative) trouble, hardship or suffering.
44. ogreish: like or having the characteristics of an ogre: (in folklore and fairy tales) a man-eating monster, usually represented as a hideous giant; hence, anything likened to such a monster in appearance or character.
45. blasphemy: abuse of or contempt for God or sacred things.
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can very often be uttered during the "unconsciousness" of a person who has been struck. This would enter sacred names and curses into engrams which, reacting within the individual, give him an unnatural terror and compulsion or repulsion toward God. It is not the religion which is at fault, it is the blaspheming of the religion. Such blasphemy makes the insane zealot46 and the murderous atheist,47 both of whom the Church would very gladly do without.
In the realm of psychosomatic illness, any combination of the language is as damaging a factor in an engram as any other factor. The moronic reasoning of the reactive mind, which considers everything in an engram equal to everything in an engram, also considers that everything similar to the engram in the exterior world (the restimulators) is sufficient cause to place an engram in effect. Hence aberration and illness can come about.
There is, however, a peculiarity in psychosomatic illnesses which is chronic: the aberree's reactive mind exercises a power of choice to the extent that only prosurvival engrams become chronic. It could be said, on a reactive level, that the aberree will not permit himself to suffer illness from his engrams unless that illness has a "survival" value. This is very important in therapy. The chronic psychosomatic illnesses which a patient displays are those which have a sympathy (pro-survival) background.
It is not possible to "spoil" a child with love and affection. Whoever postulated that it was possible was postulating out of bad data and no observation. A child needs all the love and affection it can possibly get. A
46. zealot: an excessively zealous person; fanatic.
47. atheist: a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
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test was run in one hospital which tended to show that babies, when left without attention, ran fevers. When given attention, the fevers immediately abated. The test, while not observed personally by the author, seems to have been conducted with proper controls according to report. If this is true, it postulates a mechanism in the human being which uses illness for affection on a genetic basis. There is no reason why not; there have been enough years of engineeringùalmost two billionùto build anything into the blueprint. These babies, in several groups, were left in the hospital by their parents for the test; they uniformly became ill when not given affection. Here is the law of affinity at work, if these tests were accurately conducted. Their purpose was not to help Dianetics, but to show that the leaving of a baby in the hospital after his birth because he has a slight illness invariably increases that illness.
A series of severely controlled Dianetic experiments over a much longer period demonstrated that the law of affinity, as applicable to psychosomatic illness, was more powerful than fear and antagonism by a very wide margin. So great is this margin that it could be compared as the strength of a steel girder to a straw. It was found, as above, that chronic psychosomatic ills existed only when they had a sympathy engram behind them. The law of affinity might be interpreted as the law of cohesion; affinity might be defined as "love" in both its meanings. Deprivation of or absence of affection could be considered as a violation of the law of affinity. Man must be in affinity with man to survive. The suicide ordinarily commits the act on the computation that the removal of self will some way benefit other selvesù this, on the reactive mind level, is a very ordinary computation, deriving exclusively from engrams. The violent industrial chieftain with his merciless mien,48
48. mien: a person's manner or bearing.
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when he suffers from a psychosomatic ill, ordinarily derives it out of a sympathy engram.
The sympathy engram pretends to be prosurvival. As one preclear said, a man is not victimized by his enemies but by his friends. An engram comes about always from a greater or lesser moment of "unconsciousness." There is no engram without "unconsciousness." It is only when the analyzer is out of circuit that the exterior world can come interior, unrationalized, and work from within. The second the analyzer identifies one of those engrams as such, that engram loses about 20 percent of its value to aberrate and usually 100 percent of its value to cause a psychosomatic illness. Pain is extremely perishable. Pleasure is recorded in bronze. (Not poetry here, science. Physical pain will delete with brief attention; a pleasant or even a media-media49 experience is so solidly fixed in the mind that no treatment known to Dianetics will shake it and a great deal of effort has been leveled at pleasure recordings just to test them for permanence. They are permanent; physical pain is perishable. Too bad, Schopenhauer,50 but you were a most mistaken man.)
Exposing a lock to the analyzerùa moment of "mental anguish"ùonce the engram which gave it power is gone causes that lock to blow away like chaff. The analyzer works on the "doctrine of the true datum": it has no truck51 with anything which it once
49. media-media: average.
50. Schopenhauer: Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher. He maintained that the desires and drives of men, as well as the forces of nature, are manifestations of a single will, specifically the will to live, which is the essence of the world. Schopenhauer asserted that since operation of the will means constant striving without satisfaction, life consists of suffering and that only by controlling the will through the intellect, by suppressing the desire to reproduce, can suffering be diminished.
51. truck: dealings; business.
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discovers to be false. Just exposing an engram without relieving it has some therapeutic valueù20 percentùand this gave rise to a belief that all one had to do was know about his ills and they would vanish. Nice if it were so.
The most aberrative engram, then, is one which is held down by the reactive mind'sùthat moron'sù concept that it is needed in the survival of the individual. This sympathy engram is the one which comes forward and stays chronic as a psychosomatic illness. There are two reasons for this: one is usually in one's own valence when a sympathy engram is received; and one's reactive mind, knowing well the value of affinity, puts forward the psychosomatic illness to attract affinity. There is no volition here on the part of the individual's "I," analytical self. But there is every "volition" on the part of the reactive mind.
A sympathy engram would go something like this: a small boy, much victimized by his parents, is extremely ill. His grandmother attends him and, while he is delirious, soothes him and tells him she will take care of him, that she will stay right there until he is well. This puts a high "survival" value on being sick. He does not feel safe around his parents; he wants his grandmother present (she is a winning valence because she orders the parents around), and he now has an engram. Minus the engram there would be no psychosomatic illness. Sickness, "unconsciousness" and physical pain are essential to the receipt of this engram. But it is not a contrasurvival engram. It is a prosurvival engram. It can be dramatized in one's own valence.
The psychosomatic illness, in such a case as this, would be a "precious possession." "I" doesn't even know the computation. The analyzer was out when the engram went in. The analyzer cannot recall that en-gram with anything short of Dianetic therapy. And the engram will not clear away.
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Now, with this engram we have a patient with sinusitis and a predisposition to lung infections. It may be that he was luckless enough to marry a counterpart of his mother or his grandmother. The reactive mind cannot tell the difference between Grandmother or Mother and wife if they are even vaguely similar in speech, voice tone or mannerisms. The wife is not sympathetic. In goes the engram to demand that sympathy. And even if the wife thinks that sinusitis and lung infection are repulsive enough to lead to divorce, the reactive mind keeps that engram keyed in. The more hatred from the wife, the more that engram keys in. You can kill a man that way.
The above is a standard sympathy engram. When a therapist tries to get that engram away from the patient, the reactive mind balks. The "I" doesn't balk. The analyzer doesn't balk. These are hopeful that this en-gram will spring. But the reactive mind keeps it nailed down until the Dianeticist puts a crowbar under it. Then it is gone. (Enough locks may be lifted, by the way, to alleviate this condition. But the patient will dig up another engram!)
Resistance to past therapies has resulted from these sympathy engrams. Yet they lie right there on the surface, fully exposed as chronic psychosomatic illness.
Feeding a patient with a psychosomatic ill any number of drugs can result in only temporary relief. "I" doesn't want the illness. The analyzer doesn't want it. But the body has it, and if anybody succeeds in curing it short of removing that engram, the body, at the command of the reactive mind, will find something else to substitute for that ill or develop an "allergy" to the drug or annul the effect of the drug entirely.
Of course, one can always rip living tissue out of the skull with knives, ice picks or shock in wholesale quantities. This will cure a psychosomatic ill. It also,
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unhappily, cures the personality, the intellect and all too often, life itself.
In Dianetics, the application of technique to relieve the engrams causing these ills has brought the uniform relief of all patients treated, without relapse. In short and in brief, psychosomatic ills can now be cured. All of them.
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CHAPTER Six
Emotion and the Dynamics
Emotion is a 0' quantity, which is to say that it is so involved with life forces that Dianetics, at this stage, handles it with invariable success but does not attempt to give forth more than a descriptive theory. Much research must be done on emotion; but so long as the therapy embraces it and releases it with success, further data can be dispensed with up to a point.
Emotion would have to be divided sharply into minus emotions and plus emotions. The minus emotion would be nonsurvival in character, the plus emotion would be prosurvival. The pleasant and pleasurable emotions are not of any great concern to us here. It is believed that all emotion is the same thing but in its aspects above zone 1 it can be bypassed as unnecessary to explain at this time for the purpose of this book.
In zones 1 and 0, emotion becomes very important to therapy. As has been covered earlier, zones 1 and 0 are the anger and apathy zones respectively. From death up to the border between anger and fear is zone 0. From this borderline to the beginning of boredom is anger, zone 1.
It is as if the survival dynamic, in becoming contracted into zone 1, first began to display hostility, then, on further suppression toward death, anger. On further suppression, rage began to be displayed. Then fear as the next lower level, then terror and finally, just above death, apathy.
1. 0: theta, the eighth letter in the Greek alphabet. Greek for thought or life or the spirit.
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And as the dynamic is suppressed, the cells react forcefully to the menace, it could be said, by resisting the menace. The analyzer resists down to the top border of zone 1, but in ever-decreasing control. From here on down the cells, the actual organism, do the resisting in a last-ditch effort. The reactive mind is thoroughly in command from the top border of zone 1 straight tin down to death, and it is in ever-increasing command of the organism as the dynamic is suppressed.
Emotion seems to be inextricably2 connected up with the actual force of life. That there is a life force no engineer could doubt. Man and medicine usually look at the pitcher and forget that the pitcher is only there to hold milk and that the milk is the important quantity. Life force is the helium3 which fills the free balloon. Out goes the helium, down comes the balloon. When this type of energy is located and isolated as itselfùif it is just an energy typeùthen medicine can start moving forward in strides which will make all former steps look like those of a man in a sack race.4 Medicine doesn't have any spare helium, for one thing.
How high this life force can go on the survival scale is not known. Above zone 3 is the area of question marks. A Clear goes up into a level of persistence, vigor, tenacity, rationality and happiness. Perhaps someday a Clear will attain the nebulosity the author used to hear about in India which marked the man who was all soul.
How far down it can go is definitely known. A man dies. He doesn't move or think. He dies as an organism,
2. inextricably: in a way incapable of being disentangled, undone, loosed or solved.
3. helium: one of the chemical elements, a very light, inert, colorless gas: it is used for inflating balloons, etc.
4. sack race: a race in which each contestant jumps ahead while his or her legs are confined in a sack.
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then he dies as cells. There are different periods of "life after death" for the cells, and biologists remark that the hair and nail cells do not die for months. So here is a spectrum of death, first the organism and then, colony by colony, the cells.
That is from the bottom of zone 0 downward. But what we are interested in is the area from zone 1 down to the bottom of zone 0. It could be postulated that the analytical mind has its greatest bounce against the suppressor, its highest ability to care for the organism, when it is in the third zone. As the suppressor thrusts downward against it, the analyzer, within lower zone 3, thrusts heavily back. This is necessity at work. The necessity level can rise, in this action, to a point which keys out* all engrams!
It must be realized that the analyzer considers future suppressors and is continually engaged upon computations which pose problems of the future which the analyzer resolvesùthis is one of the functions of the imagination. It must further be realized that the analyzer is engaged upon a multitude of computations about the present, for the analytical mind is dealing continually with an enormous number of factors which comprise the suppressor of the present and the suppressor of the future. It computes, for instance, on the alliances with friends and symbiotes and its greatest victories are achieved by taking some of the suppressor and turning it into an alliance factor.
The individual can be visualized, on the survival spectrum, as being at the tip of the survival dynamic. The suppressor thrusts down, or future suppressors threaten a thrust, and the analytical mind thrusts up with solutions. The level of the individual is determined
5. key out: cause an engram (or engrams) to drop away without being erased.
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! EMOTION AND THE DYNAMICS
| by how well these suppressors are apparently met.
We speak now of the Clear, and until further mention we will continue to use the Clear. The Clear is an unaberrated person. He is rational in that he forms the best possible solutions he can on the data he has and from his viewpoint. He obtains the maximum pleasure for the organism, present and future, as well as for the subjects along the other dynamics. The Clear has no engrains which can be restimulated to throw out the correctness of computation by entering hidden and false data into it. No aberration. Hence the reason we use him here as an example.
The survival dynamic is high, more than balancing
the suppressor. Take this as a first condition. This would
place the dynamic in zone 3, tone 3.9. Now increase the
suppressor. The dynamic is pushed back to tone 3.2.
Necessity surges up. The suppressor is thrust back. The
I dynamic is once more at tone 3.9. This action could be
i termed an enthusiastic resurgence. The individual has
actually gotten "angry"ùthat is to say, he has called
upon his being to furnish power for thought and action.
Mentally, he calls upon whatever constitutes mental en-
ò ergy. Physically, if the suppression was physical, he would
call upon his adrenaline. This is proper use of the endo-
crines, to use them for regaining position in relation to the
| suppressor. Any and all body function is under analytical
I (but not necessarily monitored) command.
! Now let us suppose that the suppressor surges down
against the dynamic and drives the dynamic to 3.0.
Necessity level comes up. Action is taken. The full
i force of the being is thrown against the suppressor. Now
[ let us suppose that a new factor comes into the suppres-
; sor and makes it much, much stronger. The individual
; still attempts to resurge against it. But the suppressor
weighs heavier and heavier against him. He is beginning
to exhaust his supplies of mental or physical energy (and
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this suppressor can be on either a mental or physical level). Wearying, the individual drops down to a 2.5. The suppressor again increases. Resurgence is attempted once more. The last supply of available energy or data is thrown out. And another factor comes into the suppressor, increasing its weight. The individual sags down to 2.0.
At exactly this point the analyzer, having failed, finally cuts out. Here is entered the top of zone 1. Hostility sets in. The suppressor is down, pressing down against actual cellular survival. And it drops lower. The individual goes into anger, recruiting cellu-larly, but not sentiently, the last forces. Again the suppressor gets new weight. The individual goes into rage. Once more the suppressor drops. The individual goes into fear, tone 0.9. Again the suppressor lowers, recruiting new factors. The individual is thrust down to 0.6 and, here, is in terror. Once more tl .. suppressor drops with new force. The individual slides into fear paralysis, 0.2.
Suppose we parallel this in a very simple, dramatic example so that we do not have to consider a thousand subtle factors. A Clear, inexperienced in hunting, determines to shoot a grizzly.6 He has a fine rifle. The grizzly appears to be easy game. The man is at 3.9 or above. He feels good. He is going to get that grizzly, as the grizzly has been threatening the man's stock.1 High enthusiasm carries him to the lair. He waits, he finally sees the grizzly. There is a cliff above the man which he could not ordinarily climb. But to get a good shot before the grizzly vanishes, the man has to climb the cliff. Seeing he was in danger of losing the game brought
6. grizzly: short for grizzly bear: a large, ferocious, brownish, grayish or yellowish bear of western North America, having a shoulder hump and long front claws.
7. stock: cattle or other farm or range animals; livestock.
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the man down to 3.2. Necessity sends him up the cliff. He fires but in firing falls back down the cliff. The grizzly is wounded. He starts toward the man. Necessity surges up. The man recovers the gun and shoots again. He is at 3.0 the moment he shoots. He misses. He fires again but the miss, with the grizzly charging, brought him down to 2.5. He shoots once more. The grizzly takes the ball and keeps on coming. The man shoots again but he has suddenly realized that his rifle is not going to stop this grizzly. His tone drops to 2.0. He begins to snarl and feverishly work his gun. His bullets go wild. He experiences rage at the gun, the grizzly, the world, and throws the gun away, ready to meet the grizzly, almost upon him, with bare hands. Suddenly the man knows fear. His tone is 1.2. It drops to 0.9 with a smell in his nostrils of the bear. He knows the bear will kill him. He turns and tries to claw up the cliff and get away but his efforts are frenzied. He is at tone 0.6, stark terror. The bear strikes him and knocks him from the cliffside. The man lies still, breathing almost halted, heartbeat slowed to nearly nothing. The bear hits him again and the man lies still. Then the bear decides he is dead and walks away. Shaken, the man eventually comes around, his tone gradually rising up to 2.0, the point where his analyzer shut off. He stirs more and gets up. His tone is back to 2.5: he is analytically afraid and cautious. He recovers his gun. He begins to leave the scene. He feels a great necessity to recoup his own self-esteem and his tone comes to 3.2. He walks away and reaches a safe area. Suddenly it occurs to him that he can borrow a friend's Mauser.8 He begins to make plans to get that bear. His enthusiasm mounts. But, completely aside from the engram received when the bear knocked him out, he acts on his experience. Three days later he kills the bear and his tone rises to 4.0 for the
8. Mauser: a brand of military or hunting rifles.
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space of contemplation and telling the tale, and then his mind occupies itself with new matters.
Life is much more complicated than the business of killing grizzlies, usually a lot less dramatic but always full of situations which cause a fluctuation of the suppressor. The gaining of all pleasurable goalsùa bear killed, a woman kissed, a seat in the front row at the opera, a friend won, an apple stolenùare sweeps through various levels of tone. And the individual is generally carrying on three or three thousand computations at once and there are thirty or thirty thousand variables in his computations. Too many unknowns, too many entrances of "didn't know the gun was loaded" factors: all these can throw the analyzer from a direct alignment into the scattered dispersal of nonfunction. The analyzer can be considered to cut out when tone 2.0 is reached. From 2.5 down, the computations it makes are not very rationalù too many unknowns, too many unexpected factors, too many discoveries of miscalculations.
This is living on a "Clear" basis. When our hunter was hit by the bear he received an engram. That engram, when it keyed in, would give him a fear, an apathy attitude, in the presence of certain factors: every per-ceptic presentùthe smell of that ground, twigs, bear breath, etc. But he killed the bear. The chances of that engram keying in are remote. Not because he killed the bear but because he was, after all, a grown man. And, if a Clear, he could have thought back and cleared the whole thing himself.
This is a complete cycle of emotion. Enthusiasm and high pleasure are at the extreme top. Fear and paralysis are at the bottom. Feigned9 death, in man, is very close to the actual thing on the Tone Scale. It is a valid mechanism. But it is complete apathy.
9. feigned: pretended, simulated; sham.
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So long as the analyzer is operating, the receipt of an engram is impossible. Everything files in the standard banks. As soon as the border 2.0 is passed on the way down, "unconsciousness" can be judged to have set in and anything registered, in company with pain or painful emotion, is an engram. This is not a shift of definition. The analyzer cuts out, with surgical anesthetic, at 2.0. The anesthetic may depress the level of awareness further. Pain may depress it even more. But depressing the level of awareness is not necessarily depressing emotion. How much conceived danger or sympathy is present in the environment? This is what depresses the Tone Scale. There can be a reactive engram which contains a tone 4.0, or one that contains a 1.0 or another that contains a 0.1. This is not, then, quite two-dimensional, this emotion.
The level of depth of consciousness can be affected by painful emotion, poisons or other things which depress awareness. After that it is all engram, and the engrams have their own Tone Scale which runs from 4.0 down to 0.1.
It can be seen now that two things are at work. First is the state of physical being. It is this which tunes down the analyzer. Then there is the mental state of being. This is what tunes down the emotional Tone Scale.
But remember that in engrams there is another factor present: valence. Once its own analyzer is out, the body will assume the evaluation or emotional condition of any other analyzer present. Here we have affinity at work in earnest. "Unconscious" in the presence of other beings, an individual picks up a valence for every other being present. Some of these valences are incidental. He will pick first that valence which is most sympathetic as a desirable future friend (or some similar person). And he will pick that valence which is the
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top valence (highest survival, the boss, the winner) for his dramatization. He will also take the valence of the winning entity (winning over himself or others) for emotional tone. If the winning valence is also the sympathetic valence, he has an engram which can be utilized to its fullest extent.
Let us make this an example: a man is under nitrous oxide (the most vicious anesthetic ever invented, as it is actually not anesthetic but a hypnotic) undergoing exo-dontistry.10 As usual, everybody present around the "unconscious" patient chatters and yaps about the patient, the weather, the most popular movie star or baseball. The exodontist is a tough character, bossy to the nurse, apt to be angry about trifles; he is also very sympathetic toward the patient. The nurse is a blue-eyed blonde who is sexually aberrated. The patientùactually in agony, receiving an engram amongst engrams which may ruin his life (terrible stuff, nitrous oxide; really hands out a fancy engram as any Dianeticist can attest)ùis unanalytical. Everything said to him or around him is taken literally. He takes the valence of the exodontist as both the top valence present and the sympathetic valence. But every phrase uttered is aberrative and will be interpreted by that happy little moron, the reactive mind, on the order of Simple Simon" who was told he had to be careful how he stepped in the pies, so he stepped in them carefully. These people may be talking about somebody else but every "I" or "he" or "you" uttered is engramic and will be applied to others and himself by the patient in the most literal sense. "He can't remember anything," says the exodontist. All right, when the engram keys in,
10. exodontistry: the extraction of teeth.
11. Simple Simon: a foolish character in the well-known anonymous nursery rhyme: "Simple Simon met a pieman, going to the fair; Says Simple Simon to the pieman, 'Let me taste your ware. . . .' "
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this patient will have an occlusion on memory in greater or lesser degree. "He can't see or feel it": this means an occlusion on sight, pain and tactile. If the patient has his eyes watering in agony at the moment (though completely "under"), he may get actual bad vision as well as poor visual recall from this experience. Now they put him in the hands of this blonde nurse to let him sleep off the drug and recover. She is an aberree amongst aberrees. She knows patients do weird things when they are still "out" so she pumps him for information about his life. And she knows they are hypnotic (yes, she sure does) so she gives him some positive suggestions. Amusing herself. She says he'll like her. That she'll be good to him. And stay there now for the present.
So the poor patient, who has had two wisdom teeth, impacted, taken out, has a full anger-sympathy dramatization. The general tone he takes is the tone the exodon-tist showed to the others in the room. The exodontist was angry at the nurse. With his recalls all messed up, the patient a few years later meets a woman similar to this nurse. The nurse has given him compulsions toward her. The silly little moron, the reactive mind, sees in this entirely different person enough similarity to create an identity between the nurse and this new woman. So the patient divorces his wife and marries the pseudonurse.12 Only now that he has married the pseudonurse, the dental engram begins to key in in earnest. Physically he gets ill: the two molars adjacent to where the wisdom teeth came out develop large cavities and begin to rot (circulation shutdown, pain in the area but can't be felt because there's a pain recall shut-off). His memory goes to pieces. His recalls become worse. He begins to
12. pseudo-: combining form meaning "closely or deceptively similar to (a specified thing)," as in pseudonurse, pseudomother, pseudofather, etc.
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develop eye trouble and a strange conjunctivitis. Further (because the dentist leaned on his chest and stomach with a sharp elbow from time to time), he has chest and stomach pains. The nitrous oxide hurt his lungs and this pain is also in chronic restimulation. But most horrible: he believes that this pseudonurse will take care of him and he stops to some degree taking care of himself in any way; his energy dissipates; and analytically he knows it is all wrong and that he is not himself. For he is now fixed in the valence of the exodontist who is angry with this nurse and so he beats the pseudonurse because he senses that from her all evil flows. The girl he married is not and was not the nurse: she sounds something like her and is a blonde. She has her own engrams and reacts. She attempts suicide.
Then, one day, since this is one engram among many, the mental hospital gets our patient and the doctors there decide that all he needs is a good solid series of electric shocks to tear his brain up, and if that doesn't work, a nice ice pick into each eyeball after and during electric shock, the ice pick sweeping a wide arc to tear the analytical mind to pieces. His wife agrees. Our patient can't defend himself: he's insane and the insane have no rights, you know.
Only the cavalry, in this one case, arrived in the form of Dianetics and cleared the patient and the wife and they are happy today. This is an actual engram and an actual case history. It is a sympathy engram, prosur-vival on the moronic reactive mind level.
This is to show the ebb and flow of emotion within this one engram. The physical being is out and in agony. The mental being is given a variety of emotional tones on a contagion principle. The actual emotional tone of the patient, his own, is beaten apathy; hence, he can no longer "be himself."
In passing, it should be mentioned that only absolute
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silence, utter silence and tomblike silence should attend an operation or injury of any kind. There is nothing which can be said or given as a perceptic in any moment of "unconsciousness" which is beneficial to a patient. Nothing! In the light of these researches and scientific findings (which can be proven in any other laboratory or group of people in very short order), speech or sound in the vicinity of an "unconscious" person should be punished criminally as, to anyone who knows these facts, such an act would be a willful effort to destroy the intellect or mental balance of an individual. If the patient is complimented, as in hypnosis or during an injury or operation, a manic is formed which will give him temporary euphoria and eventually plunge him into the depressive stage of the cycle.*
The golden rule could be altered to read: If you love your brother, keep your mouth shut when he is unconscious.
* The author is well aware that many physicians, in using narcosynthesis [drug hypnotism], have occasionally accidentally entered "unconscious" periods. They have promptly considered, then, that these areas were equivocal, that the patient was probably not unconscious. In Dianetic research, patients have been rendered "unconscious" to the satisfaction of two doctors, both skeptical (since no longer skeptical) and have been given material which the Dianeticist knew nothing about. Along with the complete data of the testsùas muttered by the doctors as they took them to make sure by blood pressure, respiration, etc., that the patient could not be more "unconscious" unless he were dead, the data were recovered in full in every case and for every condition of "unconsciousness." Two patients were for a time severely aberrated by the careless comments of the anesthetizing and examining doctors: a note added to warn those attempting this experiment in the future. This is the stuff of which insanity is made. Be careful with it when manhandling patients. ùLRH
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Emotion can be seen then to exist in two planes, the personal plane and the extravalence plane. It is communicable in terms of identical thinking. Rage present when a man is "unconscious" will give him a tone 1 engram: it will contain rage. Apathy present in the vicinity of an "unconscious" person will give him a tone 0 engram. Happiness present during an engram is not very aberrative but will give a tone 4 engram. And so forth. In other words, the emotions of those present around an "unconscious" person are communicated into the person as part of his engram. Any mood can be so communicated.
In dramatizing an engram, the aberree always takes the winning valence and that valence is not, of course, himself. If only one other person is present and the other is talking in terms of apathy, then the apathy is the tone value of the engram. When an apathy engram is restimulated, the individual, unless he wants to be hurt severely, is apathetic and this tone, being the nearest to death, is the most dangerous one to the individual. The rage emotion communicated to an "unconscious" person gives him a rage engram he can dramatize. This is most harmful to the society. A merely hostile tone present around an "unconscious" person gives him a merely hostile engram (covert hostility). With two people present, each having a different mood, the "unconscious" person receives an engram with two valences other than his own. When this happens he will first dramatize the winning valence with its mood and, if forced from this, will dramatize the second valence with its mood. Driven from this in a chronic engram, he goes insane.
Nothing here should be construed to mean that a person only uses or dramatizes sympathy engrams. This is very far from the case. The sympathy engram gives him the chronic psychosomatic illness. He can dramatize any engram he has when it is restimulated.
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Emotion, then, is communication and a personal condition. The cellular level evaluation of a situation depends upon any other analyzer present, even if that analyzer is thoroughly hostile to it. Lacking such evaluation, the individual takes his own tone for the moment.
There is another condition of emotion which is of extreme and useful interest to the therapist since it is the first thing with which he will have to deal in opening a case. We do not mean here to start discussing therapy but to describe a necessary part of emotion.
Great loss and other swift and severe suppressor action dams up emotion in an engram. Loss itself can be a shock to reduce analytical power. And an engram is received. If it is the loss of a sympathetic person on whom an individual has depended, it seems to the individual as if death itself stalks him. When such a suppressor effect occurs, it is as if a strong steel spring had been compressed within the engram. When it releases, it comes with a terrible rush of emotion (if this discharge is, indeed, emotion, though we hardly know what other name to call it).
Life force apparently gets dammed up at these points in life. There may be enormous quantities of that life force available but some of it becomes suppressed into a loss engram. After that the person does not seem to possess as much fluid vitality as before. This may be not emotion but life force itself. The mind, then, has below it, as in a cyst, a great quantity of sorrow or despair. The more of these charges exist in such an encysted state, the less free are the emotions of the individual. This may be on a basis of suppression to a point from which there is no swift rising. Nothing in the person's future seems to bring him up to any plane like those he occupied before.
The glory and color of childhood vanishes as one progresses into later years. But the strange part of it is
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that this glamour and beauty and sensitivity to life are not gone. They are encysted. One of the most remarkable experiences a Clear has is to find, in the process of therapy, that he is recovering appreciation of the beauty in the world.
Persons, as they live forward from childhood, suffer loss after loss, and each loss takes from them a little more of this 6 quantity which may be, indeed, life force itself. Bound up within them, that force is denied them and, indeed, reacts against them.
Only this emotional encysting can, for instance, compartment the mind of a person who is multivalent or who cannot see or hear his past. The analytical mind, worked upon by the reactive bank, compartments and divides with loss after loss until there is no free flow left. Then a man dies.
Thus we could say that emotion, or what has been called emotion, is really in two sections: first, there is the endocrine system which, handled either by the analytical mind in the upper two zones or the reactive mind in the lower two zones, brings emotional responses of fear, enthusiasm, apathy, etc.; second, there would be life force itself becoming compartmented by engrams and being sealed up, little by little, in the reactive bank.
It is possible that a therapy could be formulated which would spring out these various life force charges only and create thereby a full Clear. Unfortunately, to date, this has not been possible.
The odd part of emotion is that it is so ordinarily based on the word content of engrams. If an engram says, "I am afraid," then the aberree is afraid. If an engram says, "I am calm," even if the rest of the engram gives him chattering shakes, the aberree still has to be "calm."
The problem of emotion as endocrine balance and
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life force has another complication in that the physical pain in an engram is often mistaken for a particular emotion named in the engram. For instance, the engram can say with verbal content that the individual is "sexually excited" and have, as a pain content, an ache in the legs and have, as an actual emotional content (the valence that says, "I'm sexually excited"), anger. This, to the aberree dramatizing it, is a complex affair. When he is "sexually excited"ùhe has an idea what that means as just languageùhe is also angry and has an ache in the legs. This is actually very amusing in many cases and has led to a standard set of clinical jokes, all of which begin with, "You know, I feel like everybody else."
Dianeticists, having discovered that people evaluate the emotions, beliefs, intelligence and somatics of the world in terms of their own engramic reactions, delight in discovering new concepts of "emotion." "You know how people feel when they're happy. Their ears burn." "I feel just like anybody else when I'm happy; my feet and eyes ache." "Of course I know how people feel when they're happy; just pin prickles going all over them." "I wonder how people can stand to be passionate when it makes their noses hurt so." "Of course I know how people feel when they're excited; they have to go to the toilet."
Probably every person on Earth has his own peculiar definition for every emotional state in terms of engram command. The command plus the somatics and percep-tics make what they call an "emotional state."
Actually, the problem, then, should be defined in terms of the Clear, who can function without engramic orders from the reactive mind. So defined, it breaks down in terms of the endocrine system and the varying level of life force free to resurge against the suppressor.
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Laughter, it should be added, is not, strictly speaking, an emotion but a relief from emotion. The early Italians had a very definite idea, as represented by their folk tales, that laughter was of therapeutic value. Melancholy13 was the only mental illness these tales consider and laughter was its only cure. In Dianetics, we have a great deal to do with laughter. In therapy, patients vary in their laughter reaction from the slight chuckle to hilarious mirth. Any engram which really releases may be expected to begin somewhere between tears and boredom and end with laughter; the nearer the engram's tone is to tears at the first contact, the more certainly laughter will appear as it is relieved.
There is a stage of therapy often reached by the preclear when his entire past life seems to be a subject of uncontrollable mirth. This does not mean he is Clear but it means that a large proportion of the encysted charges have been tapped.'4 A preclear has laughed for two days almost without ceasing. Hebephrenia15 is not the same thing as this laughter, for the relief of the preclear on realizing the shadowy aspect and completely knowable character of his past fears and terrors is hearty.
Laughter plays a definite role in therapy. It is quite amusing to see a preclear, who has been haunted by an engram which contained great emotional charge, suddenly relieve it, for the situation, no matter how gruesome it was, when relieved, is in all its aspects a subject of great mirth. The laughter fades away as he becomes
13. melancholy: a gloomy state of mind, especially when habitual or prolonged; depression.
14. tapped: penetrated, opened up, reached into, etc., for the purpose of using something or drawing something off.
15. hebephrenia: (psychiatry) a form of aberration characterized by childish or silly behavior.
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disinterested in it and he can be said to be "tone 3" about it.
Laughter is definitely the relief of painful emotion.*
* The complete Tone Scale, its use in predicting the behavior of others as well as assisting in auditing, is given in the book Science of Survival, by L. Ron Hubbard.
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Prenatal Experience and Birth
Old women less than a hundred years ago talked wisely about "prenatal influence" and how a woman marked her child. Many such intuitive thoughts are based, actually, on observed data. It can be observed that the child born out of wedlock is often a luckless creature (in a society which frowns upon such bearings). These tenets have been held in the marketplace for a great many millennia. Just because they have been held is no reason they are true, but they make an excellent beginning for a chapter on prenatal experience and birth.
If Dianetics had worked on obscure theories, such as those of the old women or those of the mystics who believe that "childish delusions" are capable of aberrating a child, Dianetics would not be a science of mind. But it was no obscure theory which brought about the discovery of the exact role prenatal experience and birth play in aberration and psychosomatic ills.
Many schools of mental healing from the Aescula-pian to the modern hypnotist were studied after the basic philosophy of Dianetics had been postulated. Much data was accumulated, many experiments were made. The fundamentals about engrams had been formulated and "unconsciousness" had been discovered as being a period of actual recording, when the theory began to predict new phenomena not hitherto observed.
1. prenatal: existing or taking place before birth.
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There has been, in recent years, a practice called "narco-synthesis."2 This was actually a branch of "hyp-noanalysis"3 and "deep analysis."4 It did not produce Clears and it did not even produce alleviation in the majority of its cases. But it was discovered to be an aberrative factor in itself. A thing which aberrates may well lead to something which removes aberrations if it is studied scientifically. Narcosynthesis was so studied. Several cases were examined on which narcosynthesis had been employed. Some of these cases had experienced relief from narcosynthesis. Others had become a great deal worse.
Working with hypnoanalysis it was discovered that the technique could be varied until it would actually remove the aberrative charge contained in locks. In treating schizophrenics with narcosynthesis it was found that the locks (periods of mental anguish not including physical pain or "unconsciousness") would sometimes spring (clear) and sometimes not.
Narcosynthesis is a complicated name for a very ancient process quite well known in Greece and India. It is drug hypnotism. And it is generally employed either by those practitioners who do not know hypnosis or on those patients who will not succumb to ordinary hypnotism. A shot of sodium pentothal is given intravenously to the patient and he is asked to count backwards. Shortly he stops counting at which the injection is also stopped. The patient is now in a state of "deep sleep." That this is not sleep seems to have missed both
2. narcosynthesis: the practice of inducing sleep with drugs and then talking to the patient to draw out buried thoughts.
3. hypnoanalysis: (psychoanalysis) the use of hypnosis or hypnotic drugs in combination with psychoanalytic techniques.
4. deep analysis: depth therapy: a form of psychotherapy that attempts to work through unconscious conflicts to resolve problems in behavior.
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narcosynthesists and hypnotists. It is actually a depressant on the awareness of an individual so that those attention units which remain behind the curtain of his reactive bank can be reached directly. These attention units are up against the standard banks. The bypass circuits (demon circuits) which lie between these banks and "I" have themselves been bypassed. In other words, a section of the analytical mind has been exposed which is not aberrated. It is not very powerful and it is not highly intelligent, but it has the advantage of being hard up against the standard banks. This is basic personality? The intent and purpose and persistence of these few attention units have the same quality and direction as the whole analytical mind would have if it were Clear. It is a very nice, cooperative group of attention units and it is very useful; for basic personality has all recallsùsonic, audio, tactile, smell, pain, etc. It can get at anything that is in the banksùwhich is everything perceived or thought in a lifetime, minute by minute. These qualities of basic personality have been very poorly described in hypnotism, and it is doubtful even if it was generally known that sonic was part of the recall system disclosed by deep hypnotism or the drug hypnotism called narcosynthesis.
A study of basic personality in a multivalent subject who had poor memory, no good recalls and scant imagination disclosed the information that BP (the attention units called basic personality) was more able to select out data than AP (aberrated personality, as represented by the awake subject). It was further discovered that AP could ordinarily return better than BP so far as time-distance went but that when AP arrived at the
5. basic personality: the individual himself. The basic individual is not a buried unknown or a different person, but an intensity of all that is best and most able in the person.
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earliest place it was unable to manage recall. But if AP had gone back and established a vague contact with an incident, drug hypnotism or standard hypnotism used on him when he was in present time (no longer returned) would then permit BP to return. Drug hypnotism has seldom been able to force back very early into a patient's life. But by making the strength of AP go back and then using BP for the recall, some very early incidents could be reached. This trick was invented to overcome some of the difficulties which had made drug hypnosis relatively uncertain in results.
Then another factor was discovered. All those patients who had been treated by narcosynthesis had become worse every time the people doing the work had crossed over but left (because "everybody knew" an "unconscious" person didn't record) a period of "unconsciousness." When one of these "unconscious" periods was so probedùby the drug hypnosis called narcosynthesisùthe patient usually became worse, not better. Doing a little more probing than had been done by the usual practitioners, Dianetic research entered some of the late-life "unconscious" periods and, with much labor, laid them bare.
Now, all drug hypnosis, whether it is called narcosynthesis or a visit from the god Aesculapius, is still hypnosis. Whatever is said to a hypnotized subject remains as a positive suggestion, and these positive suggestions are simply engrams with a somewhat lighter effect and a shorter duration. When a drug is present the hypnotism is complicated by the fact that hypnotic drugs are, after all, poisons; the body is then possessed of a permanent (at least until Dianetics was discovered) somatic to go along with the suggestion. Drug hypnotism invariably creates an engram. Whatever a practitioner says to a drugged subject becomes engramic in some degree. In the course of Dianetic research, it first was supposed, playing back the careless chatter of
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practitioners out of the minds of patients they had placed under drug hypnosis, that this carelessness in saying so many aberrative things was responsible for some of the failure: But this was found to be true in a very limited sense. Then it was discovered that when the "unconscious" periods were reached by drug hypnosis they refused to lift even when the patient recounted them scores of times. This was blamed on the drug character of the hypnosis.
Straight hypnotism was then used to reach these late "unconscious" periods and these periods still failed to lift. Therefore it was adjudged safe to continue drug use on those patients who refused hypnosis. And the AP-BP alternate trick began to be employed.
It was discovered by drug hypnosis, where it was necessary, and straight hypnosis, where that was possible, that the "schizophrenic" (the multivalent aberree) could be made to reach very early periods in every case. And it was further found that an early period of "unconsciousness" would often lift. Experimentation brought about a scientific axiom: The earlier the period of "unconsciousness" the more likely it is to lift. That is a fundamental axiom of Dianetic therapy.
Manic-depressives who had sonic recall were worked upon, most of them by straight hypnosis, and it was discovered that they also followed this rule. But it was most dramatic in the multivalent aberree: for when the engram did not lift, it impinged against his analytical mind when he was awakened and created a variation in his psychoses and brought with it psychosomatic illnesses as well.
This brought about an understanding of why the multivalent aberree, under narcosynthesis, was made worse whenever some practitioner had glided over (but not entered, of course) a late-life period of "unconsciousness." Now came the problem of applying the
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axiom. It was postulated that the primary engram must in some way suppress later engrams. In view of other data and postulates, this was an entirely reasonable assumption. The earlier a person went in the life of a multivalent aberree the less likelihood there was of restimulating him artificially. Often an engram at around two or three years of age would lift entirely and give him a great deal of relief.
The problem of this research was very far from the same problem of those who, not knowing about the reactive mind and "unconsciousness," tried merely to find computing factors on a rational level or incidents of everyday life as aberrative factors in a patient.
When an engram is touched, it is very resistive, particularly above the age of two years. Further, the whole reactive bank was buried deeply under foggy layers of "unconsciousness," and was further safeguarded by a mechanism of the analytical mind which tended to prohibit it from touching pain or painful emotion. The reactive bank was protecting itself all the way through the research but it was obviously the answer. The problem was how to achieve its relief, if it could be relieved.
Having made several multivalent personalities intensely uncomfortable, a new necessity level was reached whereby something had to be done about the problem. But there was this shining hope, the above axiom. A bridge between insanity and sanity had to be built and there, in the axiom, one had at least a glimmer of a plan. The earlier one had experienced this fog and pain, the lighter these engrams seemed to be.
Then, one day, a multivalent patient, under drugs, went back to his birth. He suffered the painùand it was very painful with this crude technique, for Dianetics had not yet smoothed down to a well-oiled piece of machinery ùand he floundered through the "unconsciousness" of the period and he fought the doctor who had tried to
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put drops in his eyes and he generally resented the entire proceedings. AP had been sent down first, then later, under drugs, BP had contacted the incident.
This seemed a remarkable day for Dianetics. After twenty runs through birth, the patient experienced a recession of all somatics and "unconsciousness" and aberrative content. He had had asthma. It seemed that this asthma had been caused by the doctor's enthusiasm in yanking him off the table just when he was fighting for his first breath. He had had conjunctivitis. That came from the eye drops. He had had sinusitis. That had come from the nose swabs used by the pretty nurse.
Rejoicing was held, for he seemed to be a new man. A primary psychosis about being "pushed around" had vanished. The subjective reality of this incident was intense. Objective reality did not matter, but this patient had a mother near at hand and objective reality was established simply by returning her in therapy to his birth. They had not communicated about it in detail. The recording of her sequence compared word for word with his sequence, detail for detail, name for name. Possibility, even if they had communicated, of such duplication, outside the Dianetic situation, was mathematically impossible. And she had been "unconscious" during his birth and had always supposed that the affair had been quite different and the return data collapsed her awake description of it as being so much fable.
In order to make sure that this was no freak (for it is a very poor research man who will base conclusions on a series of one), two manic-depressives were returned to their births and both completed the experience. But one of these two birth engrams would not lift!
The postulated axiom was called into play again. If one could find the earliest engram, then the others would lift each in turn. That was the hope.
The manic-depressive whose birth had not lifted was
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returned to a period before birth in an effort to find an earlier engram.
Structural theories, as fondly held for ages, had thoroughly collapsed already when "unconscious" fog and pain had been penetrated to discover the engram as an aberrative unit. Tests had held up the discovery that all data, awake, asleep and "unconscious," from the moment of conception on, was always recorded somewhere in the mind or body. The little matter of myelin sheathing,6 since it had already been disproven by laboratory research which included the reaching of birth, was discarded. The theory that no recordings can take place in the mind until the nerves are sheathed depends upon a theoretical postulate, has never been subjected to scientific research and depends for its existence upon authority aloneùand a "science" which depends on authority alone is a breath in the wind of truth and is therefore no science at all. That babies cannot record until the myelin sheathing is formed has about as much truth, on investigation, as the fact that penis envy7 is the cause of female homosexuality. Neither theory, when applied, works. For the baby, after all, is composed of cells and it is evidenced now by much research that the cell, not an organ, records the engram.
Thus there was no inhibition about looking earlier than birth for what Dianetics had begun to call basic-basic (the first engram of the first chain of engrams). And an earlier engram was reached.
It has since been discovered that a great deal of recording is done by the child in the wornb which is not engramic. For a time it was thought that the child in the womb records on the proposition of "extended hearing,"
6. myelin sheathing: the fatty layer of tissues coating the nerves.
7. penis envy: (psychoanalysis) the repressed wish of a female to possess a penis.
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where hearing tunes up in the presence of danger and particularly during "unconsciousness." But the first research discovered prenatal engrams to be most easily reached when they contained a great deal of pain. Cells, not the individual, are evidenced to record pain. And the reactive engram bank is composed only of cells.
Recourse to nature rather than recourse to authority is the very building block of modern science. So long as Galen8 remained an authority on blood, none but "madmen" like da Vinci, Shakespeare9 and William Harvey10 even thought to experiment to find out what truly was the action of blood! So long as Aristotle" remained the authority for all, the Dark Ages reigned. Advance comes from asking free-minded questions of nature, not from quoting the works and thinking the thoughts of bygone years. Recourse to precedent is an assertion that yesterday's mentors12 were better informed than today's: an assertion which fades before the truth that knowledge is compounded of the experience of yesterdays, of which we have more, most certainly, than the best-informed mentor of yesterday itself.
In that Dianetics was based on a philosophy that used the cell as the basic building block, the fact that recording of engrams was done by cells came with less
8. Galen: (ca. 130-200 A.D.) Greek physician whose works were for centuries the standards for anatomy and physiology. Though Galen gave good descriptions of some of the human body's different parts and their functions, his observations and conclusions on the circulation of the blood were far from correct.
9. Shakespeare: William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English poet and dramatist of the Elizabethan period (1558-1603), the most widely known author in all English literature.
10. William Harvey: (1578-1657) English physician and anatomist, discoverer of the mechanics of blood circulation.
11. Aristotle: (384-322 B.C.) Greek philosopher noted for his works on logic, ethics, politics, etc.
12. mentors: wise and trusted counselors or teachers.
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surprise than it otherwise might have. The engram is not a memory; it is a cellular trace of recordings impinged deeply into the very structure of the body itself.
The experience of which cells themselves were capable had already been tested. It had been found that a monocell divided not only its substance but gave its total experience, as a master disc will make duplicates, to its offspring. Now, this is a peculiarity of monocells: they survive as identities. Each is personally its forebear.13 Cell A divides to a first generation; this generation is also Cell A; the second generation, the second division, creates an entity which is still Cell A. Lacking the necessity of such laborious processes as construction and birth and growth before reproduction, the monocell simply splits. And everything it has learned could be postulated to be contained in the new generation. Cell A dies but through generations from it, the latest generation is still Cell A. Man's belief that he is to live in his progeny might possibly derive from this cellular identity of procreation. Another interesting possibility lies in the fact that even neurons exist in embryo14 in the zygote, and neurons do not themselves divide but are like organisms (and may have the virus as their basic building block).
Dianetics, as a study of function and the science of mind, does not need any postulate concerning structure, however. The only test is whether or not a fact works. If it does work and can be used, it is a scientific fact. And the prenatal engram is a scientific fact. Tested and checked for objective reality, it still stands firm. And as for subjective reality, the acceptance of the prenatal engram as a working fact alone makes possible the Clear.
13. forebear: ancestor.
14. embryo: an early or undeveloped stage of something.
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At the end of a series of 270 Clears and alleviations, a short series of five cases was taken to finally settle the argument. These five cases were not permitted to admit anything before birth. They were treated with everything Dianetics, hypnotism and other therapeutics could offer, and no Clear was obtained. This ruled out the "personality of the operator" or "suggestion" or "faith" as factors in Dianetics. These five cases had never been informed of prenatal engrams. Each swerved in toward them but was restrained without informing him that engrams existed that early. The five were alleviated as to some variety of psychosomatic ills but the ills were only alleviated, not completely cured. The aberrations remained but little changed. They were extremely disappointed since each had heard something of "the miracles Dianetics could perform." Before them, 270 cases had been worked and 270 cases had reached prenatal engrams. And 270 cases had been .cleared or alleviated as the Dianeticist chose and time permitted. All could have been cleared with an additional average of 100 or so hours for each of the persons who were alleviated. In short, on random casesùand selected cases, so that at least two of each classification of neurosis or psychosis were included in the clearingù when prenatal engrams and birth were taken into account and used in therapy, results were obtained. When these factors were not taken into account, results were no more favorable than those attained in the best successes of past schoolsùwhich is not nearly good enough for a science of mind.
Dianetics had prenatal and birth engrams wished off on it as facts existing in the nature of things. That past schools have been passing over these engrams and into the prenatal area without success does not mean that prenatals could not be found any more than it means that these past schools found much value in prenatal
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experience when they considered it at all. The problem is slightly more complex: the difficulty lay in finding the reactive bank which was occluded by "unconsciousness" which had never before been penetrated wittingly as "unconsciousness." The discovery of this reactive bank led to the discovery of prenatal engrams, which are quite different from "prenatal memory."
After a few cases had been examined as to objective and subjective reality, Dianetics was forced to accept, if it wished a Clear, the fact that the cells of the fetus15 record. A few more cases and a little more experience discovered that the embryo16 cells record. And suddenly it was discovered that recording begins in the cells of the zygoteùwhich is to say, with conception. That the body recalls conception, which is a high-level survival activity, has little to do with engrams. Most patients to date sooner or later startle themselves by finding themselves swimming up a channel or waiting to be connected with. The recording is there. And there's little use arguing with a preclear that he cannot recall being a sperm, engramic or not as the case may be. It must be remarked because any Dianeticist will encounter this.
Anyone postulating that "return to the womb" was an ambition should have examined life in the womb a little more carefully. Even a poor scientist would have at least tried to find out if anybody could recall it before he made a statement that there was a memory of it. But life in the womb does not seem to be the paradise it has been poetically, if not scientifically, represented. Actuality discloses that three men and a horse in a telephone booth would have but little less room than an unborn baby. The womb is wet, uncomfortable and unprotected.
15. fetus: in man, the offspring in the wornb from the end of the third month of pregnancy until birth.
16. embryo: a child in the womb in the first eight weeks of its development.
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Mama sneezes, baby gets knocked "unconscious." Mama runs lightly and blithely17 into a table and baby gets its head staved in. Mama has constipation and baby, in the anxious effort, gets squashed. Papa becomes passionate and baby has the sensation of being put into a running washing machine. Mama gets hysterical, baby gets an engram. Papa hits Mama, baby gets an engram. Junior bounces on Mama's lap, baby gets an engram. And so it goes.
People have scores of prenatal engrams when they are normal. They can have more than two hundred. And each one is aberrative. Each contains pain and "unconsciousness."
Engrams received as a zygote are potentially the most aberrative, being wholly reactive. Those received as an embryo are intensely aberrative. Those received as the fetus are enough to send people to institutions all by themselves.
Zygote, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adult: these are all the same person. Time has been considered the great healer. That can be filed with the things "everybody knew." On a conscious level it may be true. But on a reactive level time is nothing. The engram, whenever received, is strong in proportion to the degree it is restimulated.
The mechanism of an engram has an interesting feature. It is not "reasoned" or analyzed, nor does it have any meaning until it has been keyed in. A baby, before speech, could have an engram in restimulation, but that engram must have been keyed in by the analytical data the baby has.
The reactive mind steals meaning from the analytical mind. An engram is just so many wave recordings
17. blithely: in a manner without thought or regard; in a carefree way; heedlessly.
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until it is keyed in, and those recordings, by such restimulation, become effective upon the analytical mind. It may be that the engram never has any reason or meaning in itself but only thrusts its waves forward as unreasoned things at the body and analyzer, and the body and analyzer, through mechanisms, give them meaning. In other words, the engram is not a sentient recording containing meanings. It is merely a series of impressions such as a needle might make on wax. These impressions are meaningless to the body until the en-gram keys in, at which time aberrations and psychoso-matics occur.
Thus, it can be understood that the prenatal child has no remotest idea of what is being said in terms of words. It does learn, being an organism, that certain things may mean certain dangers. But this is every bit as far as it goes with recording. The mind must become more or less fully formed before the engram can impinge into the analytical level.
The prenatal child can, of course, experience terror. When the parents or the professional abortionist start after it and thrust it full of holes, it knows fear and pain.
It has, however, this prenatal child, an advantage in its situation. Being surrounded by amniotic fluid18 and dependent for nutrition on its mother, being in a state of growth and easily re-formed physically, it can repair an enormous amount of damage and does. The recovery qualities of the human body are never higher than before birth. Damage which would maim an infant for life or would kill a grown man can be taken in stride by the prenatal child. Not that this damage does not make an engramùit certainly does, complete with all data and speech and emotionùbut that this damage does not easily kill it is the point here.
18. amniotic fluid: the fluid surrounding the embryo or fetus.
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Why people try to abort children is a problem which has its answer only in aberration, for it is very difficult to abort a child. One can say that in the attempt the mother herself is in more danger of dying than the child, no matter what method is used.
A society which suppresses sex as evil and which is so aberrated that any member of it will attempt an abortion is a society which is dooming itself to ever-rising insanity. For it is a scientific fact that abortion attempts are the most important factor in aberration. The child on whom the abortion is attempted is condemned to live with murderers whom he reactively knows to be murderers through all his weak and helpless youth! He forms unreasonable attachments to grandparents, has terrified reactions to all punishments, grows ill easily and suffers long. And there is no such thing as a guaranteed way to abort a child. Use contraceptives, not a knitting needle or the douche bag,19 to hold down population. Once the child is conceived, no matter how "shameful" the circumstances, no matter the mores,20 no matter the income, that man or woman who would attempt an abortion on an unborn child is attempting a murder which will seldom succeed and is laying the foundation of a childhood of illness and heartache. Anyone attempting an abortion is committing an act against the whole society and the future; any judge or doctor recommending an abortion should be instantly deprived of position and practice, whatever his "reason."
19. douche bag: a small syringe having detachable nozzles for administering a douche: a jet or current of water, sometimes with a dissolved medicating or cleansing agent, applied to a body part, organ or cavity (such as the vagina) for medicinal or hygienic purposes.
20. mores: the customs, or customary practices, rules, etc., regarded as essential to or characteristic of a group.
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If a person knows he has committed this crime against a child who has been born, he should do all possible to have that child "cleared" as soon as possible after the age of eight and in the meantime should treat that child with all the decency and courtesy possible in order to keep the engram out of restimulation. Otherwise he may send that child to an institution for the insane.
A large proportion of allegedly feebleminded children are actually attempted-abortion cases whose en-grams place them in fear paralysis or regressive palsy21 and which command them not to grow but to be where they are forever.
However many billions America spends yearly on institutions for the insane and jails for the criminals are spent primarily because of attempted abortions done by some sex-blocked mother to whom children are a curse, not a blessing of God.
Antipathy22 toward children means a blocked second dynamic. Physiological examination of anyone with such blockage will demonstrate a physical derangement of the genitalia or glands. Dianetic therapy would demonstrate attempted abortion or an equally foul prenatal existence and would clear the individual.
The case of the child who, as this is read, is not yet born but upon whom abortion has been attempted, is not hopeless. If he is treated with decency after he is born and if he is not restimulated by witnessing quarrels, he will wax23 and grow fat until he is eight and can be cleared, at which time he will probably be much startled to learn the truth. But that startlement and any antagonism included in it will vanish with the finishing
21. palsy: paralysis, especially with involuntary tremors.
22. antipathy: a strong or deep-rooted dislike.
23. wax: grow bigger or greater; increase.
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of the Clear, and his love of his parents will be greater than before.
All these things are scientific facts, tested and re-checked and tested again. And with them can be produced a Clear, on whom our racial future depends.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Contagion of Aberration
Disease is contagious. Germs, traveling from one individual to another, wander through an entire society, respecting none until stopped by such things as sulfa' or penicillin.2
Aberrations are contagious. Like germs they respect none and carry forward from individual to individual, from parents to child, respecting none until they are stopped by Dianetics.
The people of yesterday supposed that genetic insanity must exist, for it could be observed that the children of aberrated parents were often themselves aberrated. There is genetic insanity but it is limited to the case of actually missing parts. A very small percentage of insanity falls into such a category and its manifestation is mental dullness or failure to coordinate and beyond these has no aberrative quality whatever (such people receive engrams which complicate their cases).
The contagion of aberration is too simple in principle to be much labored here. In Dianetics, we learn that only moments of "unconsciousness," short or long and of greater or lesser depth, can contain engrams. When a person is rendered "unconscious," people in his vicinity react more or less at the dictates of their engrams: in fact, the "unconsciousness" is quite ordinarily caused by somebody's dramatization. A Clear, then, could be rendered unconscious by an aberree who is dramatizing
1. sulfa: any of a group of chemical compounds with antibacterial properties.
2. penicillin: a very powerful drug for destroying bacteria.
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and the aberree's dramatization of his engram would enter as an engram into the Clear.
The mechanics are simple. People under stress, if aberrated, dramatize engrams. Such dramatization may involve the injury of another person and render him more or less "unconscious." The unconscious person then receives as an engram the dramatization.
This is not the only way contagion of aberration gets about. People on operating tables, under anesthetic, are subjected to the more or less aberrated conversation of those present. This conversation enters into the "unconscious" person as an engram. Similarly, at the scene of accidents, the emergency nature of the experience may excite people into dramatizations, and if a person is "unconscious" because of the accident, an engram is received.
Aberrated parents are certain to infect their children with engrams. The father and mother, in dramatizing their own engrams around sick or injured children, pass them along just as certainly as if those engrams were bacteria. This does not mean that the total reactive bank of a child is composed solely of the parents' engrams, for there are many exterior influences to the home which can enter into the child when it is "unconscious." And it does not mean that the child is going to react to the same engrams the way either parent might react, for the child, after all, is an individual with an inherent personality, a power of choice and a different experience pattern. But it does mean that it is utterly inevitable that aberrated parents will in some way aberrate their children.
Misconceptions and poor data in a society's culture become engrams because not all the conduct around an "unconscious" person is dramatization. If some society believed that fish-eating brought on leprosy,3 it is quite
3. leprosy: a chronic, infectious disease caused by a bacterium that attacks the skin, flesh, nerves, etc.: it is characterized by ulcers, white scaly scabs, deformities and wasting of body parts.
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certain that this false datum would find its way into engrams and sooner or later someone would develop a leprosy-like disease after having eaten fish.
Primitive societies, being subject to much mauling by the elements, have many more occasions for injury than civilized societies. Further, such primitive societies are alive with false data. Further, their practice of medicine and mental healing is on a very aberrative level by itself. The number of engrams in a Zulu4 would be astonishing. Moved out of his restimulative area and taught English he would escape the penalty of much of his reactive data; but in his native habitat the Zulu is only outside the bars of a madhouse because there are no madhouses provided by his tribe. It is a safe estimate, and one based on better experience than is generally available to those who base conclusions on "modern man" by studying primitive races, that primitives are far more aberrated than civilized peoples. Their savage-ness, their unprogressiveness, their incidence of illness: all stem from their reactive patterns, not from their inherent personalities. Measuring one set of aberrees by another set of aberrees is not likely to lead to much data. And the contagion of aberration, being much greater in a primitive tribe, and the falsity of the superstitious data in the engrams of such a tribe both lead to a conclusion which, observed on the scene, is carried out by actuality.
Contagion of aberration is very easily studied in the process of clearing any aberree whose parents fought. Mother, for instance, might be relatively unaberrated at the beginning of the marriage. If she is beaten by her husband who is, after all, dramatizing, she will begin to
4. Zulu: a member of a large, formerly warlike, Bantu people of southeastern Africa.
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pick up his aberrations as part of her own reactive pattern. This is particularly noticeable when one is clearing a person who was conceived shortly after his parents' marriage or before it. Papa may begin with a certain dramatization which includes beating a wife. Whatever he says in such a dramatization will sooner or later begin to affect the wife and she mayùunless extraordinarily well balancedùbegin to dramatize these things on her own. Eventually, when the child is born, she will begin to dramatize on the child, thus putting him into a continual state of restimulation.
Birth is one of the most remarkable engrams in terms of contagion. Here the mother and child both receive the same engram which differs only in the location of pain and the depths of "unconsciousness." Whatever the doctors, nurses and other people associated with the delivery say to the mother during labor and birth and immediately afterwards before the child is taken away is recorded in the reactive bank, making an identical engram in both mother and child.
This engram is remarkably destructive in several ways. The mother's voice can restimulate the birth engram in the child and the presence of the child can restimulate the giving-birth engram in the mother. Thus they are mutually restimulative. In view of the fact that they have all the other restimulators also in common, a later-life situation can cause them each to suffer simultaneously from the engram. If birth included a slammed window, a slammed window may trigger birth dramatization in both, simultaneously, with resultant hostilities or apathies.
Should a doctor become angry or despairing, the emotional tone of birth can be severe. And if the doctor talks at all, the conversation takes on its full, reactive, literal meaning to both mother and child.
Many cases were cleared where both mother and 196
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child were available. One such case found the mother (as heard by the child in Dianetic clearing) moaning, "I'm so ashamed, I'm so ashamed," over and over. The child had a neurosis about shame. When the mother was cleared, it was found that her mother at birth was moaning, "I'm so ashamed, I'm so ashamed." One can presume that this has been going along, by contagion, since Cheops' built his tomb.
In the larger sphere of society, contagion of aberration is extremely dangerous and cannot but be considered as a vital factor in undermining the health of that society.
The social body behaves similarly to an organism in that there are social aberrations which exist within the society. The society grows and may fade like an organism which has people, not cells, for its parts. Where pain is leveled by the head of the society at any member in that society, a source of aberration is begun which will be contagious. The reasons against corporal punishment6 are not "humanitarian," they are practical. A society which practices punishment of any kind against any of its members is carrying on a contagion of aberration. The society has a social engram, society size, which says punishment is necessary. Punishment is meted.7 The jails and institutions fill. And then one day some portion of the society, depressed into zone 1 by a government's freedom with government engrams,
5. Cheops: king of ancient Egypt for 23 years (around 2900 B.C.). Cheops was famous as the builder of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, which is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Egyptian pyramids were built as royal tombs: each monarch built his own pyramid.
6. corporal punishment: (law) physical punishment, as flogging, inflicted on the body of one convicted of a crime: formerly included the death penalty, sentencing to a term of years, etc.
7. meted: distributed or apportioned by measure; allotted; doled (usually followed by out).
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jumps up and wipes the government out. And a new set of aberrations is formed from the violence attending the destruction. Violent revolutions never win because they begin this cycle of aberration.
A society filled with aberrees may feel it necessary to punish. There has been no remedy other than punishment. The provision of a remedy for unsocial conduct by members of the group is of more than passing interest to a government for a continuance of its own corporal practices; adding these to the continuing aberrations of the past seriously depresses the survival potential of that government and will someday cause that government to fall. After many governments so fall, its people, too, perish from this Earth.
Contagion of aberration is never more apparent than in that social insanity called war. Wars never solve the need of wars. Fight to save the world for democracy or save it from Confucianism8 and the fight is inevitably lost by all. War has become associated in the past with competition, and it has been believed, therefore, by shifty logic, that wars were necessary. A society which advances into a war as a solution of its problems cannot but depress its own survival potential. No government was ever permitted to enter a war without costing its people some of their liberties. The end product is the apathy of a ruling priesthood, where mystery and superstition alone can band the insane remnants of a people together. This is too easily observed in past histories to need much amplification. A democracy engaging in war has always lost some of its democratic rights. As it engages in more and more wars, it eventually comes under the command of a dictator (rule by a single engram). The dictator, forcing his rule, increases
8. Confucianism: the system of morality taught by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher (5517-479? B.C.).
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the aberrations by his activity against minorities. Revolt begins to follow revolt. Priesthoods flourish. Apathy awaits. And after apathy comes death. So went Greece, so went Rome. So goes England. So goes Russia. And so goes the United States and with it goes mankind.
Rule by force is a violation of the law of affinity, for force begets force. Rule by force reduces the self-determinism of the individuals in a society and therefore the self-determinism of the society itself. Contagion of aberration sweeps along like a forest fire. Engrams beget engrams. And unless the dwindling spiral is interrupted by new lands and mongrel races which escape their aberra-tive environments, or by the arrival of n means to break the contagion of aberration by clearing individuals, a race will reach downward to the end of the cycleùzone 0.
A race is as great as its individual members are self-determined.
In the smaller sphere of the family, as in the national scenes, contagion of aberration produces an interruption of optimum survival.
Self-determinism is the only possible way a computer can be built to give rational answers. Holding down seven in an adding machine causes it to give wrong answers. Entering fixed and not-to-be-rationalized answers into any human being will cause him to compute wrong answers. Survival depends on right answers. En-grams enter from the exterior world into the hidden recesses below rational thinking and prevent rational answers being reached. This is exterior-determinism. Any interference with self-determinism cannot but lead to wrong computations.
In that a Clear is cooperative, a society of Clears would cooperate. This may be an idyllic, Utopian9
9. Utopian: of or like a Utopia, any idealized place, state or situation of perfection.
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dream and it may not be. In a family of Clears there is observable harmony and cooperation. A Clear can recognize a superior computation when he sees one. He does not have to be slugged and held down and made to obey to make him put a shoulder to the wheel.10 If he is made to obey, independent of his thinking, his self-determinism is interrupted to a point where he cannot get right answers; the society which holds him has penalized, itself, his ability to think and act rationally. The only way a Clear could so be forced would be to give him engrams or turn a neurosurgeon loose upon his brain. But a Clear does not need to be forced for, if the job is important enough to do in terms of general need, he will most certainly do it according to his intelligence and do it as well as possible. One never observes the forced individual doing a job well, just as one never observes a forced society winning against an equally prosperous free society.
A family which runs on the godhead" plan, where somebody must be obeyed without question, is never a happy family. Its prosperity may be present in some material aspects but its apparent survival as a unit is superficial.
Forced groups are invariably less efficient than free groups working for the common good. But any group which contains aberrated members is likely to become entirely aberrated as a group through contagion. The effort to restrain aberrated members of a group inevitably restrains the group as a whole and leads to further and further restraint.
Clearing one member of a family of aberrees is seldom enough to resolve the problems of that family. If
10. put a shoulder to the wheel: work energetically toward a goal; put forth effort.
11. godhead: godhood; divinity.
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the husband has been aberrated, he will have aberrated or restimulated his wife and children in one way or another, even when he used no physical violence upon them. The parents implant their mutual aberrations in the children and the children, being potentially self-determined units, revolt back to stir up the aberrations of the parents. In that so many of these aberrations, by contagion, have become mutual and held in common with the whole family, the happiness of the family is severely undermined.
The corporal punishment of children is just another facet of the problem of the forced group. If anyone cares to argue over the necessity of punishing children, let him examine the source of the misbehavior of the children.
The child who is aberrated may not have his en-grams entirely keyed in. He may have to wait until he himself is married and has children or a pregnant wife to have restimulators enough to cause him to become, suddenly, one of these things they call a "mature adult," blind to the beauty of the world and burdened by all its griefs. But the child is nevertheless aberrated and has many dramatizations. The child is in a very unlucky situation in that he has with him his two most powerful restimulatorsùhis mother and father. These assume the power of physical punishment over him. And they are giants to him. He is a pygmy.12 And he has to depend upon them for food, clothing and shelter. One can speak very grandly about the "delusions of childhood" until he knows the engram background of most children.
The child is on the unkind receiving end of all the dramatizations of his parents. A cleared child is a most remarkable thing to observe: he is human! Affinity alone can pull him through. The spoiled child is the
12. pygmy: a very small person.
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child whose decisions have been interrupted continuously and who is robbed of his independence. Affection could no more spoil a child than the sun could be put out by a bucket of gasoline.
The beginning and end of "child psychology" is that a child is a human being, that he is entitled to his dignity and self-determinism. The child of aberrated parents is a problem because of the contagion of aberration and because he is denied any right to dramatize or counter. The wonder is not that children are a problem but that they are sane in any action, forùby contagion, punishment and denial of self-determinismù the children of today have been denied all the things required to make a rational life. And these are the future family and the future race.
This is not a dissertation on children or politics, however, but a chapter on contagion of aberration. Dia-netics covers human thought, and human thought is wide ground. When one gazes at the potentialities inherent in the mechanism of contagion, respect for the inherent stability of man cannot but arise. No "wild animal" reacting with inherent "asocial tendencies" could have built Nineveh13 or Boulder Dam.'" Carrying the contagion mechanism like some Old Man of the Sea,15 we have yet come far. Now that we know it, perhaps we shall truly reach the stars.
13. Nineveh: capital of the ancient empire of Assyria, situated on the east bank of the Tigris River, opposite modern Mosul, Iraq. Nineveh contained magnificent palaces and sculpture, which have been unearthed in archaeological excavations.
14. Boulder Dam: officially Hoover Dam, one of the highest dams in the world, on the Colorado River between the southern tip of Nevada and Arizona.
15. Old Man of the Sea: character in the story of "Sinbad the Sailor" in The Arabian Nights. A seemingly harmless old man, he climbs onto the shoulders of the obliging Sinbad and refuses to get off. He clings there for many days and nights until Sinbad escapes by getting him drunk.
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CHAPTER NINE
Keying In the Engram
The single source of inorganic mental illness and organic psychosomatic illness is the reactive engram bank. The reactive mind impinges these engrams upon the analytical mind and the organism whenever they are restimulated after being keyed in.
There are many known incidents in a lifetime which apparently have a profound influence upon the happiness and mental condition of the individual. The individual remembers these and to them attributes his troubles. In a measure he is right: he is at least looking back at incidents which are held in place by engrams. He does not see the engrams. In fact, unless he is acquainted with Dianetics, he does not know the engrams are there. And even then he will not know their contents until he has undergone therapy.
It can be demonstrated with ease that any moment of "conscious level" unhappiness which contained great stress or emotion was not guilty of the charge of causing aberration and psychosomatic illness. These moments, of course, played a role in the matter: they were the key-ins.
The process of keying in an engram is not very complex. Engram 105, let us say, was a moment of "unconsciousness" when the prenatal child was struck, via Mother, by Father. The father, aware or not of the child, uttered the words, "Goddamn you, you filthy whore: you're no good!" This engram lay where it was impressed, in the reactive bank. Now, it could lie there for seventy years and never become keyed in. It contains a headache and a falling body and the grating of teeth
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and the intestinal sounds of the mother. And any of these sounds, postbirth, may be present in large quantities without keying in this engram.
One day, however, the father becomes exasperated at the child. The child is tired and feverish, which is to say that his analytical mind may not be at its highest level of activity. And the father has a certain set of engrams which he dramatizes and one of these engrams is the above incident. And the father reaches out and slaps the child and says, "Goddamn you: you're no good!" The child cries. That night he has a headache and is much worse physically. And he feels both an intense hatred and a fear of his father. The engram has keyed in. Now the sound of a falling body or grating teeth or any trace of anger of any kind in the father's voice will make the child nervous. His physical health will suffer. He will begin to have headaches.
If we take this child who has now become an adult and rake back over his past, we shall discover (though it may be occluded) a lock like the above key-in. And now not only the key-in; we may discover half a hundred, half a thousand, such locks just on this one subject. One would say, unless he knew Dianetics, that this child was ruined postnatally by being beaten by the father, and one might attempt to bring the patient's mind back into better condition by removing these locks.
There are literally thousands, tens of thousands, of locks in the average life. To take all of these locks away would be a task for Hercules.1 Every engram a person has, if it has been keyed in, may have its hundreds of locks.
If conditioning existed as a mechanism of pain and
1. Hercules: a mythical Greek hero of fabulous strength and courage who, after completing 12 heroic feats assigned to him (including killing several legendary monsters), became immortal.
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stress, mankind would be in very bad condition. Fortunately, conditioning does not so exist. It appears to exist but the appearance is not the fact. One would think that if a child were daily thrust around and reviled2 he would eventually become conditioned into a belief that this was the way life was and that he had better turn against it.
Conditioning does not, however, exist. Pavlov3 may have been able to drive dogs mad by repeated experiments: this was simply bad observation on the part of the observer. The dogs might be trained to do this or that. But it was not conditioning. The dogs went mad because they were given engramsùif and when they did go mad. A series of such experiments, properly conducted and observed, proves this contention.
The boy who was daily told he was no good and who apparently went into a decline solely because of that, declined only because of the engram. This is a happy fact. The engram may take a while to locateùa few hoursùbut when it is alleviated or refiled in the standard memory banks, everything which had locked onto it also refiles.
People trying to help others with their aberrations who did not know about engrams were, of course, operating with 2.9 strikes against any success. In the first place, the locks themselves may vanish down into the reactive bank. Thus we get a patient who says, "Oh, my father wasn't so bad. He was a pretty good guy." And we discovered, and the patient discovers, when an engram is sprung, that Father was customarily to be found dramatizing. What the patient knows about his past before engrams are sprung is not worth cataloging. In another case we may find a patient saying, "Oh, I
2. reviled: criticized angrily in abusive language.
3. Pavlov: Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936), Russian physiologist; noted for behavioral experiments on dogs.
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had a terrible childhood, a terrible childhood. I was beaten seriously." And we discover, when we get the engrams refiled, that the parents of this patient never laid a hand on him in punishment or wrath in his entire life.
An engram may coast along without being keyed in for decades. One of the most remarkable types of case is one which spent an entire youth without displaying any aberration. Then suddenly, at the age of twenty-six, we discover him to be so aberrated, so suddenly, that it appears he must have been hexed.4 Perhaps most of his engrams were concerned with the action of getting married and having children. He has never been married before. The first time he is weary or ill and realizes he has a wife on his hands, the first engram keys in. Then the dwindling spiral begins to go to work. This one shuts down the analyzer enough so that others can be keyed in. And finally we may discover him in an institution.
The young girl who has been happy and carefree to the age of thirteen and then suddenly goes into a decline has not, that moment, received an engram. She has had an engram key in, which let another key in. Fission reaction. This key-in may have required nothing more than the discovery that she was bleeding from the vagina. She has an emotional engram about this; she becomes frantic. The other engrams, as the days follow, may swing into position to impinge upon her. And so she becomes ill.
The first sexual experience may be one which keys in an engram. This is so standard that sex has gotten a rather bad name for itself here and there as being an aberrative factor all by itself. Sex is not and never has been aberrative. Physical pain and emotion which incidentally contain sex as a subject are the aberrative factors.
4. hexed: bewitched; practiced on by witchcraft.
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It may be that a patient is urgent in her insistence that her father raped her when she was nine and that this is the cause of all her misery. Large numbers of insane patients claim this. And it is perfectly true. Father did rape her, but it happened she was only nine days beyond conception at the time. The pressure and upset of coitus5 is very uncomfortable to the child and normally can be expected to give the child an engram which will have as its content the sexual act and everything that was said.
Drug hypnosis is dangerous when one is trying to treat psychotics, as has been mentioned. And there are other reasons it is dangerous. Any operation under anesthetic or any drugging of a patient may bring about the keying in of engrams. Here is the analyzer shutdown, there is the reactive bank open to be stirred by any comment made by the people around the drugged subject. Hypnotism itself is a condition in which en-grams may be keyed in which have never before been restimulated: the glassy-eyed stare of the person who has been "too often hypnotized," the lack of will seen in people too often hypnotized, the dependence of the subject upon the hypnotic operator: all these things stem from the keying in of engrams. Any time the body is rendered "unconscious" without physical pain, no matter how light the degree of "unconsciousness" is, even if it is only the lightness of weariness, an engram may be keyed in. And when "unconsciousness" is complicated by new physical pain, a new engram is formed which may gather up with it an entire bundle of old engrams not hitherto keyed in. Such a late engram would be a cross engram in that it crosses chains of engrams. And if such an engram resulted in a loss of sanity, it would be called a break engram.
5. coitus: sexual intercourse.
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There are some aspects to various drug "unconsciousnesses" which have been very perplexing in the past. Psychotic women often maintain, after they are awakened from a drugged sleep (and sometimes a hypnotic sleep), that they have been raped. Men occasionally maintain that the operator has tried to perform a homosexual act upon them while they were drugged. Although it occasionally occurs that people are raped after being drugged, the largest number of such assertions are merely an aspect of the key-in mechanism. Almost any child has been put through the prenatal discomfort of coitus. Often there was violent emotion other than passion present. Such an engram may stay out of circuit for years until drugged "unconsciousness" or some such thing keys it in. The patient goes to sleep without a keyed-in engram; he wakes up with one. He tries to justify the strange sensations he has (and engrams are timeless things unless they are arranged properly on the time track6) and comes out with the "solution" that he must have been raped.
Childhood rapes are very seldom the responsible cause in sexual aberration. They are the key-in.
One looks at the conscious level locks and sees sadness, mental anguish and misfortune. Some of the experience there seems to be so terrible that it must certainly cause aberration. But it does not. Man is a tough, resilient creature. These conscious level experiences are at best only guideposts leading toward the actual seat of trouble, and that is not known in any detailed way to the individual.
The engram is never "computed." An example of this, on a lightly aberrative level, can be found in a child's punishment. If one examines a childhood where
6. time track: the time span of the individual from conception to present time on which lies the sequence of events of his life.
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punishment has been corporal and frequent, he begins to understand the utter futility of the pain-drive theory. Punishment actually and literally and emphatically does no good of any kind whatsoever but accomplishes quite the reverse, since it occasions a reactive revolt against the punishment source, and is likely to cause not only a disintegration of a mind but also a continual bedevil-ment7 of the punishment source. Man reacts to fight sources of pain. When he stops fighting them he is mentally broken and of little use to anyone, much less himself.
We take a case of a boy who was beaten with a hairbrush every time he was "bad." In researching this case, the most searching inquiry fails to reveal any vivid recall of why he was punished but only that he was punished. The progress of the event would go something like this: activity more or less rational, fright at threatened punishment, punishment, sorrow over punishment, renewed activity. The mechanics of the case showed the person to have been engaged on some activity which, whether others would consider it so or not, was nevertheless survival activity to him, giving him either pleasure or actual gains or even the assertion that he could and would survive. The moment punishment is threatened, old punishments go into restimulation as minor engrams, resting usually on major engrams: this shuts down the analytical power to some extent and the recording is now being done on a reactive level; the punishment takes place, submerging analytical awareness so that the punishment records in the engram bank only; the sorrow following is still in the period of analytical shutdown; the analyzer gradually turns on; full awareness returns, and then activity on an analytical plane can be resumed. All
7. bedevilment: the act of plaguing diabolically; torment; harassment.
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corporal punishment runs this gamut and all other punishments are, at best, locks, following this same pattern with only the complete shutdown resulting from pain missing.
If the analyzer wants this data for computation, it is not available. There is a reaction in the reactive mind when the matter is approached. But there are five courses the reactive mind can take with this data! And there is no guarantee and no method between land and sky of knowing what course the reactive mind will take with the data except knowing the full engram bankù and if that is known, the person could be cleared with a few more hours' work and would need no punishment.
These five ways of handling data make corporal punishment an unstable and unreliable thing. A ratio exists which can be tested and proven in any man's experience: A man is evil in the direct ratio that de-structiveness has been leveled against him. An individual (including those individuals society is liable to forget as individuals: children) reacts against the punishment source whether that source be parents or government. Anything which sets itself forward against an individual as a punishment source will be considered in greater or lesser degree (as it is in proportion to benefits) as a target for the reactions of the individual.
The little accidental milk glass upsets of children, that noise which just accidentally occurs on the porch where the children are playing, that little accidental ruination of Papa's hat or Mama's rug: these are often cold, calculated, reactive mind actions against pain sources. The analytical mind may temporize8 about love and affection and the need of three square meals. The reactive mind runs off the lessons it has learned and devil take the meals.9
8. temporize: effect a compromise; negotiate.
9. devil take the ____: a phrase used as a curse, wish of evil or the like.
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If one turned an idiot loose on an adding machine to let him audit the company books and let him prevent the auditor10 from touching equipment and data which has to be his if any answers will be right, one would get very little in the way of correct answers. And if one kept feeding the idiot and made him fat and powerful, the firm would sooner or later go to ruin. The reactive mind is the idiot, the auditor is "I" and the firm is the organism. Punishment feeds the idiot.
The helpless amazement of police about the "confirmed criminal" (and the police belief in the "criminal type" and the "criminal mind") comes about through this cycle. Police, for some reason or other, like governments, have become identified with society. Take any one of these "criminals" and clear him and the society regains a rational being of which it can use all it can get. Keep up the punishment cycle and the prisons will get more numerous and more full.
The problem of the child lashing back at his parents by "negation" and the problem of Jimmie the Cob" blowing a bank guard apart in an armed robbery stem both from the same mechanism. The child, examined on the "conscious level," is not aware of his causes but will put forth various justifications for his conduct. Jimmie the Cob, waiting for this oh-so-very-sentient society to tie him down with straps in an electric chair and give him an electric shock therapy which will cause him to cease and desist forever, examined for his causes, will pour forth justifications to explain his life and conduct. The human mind is a pretty wonderful computing machine. The reasons it can evolve for unreasonable acts
10. auditor: a person who is authorized to audit (to check or examine) accounts.
11. Jimmie the Cob: a made-up name for a criminal. Cob is British dialect for "leader; chief."
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have staggered one and all and particularly social workers. Without knowing the cause and the mechanism, the chances of drawing a correct conclusion by comparing all conducts available are as remote as winning at fan-tan12 from a Chinese. Hence, the punishments have continued as the muddled answer to a very muddled society.
There are five ways in which a human being reacts toward a source of danger. These are also the five courses he can take on any given problem. And it might be said that this is five-valued action.
The parable of the black panther* is appropriate here. Let us suppose that a particularly black-tempered black panther is sitting on the stairs and that a man named Gus is sitting in the living room. Gus wants to go to bed. But there is the black panther. The problem is to get upstairs. There are five things that Gus can do about this panther: (1) he can go attack the black panther; (2) he can run out of the house and flee the black panther; (3) he can use the back stairs and avoid the black panther; (4) he can neglect the black panther; and (5) he can succumb to the black panther.
These are the five mechanisms: attack, flee, avoid, neglect or succumb.
All actions can be seen to fall within these courses. And all actions are visible in life. In the case of a punishment source, the reactive mind can succumb,
* In Dianetics considerable slang has been developed by patients and Dianeticists and they call a neglect of the problem the "black panther mechanism." One supposes this stems from the ridiculousness of biting black panthers.
-LRH
12. fan-tan: a Chinese gambling game in which a pile of coins, counters or objects is placed under a bowl and bets are made on what the remainder will be after they have been counted off in fours.
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neglect, avoid, flee or attack it. The action is dictated by a complexity of engrams and depends upon which one comes into restimulation. This maelstrom13 of reaction generally resolves itself, however, in one of the five courses.
If a child is punished and thereafter obeys, he can be considered to have succumbed. And the value of a child who will succumb to punishment is so slight that the Spartans14 would long since have drowned him, for it means he has sunk into an apathy unless it so happens that he himself has computed the idea, bypassing all reaction, that the thing for which he was punished was not bright (he can't be assisted in this computation if punishment is entered into the reactive mind by the source trying to assist him). He can flee the punishment source, which at least is not apathy but merely cowardice by popular judgment. He can neglect the matter entirely and ignore the punishment sourceùand would have been called a stoic by the ancients, but might be called merely dull-witted by his friends. He can avoid the punishment source, which might give him the doubtful compliment of being sly or cunning or pandering.15 Or he can attack the punishment source either by direct action or by upsetting or fouling the person or the possessions of the sourceùin which instance he would be called, on direct action, a valiant fool, taking parental size into account, or in a less direct fashion he could be called "covertly hostile" or could be said to be "negating." As long as a human being will attack as a response to a valid threat, he can be said to be in fair
13. maelstrom: an agitated or tumultuous state of affairs.
14. Spartans: the citizens of Sparta, a city in ancient Greece, who would permit a child to live only if he showed potential of becoming an asset to the state.
15. pandering: ministering to others' passions or prejudices for selfish ends.
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mental conditionù"normal"ùand a child is said to be "just acting like any normal child."
Enter punishment into the computation and it no longer computes. It is entirely different in the case of "experience." Life has plenty of painful experience waiting for any human being without other human beings complicating the score. A person who is still unblocked in his dynamics or who has been unblocked by Dianetics can absorb the most amazing amount of hammering in the business of living. Here, even when the reactive mind receives engrams as a result of some of this experience, the analytical mind can continue to cope with the situation without becoming aberrated in any way. Man is a tough, resilient, competent character. But when the law of affinity begins to be broken and such a breaking of affinity gets into the reactive bank, human beings, as antagonistic sources of nonsurvival, become a punishment source. If no contrasurvival en-grams involving human beings are in the earlier (before five years) content of the engram bank, prosurvival engrams are taken as a matter of course and are not severely aberrative. In other words, it is the breaking of affinity with his fellows on an engramic level which most solidly blocks the dynamics. Man's affinity with man is far more a scientific fact than it is a poetic and idyllic idea.
The cycle, then, of life which will be "normal" (current average state) or psychotic is an easy thing to draw. It begins with a large number of engrams before birth, it gathers more in the dependent and rather helpless condition postbirth. Punishment of various kinds, entering now as locks, key in the engrams. New engrams which will involve the earlier ones enter. New locks accumulate. Illness and aberrated action set in most certainly by the age of forty or fifty. And death ensues sometime afterwards.
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Short of the optimum solution of clearing the en-grams, there are several things which can be done about aberration and psychosomatic ills. That these methods are uncertain and of only limited value does not mean that they will not occasionally meet with some astonishingly beneficial responses.
Such methods can be classified under the headings of environmental change, education and physical treatment. Taking factors out of the environment of an aberree or taking the aberree out of the environment in which he is unhappy or ineffective can bring about some astonishingly swift recoveries: this is valid therapy. It removes the restimulators from the individual or takes the individual away from the restimulators. It is ordinarily quite hit-or-miss (and more miss than hit) and it will not remove all the restimulators by nine-tenths, since the individual himself carries the bulk of these around with him or is compelled to contact them. One is reminded of a case which had severe asthma. He had received it in a very severe birth engram; his frantic parents carried him to every mountain asthma resort suggested and spent tens of thousands of dollars in these jauntings. '6 When this patient was cleared and the engram refiled, it was discovered that the restimulator for his asthma was clean, cold air! The only certainty in the environment approach is that a sickly child will recover when removed from restimulative parents and taken where he is loved and feels safeùfor his sickness is the inevitable result of restimulation of prenatal engrams by one or the other or both his parents. Somewhere along the line there is probably a husband or a wife who has descended chronically into the first two zones after marriage, after having married pseudo-mother or pseudofather or pseudoabortionist.
16. jauntings: trips; excursions.
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In the educational field, new data or enthusiasms may very well key out engrams by overbalancing the reactive mind in the light of a new analytical surge. If a man can simply be convinced he has been fighting shadows or if he can be persuaded to hang his fears on some indicated cause, whether that cause is true or not, he can be benefited. Sometimes he can be "educated" into a strong faith in some deity or cult which will cause him to feel so invulnerable that he rises above his engrams. Raising his survival potential in any way will raise his general tone to a point where it is no longer on a par with the reactive bank. Giving him an education in engineering or music, where he can receive a higher level of respect, will often defend him from his restimu-lators. A rise to a position of esteem is actually a change of environment, but it is also educational since he is now taught he is valuable. If a man can be made busy at a hobby or work by personal or exterior education that it is good for him, another mechanism comes into being: the analytical mind becomes so engrossed that it takes to itself more and more energy for its activity and begins to align with a new purpose.
Physical treatment resulting in improved physical condition will bring about hope or change a man's reactions by shifting him on his time track. It may key out engrams.
These methods are valid therapy: they are also, in reverse, the things which cause aberrations to manifest themselves. There are wrong ways to act and wrong things to do and wrong ways to treat men which, in the light of what we know now, are criminal.
Thrusting a man into an environment which re-stimulates him and making him stay there is a slice of murder. Making him keep an associate who is restimu-lative is bad; making a man or a woman stay with a marriage partner who is restimulative is unworkable
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mores unless Dianetic therapy is used; making a child stay in a home where he is restimulated is most certainly inhibitive, not only of his happiness but of his mental and physical developmentùa child should have many more rights about such things, more places to go. On the physical therapy level, anything as violent as surgery or exodontistry in the psychosomatic plane is utter barbarism in the light of Dianetics. "Toothache" is normally psychosomatic. Organic illnesses enough to fill several catalogs are psychosomatic. No recourse to surgery of any kind should be had until it is certain that the ailment is not psychosomatic or that the illness will not diminish by itself if the potency of the reactive mind is reduced. Mental-physical therapy is too ridiculous, with the source of aberration now a science, to be seriously mentioned. For no thinking doctor or psychiatrist possessed of this information would touch another electrode for electric shock therapy or even glance at a scalpel or ice pick to perform an operation on the pre-frontal lobes of the brain unless that doctor or psychiatrist is himself so thoroughly aberrated that the act springs, not from any desire to heal, but from the most utter and craven17 sadism to which engrams can bring a man.*
* Many persons investigating the treatment of the mentally ill by psychiatrists and others in charge of mental institutions are promptedùwhen they discover just what the prefrontal lo-botomy, the transorbital leukotomy and electric shock actually do to patientsùto revile the psychiatrist as unworthy of trust and accuse him of using it to conduct vivisection experiments on human beings. That any possible hope of recovery via Dianetics may be gone for these unfortunate patients in the majority of cases should not be blamed upon the psychiatrist and neurosurgeon. These people have only followed their teachings in various universities and have practiced such
17. craven: cowardly.
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actions merely because they believed the problem of the mind could not be solved by anyone. A witch-burning attitude toward these people is very far from the one adopted by Dianetics. Pointing to the fact that they have murdered minds which would otherwise have recovered, labeling them "mind snatchers," and making a horror story out of their actions is far from rational conduct. On the whole, these people have been entirely sincere in their efforts to help the insane. By contagion of aberration such people have been subjected to enormous stresses in this work, having had their own engrams in continual re stimulation. They can be cleared and their experience is valuable. Legislation against them such as that recently mentioned by a senator who was familiar with Dianetics, horror stories about them in newspapers and a general public antipathy, as well as the medical doctors' traditional distrust of them, cannot but bring about a disorderly condition. Dianetics is a newly discovered science and is nonparti-san.K -LRH
18. nonpartisan: not an adherent or supporter of a person, group, party or cause; objective.
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CHAPTER
Preventive Dianetics
There are many branches in Dianetics. It is actually a family of sciences covered by a single set of axioms. There is, for instance, Educational Dianetics, which contains the body of organized knowledge necessary to train minds to their optimum efficiency and to an optimum of skill and knowledge in the various branches of the works of man. And there is Political Dianetics, which embraces the field of group activity and organization to establish the optimum conditions and processes of leadership and intergroup relations. And again there is Medical Dianetics. And there is Social Dianetics. There are many such subdivisions which are sciences within themselves guided by their own axioms.
We are dealing in this volume, actually, with basic Dianetics and Dianetic therapy as applied to the individual. This is the most immediately important and the most valuable to the individual.
But no book on Dianetic therapy would be complete without a mention of a branch of Dianetics which, some say, is even more important to the race than the therapy. This is Preventive Dianetics.
If one knows the cause of something, he can usually prevent the cause from going into effect. The discovery and proof of Ronald Ross1 that the malaria germ was carried by the mosquito makes it possible to prevent the disease from committing the ravages it once enjoyed at the expense of mankind. Similarly, when one knows the
1. Ronald Ross: (1857-1932) British physician.
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cause of aberration and psychosomatic illness, he can do a great deal toward preventing them. '
While Preventive Dianetics is a large subject, infiltrating the fields of industry and agriculture and other specialized activities of man, its basic principle is the scientific fact that engrams can be held to minimal content or prevented entirely with large gains in favor of mental health and physical well-being as well as social adjustment.
The engram is actually a very simple thing: it is a moment when the analytical mind is shut down by physical pain, drugs or other means, and the reactive bank is open to the receipt of a recording. When that recording has verbal content, it becomes most severely aberrative. When it contains antagonism on an emotional level, it becomes very destructive. When it is intensely prosurvival in content, it is most certainly capable of thoroughly deranging a life.
The engram, amongst other things, determines fate. The engram says that a man has to fail to survive, and so he contrives numerous ways to fail. The engram commands that he can only experience pleasure amongst the members of another race and so he goes amongst them and abandons his own. It commands that he must kill to live and so he kills. And far more subtly, the engram weaves its way from incident to incident to cause the catastrophe which it dictates.
A recent case was plotted out to have actually gone to enormous lengths to break his arm, for with a broken arm he received the sympathy without which the en-gram said he could not live. The plot covered three years and half a hundred apparently innocent incidents which, when netted together, told the story.
The accident-prone person is a case where the reactive mind commands accidents. He is a serious menace in any society for his accidents are reactively intentional
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and they include the destruction of other people who are innocent.
Drivers with several accidents on their records are generally accident-prone. They have engrams which command them to have accidents. When you have run a case, just one, you will see how thoroughly and maliciously disposed this moronic thing, the reactive mind, can be about such things. Cleared drivers could have accidents only through two sources: (a) mechanical failure and, more important, (b) because of accident-prone people. The terrible and awesome death toll taken by our automotive transport is almost all attributable to reactive mind driving rather than learned response driving. The apathy of this society is measured by the fact that it does not act severely to prevent all automotive accidents; just one broken windshield is one too many. Now that an answer is to hand, action can take place.
The aberree, in thousands of ways, complicates the lives of others. Preventive Dianetics makes it possible to sort out the aberree who is accident-prone and bar him from activities which will menace others. This is one general aspect of Preventive Dianetics. That the aberrees so isolated can be cleared is another type of problem.
The other general aspect of Preventive Dianetics, and the more important, is the prevention of engrams and modification of content both on the social and the individual scale. On the social scale one would delete from the society the causes of aberration in that society as if he were deleting engrams from the individual. In the same way, one can prevent the social causes from occurring in the first place.
In the individual, the prevention of engrams is a very easy matter. Once the source of aberration and illness is known, one can prevent the source from entering a life. If the source has been known to enter, one can prevent
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the next step, the key-in. Of course, the final answer in all this is therapy to a clearing, but there is one aspect of the source which is not so answered.
The child cannot be safely cleared until he is at least five years of age and current practice is to place this figure at about eight years. Improved address to the problem may reduce this figure, but it cannot be reduced below the age of speech unless someone in the future invents a catalyst2 which simply clears out the reactive mind without further treatment (not as wild as it may sound). But just now, and probably for a long time to come, the child will remain a problem to Dianetics.
Childhood illness is chiefly derived from engrams. It is most likely to be severe before the age of speech and the number of deaths within the first year of life, while medicine may reduce them, is yet a serious thing.
Preventive Dianetics addresses this problem in two phases: first, the prevention of engrams; and second, the prevention of the key-in.
Taking the key-in first, there are two things which can be done to prevent it. The child can be given a calm and harmonious atmosphere which is not restimulative or, if the child appears to be restimulated despite kindly treatment, he can be removed to another environment which will be minus the two most certain sourcesùhis father and motherùand which will contain a source of affection. The test of whether or not a child is restimulated, prespeech or postspeech, is very simple. Is he susceptible to illness? Does he eat well? Is he nervous? There can be actual physical things wrong with the child, of course, but these are quickly established by a doctor and they lie in the category of physical derangement.
2. catalyst: a person or thing acting as the stimulus in bringing about or hastening a result.
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Quarrels within the hearing of a child, loud noises, frantic conduct, drooling sympathy when he is sick or hurt: these things are some of the key-in catalog. These make a child ill physically and aberrated mentally by keying in his engrams. And nobody can say how many he has!
The primary source of prevention lies in the field, oddly enough, of the regard in which another person is heldùhis mother.
It is not "biological love" which makes Mother play such an enormous role in the life of a human being. It is the simple mechanical truth that Mother is a common denominator to all the child's prenatals. The prenatal engram is far more serious than the postnatal. Any such engram a person has contains his mother or his mother and another person, but always his mother. Therefore her voice, the things she says, the things she does, have an enormous and vast effect upon the unborn child.
It is not true that emotion gets into a child through the umbilical cord, as people always suppose the moment they hear of prenatals. Emotion comes on another (more electrical than physical) type of waveùwhat type is a problem for structure. Therefore, anyone who is emotional around a pregnant woman is communicating that emotion straight into the child. And Mother's emotion is, in the same manner, so conducted to his reactive mind.
Whether or not the unborn child is "unanalytical" has no bearing on his susceptibility to engrams. The prenatal engram is just another engram. Only when the child is actually struck or hurt by high blood pressure or orgasms or other sources of injury does he become "unconscious." When he becomes "unconscious" he receives all the percepts and words in the area of the mother as engrams. Analytical power has nothing to do with engrams. If the child is "unanalytical," this does not
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predispose him to engrams. If the child is "unconscious" or hurt, it does. The presence or absence of "analytical power" has nothing to do with whether or not engrams are received.
Morning sickness,3 coughing, all monologuing (Mother talking to herself), street noises, household noises, etc., are all communicated to the "unconscious" child when he is injured. And the child is very easily injured. He is not protected by formed bones and he has no mobility. He is there: when something strikes him or presses him, his cells and organs are injured. A simple experiment to demonstrate how mobility influences this is to lie down in bed and place one's head on a pillow. Then have somebody lean a hand on one's forehead. As there is no mobility, the pressure of the hand is far stronger than it would be if a hand were laid on the forehead when one was standing. The tissue and the water around the child form very slight buffers. In an injury, amniotic fluid, as an incompressible medium, presses him, for it cannot compress itself. The child's situation is far from armored. Mother's act of tying her shoes, in the later stages of pregnancy, even may be severe on the child. Mother's strain when lifting heavy objects is particularly injurious. And Mother's collision with objects like a table edge might well crush a baby's head. The repair facilities of the unborn child, as mentioned elsewhere, are far above anything ever before discovered. The child may have its head crushed but the blueprint is still there and the building materials and repair can be made. So it is not a case of the child being "all right" just because it can live through almost anything. It is a case of whether or not these injuries are
3. morning sickness: nausea occurring in the early part of the day, especially as a characteristic symptom in the first months of pregnancy.
224
PREVENTIVE DIANETICS
going to have high aberrative value as engrams.
Attempted abortion is very common. And remarkably lacking in success. The mother, every time she injures the child in such a fiendish fashion, is actually penalizing herself. Morning sickness is entirely en-gramic, so far as can be discovered, since Clears have not so far experienced it during their own pregnancies. And the act of vomiting because of pregnancy is via contagion of aberration. Actual illness generally results only when Mother has been interfering with the child either by douches or knitting needles or some such thing. Such interference causes the mother to become ill and, from an actual physical standpoint, is much harder on the mother than on the child. Morning sickness evidently gets into a society because of these interferences such as attempted abortion and, of course, injury.
The cells know when pregnancy occurs. The reactive mind is acquainted with the fact before the analyzer by process of organic sensation, since the endocrine system is altered. Hence, the mother's discovery of pregnancy has little to do with whether or not she was sick before the discovery.
This entire field has been a subject of considerable research in Dianetics. Much more research must be done. These conclusions are tentative. But the conclusion that the engram is received and that it is as violent as its content, rather than its actual pain, is a scientific fact and not in any way a theory. It is as real a discovery as gravity.
Preventing these engrams is the first consideration. Preventing them from having any content is the second. Women who lead peasant lives, doing heavy labor, are subject to all manner of accident. Perhaps such accidents cannot be prevented because of the purpose these women serve in the society. But when it is known that
225
L. RON HUBBARD
any injury to the mother can create an engram in the
unborn child, it should be the concern of all those
present during such an injury, including the mother, to
maintain a complete and utter silence. Any remark is
abcrmtive, in an engram. Even such a statement as "You
can remember this when in Dianetic therapy," made
toward an unborn child, installs an engram so that
every word in this statement means a physical pain just
where he received it at the time, and in the future
"Dianetic therapy" will be restimulative to him.
The doctor, punching around to find out if Mother is
pregnant, may say, "Well, it's hard to tell this early."
The patient in Dianetic therapy years later will return
into the vicinity of this incident only to draw a blank
until the Dianeticist suddenly guesses the content from
how the patient describes his reactions. If the doctor is
very tough and says, "You had better take good care of
yourself, Mrs. Jones. If you don't, you'll be mighty
sick!" the child, "unconscious" from the examination
no matter how mild it is, will get a mild hypochondria
when the engram keys in and be very concerned over
his health.
If the husband uses language during coitus, every
word of it is going to be engramic. If the mother is
beaten by him, that beating and everything he says and
that she says will become part of the engram.
If she does not want the child and he does, the child
will later react toward him as an ally4 and perhaps have
a nervous breakdown when the father dies. If she wants
4. ally: in Dianetics it basically means someone who protects a
person who is in a weak state and becomes a very strong
influence over the person. The weaker person, such as a child,
even partakes the characteristics of the ally so that one may find
that a person who has, for instance, a bad leg, has it because a
protector or ally in his youth had a bad leg. The word is from
French and Latin and means to bind together.
226
PREVENTIVE DIANETICS
the child and he doesn't, the ally computation5 is reversed.
This is true when abortion is threatened or attempted,
providing the threat is contained in an engram.
Should the mother be injured and the father be
highly solicitous,6 the engram has this for content and
the child has a sympathy engram. The way to survive,
then, is to be pathetic when injured, and even see to it
that one is injured.
A woman who is pregnant should be given every
consideration by a society which has any feeling for its
future generations. If she falls, she should be helpedù
but silently. She must not be expected to carry heavy
things. And she should not have coitus forced upon her.
For every coital experience is an engram in the child
during pregnancy.
An astonishing number of pregnancies must take
place which are never realized. The violence of coitus,
the use of douches and jellies (used because the woman
is still contracepting and does not know she is already
pregnant), straining bowel movements, falls and acci-
dents must account for a large number of miscarriages
which come about sometime around the first period
after conception. For the zygote and embryo forms of
the child have a rather frail grip on existence and are
very severely injured by things the mother would con-
sider nothing. Once past the first missed period, the
chances of miscarriage rapidly grow less and only when
the child is a genetic monstrosity or when abortion
5. ally computation: little more than a mere idiot calculation
that anyone who is a friend can be kept a friend only by
approximating the conditions wherein the friendship was real-
ized. It is a computation on the basis that one can only be safe in
the vicinity of certain people and that one can only be in the
vicinity of certain people by being sick or crazy or poor and
generally disabled.
6. solicitous: anxious and concerned about a person's welfare or
comfort.
227
L. RON HUBBARD
attempts are made can a miscarriage be expected to
take place The monstrosities are so small a percentage
that they are negligible as a possibility.
The amniotic sac7 can be pierced many times and
repeatedly and emptied of all water after the first
missed period and the child can still survive. Twenty or
thirty abortion attempts are not uncommon in the aber-
ree and in every attempt the child could have been
pierced through the body or brain.
The child before birth does not depend upon the
standard senses for its perceptions. Engrams are not
memories but cellular level recordings. Therefore, the
child needs no eardrums to record an engram. Cases are
on hand where whatever hearing mechanism the unborn
child had must have been temporarily destroyed by an
abortion attempt. And the engram was still recorded.
The cells rebuilt the apparatus which was to be the
source of sound in the standard banks and stored their
own data in the reactive bank.
Release of such engrams means a restoration of
rationality to the individual far above the current norm
and a stability and well-being greater than man ever
thought man possessed. These engrams have been con-
firmed by taking the data from a child, from the mother
and the father, and all data checked. So we are dealing
here with scientific facts which, no matter how star-
tling, are nevertheless true.
The mother, then, should be extremely gentle on
herself during pregnancy and those around her should
be entirely informed of the necessity for silence after
any jar or injury. And in view of the fact that it is not
possible to tell when a woman has become pregnant and
in view also of the high potentiality of aberration in the
zygote and embryo engrams, it is obvious that society
7. amniotk sac: the membrane sac enclosing the developing
fetus and amniotic fluid.
228
PREVENTIVE DIANETICS
must better its ways toward women if the future health
of the child is to be preserved.
The woman has, to some degree, become considered
less valuable in this society than in other societies and
times. She is expected to be in competition with men.
Such a thing is nonsense. A woman has as high a plane
of activity as man. He cannot compete with her any
more than she can compete with him in the fields of
structure and vigorous activity. Much of the social
maelstrom now in existence has as its hub the failure to
recognize the important role of the woman as a woman
and the separation of the fields of women and men.
The changes which will come about in the next
twenty years need no urging here. But with the recent
discoveries in photosynthesis8 which should secure
enough food to feed man better and at less cost, the
importance of birth control dwindles. The morality
standards have already changed, no matter what moral-
ists do to try to block the change. And woman, there-
fore, can be freed of many of her undesirable chains.
In the custody of man is the current world and its
activity and structure. In the charge of woman is the
care of the person of the human being and his children.
Almost sole custodian of tomorrow's generation, she is
entitled to much more respect than her chattel9 period
of the past gave her.
It is not, then, any wild Utopian thought that woman
can be placed above the level hitherto occupied. And so
she must be placed if the childhood of tomorrow's
generation is to reach any high standard, if homes are to
be peaceful and unharassed and if society is to advance.
8. photosynthesis: the process by which green plants use sun-
light to convert carbon dioxide (taken from the air) and water into
complex substances.
9. chattel: slave or any movable possession (as opposed to a
house or land).
229
L. RON HUBBARD
Preventive Dianetics, in the sphere of the home,
must place emphasis on the woman in order to safe-
guard the child.
As any first step, a mother should be cleared, for
any mother who attempts an abortion is blocked across
the second dynamic and any block menaces her health
as well as her happiness. An antipathy for children has
been found to accompany sexual aberration.
Preventive Dianetics, then, on the level of the indi-
vidual, asks for cleared parents and then precaution
against the aberrating of the child, and further precau-
tion against the keying in of any aberration the child
might have received.
To do this is very easy. Maintain silence in the
presence of injury. Do what has to be done for the
injured or ill and do it in silence. Maintain silence in
the presence of birth to save both the sanity of the
mother and the child and safeguard the home to which
they will go. And the maintaining of silence does not
mean a volley10 of "Sh's," for those make stammerers.
In a wider field, the maintenance of silence around
any "unconscious" or injured person is second in im-
portance only to preventing the "unconsciousness" in
the first place.
Say nothing and make no sound around an "uncon-
scious" or injured person. To speak, no matter what is
said, is to threaten his sanity. Say nothing while a
person is being operated upon. Say nothing when there
is a street accident. Don't talk!
Say nothing around a sick child or an injured child.
Smile, appear calm, but say nothing. Actions do not
speak louder than words but actions are all that can be
done around the sick and injured, unless one has an
10. volley: (figurative) a noisy, rapid outpouring or burst of many
things at once.
230
PREVENTIVE DIANETICS
active desire to drive them into neurosis or insanity or,
at best, to give them a future illness.
And above all, say nothing around a woman who has
been struck or jarred in any way. Help her. If she
speaks, don't answer. Just help her. You have no idea of
whether she is pregnant or not.
And it is a remarkable fact, a scientific fact, that the
healthiest children come from the happiest mothers.
Birth, for one thing, in a cleared mother, is a very mild
affair. Only birth engrams in the mother made it hard.
A cleared mother needs no anesthetic. And that is well
because the anesthetic makes a dazed child and the
engram, when it reacts, makes him appear a dull child.
A happy woman has very little trouble. And even a few
engrams, which arrive despite all precautions, are noth-
ing if the general tone of the mother is happy.
Woman, you have a right and a reason to demand
good treatment.
231
I
Book Three
Therapy
CHAPTER ONE
The Mind's Protection
The mind is a self-protecting mechanism. Short of
the use of drugs as in narcosynthesis, shock, hypnotism
or surgery, no mistake can be made by an auditor1
which cannot be remedied either by himself or by
another auditor. Those things which are stressed, then,
in this book, are ways to accomplish therapy as swiftly
as possible with minimal errors; for errors take time.
Auditors are going to make errors, that is inevitable. If
they make the same error repeatedly, they had better get
someone to guide them through therapy.
Thf-t- are probably thousands of ways to get into
trouble .ith mental healing, but all these ways can be
classed in these groups: (1) use of shock or surgery on
the brain; (2) use of strong drugs; (3) use of hypnosis as
such; and (4) trying to crossbreed Dianetics with older
forms of therapy.
The mind will not permit itself to be seriously
overloaded so long as it can retain partial awareness of
itself; it can only be overloaded when its awareness is
reduced to a point where it cannot evaluate anything: it
can then be thoroughly upset. Dianetic reverie2 leaves a
1. auditor: a person trained and qualified in applying Dianetics
processes and procedures to individuals for their betterment;
called an auditor because auditor means "one who listens."
2. reverie: the state of reverie is actually just a name. It is a label
introduced to make the patient feel that his state has altered and
that he has gone into a state where his memory is very good or
where he can do something he couldn't ordinarily do before. The
actuality is that he is able to do it all the time anyway. It is not a
strange state. The person is wide awake, but merely by asking
him to close his eyes he is technically in reverie.
235
L. RON HUBBARD
patient fully aware of everything which is taking place
and with full recall of everything which has happened.
Types of therapy which do not do this are possible and
useful but they must be approached with the full knowl-
edge that they are not foolproof. Dianetics, then, uses
the reverie for the majority of its work, and, using the
reverie, an auditor cannot possibly get himself into any
trouble from which he cannot extricate himself and the
patient. He is working with an almost foolproof mecha-
nism as long as the mind retains some awareness: a
radio or a clock or an electric motor are far more
susceptible to injury in the hands of a workman than the
human mind. The mind was built to be as tough as
possible. It will be found that it is difficult to get it into
situations which make it uncomfortable and impossible,
with the reverie, to embroil3 it enough to cause neurosis
or insanity. In the US infantry manual there is a line
about decision: "Any plan, no matter how poorly con-
ceived, if boldly executed, is better than inaction."
In Dianetics, any case,4 no matter how serious, no
matter how unskilled the auditor, is better opened than
left closed. It is better to start therapy if it is to be
interrupted after two hours of work than not to start
therapy at all. It is better to contact an engram than to
leave an engram uncontacted even if the result is physi-
cal discomfort for the patientùfor that engram will not
thereafter possess as much power and the discomfort
will gradually abate.
This is scientific fact. The mechanism Dianetics
uses is an ability of the brain which man as a whole did
not know he had. It is a process of thought which
3. embroil: throw into confusion; complicate.
4. case: a general term for a person being treated or helped. Case
also refers to a person's condition, which is monitored by the
content of his reactive mind. A person's case is the way he
responds to the world around him by reason of his aberrations.
236
THE MIND'S PROTECTION
everyone possesses inherently and which was evidently
meant to be used in the overall process of thinking but
which, by some strange oversight, man has never before
discovered. Once a person has learned that he possesses
just this one new faculty, he is better able to think than
he was before, and he can learn this faculty in ten
minutes. Further, when one approaches an engram with
this faculty (which, when intensified, is the reverie),
some of that engram's sublevel connections are broken
and the aberrative factors no longer have as much force
either in the physical or mental spheres. Further, the
knowledge that there is a solution to mental ills is a
stabilizing factor.
Approaching an engram with the reverie is very far
from the same as restimulating the engram exteriorly as
is done in life. The engram is a powerful and vicious
character only so long as it is untapped. In place and
active, it can be restimulated to cause innumerable
mental and physical ills. But approaching it with reverie
is approaching it on a new circuit, one that disarms it.
The power of the engram is partly the fear of the
unknownùknowing brings stability by itself.
Do not think that you will not make patients uncom-
fortable. That is not true. The auditor's work, when it
taps engrams which cannot be lifted, may cause the
patient to have headaches, various aches and pains and
even mild physical illness, even when the work is
carefully done. But life has been doing this to the
patient on a much grander scale for years and, no
matter how badly the case is mauled around, no matter
how many aberrations spring into view to plague the
patient for a day or two, none are as serious as those
which can be occasioned by the environment acting
upon the untapped engram.
The auditor can do everything backwards, upside
down and utterly wrong and the patient will still be
237
L. RON HUBBARD
better, provided only that he does not try to use drugs
before he has worked a few cases, that he does not use
hypnotism as hypnotism and he does not try to cross
Dianetics with some older therapy. He can use drugs in
Dianetics if he knows his Dianetics and if he has
medical concurrence. He can use all the techniques of
hypnotism so long as he is thoroughly experienced with
Dianetics. And once he has used Dianetics, he will not
fall back to mystic efforts to heal minds. In short, the
point which is offered here is that so long as the auditor
takes a relatively simple case at first to see how the
mechanisms of the mind work and uses only the rev-
erie, he cannot get into trouble. There will be those,
certainly, who believe they are so vastly experienced in
tom-tom beating or gourd rattling that they won't give
Dianetics a chance to work as Dianetics but will sail in
and begin to plague the patient about "penis envy" or
make him repent his sins; but the patient who starts to
get this will be smart to simply change positions from
the couch to the auditor's chair and clear up some of
the aberrations of the auditor before work proceeds.
Anybody who has read this book once through and
procured a patient with sonic recall for a trial effort
will know more about the mind, in those actions, than
he has ever known before, and he will be more skilled
and able to treat the mind than anyone attempting to do
so, regardless of reputation, a very short while ago.
This does not mean that men who have had experience
with mental patients will not, knowing Dianetics (know-
ing Dianetics) have an edge on those who do not realize
some of the foibles5 of which man in an aberrated state
is capable. And on the other hand it does not mean that
some engineer or lawyer or cook with a few Dianetic
5. foibles: minor weaknesses or failings of character; slight flaws
or defects.
238
THE MIND'S PROTECTION
cases under his belt will not be more skilled than all
other practitioners of whatever background or kind. In
this case, the sky is no limit.
One could not say, offhand, that an able hypnotist or
an able psychologist, ready and willing to jettison6 and
unlearn yesterday's mistakes, is not better prepared to
practice Dianetics. In the field of psychosomatic medi-
cine, the medical doctor, with a vast fund of experience
in healing, might very well be far and above other
auditors in Dianetic work. But it is not necessarily the
case, for in research it has been proven that men and
women with most unlikely professional backgrounds
have suddenly become auditors superior in skill to those
in fields you might suspect were more closely allied.
Engineers particularly are excellent material and make
excellent auditors. Again, Dianetics is not being re-
leased to a profession, for no profession could encom-
pass it. It is insufficiently complicated to warrant years
of study in some university. It belongs to man and it is
doubtful if anyone could manage to gain a corner7 on it
for it does not fall within any legislation of any kind in
any place and if Dianetics were legislated into a li-
censed profession, then it is to be feared that listening
to stories and jokes and personal experience would also
have to be legislated into a profession. Such laws would
put all men of goodwill who lend a sympathetic ear to a
friend's troubles inside the barbed wire. Dianetics is
not psychiatry. It is not psychoanalysis. It is not psy-
chology. It is not personal relations. It is not hypnotism.
It is a science of mind and needs about as much
licensing and regulation as the application of the science
6. jettison: throw off (something) as an obstacle or burden;
discard.
7. corner: a monopoly acquired on a stock or a commodity so as
to be able to raise the price.
239
L. RON HUBBARD
of physics. Those things which are legislated against
are a matter of law because they may in some way
injure individuals or society. Legislation exists about
psychoanalysis in some three states in the Union, legis-
lation against or about psychiatry exists everywhere. If
an auditor wishes to constitute8 himself a psychiatrist
with the power of vivisecting9 human brains, if he wants
to constitute himself a doctor and administer drugs and
medicines, if he wants to practice hypnotism and pour
suggestions into a patient, then he must square it with
psychiatry, medicine and the local laws about hypno-
tism, for he has entered other fields than Dianetics. In
Dianetics, hypnotism is not used, no brains are operated
upon and no drugs are given unless the local medico is
part of the staff. Dianetics is not in any way covered by
legislation anywhere, for no law can prevent one man
sitting down and telling another man his troubles, and if
anyone wants a monopoly on Dianetics, be assured that
he wants it for reasons which have to do not with
Dianetics but with profit. There are not enough psy-
chiatrists in the country to begin to staff the mental
institutions. Surely this generation, particularly with all
the iatrogenic* work which has been done, will con-
tinue to need those institutions and will need psychia-
trists: their field is the treatment of the insane by
definition and that has nothing to do with thee and me.
In psychology, Dianetics drops into line without dis-
turbing anything concerned with staffs or research or
* Iatrogenic means illness generated by doctors. An operation
during which the doctor's knife slipped and accidentally
harmed the patient might cause an iatrogenic illness or injury
since the fault would have been with the surgeons. ùLRH
8. constitute: establish or set up; make (a person or thing)
something.
9. vivisecting: cutting into or dissecting.
240
THE MIND'S PROTECTION
teaching posts, for psychology is simply the study of the
psyche and now that there exists a science of the psyche
it can go ahead with a will. Thus, Dianetics is the
enemy of none, and Dianetics falls utterly outside all
existing legislation, none of which anticipated or made
any provision for a science of mind.
241
CHAPTER Two
Release or Clear
The object of Dianetic therapy is to bring about a
Release or a Clear.
A Release (noun) is an individual from whom major
stress and anxiety have been removed by Dianetic therapy.
A Clear (noun) is an individual who, as a result of
Dianetic therapy, has neither active nor potential psycho-
somatic illness or aberration.
To clear (verb) is to release all the physical pain and
painful emotion from the life of an individual or, as in
Political Dianetics, a society. The result of this will
bring about persistence in the four dynamics, optimum
analytical ability for the individual and, with that, all
recall. The experience of his entire life is available to
the Clear and he has all his inherent mental ability and
imagination free to use it. His physical vitality and
health are markedly improved and all psychosomatic
illnesses have vanished and will not return. He has
greater resistance to actual disease. And he is adaptable
to and able to change his environment. He is not
"adjusted"; he is dynamic. His ethical and moral stand-
ards are high, his ability to seek and experience pleas-
ure is great. His personality is heightened and he is
creative and constructive. It is not yet known how much
longevity is added to a life in the process of clearing,
but in view of the automatic rebalancing of the endo-
crine system, the lowered incidence of accident and the
improvement of general physical tone, it is most cer-
tainly raised.
A Release is an individual from whom have been
released the current or chronic mental and physical
242
RELEASE OR CLEAR
difficulties and painful emotion. The value of a Re-
lease, when compared to a Clear, may not at first
thought be considered great, but when one understands
that a Release is usually in excess of the contemporary
norm in mental stability, it can be seen that the condi-
tion is not without great value.
As a standard of comparison, a Clear is to the
contemporary norm as the contemporary norm is to
a contemporary institutional case. The margin is wide
and it would be difficult to exaggerate it. A Clear, for
instance, has complete recall of everything which has
ever happened to him or anything he has ever studied.
He does mental computations, such as those of chess,1
for example, which a normal would do in half an hour,
in ten or fifteen seconds. He does not think "vocally"
but spontaneously. There are no demon circuits in his
mind except those which it might amuse him to set
upùand break down againùto care for various ap-
proaches to living. He is entirely self-determined. And
his creative imagination is high. He can do a swift study
of anything within his intellectual capacity, which is
inherent, and the study would be the equivalent to him
of a year or two of training when he was "normal." His
vigor, persistence and tenacity to life are very much
higher than anyone has thought possible.
The objection that it is dangerous to create too many
Clears in a society is a thoughtless one. The Clear is
rational. The acts which damage a society are irra-
tional. That a handful of Clears could probably handle
any number of "normals" is within reason, but that the
1. chess: a game of skill played on a checkered board by two
players, each possessing an initial force of 16 pieces, including a
piece called a "king." There are individual rules of movement for
each different kind of piece. Players make alternate moves, each
seeking to attack the other's king in such a manner that no escape
or defense is possible, thus ending the game.
243
L. RON HUBBARD
Clear would handle them to their detriment is unreason-
able. The more Clears a society possessed, the more
chance that society would have to prosper. That a Clear
is unambitious is not proven out by scientific observa-
tion, for the curve of dwindling ambition follows the
curve of reducing rationality; and those who have been
cleared have proven the matter by re-activating all their
skills toward goals they had once desired but had begun
to consider unattainable when "norms."* That a Clear
is in some degree separated from the "norm" is attrib-
utable to the gulf between their respective mental abil-
ities, for he has achieved solutions and conclusions
before the "norm" has begun to form an idea of what to
conclude. This does not make a Clear intolerable to the
"norm," for the Clear has none of that superiority
attitude which is actually a product of engrams. This is
a quick glance at the state of being Clear, but the state
cannot be described; it has to be experienced to be
appreciated.
A Release is a somewhat variable quantity. Anyone
well advanced on the road to Clear is a Release. There
is no comparison between a Clear and anything man has
before believed obtainable, and there is no comparison
between clearing and any therapy hitherto practiced. In
the case of the Release only is there a basis of com-
parison between Dianetics and past therapies such as
"psychoanalysis" and any other. A Release can be ef-
fected in a few weeks. The resulting condition will be at
least equivalent to that following two years of "psycho-
analysis" with the difference that the Release has a guar-
antee of permanent results and no guarantee of success
has ever been made by "psychoanalysis." A Release does
* Norm is a term in psychology denoting the normal individual,
which is to say, an average person. The IQ and behavior of a
"norm" would be an averaging out of the current population. There
is nothing desirable about being a "norm," for he is badly aberra-
ted. -LRH
244
RELEASE OR CLEAR
not relapse into any pattern which has been relieved.
These are the two goals of the Dianetic auditor:
Clear and Release. It is not known at this writing how
long is the average time to raise the institutionally
insane into the neurotic level: it has been done in two
hours, it has been done in ten and in some cases it has
required two hundred.*
The Dianetic auditor should determine beforehand
in any case whether he wishes to attempt a Release or a
Clear. He can achieve either with anyone not organi-
cally insane (missing or seared portions of the brain
bringing about insanity, mainly genetic or iatrogenic
and relatively rare except in institutions). But he should
make an estimate of the amount of time he can invest in
any one person and regulate his intention accordingly
and announce it to his patient. The two goals are
slightly different. In a Release, one does not attempt
entrance into phases of the case which will or may bring
about a necessity of long work and gives his attention to
the location and release of emotional charge. In clear-
ing, the auditor gives his attention to the location of the
basic-basic engram, the discharge of emotion and the
entire engram bank.
There is a third goal which could be considered a
subhead of a Release. This is an assist: it is done after
injury, or illness following the injury, or illness just
sustained, in order to promote more rapid recovery; to
assist the body in its rehabilitation after injury or
* The Dianetic auditor who practices with the institutionally
insane exclusively should provide himself with the text now in
preparation on that subject. The techniques are similar to those
described here but incline more toward heroic measures. This
present volume is addressed to treatment of the normal person or
the neurotic patient not sufficiently violent to he institutional-
ized. However, with intelligence and imagination, these same
techniques can he applied with success to any mental state or
physical illness. Institutional Dianetics is primarily the reduction
of an insanity to a neurosis. ù LRH
245
L. RON HUBBARD
illness. This is specialized therapy which will probably
be practiced commonly enough but is of primary ben-
j | efit to the medical doctor who, with it, can save lives
and speed healing by releasing the engram of that
particular illness or injury, thus removing the various
engram conceptions which the furtherance of the injury
restimulates. Any Dianetic auditor can practice this.
The assist has about the same level of usefulness as a
faith-healing miracle which would work every time.
Estimations of the amount of time the case will
require are difficult to attain with any accuracy greater
than 50 percent and it should be understood by the
patient that the time in therapy is variable. It depends in
a measure upon the skill of the auditor, the number of
unsuspected engrams never hitherto reactivated, and the
amount of restimulation to which the patient is subject
during therapy. Therefore, the auditor should not be
optimistic in estimating time but should make his pa-
tient understand that greater or lesser time may be
consumed in the therapy.
Any person who is intelligent and possessed of
average persistency and who is willing to read this book
thoroughly should be able to become a Dianetic auditor.
When he has cleared two or three cases he will have
learned far more and understood far more than is
contained in this book, for there is nothing which
develops an understanding of a machine like handling it
in action. This is the instruction book, the machine in
question is ready to hand wherever there are men.
Contrary to superstition about the mind, it is almost
impossible to permanently injure the mechanism. It can
be done with an electric shock or a scalpel or an ice
pick, but it is almost impossible to do it with Dianetic
therapy.
246
CHAPTER THREE
The Auditor's Role
The purpose of therapy and its sole target is the
removal of the content of the reactive engram bank. In
a Release, the majority of emotional stress is deleted
from this bank. In a Clear, the entire content is re-
moved.*
The application of a science is an art. That is true of
any science. The efficacy of its application depends
upon the understanding, skill and ability of whoever
applies it. The chemist has a science of chemistry and
yet the profession of being a chemist is an art. The
engineer may have behind him the precision of all the
physical sciences and yet the practice of engineering is
an art.
Certain rules of procedure can be laid down after
the basic axioms of a science are understood. Beyond
those rules of procedure is the understanding, skill and
ability necessary to application.
Dianetics is extremely simple. This does not mean
that cases cannot be extremely complicated. To cover
one case for each kind of case in this book would
necessitate two billion cases and that would only en-
compass the current population. For each man is a great
deal different from every other man. His inherent per-
sonality is different. His composite of experience is
different. And his dynamics are of different strengths.
* The content of the engram bank is actually shifted rather
than removed, for it refiles under the heading of experience
in the standard banks. The material, however, appears to
vanish in therapy because the therapy is addressed to the
engram bank, not the standard banks. ùLRH
247
L. RON HUBBARD
The only constant is the mechanism of the reactive
engram bank and that alone does not vary. The content
of that bank is different from man to man both in
quantity and intensity but the mechanism of operation
of the bank and therefore the basic mechanisms of
Dianetics are constant from man to man, and were in
every age and will be in every future age until man
evolves into another organism.
The target is the engram. It is also the target of the
patient's analytical mind and the patient's dynamics as
he tries to live his life: It is the target of the auditor's
analytical mind and the auditor's dynamics. So brack-
eted1 and salvoed,2 it gives up its store of engrams.
This should be extremely plain to any auditor: the
amount he relaxes from the position of auditor and
forgets the target, he garners3 trouble which will con-
sume his time. The moment he makes the error of
thinking that the person, the analytical mind or the
dynamics of the patient are resisting, trying to stop
therapy or giving up, the auditor has made the funda-
mental and primary error in the practice of Dianetics.
Almost anything that goes wrong can be traced back to
this error. It cannot be too emphatically stated that the
analytical mind and the dynamics of the patient never,
never, never resist the auditor. The auditor is not there
to be resisted. He has no concern with resistance from
anything except the patient's (and sometimes his own)
engrams.
The auditor is not there as the patient's driver or
adviser. He is not there to be intimidated by the patient's
1. bracketed: of a target, having had its range determined by
placing shots both short of the target and beyond it. Used
figuratively.
2. salvoed: fired at with a number of guns or artillery pieces at
one time.
3. garners: acquires; gathers or collects.
248
THE AUDITOR'S ROLE
engrams or be frightened by their aspects. He is there to
audit and only to audit. If he feels that he is called upon
to be lordly to the patient, then the auditor had better
change chair for couch because he has a case of authori-
tarianism coming into view. The word auditor is used,
not operator or therapist, because it is a cooperative
effort between the auditor and the patient, and the law
of affinity is at work.
The patient cannot see his own aberrations. That is
one of the reasons why the auditor is there. The patient
needs to be bolstered to face the unknowns of his life.
That is another reason the auditor is there. The patient
would not dare address the world which has gotten
inside him and turn his back upon the world that is
outside him unless he has a sentry. That is another
reason the auditor is there.
The auditor's job is to safeguard the person of the
patient during therapy, to compute the reasons why the
patient's mind cannot reach into the engram bank, to
strengthen the patient's nerve and to get those engrams.
There is a three-way case of affinity at work this
moment. I am in affinity with the auditor: I am telling
him all that has been discovered and is in practice in
Dianetics and I want him to succeed. The auditor is in
affinity with the patient: he wants the patient to attack
engrams. The patient is in affinity with the auditor
because, with minimal work, that patient is going to get
better andùwith persistence lent him by the auditor,
plus his ownùwill become a Release or a Clear. There
are even more affinities at work, a vast network of
them. This is a cooperative endeavor.
The engram bank is the target, not the patient. If the
patient swears and moans and weeps and pleads, those
are engrams talking. After a while the engrams that
make him swear and moan and weep and plead will be
discharged and refiled. The patient, in whatever state,
249
L. RON HUBBARD
knows full well that the action taken is necessary. If the
auditor is so short of rationality that he mistakes this
swearing or moaning as something directed at him
personally, that auditor had better change places with
the patient and undergo therapy.
The only thing which resists is the engram! When it
is being restimulated it impinges against the patient's
analyzer, tends to reduce analytical power, and the
patient exhibits a modified dramatization. Any auditor
with two brain cells to click together will never be in
any slightest danger of his person at the hands of the
prerelease or preclear* If the auditor wants to use
hypnotism and try to run late physically painful en-
grams, such as operations, when early ones are avail-
able, he may find himself targeted. But then he has
done something very wrong. If the auditor suddenly
gets supermoral and lectures the patient, he may get
involved, but again he has done something very wrong.
If the auditor snarls and snaps at the patient, he may get
targeted, but once more a fundamental error has been
made.
The target is the engram bank. It is the auditor's job
to attack the preclear's engram bank. It is the pre-
clear's job to attack that bank. To attack the preclear is
to permit his engram bank to attack the preclear.
We know that there are five methods of handling
an engram. Four of them are wrong. To succumb to an
engram is apathy, to neglect one is carelessness, but to
avoid or flee from one is cowardice. Attack, and only
attack, resolves the problem. It is the duty of the auditor
to make very sure that the preclear keeps attacking
* The terms prerelease and preclear are used to designate an
individual entered into and undergoing Dianetic therapy. The
term preclear is used most commonly. The word patient is less
descriptive because it implies illness, but it is used inter-
changeably. ùLRH
250
THE AUDITOR'S ROLE
engrams, not the auditor or the exterior world. If the
auditor attacks the preclear, that's bad gunnery and
very poor logic.
The engram bank is best attacked primarily by
discharging its emotional charge anywhere it can be
contacted. After that it is best attacked by finding out
what the preclear, in reverie, thinks would happen to
him if he got well, got better, found out, etc. And then
it is most and always most important, in any way
possible, to contact the primary moment of pain or
unconsciousness in the patient's life. This is basic-
basic. Once an auditor has basic-basic, the case will
swiftly resolve. If the preclear's reactive mind is sup-
pressing basic-basic, then the auditor should discharge
more reactive emotion, discover the computation now in
force, and try again. He will eventually get basic-basic.
That's important. And that is all that is important in a
preclear.
In the prerelease (patient working toward Release
only), the task is to discharge emotion and as many
early engrams as will present themselves easily. The
reduction of locks may be included in prerelease; but
only when they lead to basic-basic should locks be
touched in a preclear.
There are three levels of healing. The first is getting
the job done efficiently. Below that is making the
patient comfortable. Below that is sympathy. In short, if
you can do nothing for a man with a broken back, you
can make him comfortable. If you can't even make him
comfortable, you can sympathize with him.
The second and third echelons above are entirely
unwarranted in Dianetics. The job can be done effi-
ciently. Making the patient comfortable is a waste of
time. Giving him sympathy may snarl up the entire case,
for his worst engrams will be sympathy engrams and
sympathy may restimulate them out of place. The auditor
251
L. RON HUBBARD
who indulges in "hand-patting," no matter how much it
seems to be indicated, is wasting time and slowing down
the case. Undue roughness is not indicated. A friendly,
cheerful, optimistic attitude will take care of everything.
A preclear sometimes needs a grin. But he has already
had more "hand-patting" than the analyzer has been able
to compute. His chronic psychosomatic illness contains
sympathy in its engram.
The next thing the auditor should know and live is
the Auditor's Code.*4 This may sound like something
from "When Knighthood Was in Flower" or the "Thir-
teen Rituals for Heavenly Bliss and Nirvana," but
unless it is employed by the auditor on his patients, the
auditor will have some heavy slogging. This code is not
for the comfort of the preclear; it is exclusively for the
protection of the auditor.
The Auditor's Code should never be violated. Prac-
tice in Dianetics has demonstrated that violation of the
Auditor's Code alone can interrupt cases.
The auditor should be courteous in his treatment of
all preclears.
The auditor should be kind, not giving way to any
indulgence of cruelty toward preclears, nor surrender-
ing to any desire to punish.
The auditor should be quiet during therapy, not
given to talk beyond the absolute essentials of Dianetics
during an actual session.
* It is interesting that the Auditor's Code outlines, save for its
last clause, the survival conduct pattern of man. The Clear
operates more or less automatically on this code. Dianetics is
a parallel to thought, since it follows the natural laws of
thought. What works in Dianetics works as well in life. ù LRH
4. Auditor's Code: a collection of rules (do's and don'ts) that an
auditor follows while auditing someone, which assures that the
preclear will get the greatest possible gain out of the auditing he
is having.
252
THE AUDITOR'S ROLE
The auditor should be trustworthy, keeping his word
when given, keeping his appointments in schedules and
his commitments to work, and never giving forth any
commitment of any kind which he has any slightest
reason to believe he cannot keep.
The auditor should be courageous, never giving ground
or violating the fundamentals of therapy because a pre-
clear thinks he should.
The auditor should be patient in his working, never
becoming restless or annoyed by the preclear, no matter
what the preclear is doing or saying.
The auditor should be thorough, never permitting his
plan of work to be swayed or a charge to be avoided.
The auditor should be persistent, never giving up
until he has achieved results.
The auditor should be uncommunicative, never giv-
ing the patient any information whatsoever about his
case, including evaluations of data or further estimates
of time in therapy.
Various conditions ensue when any of the above are
violated. All violations slow therapy and cause the
auditor more work. All violations come back to the
detriment of the auditor.
For instance, in the last, it is not part of the audi-
tor's work to inform the preclear of anything. As soon
as he starts doing so, the preclear promptly hooks the
auditor into the circuit as the source of information and
so avoids engrams.
The auditor will see in progress the most violent and
disturbing human emotions. He may be moved to sym-
pathy, but if he is, he has overlooked something and
hindered therapy: Whenever an emotion shows, it is an
emotion which will shortly be history. Whatever gyra-
tions5 the preclear may go through, however much he
5. gyrations: actions of turning round, wheeling or whirling.
253
L. RON HUBBARD
may move or wrestle around, the auditor must keep
firmly in mind that every moan or gyration is one step
closer to the goal. For why be frightened or waste
sympathy about something which, when it has been
recounted a few times, will leave a preclear happier?
If the auditor becomes frightened and pulls that
error of all errors when a preclear begins to shake,
"Come up to present time!" he can be sure that the
preclear will have a couple of bad days and that the next
time the auditor wants to enter that engram it will be
blocked.
If an auditor assumes the state of mind that he can
sit and whistle while Rome burns before him and be
prepared to grin about it, then he will do an optimum
job. The things at which he gazes, no matter how they
look, no matter how they sound, are solid gains. It's the
quiet, orderly patient who is making few gains. This
does not mean that the auditor is trying for nothing but
violence, but it does mean that when he gets it he can
be cheerful and content that one more engram has lost
its charge.
The task of auditing is rather much a shepherd's
task, herding the little sheep, the engrams, into the pen
for slaughter. The preclear isn't under the auditor's
orders but the preclear, if the case runs well, will do
whatever the auditor wants with these engrams because
the analytical mind and the dynamics of the preclear
want that job done. The mind knows how the mind
operates.
254
CHAPTER FOUR
Diagnosis
One of the most important contributions of Dia-
netics is the resolution of the problem of diagnosis in
the field of aberration. Hitherto there have been almost
unlimited classifications; further, there has been no
optimum standard.* As one researches in the field of
psychiatric texts, he finds wide disagreement in classi-
fication and continual complaint that classification is
very complex and lacking in usefulness. Without an
optimum goal of conduct or mental state and without
knowledge of the cause of aberration, catalogs of de-
scriptions alone were possible and these were so in-
volved and contradictory that it was nearly impossible
to sharply assign to a psychotic or neurotic any classifi-
cation which would lead to an understanding of his
case.** The main disability in this classification system
was that the classification did not lead to a cure, for
there was no standard treatment and there was no
optimum state to indicate when treatment was at end;
and as there was no cure for aberration or psycho-
somatic illness, there could be no classification which
* "Psychology has . . . no mental standards to set up. . , .
The psychologist does not occupy himself with the establish-
ment of norms." The Psychology of Abnormal People, by
John J. B. Morgan, Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1928.
-LRH
** "The work of the psychiatrist was taken up mainly with
describing and classifying symptoms. This procedure has
been strongly criticized by some students on the ground that it
leads nowhere and encourages a false pretense of understand-
ing where there is none. Giving a name to something does not
increase our understanding of it." Ibid., Intro. ùLRH
255
L. RON HUBBARD
would indicate the direction which was to be taken or
what could uniformly be expected of a case.
This is no criticism of past efforts surely, but it is a
source of relief to know that the classification of aber-
ration is unnecessary along such complicated lines as
have been used and that the cataloging of psycho-
somatic ills, while necessary to the physician, is unim-
portant to the auditor. In the evolution of the science of
Dianetics there were several stages of classification
until it finally became clear that the label on a patho-
logical condition should only be whatever the auditor
had to overcome to achieve cure. This system, as now
evolved through practice, makes it possible for the auditor
to "diagnose" without any more knowledge than is con-
tained in this chapter and his own future experience.
The number of aberrations possible is the number of
combinations of words possible in a language as con-
tained in engrams. In other words, if a psychotic thinks
he is God, he has an engram which says he is God. If he
is worried about poison in his hash, he has an engram
which tells him he may get poison in his hash. If he is
certain he may be "fired" from his job any moment,
even though he is competent and well liked, he has an
engram which tells him he is about to be "fired." If he
thinks he is ugly, he has an engram about being ugly. If
he is afraid of snakes or cats, he has engrams which tell
him to fear snakes and cats. If he is sure he has to buy
everything he sees, despite his income, he has an en-
gram which tells him to buy everything he sees. And in
view of the fact that anyone not released or cleared has
upwards of two or three hundred engrams and as these
engrams contain a most remarkable assortment of lan-
guage and as he may choose one of five ways of
handling any one of these engrams, the problem of
aberration is of no importance to the auditor except
where it slows therapy.
256
DIAGNOSIS
Most aberrated people talk in a large measure out of
their engrams. Whatever the chronic patter' of the indi-
vidual may be, his rage patter, his apathy patter, his
general attitude toward life, this patter is contained in
engrams wherever it departs even in the slightest degree
from complete rationality. The man who "cannot be
sure," who "does not know" and who is skeptical of
everything, is talking out of engrams. The man who is
certain "it cannot be true," that "it isn't possible," that
"authority must be contacted," is talking out of en-
grams. The woman who is so certain she needs a
divorce or that her husband is going to murder her some
night is talking out of either her own or his engrams.
The man who comes in and says he has a bad pain in his
stomach that feels "just like a #12 gauge2 copper wire
going straight through me," has quite possibly had a
#12 gauge copper wire through him in an attempted
abortion or talk of such a thing while he was in pain.
The man who says it "has to be cut out" is talking
straight out of an engram, either from some operation
of his own or his mother's or from an attempted
abortion. The man who "has to get rid of it" is again
possibly talking out of an attempted-abortion engram.
The man who "can't get rid of it" may be talking from
the same source but from another valence. People, in
short, especially when talking about Dianetics and en-
grams, give forth with engram talk in steady streams.
They have no awareness, ordinarily, that the things they
are saying are minor dramatizations of their engrams
and suppose that they have concluded these things
themselves or think these things: the supposition and
explanation is only justified thoughtùthe analyzer
1. patter: the special vocabulary of a particular activity.
2. gauge: thickness or diameter, as of sheet metal or wire. A #12
gauge copper wire is approximately three thirty-secondths of an
inch thick.
257
L. RON HUBBARD
performing its duty in guaranteeing that the organism is
right no matter how foolishly it is acting.
The auditor can be assured, particularly when he is
talking about Dianetics, that he is going to hear in
return a lot of engram content; for discussion of the
reactive mind generally takes place in language which it
itself holds.
Recall that the reactive mind can think only on this
equationùA = A = A, where the three A's may be re-
spectively a horse, a swear word and the verb to spit.
Spitting is the same as horses is the same as God. The
reactive mind is a very zealous Simple Simon, carefully
stepping in each pie. Thus, when a man is told he has to
delete the content of the reactive bank, he may say that
if he did, he is sure he would lose all his ambition. Be
assuredùand how easily this proves up on therapy and
how red-eared some preclears becomeùthat he has an
engram which may run something like this:
(Blow or bump, prenatal)
Father: Damn it, Agnes, you've got to get rid of that
goddamned baby. If you don't, we'll starve to death.
I can't afford it.
Mother: Oh, no, no, no. I can't get rid of it, I can't, I
can't, I can't! Honest, I will take care of it. I'll work
and slave and support it. Please don't make me get
rid of it. If I did I'd just die. I'd lose my mind! I
wouldn't have anything to hope for. I'd lose all my
interest in life. I'd lose my ambition. Please let me
keep it!
What a common one that engram is: and how sin-
cere and "rational" and earnest an aberree can be in
supporting his conclusion that he has just "thought up"
the "computation" that if he "gets rid of it," he'll lose
his mind and ambition, maybe even die!
As this work is written, most of the engrams that
will be found in adults come from the first quarter of
258
DIAGNOSIS
the twentieth century. This was the period of "Aha, Jack
Dalton,3 at last I have you in my possession!" It was the
period of Blood and Sand4 and Theda Bara.5 It was the
period of bootleg6 whiskey and woman suffrage.7 It
covered the days of "flaming youth" and "The Yanks
are coming,"8 and bits of such color will be demanding
action in the engram banks. Dianetic auditors have
picked up whole passages of the great play Drunkard9
out of prenatal engrams, not as a piece of funny
"corn"10 but as Mama's sincere and passionate effort to
reform Papa. Superdrama, mellerdrammer." And not
only that but also tragedy. The hangover of the Gay
Nineties,12 when the "business girl" had just begun to
be "free" and Carry Nation13 was saving the world at
3. Jack Dalton: member of an outlaw gang in the nineteenth-
century American West; also a character in early westerns.
4. Blood and Sand: title of a silent movie featuring Rudolph
Valentine.
5. Theda Bara: stage name of Theodosia Goodman (1890-
1955), US actress who played parts of evil women in forty films
between 1915 and 1919.
6. bootleg: made, sold or transported unlawfully. The term arose
from the practice of hiding a liquor bottle in the leg of one's boot.
7. suffrage: the right to vote, especially in a political election.
8. "The Yanks are coining": line from the refrain of the song
"Over There" by George M. Cohan (1878-1942), American
actor, songwriter, playwright and producer. The song is about the
American troops sent to Europe to fight in World War I.
9. Drunkard: a play written by William H. Smith and "A Gentle-
man" in the late 1800s, a moral domestic drama of American life.
10. corn: (informal) old-fashioned, trite or mawkishly (weakly
emotional) sentimental material, as a joke, a story or music.
11. mellerdrammer: humorous spelling of melodrama, any sen-
sational writing, speech or action with exaggerated appeal to the
emotions.
12. Gay Nineties: the 1890s, a period of sudden affluence in the
US brought on by the industrial revolution.
13. Carry Nation: (1846-1911) American temperance agitator,
famous for her use of a hatchet to break up saloons.
259
L. RON HUBBARD
the expense of bartenders, will be common fare in
engrams found in today's adults. Yesterday's cliches
and absurdities become, tragically enough, today's en-
gramic commands. One very, very morose young man,
for instance, was found to have as the central motif14 of
his reactive mind Hamlet's15 historic vacillations16 about
whether "to be or not to be, that is the question." Mama
(who was what these colloquially minded auditors call a
"loop"17) had gotten it by contagion from an actor-
father whose failure to be a Barrymore18 had driven him
to drink and wife beating; and our young man would sit
for hours in a morose apathy wondering about life. To
classify his psychosis required nothing more than "apa-
thetic young fellow."
Most of engram content is merely cliches and common-
places and emotional crash dives by Mama or Papa. But
the auditor will have his moments. And when he suddenly
learns about them, the preclear will have his laughs.
In other words, aberration can be any combination
of words contained in an engram. Thus, to classify by
aberration is not only utterly impossible but completely
unnecessary. After an auditor has run one case, he will
be far more able to appreciate this.
14. motif: dominant idea or feature.
15. Hamlet: hero of the play Hamlet, a tragedy (first printed
1603) by William Shakespeare. Hamlet is a young prince who
avenges the murder of his father.
16. vacillation: a wavering in mind or opinion.
17. "loop": literally, a length of film or magnetic tape whose
ends have been joined to form an endless strip, so that continuous
repetition of the recording is made possible (e.g., in rehearsing
the synchronization required for dubbing a foreign-language
soundtrack). Used figuratively.
18. Barrymore: referring to the Barrymore family, American
actors of English-Irish descent, one of the most famous families
in the history of the American stage: Maurice Barrymore (1847-
1905) and his three children-Lionel (1878-1954), Ethel (1879-
1959) and John (1892-1942).
260
DIAGNOSIS
As for psychosomatic ills, as classified in an earlier
chapter, these depend also upon accidental or intentional
word combinations and all the variety of injury and unbal-
anced fluid and growth possible. It is very well to call an
obscure pain "tendinitis," but more probably and more
accurately it is a fall or injury before birth. Asthma comes
fairly constantly from birth, as do conjunctivitis and
sinusitis, but when these can occur in birth, there is
generally prenatal background. Thus it can be said that
wherever a man or woman aches is of minor importance
to the auditor beyond using the patient's chronic illness to
locate the chain of sympathy engrams, and all the auditor
needs to know of that illness is that some area of the body
hurts the patient. That, for the auditor, is enough for
psychosomatic diagnosis.
It happens that the extent of aberration and the
extent of psychosomatic illness are not the regulating
factors which establish how long a case may take. A
patient may be a screaming lunatic and yet require only
a hundred hours to clear. Another may be a "well-
balanced" and moderately successful person and yet
take five hundred hours to clear. Therefore, in the light of
the fact that the extent of aberration and illness has only a
minor influence on what the auditor is interested inù
therapyùclassification by these is so much wasted time.
Oh, there are such things as a man being too sick
from heart trouble to be worked very hard, and such
things as a patient worrying so continuously as a mani-
festation of his usual life that the auditor finds his work
difficult, but these are rarities and again have little
bearing on the classification of a case.
The rule in diagnosis is that whatever the individual
offers the auditor as a detrimental reaction to therapy is
engramic and will prove so in the process. Whatever
impedes the auditor in his work is identical to whatever
is impeding the patient in his thinking and living. Think
of it this way: the auditor is an analytical mind (his
261
L. RON HUBBARD
own) confronted with a reactive mind (the preclear's).
Therapy is a process of thinking. Whatever troubles the
patient will also trouble the auditor; whatever troubles
the auditor has also troubled the patient's analytical
mind. The patient is not a whole analytical mind. The
auditor will find himself occasionally with a patient
who does nothing but swear at him and yet when the
appointment time arrives, there that patient is, anxious
to continue therapy; or the auditor may find a patient
who tells him how useless the entire procedure is and
how she hates to be worked upon and yet if he were to
tell her, "All right, we'll stop work," she would go into
a prompt decline. The analytical mind of the patient
wants to do the same thing the auditor is trying to do:
fight down into the reactive bank. Therefore, the audi-
tor, when he encounters opposition, adverse theory
about Dianetics, personal criticism, etc., is not listen-
ing to analytical data but reactive engrams and he
should calmly proceed, secure in that knowledge; for
the patient's dynamics, all that can be brought to bear,
will help him so long as the auditor is an ally against
the preclear 's reactive mind, rather than a critic or
attacker of the preclear 's analytical mind.
This is an example:
(In reverieùprenatal basic area)
Preclear: (Believing he means Dianetics) I don't know.
I don't know. I just can't remember. It won't work. I
know it won't work.
Auditor: (Repeater technique,19 described later) Go
over that. Say, "It won't work."
19. repeater technique: the repetition of a word or phrase in
order to produce movement on the time track into areas of
disturbed thought containing that word or phrase. After the audi-
tor has placed the patient in reverie, if he discovers the patient, for
instance, insists he "can't go anyplace," the auditor makes him
repeat the phrase. Repetition of such a phrase, over and over,
sucks the patient back down the track and into contact with an
engram which contains it.
262
DIAGNOSIS
Preclear: "It won't work. It won't work. It won't work.
. . ." etc., etc. Ouch, my stomach hurts! "It won't
work. It won't work. It won't work. . . ." (Laughter
of relief) That's my mother. Talking to herself.
Auditor: All right, let's pick up the entire engram.
Begin at the beginning.
Preclear: (Quoting recall with somatics [pains]) "I
don't know how to do it. I just can't remember what
Becky told me. I just can't remember it. Oh, I am so
discouraged. It won't work this way. It just won't
work. I wish I knew what Becky told me but I can't
remember. Oh, I wish . . ." Hey, what's she got in
here? Why, goddamn her, that's beginning to burn!
It's a douche. Say! Let me out of here. Bring me up
to present time! That really burns!
Auditor: Go back to the beginning and go over it again.
Pick up whatever additional data you can contact.
Preclear: Repeats engram, finding all the old phrases
and some new ones, plus some sounds. Recounts
four more times, "reexperiencing" everything. Be-
gins to yawn, almost falls asleep (unconsciousness
coming off), revives and repeats engram twice
more. Then begins to chuckle over it. Somatic is
gone. Suddenly engram is "gone" (refiled and he
cannot discover it again). He is much pleased.
Auditor: Go to the next earliest moment of pain or
discomfort.
Preclear: Uh. Mmmmm. I can't get in there. Say, I
can't get in there! I mean it. I wonder where . . .
Auditor: Go over the line, "Can't get in there."
Preclear: "Can't get in there. Can't . . ." My legs feel
funny. There's a sharp pain. Say, what the hell is she
doing? Why, damn her. Boy, I'd like to get my hands
on her just once. Just once!
Auditor: Begin at the beginning and recount it.
263
L. RON HUBBARD
Preclear: (Recounts engram several times, yawns off
"unconsciousness," chuckles when he can't find the
engram anymore. Feels better.) Oh, well, I guess she
had her troubles.
Auditor: (Carefully refraining from agreeing that Mama
had her troubles, since that would make him an ally of
Mama) Go to the next moment of pain or discomfort.
Preclear: (Uncomfortable) I can't. I'm not moving on
the time track. I'm stuck. Oh, all right. "I'm stuck,
I'm stuck." No. "It's stuck. It's stuck that time." No.
"I stuck it that time." Why damn her! That's my
coronary trouble! That's it! That's the sharp pain I get!
Auditor: Begin at the beginning of the engram and
recount, etc.
Each time, it can be seen in this example, that the
patient in reverie encountered analytically the engram
in near proximity, the engram command impinged itself
upon the patient himself, who gave it forth as an
analytical opinion to the auditor. A preclear in reverie
is close up against the source material of his aberra-
tions. An aberree wide-awake may be giving forth
highly complex opinions which he will battle to the
death to defend as his own but which are, in reality,
only his aberrations impinging against his analytical
mind. Patients will go right on declaring that they know
the auditor is dangerous, that he shouldn't ever have
started them in therapy, etc., and still keep working
well and efficiently. That's one of the reasons why the
Auditor's Code is so important: the patient is just as
eager to relieve himself of his engrams as could be
wished, but the engrams give the appearance of being a
long way from anxious to be relieved.
It will also be seen in the above example that the
auditor is not making any positive suggestion. If the
phrase is not engramic, the patient will very rapidly tell
him so in no uncertain terms and although it still may
be, the auditor has no great influence over the preclear
264
DIAGNOSIS
in reverie beyond helping him to attack engrams. If the
preclear contradicted any of the above, it means that the
engram containing the words suggested is not ready to
be relieved and another paraphrase is in order.
Diagnosis, then, is something which takes care of
itself on the aberration and psychosomatic plane. The
auditor could have guessedùand kept it to himselfù
that a series of attempted abortions were coming up in
the above example before he entered the area. He might
have guessed that the indecisiveness of the patient was
from his mother. The auditor, however, does not com-
municate his guesses. This would be suggestion and
might be seized upon by the patient. It is up to the
preclear to find out. The auditor, for instance, could not
have known where on the time track the preclear's
"coronary pain" was nor the nature of the injury.
Chasing up and down looking for a specific pain would
be just so much wasted time. All such things will
surrender in the course of therapy. The only interest in
them is whether or not the aberrations and illnesses go,
to return no more. At the end of therapy they will be
gone. At the beginning they are only complication.
Diagnosis of aberration and psychosomatic illness,
then, is not an essential part of Dianetic diagnosis.
What we are interested in is the mechanical opera-
tion of the mind. That is the sphere of diagnosis. What
are the working mechanics of the analytical mind?
1. Perception: Sight, hearing, tactile and pain, etc.
2. Recall: Visio-color, tone-sonic,* tactile, etc.
3. Imagination: Visio-color, tone-sonic, tactile, etc.
These are the mechanical processes. Diagnosis deals
primarily with these factors and with these factors can
* Visio means sight recall in Dianetics. Sonic means sound
recall. Somatic means pain recall. A patient who can see,
hear and feel pain stores them. "I," remembering, recalls
them as visio, sonic and somatic. ù LRH
265
L. RON HUBBARD
I
º establish the length of time a case should take, how
I difficult the case will be, etc. And we need only a few of
I' these.
| This further simplifies into a code:
| 1. Perception (over or under optimum):
I a. Sight
|y b. Sound
| 2. Recall (under):
|: a. Sonic
t b. Visio
.'&,
f 3. Imagination (over):
a. Sonic
b. Visio
In other words, when we examine a patient before
we make him a preclear (by starting him into therapy), we
are interested in three things only: too much or too little
perception, too little recall, too much imagination.
In perception, we mean how well or how poorly he
can hear, see and feel.
In recall, we want to know if he can recall by sonic
(hearing), visio (seeing) and somatic (feeling).
In imagination, we want to know if he "recalls"
sonics, visios or somatics too much.
Let us make this extremely clear: it is very simple, it is
not complex, and it requires no great examination. But it
is important and establishes the length of time in therapy.
There is nothing wrong with an active imagination
so long as the person knows he is imagining. The kind
of imagination we are interested in is that used for
unknowing "dub-in"20 and in that kind only. An active
20. dub-in: the manifestation of putting, unknowingly, percep-
tions which do not in actual fact exist, in the environment. (It is a
phrase taken from the motion picture industry, meaning to record
dialogue and various sounds and then integrate them into the film
after it has been shot. This is done for scenes where the original
recording is faulty, for scenes where it is simply more convenient
to add dialogue and other sound later, and for films playing
abroad which require new dialogue in the native language of the
host country.)
266
DIAGNOSIS
imagination which the patient knows to be imagination
is an extremely valuable asset to him. An imagination
which substitutes itself for recall is very trying in
therapy.
"Hysterical"21 blindness and deafness or extended
sight or hearing are useful in diagnosis. The first,
"hysterical" blindness, means the patient is afraid to
see; "hysterical" deafness means he is afraid to hear.
These will require considerable therapy. Likewise, ex-
tended sight and extended hearing, while not as bad as
blindness and deafness, are an index of how frightened
the patient really is and is often a straight index of the
prenatal content in terms of violence.
If the patient is afraid to see with his eyes or hear
with his ears in present time, be assured there is much
in his background to make him afraid, for these actual
perceptions do not "turn off" easily.
If the patient jumps at sounds and is startled by
sights or is very disturbed by these things, his percep-
tions can be said to be extended, which means the
reactive bank has a great deal in it labeled "death."
The recalls in which we are interested in diagnosis
are those which are less than optimum only. When they
are "overoptimum," they are actually imagination
"dubbed in" for recall. Recall (under) and imagination
(over) are actually, then, one group, but for simplicity and
clarity we keep them apart.
If the patient cannot "hear" sounds or voices in past
incidents he does not have sonic. If he does not "see"
scenes of past experiences in motion-color pictures, he
does not have visio.
21. hysterical: (psychiatry) of or characteristic of hysteria, a
psychiatric condition variously characterized by emotional excit-
ability, excessive anxiety, sensory and motor disturbances, or the
unconscious simulation of organic disorders, such as blindness,
deafness, etc.
267
L. RON HUBBARD
If the patient hears voices which have not existed or
sees scenes which have not existed and yet supposes
that these voices really spoke and these scenes were
real, we have "overimagination." In Dianetics, imagi-
nary sound recall would be hypersonic, sight recall,
hypervisio (hyper = over).
Let us take specific examples of each one of these
three classes and demonstrate how they become funda-
mental in therapy and how their presence or absence
can make a case difficult.
A patient with a mild case of "hysterical" deafness
is one who has difficulty in hearing. The deafness can
be organic but, if organic, it will not vary from time to
time. This patient has something he is afraid to hear. He
plays the radio very loudly, makes people repeat contin-
ually and misses pieces of the conversation. Do not go
to an institution to find this degree of "hysterical"
deafness. Men and women are "hysterically" deaf
without any conscious knowledge of it. Their "hearing
just isn't so good." In Dianetics, this is being called
hypohearing (hypo = under).
The patient who is always losing something when it
lies in fair view before him, who misses signposts,
theater bills and people who are in plain sight, is
"hysterically" blind to some degree. He is afraid he
will see something. In Dianetics, this is being called,
since the word hysterical is a very inadequate and overly
dramatic one, hyposight.
Then there is the case of overperception. This is not
necessarily imagination, but it can go to the length of
seeing and hearing things which are not there at all,
which happens to be a common insanity. We are inter-
ested in a less dramatic grade in standard operation.
A girl, for instance, who sees something or thinks
she sees something but knows she doesn't and is very
startled, who jumps in fright when anyone silently
268
DIAGNOSIS
comes into a room, and can be so startled rather
habitually, is suffering from extended sight. She is
afraid she will encounter something. But instead of
being blind to it, she is too alive to it. This is hyper-
sight.
A person who is much alarmed by noises, by sounds
in general, by certain voices, who gets a headache or
gets angry when the people around are "noisy" or the
door slams or the dishes rattle, is a victim of extended
hearing. She hears sounds far louder than they actually
are. This is hyperhearing.
The actual quality of the seeing and hearing does
not need to be good. The actual organs of sight and
sound can be in poor condition. The only fact of
importance is the "nervousness" about reception.
This disposes of the two perceptions in which we are
interested in Dianetics. As the auditor talks to people
around him and gets their reactions to sights and
sounds, he will find wide variety in quality of response.
Recall is the most directly important to therapy, for
it is not a symptom, it is an actual tool of work. There
are many ways to use recall. The Clear has vivid and
accurate recall for every one of the senses. Few aber-
rees have. The auditor is not interested in other senses
than sight and sound because the others will be cared
for in the usual course of therapy. But if he has a patient
who has no sonic, watch out. And if he has a patient
with neither sonic nor visio, beware! This is the multi-
valent personality, the schizophrenic, the paranoid of
psychiatry with symptoms not acute enough to be so
classified in normal life. This does not mean-
emphatically does not meanùthat people without sight
and sound recall are insane, but it does mean an
above-average case and it means a case which will take
some time. It does not mean the case is "incurable," for
nothing can be further from the truth: but such cases
269
L. RON HUBBARD
which are not present or bypass engrams which are
present and so on in a tangled hash.)
The optimurii preclear would be one who had aver-
age response to noises and sights, who had accurate
sonic and visio and who could imagine and know that
he was imagining, in color-visio and tone-sonic. This
person, understand clearly, may have aberrations which
make him climb every chimney in town, drink every
drop in every bar every night (or try it anyway), beat his
wife, drown his children and suppose himself to be a
jub-jub bird.26 In the psychosomatic line he may have
engineers, nurses, construction workers, celebrities, mili-
tary personnel, marketing and administration person-
nel, secretaries, athletes, civil servants, etc. Clearing
knows no social caste, income class, race, color or
creed.
Dianetics' unparalleled emergence began a year be-
fore the book's release with Mr. Hubbard's manuscript,
"The Original Thesis" (today entitled The Dynamics of
Life). This was a compilation of his sixteen-year study
of the human condition. He gave a few copies to friends,
and they promptly made duplicates and sent it to their
friends who, in turn, copied it and sent it to others.
Passed hand to hand, the basic breakthroughs of Dia-
netics quickly became known the world over. Word
began to spread: the source of human aberration had
been discovered and a technology of the mind that
worked had been developed.
The first published article on Dianetics, entitled
"Terra Incognita: The Human Mind," appeared in the
Winter/Spring 1949-1950 issue of the Explorers Club
Journal. While also writing essays on Dianetics for
other publications, Mr. Hubbard soon found his time
consumed with letters to answer and a steadily increas-
ing flow of requests for more information flooding his
office and home.
570
DIANETICS: THE BRIDGE TO CLEAR
The response validated what he had long recognized:
for eons man has possessed the most sophisticated com-
puter in existenceùthe human mindùyet man's concept
of it was barbaric. Never before had a popular text on
the mind been written for the people. No owner's man-
ual existed to unleash the mind's true power and ca-
pability.
Thus his decision: he would write, for broad public
consumption, a book detailing his discoveries and the
technology he had developed. With the release of his
book, Dianetics, every man and woman would soon
have such an owner's manual for their personal use.
In January 1950, renowned syndicated columnist
Walter Winchell heralded what was to become known
simply as "The Book": "There is something new coming
up in April called Dianetics," he wrote. "A new science
which works with the invariability of physical science in
the field of the human mind. From all indications, it will
prove to be as revolutionary for humanity as the first
cave man's discovery and utilization of fire."
Winchell's prescience was undeniable. The world's
response to the May 9 Dianetics release was both instan-
taneous and overwhelming. Overnight the book became
a nationwide bestseller, with twenty-five thousand let-
ters and telegrams of congratulations pouring in to the
publisher. The book hit the New York Times bestseller
list where it remained week after week, month after
month.
By late fall of 1950, there were 750 groups across
the country applying Dianetics techniques, while news-
paper headlines proclaimed, "Dianetics Taking US by
Storm," and "Fastest Growing Movement in America."
Then, more increasingly came headlines reporting,
"Husbands Are Auditing Their Wives; Neighbors Form
Discussion Groups" and "Dianetics Fans Deluge
Schools," the latter referring to the influx of Dianetics
571
DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
readers into Elizabeth, New Jersey, site of the first
Hubbard Dianetics Research Foundation.
An early Dianeticist who was among the first wave
into Elizabeth, recounts her first experiences with Dia-
netics, starting in May 1950:
"I read all of Dianetics and insisted that my friends
read it also. A friend of mine audited me literally out of
the book.
"The first session was fantastic. For the first time in
my life I became aware of the fact that I was and could
become truly free of this mess of pain and confusion and
really live 100 percent. As a side effect I got rid of
migraine headaches which had plagued me and effec-
tively ruined my life."
Dianetics' enthusiastic following clamored for coast-
to-coast author appearances. Most of Dianetics' first
year saw Mr. Hubbard lecturing, demonstrating Dia-
netics auditing and assisting in the servicing of the tens
of thousands of enthusiasts beating a path to Foundation
doors nationwide.
By year's end, more than 150,000 copies of "The
Book" had been sold and Dianetics clubs had been
established throughout the US, in Canada, Finland,
Sweden, England, Germany, Switzerland, South Africa,
Australia, Guatemala and Peru.
By its first anniversary in May of 1951, Dianetics
was in its seventh printing. Writing for America's Better
Homes & Gardens magazine, Professor Frederick L.
Schumann reported "the Hubbard book was a national
sensation," adding detailed personal testimony to the
"flourishing co-auditor's course" that he observed first-
hand at the Elizabeth Foundation.
Through the 1960s, Dianetics gained a foothold in
all English-speaking countries. More than 850,000
hardback copies had been sold by the time the first
Dianetics paperback edition was printed in 1968. And,
572
DIANETICS: THE BRIDGE TO CLEAR
with the paperback's printing and worldwide distribu-
tion came a period of tremendous growth for Dianetics.
By 1977, ten years after the release of the Dianetics
paperback, sales had soared to 2.6 million copies. In the
meantime, both the number of Dianetics organizations
(328) and number of countries in which organizations
were delivering Dianetics auditing (55) had trebled.
And, in the late 70s, Mr. Hubbard completed important
technical refinements of Dianetics auditing procedure, ad-
vancing a powerful series of techniques and procedures
called New Era Dianetics. Based on thirty years of experi-
ence and application with the subject, the breakthroughs of
New Era Dianetics resulted in a vast increase in the speed
and accuracy of Dianetics auditing.
In the 80s, "Dianetics" became a household word
due to its sheer popularity and miracle results. The
book shot back onto the bestseller lists internationally,
where it remains today. On September 7, 1986, it made
publishing history by returning to the New York Times
bestseller listù36 years after the first copy was pub-
lished. Its stunning rise to number one on the New York
Times list was accomplished in March of 1987. The
book's one-hundred-week stay on the Publisher's
Weekly bestseller list earned for Dianetics and its
author the magazine's prestigious Century Award.
By the end of 1987, purchases of Dianetics passed
the ten million mark, quadrupling 1977's total.
Through the years, 22 foreign-language editions of
Dianetics have been published. Each has had their own
stream of successes to parallelùand contribute toùthe
book's overwhelming public popularity.
In 1988, for instance, the Chinese edition of Dia-
netics received a welcome reminiscent of the book's
1950s reception in the West. In the first three weeks on
China's bookstands, more than 120,000 copies of Dia-
netics were sold. By the fourth month, more than a
573
DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
quarter-million copies were bought. Three printings of
the book were needed before the year was out.
As the 90s unfold, more than 1,100 organizations
exist to provide Dianetics service to an ever-growing
number of people. Dianetics, meanwhile, remains sol-
idly atop bestseller lists worldwide.
More countries continue to usher in a new era with
Dianetics. Released in Japan in June 1991, Dianetics
enjoyed remarkable success within weeks. It immedi-
, _ ately went to number one for new releases on the
iI s. bestseller list of the Economic Journal, Japan's leading
business newspaper. Hungary followed suit by selling
out all 30,000 of its first-run books.
Today, Dianetics is in every library in the US. The
US Library of Congress prides itself in maintaining the
full collection ofL. Ron Hubbard's works. Leading univer-
sities and intellectual institutions proudly collect both his
fiction and nonfiction. The distinguished Huntington Li-
brary houses Dianetics and other works by Mr. Hubbard
along with the Gutenberg Bible and the Canterbury Tales.
Dianetics is required reading at a major US univer-
sity's religious studies class and has been among the
most requested L. Ron Hubbard works by more than 160
university professors. In 1992, Mr. Hubbard was post-
humously presented an Honorary Doctorate in Literature
from Moscow State University, where an entire hall of
the university was dedicated to him. There, students
from around the world study Dianetics in all its transla-
tions, along with other L. Ron Hubbard works.
Press reports tell of Dianetics being recommended in
reader surveys as a book that the US president and first
lady should read, of its being spotted in the office of a
championship-winning major league baseball manager, of
its having saved the careers of actors, artists, musicians.
The list goes onùand grows daily.
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DIANETICS: THE BRIDGE TO CLEAR
But, looking through Dianetics' indomitable publishing
milestones and grass-roots popularity to the real heart of
the subject, one must consider what it takes to build and
maintain such enduring momentum. What is it about Dia-
netics that has created such dedicated excitement?
A simple answer like, "Read the book and you'll
understand," would draw little argument from a fellow
reader. But it takes more than the flicker of a reader's
recognition of truth to generate the sustained ardor the
Dianetics adventure has won over the decades. It takes
results that prove, over and over again, the worth of
both message and methodology.
Roomfuls of personal testimonials exist in any or-
ganization where Dianetics auditing has been delivered
over the years. Each of these success stories speaks of
an undeniable change for the better in one's life. Some
accounts dramatically detail lifesaving experiences that
would never have occurred without the application of
Dianetics technology.
Here is just one example:
"I was very ill for months in the hospital. I was
under intensive care for weeks with a bleeding ulcer
infection and kidney failure. My heart stopped three
times and I died three times. I also was unconscious for
over a week, and I basically did not want to live. The
doctors were going to give up on me and stop the
treatment. The nurses did not expect me to live.
"My wife had a very hard time with it and she
couldn't even call to see how I was doing; she had to
have someone else call for her. She then received some
Dianetics auditing and came to grips with it, at which
point she was able to come into my room in the hospital
and give me some auditing. She came in every day.
"I soon started becoming more aware of my environ-
ment and had a determinism to survive. It made life bright
enough to live. Many other people helped me get through
575
DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
it by using L. Ron Hubbard's technology. I am now re-
covered and would not have lived if it weren't for the tech-
nology by L. Ron Hubbard that helped us get through it."
Here is another example from a Dianetics auditor
who was able to salvage a friend's marriage:
"I consider my ability to help others even more
important than the changes Dianetics has made in my
own life. What I can confront and handle in a few
minutes would put any psychiatrist to utter shame. I will
briefly describe for you an example.
"I have a friend whose marriage had gone on the
rocks. He was cheating on his wife, drinking excessively,
taking drugs and, as you may guess, had become very
abusive of her.
"She, on the other hand, spent tons of money, worked
for one of the top fabric designers in New York and led a
very unhappy life.
"She decided at one point a few years ago that she
wanted to handle her side of things and came to Los
Angeles to receive auditing. She was very uncertain,
though, about how her husband would respond to this,
and whether he would be able to do the same.
"I called him on the phone as she was flying back to
New York.
"The training I have, although easily learned and in
far less time than that of any psychiatrist, was tested
thoroughly as he screamed at me across the miles. But,
he told me things he never told anyone else; and he flew
immediately to Los Angeles to handle his life.
"And, in one forty-five-minute session, he handled
the reason he had become an alcoholic.
"Two people lead a happier life nowùand those who
live around them. I find no greater pleasure than to help
others. It is a pleasure present in all of us who help
others with the brilliant discoveries of the mind made by
L. Ron Hubbard."
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DIANETICS: THE BRIDGE TO CLEAR
Such stories leave long-lasting impressions on both
the individuals involved and their family, friends and
associates who directly observe its often dramatic ef-
fects.
Dianetics not only affects individuals, but society
itself. Through hands-on application and direct observa-
tion, it has increasingly become an accepted methodol-
ogy in many spheres of activity. Years after a health
professional's discovery of a workable Dianetics axiom,
it will become noticed by media and tabbed a "new"
breakthrough.
One such example is the concept of prenatal influ-
ences, so integral to the unburdening of a case in
Dianetics auditing. L. Ron Hubbard made key discover-
ies in Dianetics concerning prenatal awareness that are
proven and workable as evidenced by professional opin-
ions on the subject and testimonies of miracle results
through Dianetics auditing.
But, before Dianetics, it was unheard of to attribute
certain illnesses to prenatal trauma. As an immediate
result of the book, however, more than forty articles
appeared in the early 50s supporting the fact of prenatal
experience influencing an individual after birth. Doc-
tors today commonly accept the fact that a variety of
conditions such as psychosomatic ills, alcohol abuse and
drug addiction influence the health and well-being of
the unborn.
Another example: the ill effects of utterances made
near an unconscious person. In hospitals throughout the
world, Mr. Hubbard's guidelines regarding silence dur-
ing operations have been adopted. A British journal
reports that three scientists from leading universities
have found that anesthetized persons can be affected by
what they hear while "under."
To prevent shocks to a child that could leave perma-
nent damage, Mr. Hubbard in Dianetics advised silence
577
DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
in the delivery room and, in subsequent studies, the
laying of the newborn on the mother's abdomen before
the cord is cut.
One of the world's leading obstetricians, Frederick
Leboyer, wrote in 1974, "As for hearing, nothing could be
simpler: be silent . . . This apprenticeship of silenceù
so indispensable for mothersùis just as important for
those who perform the delivery: the obstetricians, the
attendants."
In a natural birth, Leboyer advised, "The baby
emerges . . . and we settle the child immediately on
its mother's stomach. What better place could there
be? . . . To sever the umbilicus when the child has
scarcely left the mother's womb is an act of cruelty
whose ill effects are immeasurable."
When a Dianeticist asked Leboyer for a quote to
appear in a book she was writing on pregnancy and
childbirth, he responded, "I shall feel most honored
being quoted together with Ron Hubbard, whose work I
greatly admire."
With Dianetics, Mr. Hubbard has resolved problems
of the human mind on both an individual and societal
level. Yet still unanswered by Dianetics were many
questions that people had been asking about the nature
of man since the beginning of recorded history.
Particularly with respect to the mind's mental image
pictures, the question was posed: Who was looking at
these mental image pictures and being adversely af-
fected by them?
Mr. Hubbard set out to answer this question and, in
1951, demonstrated that man was neither his body nor
his mind, but a spiritual being. One doesn't have a soul
or spirit, he concluded. One is a spirit.
This life force is the source of all that is good,
decent, creative and beautiful in the world: the individ-
ual being himself. Although he has a mind and a body,
he is himself a spiritual being.
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DIANETICS: THE BRIDGE TO CLEAR
These breakthroughs form the basis of the religious
philosophy of Scientology, of which the Dianetics tech-
nology is a vital and basic branch. Contained within
Dianetics and Scientology is an exact route to higher
levels of ability. Through study of materials on all aspects
of life itself and through auditing addressing the mind and
the spirit, greater states of existence are possible.
The development and codification of both Dianetics
and Scientology can now be found in scores of books,
more than fifteen thousand pages of technical writings
and more than six thousand taped lecturesùall by Mr.
Hubbard. This extraordinary collection of materials is
available to anyone in the world through their local
Hubbard Dianetics Foundation or Scientology church or
mission.
Standard delivery of Mr. Hubbard's precision tech-
nology is the hallmark of these Dianetics and Scientol-
ogy groups. These organizations help each student to
fully understand and apply the principles found in Dia-
netics and subsequent materials. They provide audio
and video tapes of Mr. Hubbard's lectures and auditing
demonstrations. They train today's auditors to profes-
sional standards and they deliver Dianetics auditing
daily. These organizations are where Clears are made.
Today the door is wide open to Clear, no matter how
remote one may seem from the nearest Hubbard Dia-
netics Foundation. In the US, one call to the toll-free
Dianetics information line (see listing in the pages to
follow) can guide you to your next step.
In a troubled world searching for answers, Dianetics
provides themùand more. It spells hope for man and a
technology for a better world.
By reading Dianetics, you have walked the first step
to Clear. By all means, take your next.
"And may you never be the same again."
579
Glossary
Aberration: a departure from rational thought or behavior. From the Latin, aberrare, to wander from; Latin, ab, away, errare, to wander. It means basically to err, to make mistakes, or more specifically to have fixed ideas which are not true. The word is also used in its scientific sense. It means departure from a straight line. If a line should go from A to B, then if it is "aberrated" it would go from A to some other point, to some other point, to some other point, to some other point, to some other point and finally arrive at B. Taken in its scientific sense, it would also mean the lack of straightness or to see crookedly as, in example, a man sees a horse but thinks he sees an elephant. Aberrated conduct would be wrong conduct, or conduct not supported by reason. When a person has engrains, these tend to deflect what would be his normal ability to perceive truth and bring about an aberrated view of situations which then would cause an aberrated reaction to them. Aberration is opposed to sanity, which would be its opposite. This is the most fundamental level of aberration: "If the food smells good, go away from it!" This is directly against the survival intention of the organism.
aberree: aberrated person.
aborigine: any of the first or earliest known inhabitants of a region; native.
ahreact: (psychoanalysis) release (repressed emotions) by acting out, such as in words, action or the imagination, the situation causing the conflict.
Achilles' heel: a portion, spot, area or the like, that is especially or solely vulnerable. In Greek mythology, Achilles was an illustrious Greek warrior. He had been dipped in the river Styx (one of the mythological rivers of hell) by his mother, which rendered him invulnerable except in the heel by which she held him. He was fatally wounded by an arrow in that heel.
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
ACTH: a hormone that was sometimes used to combat symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis; it stimulates the production of other hormones in the body.
acupuncture: Chinese practice of pricking the tissues of the body with fine needles to relieve pain or as a local anesthetic.
acute: brief and severe.
ad absurdum: to the point of ridiculousness.
adjudication: (law) the act of a court in making an order, judgment or decree.
adrenaline: a hormone secreted by the adrenal gland, that stimulates the heart, increases muscular strength, etc.
Aesculapian: of Aesculapius, the god of medicine and healing in ancient Greek and Roman mythology.
affinities: the attractions which exist between two human beings, or between human beings and other life organisms.
affront: open insult.
aggregations: groups or masses of distinct things or individuals.
Alexander: Alexander III, known as Alexander the Great: (356-323 B.C.) king of Macedonia (ancient kingdom located in what is now Greece and Yugoslavia).
algae: a group of plants, either one-celled or many-celled, often growing in colonies. Algae contain chlorophyll (the green coloring matter of plants) and other pigments, but have no true root, stem or leaf. They are found in water or damp places and include seaweed, pond scum, etc.
alloy: to weaken or spoil by adding something that reduces value or pleasure.
ally: in Dianetics it basically means someone who protects a person who is in a weak state and becomes a very strong influence over the person. The weaker person, such as a child, even partakes the characteristics of the ally so that one may find that a person who has, for instance, a bad leg, has it because a protector or ally in his youth had a bad leg. The word is from French and Latin and means to bind together.
ally computation: little more than a mere idiot calculation that anyone who is a friend can be kept a friend only by approximating the conditions wherein the friendship was realized. It is a computation on the basis that one can only be safe in the vicinity of certain people and that one can only be in the vicinity of certain people by being sick or crazy or poor and generally disabled.
600
GLOSSARY
altitude: a difference in level of prestigeùone on a higher altitude carries conviction to one on a lower altitude merely because of altitude. The auditor may find himself unable to gain sufficient altitude with some patients to work them smoothly and he may have so much altitude with others that they believe everything he says. When he has too little altitude, he is not believed; when he has too much, he is believed too well.
altruistic: having unselfish concern for the welfare of others.
ambivalent: having two valences (ambi- is Latin for "both"). See also valence in this glossary.
ambi version: a condition or character trait that includes elements of both introversion and extroversion.
ammonium chloride: a white, crystalline compound produced by the reaction of ammonia with hydrochloric acid: it is used in medicine, and also in dry cells, dyes, etc.
amniotic fluid: the fluid surrounding the embryo or fetus.
amniotic sac: the membrane sac enclosing the developing fetus and amniotic fluid.
amour: (French) love.
amulet: something worn on the body because of its supposed magic power to protect against injury or evil; a charm.
analogue: thing or part that is similar or comparable in certain respects.
analogy: explanation of something by comparing it point by point with something similar.
analytical mind: the conscious, aware mind which thinks, observes data, remembers it and resolves problems. It would be essentially the conscious mind as opposed to the unconscious mind. In Dianetics the analytical mind is the one which is alert and aware and the reactive mind simply reacts without analysis. Also called the analyzer.
analyzer: see analytical mind
anemia: a deficiency in the oxygen-carrying material of the blood resulting in a paleness, generalized weakness, etc.
anthropological: pertaining to anthropology, the science that deals with the origins, physical and cultural development, biological characteristics, and social customs and beliefs of humankind.
antipathy: a strong or deep-rooted dislike.
apprised: given notice; informed; advised.
apropos of: with reference to; in respect or regard to.
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
arbitrary: based on one's preference, notion, whim, etc.; capricious.
archaeological: of archaeology, the scientific study of the life and culture of ancient peoples, as by digging up the remains of ancient cities, etc.
Aristotelian logic: Aristotle's method of logic, characterized by the syllogism, an argument or form of reasoning in which two statements or premises are made and a logical conclusion is drawn from them. Example: All mammals are warmblooded (major premise); whales are mammals (minor premise); therefore, whales are warmblooded (conclusion).
Aristotle: (384-322 B.C.) Greek philosopher noted for his works on logic, ethics, politics, etc.
arthritis: a condition causing inflammation, pain and stiffness in the joints.
articulate: well formulated; clearly presented.
asthma: a generally chronic disorder characterized by wheezing, coughing, difficulty in breathing and a suffocating feeling.
astigmatism: a defect in an eye or lens preventing proper focusing.
astral self: also called astral body: a second body, per some forms of philosophical or religious thought, said to belong to each individual, formed of a substance which is above or beyond perception by the senses and which pervades all space. Per these beliefs, the astral body accompanies the individual through life, is able to leave the human body at will, and survives the individual after death. Astral bodies are actually just somebody's delusion. They are usually mock-ups which the mystic then tries to believe real. He sees the astral body as something else and then seeks to inhabit it in the most common practices of "astral walking."
asylums: institutions for the maintenance and care of the mentally ill, orphans or other persons requiring specialized assistance.
atheist: a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
atom bomb: a bomb that uses the energy from the splitting of atoms to cause an explosion of tremendous force, accompanied by a blinding light.
attention units: quantity of awareness. Any organism is aware
602
GLOSSARY
to some degree. A rational or relatively rational organism is aware of being aware. Attention units could be said to exist in the mind in varying quantity from person to person.
attenuated: weakened or reduced in force, intensity, effect, quantity or value.
attrition: a wearing down or weakening of resistance, especially as a result of continuous pressure or harassment.
auditing: the application of Dianetics processes and procedures to someone by an auditor. To audit is both to listen and to compute.
auditor: 1. a person trained and qualified in applying Dianetics processes and procedures to individuals for their betterment; called an auditor because auditor means "one who listens." 2. a person who is authorized to audit (to check or examine) accounts.
Auditor 's Code: a collection of rules (do's and don'ts) that an auditor follows while auditing someone, which assures that the preclear will get the greatest possible gain out of the auditing he is having.
autocontrol: autohypnosis or an attempt to process oneself without an auditor. If attempted in Dianetics, autohypnosis is probably as close to fruitless masochism as one can get. If a patient places himself in autohypnosis and regresses himself in an effort to reach illness or birth or prenatals, the only thing he will get is ill.
autonomic nervous system: a system of nerves in the body which regulates involuntary action, as of the intestines, heart and glands. Autonomic means "self-ruling" or "independent."
bacillus: loosely, any of the bacteria, especially those causing a disease.
Bacon, Francis: (1561-1626) English philosopher and essayist who insisted that investigation should begin with observable facts rather than with theories.
bank: see reactive mind
banked: (of a fire) covered with ashes or fuel to make it burn long and slowly.
Bara, Theda: stage name of Theodosia Goodman (1890-1955), US actress who played parts of evil women in forty films between 1915 and 1919.
barber basin medicine: reference to the practice of surgery by barbers in earlier centuries. Generally untrained in medical
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
procedures, their "treatments" were very painful with severe infections and often death resulting from unsanitary conditions.
Barrymore: referring to the Barrymore family, American actors of English-Irish descent, one of the most famous families in the history of the American stage: Maurice Barrymore (1847-1905) and his three childrenùLionel (1878-1954), Ethel (1879-1959) and John (1892-1942).
basic: the first engram on any chain of similar engrams; basic is simply earliest.
basic-basic: the first engram of the first chain of engrams.
basic personality: the individual himself. The basic individual is not a buried unknown or a different person, but an intensity of all that is best and most able in the person.
bastion: something serving as a stronghold.
battery: a group of similar things arranged, connected or used together; set or series; array.
bawled out: (slang) scolded angrily.
bedevilment: the act of plaguing diabolically; torment; harassment.
Bedlam: an old insane asylum (in full, St. Mary of Bethlehem) in London, infamous for the brutal ill-treatment inflicted upon the insane.
beneficent: doing good or causing good to be done; conferring benefits; kindly in action or purpose.
Benzedrine: (trademark) an amphetamine, a drug used as a stimulant.
Bergson, Henri: (1859-1941) French philosopher. Awarded Nobel Prize for literature (1927).
beset: encompassed; surrounded; assailed; possessed detrimentally: said of the difficulties, perils or obstacles which surround an action, work or course.
bid fair: seem likely (to be or do something).
biochemistry: the chemistry of living organisms.
blasphemy: abuse of or contempt for God or sacred things.
blithely: in a manner without thought or regard; in a carefree way; heedlessly.
Blood and Sand: title of a silent movie featuring Rudolph Valentine.
boarders: people who regularly get meals, or room and meals, at another's home for pay.
boil-off: becoming groggy and seeming to sleep. This manifestation denotes that some period of the person's life
604
GLOSSARY
wherein he was unconscious has been slightly restim-ulated.
bona fide: authentic; true.
bootleg: made, sold or transported unlawfully. The term arose from the practice of hiding a liquor bottle in the leg of one's boot.
bootstraps: means of advancing oneself or accomplishing something.
bosun: a ship's petty officer in charge of rigging, boats, anchors, etc.
boudoir: a woman's bedroom, dressing room or private sitting room.
Boulder Dam: officially Hoover Dam, one of the highest dams in the world, on the Colorado River between the southern tip of Nevada and Arizona.
bouncer: an engramic command (such as "Can't stay here" or "Get out!") which sends the preclear up the track toward present time.
bow-drill fire-maker: an ancient device for making fire by friction. It consisted of a stick resting in a hollow in a piece of wood which was given a sawlike motion by a loop in a little bow, producing glowing wood dust.
bowlers: stiff felt hats with rounded crown and narrow brim, worn chiefly by men. Also called derbies.
brace and bit: a tool for boring, consisting of a removable drill (bit) in a rotating handle (brace).
bracketed: of a target, having had its range determined by placing shots both short of the target and beyond it. Used figuratively.
brackish: somewhat salty, as the water of some marshes near the sea.
British Guyana: country in northeastern South America: formerly a British colony, it became independent and a member of the Commonwealth in 1966.
brought to bar: held accountable.
bubonic plague: a very dangerous contagious disease, accompanied by fever, chills and swelling of the lymphatic glands. It is carried to humans by fleas from rats or squirrels.
Bund: a street running along the waterfront in Shanghai (a seaport in eastern China).
buoyant: lighthearted, cheerful.
bursitis: inflammation of a bursa, a pouch between joints or
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
between muscles or skin, etc., and bones, for lessening friction.
Caesar, Julius: (1007-44 B.C.) Roman general and statesman. As part of his military conquests, he invaded Britain in 55 and 54 B.C. Became Roman dictator in 49 B.C.
calculus: (mathematics) a method of calculation in higher mathematics; a way of making calculations about quantities which are continually changing, such as the speed of a falling stone or the slope of a curved line. Calculus measures little bits of things in order to find out what the whole thing will do. That is the whole theory of calculus.
Caligula: (A.D. 12-41) Roman emperor (37-41). His reign was marked by extreme cruelty and tyranny.
caliper: a compass for measuring the diameter of tubes or of round objects.
canceller: a contract with the patient that whatever the auditor says will not become literally interpreted by the patient or used by him in any way. It prevents accidental positive suggestion.
capricious: characterized by or subject to whim; impulsive and unpredictable.
cargo: load.
carmine: red or purplish red; crimson.
case: a general term for a person being treated or helped. Case also refers to a person's condition, which is monitored by the content of his reactive mind. A person's case is the way he responds to the world around him by reason of his aberrations.
cataclysm: any great upheaval that causes sudden and violent changes, as an earthquake, war, etc.
catalyst: a person or thing acting as the stimulus in bringing about or hastening a result.
catarrhal: having to do with inflammation of a mucous membrane, especially of the nose or throat, causing an increased flow of mucus.
caustic: severely critical or sarcastic.
censure: criticize severely.
cervix: a neck-shaped, anatomical structure, as the narrow outer end of the uterus.
chain: a series of incidents of similar nature or similar subject matter.
chain fission: (fission means a splitting apart, dividing) larger atoms such as atoms of uranium can fission (split) into
606
GLOSSARY
smaller atoms such as atoms of iodine and bromine. This process can be designed so that each fission will cause another fission, thereby setting off a chain reaction. The atomic bomb is an example of a chain fission. Used figuratively.
charge: harmful energy or force accumulated and stored in the reactive mind, resulting from the conflicts and unpleasant experiences that a person has had.
charlatan: an assuming empty pretender to knowledge or skill; a pretentious impostor.
chary: cautious, wary.
chastened: restrained; subdued.
chattel: slave or any movable possession (as opposed to a house or land).
Cheops: king of ancient Egypt for 23 years (around 2900 B.C.). Cheops was famous as the builder of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, which is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Egyptian pyramids were built as royal tombs: each monarch built his own pyramid.
chess: a game of skill played on a checkered board by two players, each possessing an initial force of 16 pieces, including a piece called a "king." There are individual rules of movement for each different kind of piece. Players make alternate moves, each seeking to attack the other's king in such a manner that no escape or defense is possible, thus ending the game.
chloroform: a colorless liquid with a sharp, sweetish smell and taste. Chloroform evaporates quickly and easily. When its vapor is inhaled, it makes a person unconscious or unable to feel pain.
chronometer: an instrument for measuring time precisely; highly accurate kind of clock or watch, as for scientific use.
cinch: (colloquial) a firm grip.
circuit: a part of an individual's bank (a colloquial name for the reactive mind) that behaves as though it were someone or something separate from him and that either talks to him or goes into action of its own accord, and may even, if severe enough, take control of him while it operates.
clairvoyance: the ability to perceive things that are not in sight or that cannot be seen.
Clear: the Clear is an unaberrated person. He is rational in that he forms the best possible solutions he can on the data he
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
has and from his viewpoint. The Clear has no engrams which can be restimulated to throw out the correctness of computation by entering hidden and false data. Clear is the goal in Dianetics therapy, a goal which some patience and a little study will bring about.
climes: regions or realms, especially with reference to their climates.
coach-and-four: a coach pulled by four horses.
cohabit: live together in a sexual relationship when not legally married.
coitus: sexual intercourse.
colloquial: characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather than formal speech or writing; informal.
comatic: of a coma (a period of deep, prolonged unconsciousness usually resulting from a severe injury or illness).
combat exhaustion: (psychiatry) a neurotic condition in which one is anxious, irritable, depressed, etc., often as a result of having been in combat or battle for a long time.
compulsions: irresistible, repeated, irrational impulses to perform some act.
concourse: concurrence in action or causation, cooperation; combined action.
condenser: a device storing a charge of electricity. Also called a capacitor.
confounded: damned; a mild oath.
Confucianism: the system of morality taught by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher (5517-479? B.C.).
conjunctivitis: inflammation of the conjunctiva, the mucous membrane lining the inner eyelid and part of the eye.
consecrated: set apart or declared as holy.
consternation: a sudden, alarming amazement or dread that results in utter confusion; dismay.
constitute: establish or set up; make (a person or thing) something.
contaging: a verb coined from the word contagious, describing the act of spreading or tending to spread from person to person.
cordite: a smokeless explosive used as a propellant in bullets and shells.
corn: (informal) old-fashioned, trite or mawkishly (weakly emotional) sentimental material, as a joke, a story or music.
608
GLOSSARY
corn-and-games: reference to the practice in ancient Rome of feeding people and providing official public amusement (circuses in the arena) in an attempt to prevent unrest. Also known as "bread and circuses."
corner: a monopoly acquired on a stock or a commodity so as to be able to raise the price.
coronary: of or pertaining to the human heart, with respect to health.
corporal punishment: (law) physical punishment, as flogging, inflicted on the body of one convicted of a crime: formerly included the death penalty, sentencing to a term of years, etc.
counter-checking: controlling or confirming by a second check.
cowed: subdued by frightening with threats or force.
craven: cowardly.
crazy house: a fun house: an attraction at an amusement park consisting of a series of rooms and passageways with sloping or moving floors, distorting mirrors and other devices designed to surprise or amuse.
credence: belief as to the truth of something.
crocheted: done in a kind of needlework in which loops of a thread or yarn are interwoven by means of a single hooked needle.
crow: boast in triumph; exult.
cry, a far: only remotely related; very different.
culpable: deserving blame; blameworthy.
cyanide: a very poisonous chemical substance.
cytology: the scientific study of cells.
Dalton, Jack: member of an outlaw gang in the nineteenth-century American West; also a character in early westerns.
Dante: originally Durante, Alighieri: (1265-1321) Italian poet. Wrote Divina Commedia, recounting an imaginary journey by the author through hell, purgatory and paradise.
Dark Ages: the Middle Ages, especially the earlier part from about A.D. 476 to about the end of the 10th century: so called from the idea that this period in Europe was characterized by intellectual stagnation, widespread ignorance and poverty, and cultural decline.
debauchery: indulgence in harmful or immoral pleasures.
decks: decorates; dresses up.
decried: spoken out against strongly and openly; denounced.
deep analysis: depth therapy: a form of psychotherapy that
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
attempts to work through unconscious conflicts to resolve problems in behavior.
demon: a mental mechanism set up by an engram which takes over a portion of the analyzer and acts as an individual being. A bona fide demon is one who gives thoughts voice or echoes the spoken word interiorly or who gives all sorts of complicated advices like a real, live voice exteriorly.
denyer: a species of command which, literally translated, means that the engram doesn't exist. "I'm not here," "This is getting nowhere," "I must not talk about it," "I can't remember," etc. A command which makes the pre-clear feel there is no incident present.
derangements: disturbances of the functions of the mind; mental disorders; insanities.
derelict: neglectful of duty; delinquent; negligent.
derided: laughed at in contempt or scorn; made fun of; ridiculed.
dermatitis: inflammation of the skin.
dervish: a member of any various Moslem orders of ascetics (ones who lead a life of austere self-discipline, especially as an act of religious devotion or penance), some of which employ whirling dances and the chanting of religious formulas to producer collective ecstasy.
descriptic: representing or delineating by a picture or figure.
designing: crafty, conniving.
devil take the ____ : a phrase used as a curse, wish of evil or the like.
diabetes: a disease in which sugar and starch are not properly absorbed by the body.
Dianetics: Dianetics spiritual healing technology. It addresses and handles the effects of the spirit on the body and can alleviate such things as unwanted sensations and emotions, accidents, injuries and psychosomatic illnesses (ones that are caused or aggravated by mental stress). Dianetics means "through the soul" (from Greek dia, through, and nous, soul). It is further defined as "what the soul is doing to the body."
dime-store: of or purchased at a dime store or five-and-ten-cent storeùa store that sells a wide variety of inexpensive merchandise, originally with many articles priced at five or ten cents.
dipsomaniac: a person suffering from an uncontrollable craving for alcohol.
610
GLOSSARY
direful: dreadful; awful; terrible.
disavow: deny any knowledge or approval of, or responsibility for; disclaim; disown.
dismembered: divided into parts; cut to pieces; mutilated.
disposition: state of mind regarding something; inclination.
Dixie, whistle: engage in wishful thinking. Dixie is a lively song about the Southern states of the United States, written in 1859 by Daniel D. Emmett (1815-1904). It was used to build enthusiasm for the South during the Civil War.
doilies: small mats, as of lace or paper, put under a dish, vase or the like, as a decoration or to protect a surface. Named after a 17th-century draper (dealer in cloth and dry goods) whose name was Doily or Doyley.
donjon: the fortified main tower of a castle.
dopey: tired, sleepy, foggy (as though doped).
douche bag: a small syringe having detachable nozzles for administering a douche: a jet or current of water, sometimes with a dissolved medicating or cleansing agent, applied to a body part, organ or cavity (such as the vagina) for medicinal or hygienic purposes.
dramatis personae: the characters in a play or story (used here to refer to people present in the engrams of the aberree).
dramatization: the duplication of an engramic content, entire or in part, by an aberree in his present time environment. Aberrated conduct is entirely dramatization. The degree of dramatization is in direct ratio to the degree of restimula-tion of the engrams causing it. When dramatizing, the individual is like an actor playing his dictated part and going through a whole series of irrational actions.
dranuner: humorous spelling of drama, a series of events so interesting, vivid, etc., as to resemble those of a play.
droll: amusing in an odd or ironic way.
dross: inferior, trivial or worthless matter.
Drunkard: a play written by William H. Smith and "A Gentleman" in the late 1800s, a moral domestic drama of American life.
DTfc: delirium tremens: a violent delirium (temporary state of extreme mental excitement, marked by restlessness, confused speech and hallucinations) resulting chiefly from excessive drinking of alcoholic liquor and characterized by sweating, trembling, anxiety and frightening hallucinations. Delirium tremens comes from Latin, and means literally "trembling delirium."
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
dub-in: the manifestation of putting, unknowingly, perceptions which do not in actual fact exist, in the environment. (It is a phrase taken from the motion picture industry, meaning to record dialogue and various sounds and then integrate them into the film after it has been shot. This is done for scenes where the original recording is faulty, for scenes where it is simply more convenient to add dialogue and other sound later, and for films playing abroad which require new dialogue in the native language of the host country.)
dynamic: i. the tenacity to life and vigor and persistence in survival. 2. the urge, thrust and purpose of lifeù Survive;ùin its four manifestations: self, sex, group and mankind.
dynamic principle oi' existence: survival. The goal of life can be considered to be infinite survival. Man, au a life form, can be demonstrated to obey in all his actions and purposes the one command "Survive!" It is not o. new thought that man is surviving. It is a new thought that man is motivated only by survival.
dynasties: successions of rulers who are members of the same family.
eccentricity, unusual or odd behavior, or a peculiar habit.
ectoplasm: the luminous substance believed to emanate from a spiritualistic medium.
effusion: a pouring forth.
egocentric: viewing everything in relation to oneself; self-centereu.
Einstein, Albert: (1879-1955) German physicist, US citizen from 1940; formulated the theory of the conversion of mass into energy, opening the way for the development of the atomic bomb.
EUis, Henry flavelock: (1859-1939) English criminologist and psychologist who conducted studies in psychology and sociology of sex.
embroil: throw into confusion; complicate.
embryo: 1. an early or undeveloped stage of something. 2. a child in the womb in the first eight weeks of its development.
Emersonian: of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (1803-1882) American essayist, poet and lecturer. Emerson was part of the tran-scendentalist movement, which advised people to look for God-given power within themselves. His best-known essay
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GLOSSARY
is "Self-Reliance." Many in the nineteenth century took inspiration from Emerson, especially through his brief and pointed sayings and urgings, such as "Hitch your wagon to a star."
encysting: enclosing in or as if in a cyst or sac.
endocrine: designating or of any gland producing one or more internal secretions that are introduced directly into the bloodstream and carried to other parts of the body whose functions they regulate or control.
engendered: brought into being; brought about; caused; produced.
engrain: a mental image picture which is a recording of an experience containing pain, unconsciousness, and a real or fancied threat to survival. It is a recording in the reactive mind of something which actually happened to an individual in the past and which contained pain and unconsciousness, both of which are recorded in the mental image picture called an engram. It must, by definition, have impact or injury as part of its content. These engrams are a complete recording, down to the last accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of partial or full unconsciousness.
engram command: any phrase contained in an engram.
enjoin: order, command.
ensigns: in the US Navy, commissioned officers of the lowest rank.
equilibrium: mental or emotional balance; evenness of mind or temper; composure.
equipage: a carriage drawn by horses and attended by servants.
equivocal: questionable; suspicious.
erase: cause an engram to "vanish" entirely by recountings, at which time it is filed as memory and experience.
erudition: exhibition of knowledge not easily understood by the average person.
estrogen: a sex hormone or other substance capable of developing and maintaining female characteristics of the body.
et al.: and others.
ether: a drug used to produce anesthesia, as before surgery.
evolutes: evolves; develops.
excreta: waste matter excreted from the body, as sweat or urine.
exodontistry: the extraction of teeth.
facetious: joking or trying to be jocular, especially at an inappropriate time.
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
facile: acting, working or done easily, or in a quick, smooth
way; fluent; ready. faculty: an ability, natural or acquired, for a particular kind of
action. fan: (Western US, chiefly cowboy use) slap the flanks (of a horse
or other animal) repeatedly with a hat to get it to move or
move faster. fan-tan: a Chinese gambling game in which a pile of coins,
counters or objects is placed under a bowl and bets are
made on what the remainder will be after they have been
counted off in fours. Farragut, David Glasgow: (1801-1870) US admiral who won
the battles of New Orleans and Mobile Bay for the Union
in the US Civil War. feigned: pretended, simulated; sham. fetishes: objects, ideas, etc., eliciting unquestioning reverence,
respect or devotion. fetus: in man, the offspring in the womb from the end of the
third month of pregnancy until birth. fidelity: accuracy; exactness. file clerk: Dianetic auditor's slang for the mechanism of the
mind which acts as a data monitor. Auditors can get
instant or "flash" answers direct from the file clerk to aid
in contacting incidents. Technically the name of the file
clerk might be "bank monitor unit" but that phrase is too
unwieldy. fireplugs: street hydrants to which hoses can be attached for
fighting fires. flash answer: the first thing which comes into a person's head
when a question is asked of him. flint: a fine-grained, very hard rock, usually gray, that produces
sparks when struck with steel, and that breaks into pieces
with sharp cutting edges. flippant: joking or trying to be funny when one should be more
serious or show more respect. flounder, out like a: in a faint; unconscious. (Flounder is a
slang term for the corpse of a drowned man.) flushed: revealed; brought into the open; driven out. foibles: minor weaknesses or failings of character; slight flaws
or defects. forebear: ancestor. forgetter mechanism: a forgetter mechanism is "Put it out of
my mind," "If I remembered it I would go mad," "Can't
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GLOSSARY
remember," and just plain "I don't know," as well as the master of the family of phrases, "Forget it!" Any engram command which makes the individual believe he can't remember.
fostered: helped to grow or develop; stimulated; promoted.
frigid: habitually failing to become sexually aroused, or abnormally repelled by sexual activity: said of a woman.
fuse: a wire or strip of easily melted metal, usually set in a plug, placed in a circuit as a safeguard: if the current becomes too strong, the metal melts, thus breaking the circuit.
Galen: (ca. A.D. 130-200) Greek physician whose works were for centuries the standards for anatomy and physiology. Though Galen gave good descriptions of some of the human body's different parts and their functions, his observations and conclusions on the circulation of the blood were far from correct.
galvanometer: an instrument for detecting and measuring small electric currents.
gamut: the entire range or extent, as of emotions.
gaoler: jailer.
garners: acquires; gathers or collects.
Gaslight: a play by Patrick Hamilton (later called Angel Street) in which a man tries to drive his wife insane.
gauge: thickness or diameter, as of sheet metal or wire. A #12 gauge copper wire is approximately three thirty-secondths of an inch thick.
Gauls: any of the Celtic-speaking people of Gaul, ancient region in western Europe consisting of what is now mainly France and Belgium.
Gay Nineties: the 1890s, a period of sudden affluence in the US brought on by the industrial revolution.
genesis: the way in which something comes to be; beginning; origin.
genetic: of or having to do with genetics, the branch of biology that deals with heredity and the way that animals and plants pass on to their offspring such characteristics as size, color, etc.
Genghis Khan: (1162-1227) Mongol conqueror of much of Asia and eastern Europe. He and his armies were totally ruthless in their actions and were said to have killed over a million people in one city alone.
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
geometric progression: a sequence of terms, such as 1, 3, 9, 27, 81, etc., each of which is a constant multiple of the immediately preceding term.
germane: closely or significantly related; relevant; pertinent.
glad-hander: one who is demonstrative in his personal contacts; one who acts more friendly or more optimistic than necessary; one, as a politician, who pretends friendliness.
gnome: (folklore) any of a race of small, misshapen, dwarflike beings, supposed to dwell in the earth and guard its treasures.
godhead: godhood; divinity.
golden age: the period in which a nation, etc., is at its highest state of prosperity, or in which some human art or activity is at its most excellent.
Goldi: a people, traditionally hunters and fishermen, who inhabit the valley of the Amur River in southeastern Siberia and northeastern Manchuria (a region and former administrative division of northeast China).
gold panning: separating (gold, etc.) from gravel by washing it in a pan.
gonads: bodily organs that produce gametes (mature sperm or eggs capable of participating in fertilization).
Goodwife Sofie: made-up name for a woman who was the mistress of a household. Goodwife is an archaic title of respect for a woman.
Grand Coulee Dam: a large, concrete dam located on the Columbia River in central Washington.
gregarious: living in herds or flocks.
grippe: influenza.
grist to (one's) mill: something employed to one's profit or advantage, especially something seemingly unpromising.
grizzly: short for grizzly bear: a large, ferocious, brownish, grayish or yellowish bear of western North America, having a shoulder hump and long front claws.
grouper: species of command which, literally translated, means that all incidents are in one place on the time track: "I'm jammed up," "Everything happens at once," "Everything comes in on me at once," "I'll get even with you," etc.
G-2: military intelligence section of the Army or Marine Corps.
gyrations: actions of turning round, wheeling or whirling.
hallowed: regarded as holy; honored as sacred.
Hamlet: hero of the play Hamlet, a tragedy (first printed 1603)
616
GLOSSARY
by William Shakespeare. Hamlet is a young prince who avenges the murder of his father.
harlot: a prostitute.
harridan: a scolding, vicious woman; hag; shrew.
harrowing: extremely disturbing or distressing; grievous.
Harvey, William: (1578-1657) English physician and anatomist, discoverer of the mechanics of blood circulation.
havoc, cry: sound an alarm. Used figuratively.
hawk: make an effort to raise phlegm from the throat; clear the throat noisily.
hazarded: offered (a statement, conjecture, etc.) with the possibility of facing criticism, disapproval, failure or the like; ventured.
"Heads I win, tails you lose": descriptive of a one-sided arrangement. The phrase comes from a game of flipping a coin into the air and betting on which side will land uppermost. Heads refers to the side of a coin bearing the date and the main design (often a representation of a head); tails refers to the reverse side of a coin.
hebephrenia: (psychiatry) a form of aberration characterized by childish or silly behavior.
Hegelian: of Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel [1770-1831], German philosopher) or his philosophy. Hegel put forth a philosophy based on the principle that an idea or event (thesis) generates its opposite (antithesis) leading to the reconciliation of opposites.
helium: one of the chemical elements, a very light, inert, colorless gas; it is used for inflating balloons, etc.
Hercules: a mythical Greek hero of fabulous strength and courage who, after completing 12 heroic feats assigned to him (including killing several legendary monsters), became immortal.
hew: to chop or cut with an ax or sword, etc.
hexed: bewitched; practiced on by witchcraft.
Hindu: of Hinduism, a religious and social system which developed in India about 1400 B.C. , with belief in reincarnation, worship of several gods, and the caste system (rigid, hereditary social classes) as a basis of society.
Hindu trinity: Hindu representation of the three manifestations of the Supreme BeingùBrahma, Vishnu and Sivaùeach with a specific cosmic function: Brahma was associated with creation; Vishnu was associated with preservation and renewal; and Siva with destruction and disintegration.
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
Hippocrates: (4607-370? B.C.) Greek physician, known as "the father of medicine."
histamine: a substance released by the tissues in allergic reactions: it dilates blood vessels, stimulates gastric secretion, etc.
holder: any engram command which makes an individual remain in an engram knowingly or unknowingly. These include such things as "Stay here," "Sit right there and think about it," "Come back and sit down," "I can't go," "I mustn't leave," etc.
hound: hunt or chase with or as with hounds; chase or follow continually; nag.
hubbub: tumult; uproar.
Hurne, David: (1711-1776) Scottish philosopher and historian. Hume was known for his skepticism. He maintained that all knowledge was based on either the impressions of the senses or the logical relations of ideas.
hurrah's nest: state of utmost confusion; a mess.
hyacinth: a plant of the lily family, widely cultivated for its cylindrical cluster of fragrant flowers in a variety of colors.
hydraulic rams: devices by which the energy of descending water is utilized to raise a part of the water to a height greater than that of the source.
hyoscine: same as scopolamine, an alkaloid used in medicine as a sedative, hypnotic and sometimes with other drugs to relieve pain.
hypnoanalysis: (psychoanalysis) the use of hypnosis or hypnotic drugs in combination with psychoanalytic techniques.
hypochondriac: a person who continually shows unnecessary anxiety about his health.
hysterical: (psychiatry) of or characteristic of hysteria, a psychiatric condition variously characterized by emotional excitability, excessive anxiety, sensory and motor disturbances, or the unconscious simulation of organic disorders, such as blindness, deafness, etc.
iatrogenic: means illness generated by doctors. An operation during which the doctor's knife slipped and accidentally harmed the patient might cause an iatrogenic illness or injury since the fault would have been with the surgeons.
ideologies: systematic schemes of ideas, usually relating to politics or society or to the conduct of a class or group,
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GLOSSARY
and regarded as justifying actions, especially those that are
held implicitly or adopted as a whole and maintained
regardless of the course of events. idiosyncrasy: a characteristic, habit, mannerism or the like that
is peculiar to an individual. idyllic: pleasing and simple; pastoral (characteristic of rural life,
idealized as peaceful, simple and natural) or picturesque. ilk: class; kind; sort. impaction: the action of becoming, or condition of being,
impacted (pressed closely into or in something) or firmly
fixed in. impasses: situations offering no escape, as a difficulty without
solution, an argument where no agreement is possible,
etc.; deadlocks.
impedimenta: things which impede or encumber progress; baggage. imponderables: things that cannot be conclusively determined
or explained.
imposition: a burden imposed unfairly.
incontrovertible: not open to question or dispute; indisputable. Indian rope trick: a magic trick in which the magician makes a
rope seem to suspend in midair and either goes up the rope
and disappears or sends other things up which disappear. indolence: the quality or state of disliking or avoiding work;
idleness; laziness.
inductive: of or using induction, logical reasoning that a general law exists because particular cases that seem to be
examples of it exist. inextricably: in a way incapable of being disentangled, undone,
loosed or solved.
infame: very bad reputation; notoriety; disgrace; dishonor. infidelity: unfaithfulness or disloyalty to another; especially,
sexual unfaithfulness of a husband or wife; adultery. injunctions: orders or commands that something must or must
not be done.
in kind: in proper or good condition. in re: in regard to. insidious: spreading or developing or acting inconspicuously
but with harmful effect. instanter: immediately; at once. insulin shock: a state of coma resulting from reduced blood
sugar when insulin (a substance which helps the body use
sugar and other carbohydrates) is present in excessive
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
amounts. Insulin shock is used by psychiatrists as one form of shock therapy in "treating" mental illness.
intelligence officer: a military officer responsible for collecting and processing data on hostile forces, weather and terrain.
intimation: hint; indirect suggestion.
introvert: look in on oneself.
inversion: acute awareness of self.
Iowa: a north central state of the US; its chief products are agricultural.
Ism: a doctrine, theory, system, etc., especially one whose name ends in -ism.
jauntings: trips; excursions.
jettison: throw off (something) as an obstacle or burden; discard.
Jimmie the Cob: a made-up name for a criminal. Cob is British dialect for "leader; chief."
jockeying: playing tricks with; managing or manipulating in a tricky way.
jog: stir or jolt into activity or alertness, as by a hint or reminder.
jub-jub bird: imaginary creature from the poem "Jabber-wocky" by Lewis Carroll.
jurisprudence: the study of law or of a particular part of law.
Keats, John: (1795-1821) English poet, considered one of the greatest English poets. His poems are unequaled for dignity, melody and richness of imagery.
keep: the strongest, innermost part or central tower of a medieval castle.
key in: make active. A key-in is a moment when the environment around the awake but fatigued or distressed individual is itself similar to the dormant (inactive) engram. At that moment the engram becomes active.
key out: cause an engram (or engrams) to drop away without being erased.
Kinsey, Alfred Charles: (1894-1956) American scientist who investigated the sexual behavior of men and women. In 1947 and 1948, he published books on his findingsù Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Femaleùpopularly known as the Kinsey Reports, which shattered existing conceptions of the nature and extent of American sexual practices.
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GLOSSARY
kleptomaniac: a person suffering from an uncontrollable tendency to steal things, with no desire to use or profit by them.
Korzybski, Alfred: (1879-1950) American scientist and writer; developed the subject of general semantics, a methodology that attempts to improve human behavior through a critical use of words and symbols.
Kraepelin, Emit: (1856-1926) German psychiatrist; divided mental disturbances into various classifications.
Krafft-Ebing, Baron Richard von: (1840-1902) German neurologist and author of works on sexual pathology.
latitude: freedom from narrow restrictions; freedom of opinion, conduct or action.
leads: electrical conductors (usually wires) conveying current from a source to a place of use.
leprosy: a chronic, infectious disease caused by a bacterium that attacks the skin, flesh, nerves, etc.: it is characterized by ulcers, white scaly scabs, deformities and wasting of body parts.
lesbianism: homosexual relations between women.
Lesbos: Greek island in the Aegean Sea. The word lesbian derives from the ancient Greek name of this island, from the eroticism and homosexuality attributed to Sappho (ancient Greek poetess) and her followers.
Leucippus: Greek philosopher of the fifth century B.C.
lichens: any of a large group of plants that look somewhat like moss and grow in patches on trees, rocks, etc.
lick: overcome or defeat, as in a fight, game or contest.
lie factory: technically, a phrase contained in an engram demanding prevarication (the telling of lies)ùit was originally called a fabricator.
liner: a steamship, passenger airplane, etc., in regular service for a specific line.
llamas: South American animals related to the camel but smaller and without humps: the llama is used as a beast of burden and for its wool, flesh and milk.
lock: an analytical moment in which the perceptics of the engram are approximated, thus restimulating the engram or bringing it into action, the present time perceptics being erroneously interpreted by the reactive mind to mean that the same condition which produced physical pain once before is now again at hand.
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
Locke, John: (1632-1704) English philosopher who argued against the belief that human beings are born with certain ideas already in their minds. He claimed that, on the contrary, the mind is a tabula rasa (blank slate) until experience begins to "write" on it.
"loop": literally, a length of film or magnetic tape whose ends have been joined to form an endless strip, so that continuous repetition of the recording is made possible (e.g., in rehearsing the synchronization required for dubbing a foreign-language soundtrack). Used figuratively.
Lorentz-FHzGerald-Einstein equations: mathematical equations developed by Hendrik Lorentz and George Francis FitzGerald, closely related to the work of Einstein. These formulas, also known as the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction, contain the hypothesis that a moving body exhibits a contraction in the direction of motion when its velocity is close to the speed of light.
Direction of Motion
Low Speeds Approaching Speed of Light
"loud": (colloquial) too vivid; flashy.
loused up: botched; spoiled; ruined.
Lucretius: (987-55 B.C.) Roman poet who was the author of the unfinished On the Nature of Things, a didactic (instructional) poem in six books, setting forth in outline a complete science of the universe. The purpose of the work was to prove, by investigating the nature of the world in which man lives, that all thingsùincluding manùoperate according to their own laws and are not in any way influenced by supernatural powers.
lugubrious: very sad or mournful, especially in a way that seems exaggerated or ridiculous.
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GLOSSARY
Lysol: (trademark) a brand of clear, brown, oily solution used as a disinfectant and antiseptic.
Macbeth: title character of a play by Shakespeare, tortured by his guilt for murders he committed rising to power in Scotland.
maelstrom: an agitated or tumultuous state of affairs.
malignant: causing or likely to cause death, especially by spreading unchecked through the body.
maligned: spoken evil of; defamed; slandered.
mange: a skin disease affecting hairy animals, caused by a parasite and characterized by intense itching, scabs and loss of hair.
manic: having or characterized by abnormal excitability, exaggerated feeling of well-being, flight of ideas, excessive activity, etc.
manic-depressive: (psychiatry) having a mental disorder marked by alternating extremes of excitement and depression.
marijuana: the dried leaves and flowers of the hemp plant, used in cigarette form as a narcotic or hallucinogen.
masochistic: of, concerning or pertaining to the getting of sexual pleasure from being dominated, mistreated or hurt physically or otherwise by one's partner.
Matterhorn: a mountain on the border of Switzerland and Italy.
Mauser: a brand of military or hunting rifles.
maw: anything thought of as consuming, devouring, etc., without end.
mawkish: sentimental in a tearful way, so as to be sickening.
Maxwell, James Clerk: (1831-1879) Scottish physicist, responsible for the theory that electricity and light are the same in their fundamental nature.
Mazda and Ahriman: the deities in Zoroastrianism, the religious system of the Persians before their conversion to Islam. Mazda is the spirit of universal good and Ahriman is his archrival as the spirit of evil.
media-media: average.
melancholy: a gloomy state of mind, especially when habitual or prolonged; depression.
mellerdrammer: humorous spelling of melodrama, any sensational writing, speech or action with exaggerated appeal to the emotions.
memory: anything which, perceived, is filed in the standard memory bank and can be recalled by the analytical mind.
mentors: wise and trusted counselors or teachers.
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
Mesmer, Franz Anton: (1734-1815) Austrian physician who developed the practice of mesmerismùhypnotism.
metallurgy: the scientific study of the properties of metals and alloys, the art of working metals or of extracting them from their ores.
metaphysics: a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of existence and of truth and knowledge.
meted: distributed or apportioned by measure; allotted; doled (usually followed by out).
mien: a person's manner or bearing.
migraine: a type of intense, periodically returning headache, usually limited to one side of the head and often accompanied by nausea, visual disorders, etc.
militate: are directed (against); operate or work (against or, rarely, for): said of facts, evidence, actions, etc.
misdirector: any engram command which makes the patient move in a way or direction on the track which is contrary to instructions of the auditor or the desires of the analytical mind of the patient.
Moloch: in the Bible, an ancient god of the Phoenicians, etc., to whom children were sacrificed by burning. Moloch has come to mean anything demanding terrible sacrifice.
monomanic: one who suffers from an obsession with one idea or interest.
moored: fixed firmly; secured.
mores: the customs, or customary practices, rules, etc., regarded as essential to or characteristic of a group.
morning sickness: nausea occurring in the early part of the day, especially as a characteristic symptom in the first months of pregnancy.
morphine: a drug made from opium, used for relieving pain.
motif: dominant idea or feature.
motor strip: the mind's control system through the motor controls. There are two panels on each side of the skull, one on top of the other, and they control opposite sides of the body. One of the panels on each side is where the thoughts register, and the other panel is where the muscle control is set up.
mumbo jumbo: senseless or pretentious language, usually designed to obscure an issue, confuse a listener or the like.
myelin sheathing: the fatty layer of tissues coating the nerves.
myopia: inability to see clearly what is far awayùnear-sightedness.
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GLOSSARY
mysticism: the beliefs or practices of those who claim to have experiences based on intuition, meditation, etc., of a spiritual nature, by which they learn truths not known by ordinary people.
Napoleon: Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), French military leader and emperor of France (1804-1815). He led a brilliant campaign of French domination in Europe but ended in ruin, spending the last years of his life as a prisoner on a lonely British island.
narcosynthesis: the practice of inducing sleep with drugs and then talking to the patient to draw out buried thoughts.
Nation, Carry: (1846-1911) American temperance agitator, famous for her use of a hatchet to break up saloons.
nebulously: hazily, vaguely, indistinctly or confusedly.
neurology: the science of the nerves and the nervous system, especially the diseases affecting them.
neurons: the main units that make up the nerves. They consist of cell bodies with threadlike parts that carry signals to and from the cells.
neuroses: emotional states containing conflicts and emotional data inhibiting the abilities or welfare of the individual.
neurotic: one who is insane or disturbed on some subject (as opposed to a psychotic person, who is just insane in general).
Newton, Sir Isaac: (1642-1727) English mathematician and natural philosopher. One of the greatest geniuses the world has known, he made three scientific discoveries of fundamental importance: first, the method of change in varying quantities, which forms the basis of modern calculus; second, the law of the composition of light; third, the law of gravity.
Nineveh: capital of the ancient empire of Assyria, situated on the east bank of the Tigris River, opposite modern Mosul, Iraq. Nineveh contained magnificent palaces and sculpture, which have been unearthed in archaeological excavations.
nirvana: in Buddhism, the highest state of consciousness, in which the soul is freed from all desires and attachments.
nitrous oxide: a colorless gas that dulls pain, and in some patients produces exhilaration and occasionally uncontrollable laughter; laughing gas. It is used as an anesthetic.
nomenclature: the set of terms used to describe things in a particular subject.
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
nonpartisan: not an adherent or supporter of a person, group, party or cause; objective.
obstetrical: of or regarding obstetrics, the branch of medicine concerned with the care and treatment of women during pregnancy, childbirth and the period immediately following.
occasioned: given occasion or cause for; brought about.
ocularly: of or relating to the sense of sight.
odor: repute; esteem.
ogreish: like or having the characteristics of an ogre: (in folklore and fairy tales) a man-eating monster, usually represented as a hideous giant; hence, anything likened to such a monster in appearance or character.
Old Man of the Sea: character in the story of "Sinbad the Sailor" in The Arabian Nights. A seemingly harmless old man, he climbs onto the shoulders of the obliging Sinbad and refuses to get off. He clings there for many days and nights until Sinbad escapes by getting him drunk.
olfactory: of or relating to the sense of smell.
Olympian: of, resembling, characteristic of or suitable to the gods of Olympus (mountain in northeastern Greece); majestic or aloof.
omnipresent: present everywhere at the same time.
opium: a drug made from the juice of certain poppies, smoked or chewed as a stimulant or narcotic, and used in medicine as a sedative.
opossum playing: pretending to be dead, a trick used by opossums (small, tree-dwelling mammals which are active at night) to defend themselves from predators.
opportunism: the policy or practice, as in politics, business or one's personal affairs, of adapting actions, decisions, etc., to expediency or effectiveness regardless of the sacrifice of ethical principles.
orthopedics: the branch of surgery dealing with the treatment of deformities, diseases and injuries of the bones, joints, muscles, etc.
pagan: non-Christian; refers to those peoples who worshipped many gods, such as the Greeks and the Romans.
pain-drive theory: the theory that pain, deprivation or other unpleasant consequence imposed on or experienced by an organism responding incorrectly under specific conditions establishes, through avoidance, the desired learning or behavior.
626
GLOSSARY
pallid: lacking in spirit or vitality; dull.
palsy: paralysis, especially with involuntary tremors.
panacea: a remedy for all kinds of diseases or troubles.
pandering: ministering to others' passions or prejudices for selfish ends.
paragon: a model or pattern of excellence or of a particular excellence.
paranoid-schizophrenic: (psychiatry) of or concerning a mental condition resembling paranoia (form of psychosis in which a person imagines that he is being persecuted or that he is very great or important) but also characterized by autistic (concerning a state of mind characterized by daydreaming, hallucinations and disregard of external reality) behavior and gradual deterioration of the personality.
parathyroid: a hormone important in controlling of the calcium-phosphate balance of the body.
Parcheesi: a trademark for a board game in which the moves of pieces on a board are determined by the throwing of dice.
paresis: a brain disease of syphilitic origin, characterized by mental deterioration, speech disturbances and progressive muscular weakness. See also syphilis in this glossary.
Pasteur, Louis: (1822-1895) French chemist and bacteriologist; he proved that decay and putrefaction are caused by bacteria and developed serums and vaccines for such diseases as cholera and rabies.
Pasteuretta pestis: organism causing bubonic plague. See also bubonic plague in this glossary.
paternity: the state of being a father; fatherhood.
pathologically: in a manner caused by or having to do with disease. See also pathology in this glossary.
pathology: the science or the study of the origin, nature and course of diseases.
patter: the special vocabulary of a particular activity.
Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich: (1849-1936) Russian physiologist; noted for behavioral experiments on dogs.
pedantic: having unnecessary stress on minor or trivial points of learning; displaying a scholarship lacking in judgment or sense of proportion.
penicillin: a very powerful drug for destroying bacteria.
penis envy: (psychoanalysis) the repressed wish of a female to possess a penis.
peptic ulcers: open sores in the stomach.
perceptic: any sense message such as a sight, sound, smell, etc.
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DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
percepts: recognizable sensations or impressions received by
the mind through the senses. phenobarbital: a medicinal drug used to calm the nerves and
induce sleep. Philip: Philip II: (382-336 B.C.) king of Macedonia, father of
Alexander the Great. phlebotomy: the act or practice of bloodletting as a therapeutic
measure. photosynthesis: the process by which green plants use sunlight
to convert carbon dioxide (taken from the air) and water
into complex substances. pilloried: held up to public ridicule or scorn. pine tar: a thick, dark liquid obtained by destructive distillation
(decomposition by heat in the absence of air) of pine
wood, used in ointments, tar paints, etc. Pittsburgh: city in southwest Pennsylvania. pituitrin: the various substances secreted by the pituitary gland,
located at the base of the brain, which have important
influences on growth and bodily functions. placate: stop from being angry; appease; pacify; mollify. plankton: the small animal and plant organisms that float or
drift in water, especially at or near the surface. Plankton
serves as an important source of food for larger animals,
such as fish. platitudes: flat, dull or trite remarks, especially those uttered as
if they were fresh or profound.
polarity: (figurative) the possession of two opposite or contrasted principles or tendencies. polysyllables: words having several, especially four or more,
syllables.
portends: is an indication of; signifies. post: the starting gate at a racetrack. postulates: things assumed to be true, especially as a basis for
reasoning. poultice: a hot, soft, moist mass, as of flour, herbs, mustard,
etc. Sometimes spread on cloth, applied to a sore or
inflamed part of the body. preclear: from pre-Clear, a person not yet Clear; generally a
person being audited, who is thus on the road to Clear; a
person who, through Dianetics auditing, is finding out
more about himself and life. predisposition: a state of mind or body that renders a person
628
GLOSSARY
liable to act or behave in a certain way or to be subject to certain diseases.
prefrontal lobes: portion of the brain directly behind the forehead.
prefrontal lobotomy: (psychiatry) an operation in which the white fibers joining the prefrontal and frontal lobes to the interior region of the brain are severed.
prenatal: existing or taking place before birth.
prerelease: any patient who is entered into therapy to accomplish a release from his chief difficulties, psychosomatic or aberrational.
prescience: knowledge of events or actions before they happen.
present time: the time which is now and becomes the past as rapidly as it is observed. It is a term loosely applied to the environment existing in now.
press-agentry: publicity produced by a press agent's work or skill, especially in making a person or thing seem more desirable, admirable or successful.
preterm: before the end of the period a pregnancy normally lasts.
procreation: bringing living things into existence by the natural process of reproduction.
progeny: children, descendants or offspring collectively.
promiscuous: having sexual relations with many people.
provisos: stipulations or conditions.
pseudo-: combining form meaning "closely or deceptively similar to (a specified thing)," as in pseudonurse, pseudomother, pseudofather, etc.
psychic: of or pertaining to the human soul or mind; mental (opposed to physical).
psychometry: measurement of psychological variables, as intelligence, aptitude and emotional disturbance.
psychoses: severe forms of mental disorder; insanities.
psychosomatic: psycho of course refers to mind and somatic refers to body; the term psychosomatic means the mind making the body ill or illnesses which have been created physically within the body by derangement of the mind.
punk water: another name for spunk water, rainwater that collects in hollow tree stumps, popularly thought to be a cure for warts.
pygmy: a very small person.
pyramiding: increasing rapidly and on a widening base.
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Q: symbol used to represent an undefined, but observable as existing, form of energy or force.
quinine: a bitter medicinal drug used to treat malaria and in tonics.
rationalization: justified thoughtùthe excuses one makes to explain his irrational behavior.
reactive mind: a portion of a person's mind which works on a totally stimulus-response basis, which is not under his volitional control, and which exerts force and the power of command over his awareness, purposes, thoughts, body and actions. Stored in the reactive mind are engrams, and here we find the single source of aberrations and psychosomatic ills. Also called bank.
recalcitrant: disobedient, resisting authority or discipline.
recourse: a turning or seeking for aid, safety, etc.
recriminative: accusing in return.
red herrings: things intended to divert attention from the real problem or matter at hand; misleading clues.
reduce: take all the charge or pain out of an incident. This means to have the preclear recount the incident from beginning to end (while returned to it in reverie) over and over again, picking up all the somatics and perceptions present just as though the incident were happening at that moment. To reduce means, technically, to render free of aberrative material as far as possible to make the case progress.
remonstrated: presented and urged reasons in opposition or complaint; protested.
Renaissance: the great revival of art, literature and learning in Europe in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, based on classical (Greek and Roman) sources. It began in Italy and spread gradually to other countries and marked the transition from the medieval world (from about A.D. 500 to 1450) to the modern.
repeater technique: the repetition of a word or phrase in order to produce movement on the time track into areas of disturbed thought containing that word or phrase. After the auditor has placed the patient in reverie, if he discovers the patient, for instance, insists he "can't go anyplace," the auditor makes him repeat the phrase. Repetition of such a phrase, over and over, sucks the patient back down the track and into contact with an engram which contains it.
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GLOSSARY
repressions: commands that the organism must not do something.
restimulation: the reactivation of a past memory due to similar circumstances in the present approximating circumstances of the past.
restimulators: approximations of the reactive mind's content or some part thereof continually perceived in the environment of the organism.
retribution: punishment one deserves for a wrong that he has done.
returning: "sending" a portion of one's mind to a past period on either a mental or combined mental and physical basis and reexperiencing incidents which have taken place in one's past in the same fashion and with the same sensations as before.
reverie: the state of reverie is actually just a name. It is a label introduced to make the patient feel that his state has altered and that he has gone into a state where his memory is very good or where he can do something he couldn't ordinarily do before. The actuality is that he is able to do it all the time anyway. It is not a strange state. The person is wide awake, but merely by asking him to close his eyes he is technically in reverie.
reviled: criticized angrily in abusive language.
rheostat: an electrical instrument used to control current by varying resistance.
rheumatic fever: a disease more common among children than adults, characterized by fever, pains in the joints and often damage to the heart.
riding habits: dresses or suits worn by horseback riders.
Rohmer, Sax: pseudonym of Arthur Sarsfield Ward (1883-1959), English author of mystery thrillers, especially a series centering about fictional character Dr. Fu Manchu.
Ross, Ronald: (1857-1932) British physician.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques: (1712-1778) Swiss-born French philosopher, author, political theorist and composer, who argued that nature is good and civilization bad.
sack race: a race in which each contestant jumps ahead while his or her legs are confined in a sack.
sadism: the getting of sexual pleasure from dominating, mistreating or hurting one's partner.
sakes: remembrances.
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salvoed: fired at with a number of guns or artillery pieces at one time.
sanitaria: establishments for treating chronic diseases.
sarcastic: sneering; bitterly cutting; taunting.
scathing: very harsh or bitter.
schematic: of, or having the nature of, a scheme, schema, plan, diagram, etc.
schizophrenic: (psychiatry) person suffering from schizophrenia, a mental illness in which an individual is being two people madly inside of himself. It is a psychiatry classification derived from the Latin schizo, meaning "split," and the Greek phren, meaning "mind."
scholastic: one who narrowly adheres to traditional teachings, doctrines or methods.
school tie: a necktie striped in the colors of a specific English public school, especially as worn by a graduate to indicate his educational background.
Schopenhauer, Arthur: (1788-1860) German philosopher. He maintained that the desires and drives of men, as well as the forces of nature, are manifestations of a single will, specifically the will to live, which is the essence of the world. Schopenhauer asserted that since operation of the will means constant striving without satisfaction, life consists of suffering and that only by controlling the will through the intellect, by suppressing the desire to reproduce, can suffering be diminished.
Scientology: Scientology philosophy. It is the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, universes and other life. Scientology means scio, knowing in the fullest sense of the word and logos, study. In itself the word means literally knowing how to know. Scientology is a "route," a way, rather than a dissertation or an assertive body of knowledge. Through its drills and studies one may find the truth for himself. The technology is therefore not expounded as something to believe, but something to do.
self-determinism: the state wherein the individual can or cannot be controlled by his environment according to his own choice. He is confident in his interpersonal relationships. He reasons but does not need to react.
semantic: of, pertaining to or arising from the different meanings of words or other symbols.
seminal: pertaining to, containing or consisting of semen.
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GLOSSARY
sensory strip: the sensory strip could be considered the "mental" side of the switchboard, and the motor strip the physical side. See also motor strip in this glossary.
Sententious, Dr.: made-up name for an "authority." Sententious: putting on an air of wisdom; dull and moralizing.
sentient: of, having or capable of feeling or perception; conscious.
seven, gets a: reference to the game of craps (the throwing, or shooting, of dice), in which a first throw of seven wins.
sextant: an instrument used by navigators for measuring the angular distance of the sun, a star, etc., from the horizon, as in finding the position of a ship.
Shakespeare, William: (1564-1616) English poet and dramatist of the Elizabethan period (1558-1603), the most widely known author in all English literature.
shaman: a priest or witch doctor among certain peoples, claiming to have sole contact with the gods, etc.
shift, makes: manages or does the best one can (with whatever means are at hand).
short shrift: little attention or consideration in dealing with a person or matter.
shoulder to the wheel, put a: work energetically toward a goal; put forth effort.
Siberian: of Siberia, a part of the Soviet Union in north Asia, extending from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific.
signal: not average or ordinary; remarkable; notable.
Simple Simon: a foolish character in the well-known anonymous nursery rhyme: "Simple Simon met a pieman, going to the fair; Says Simple Simon to the pieman, 'Let me taste your ware. . . .' "
sinusitis: inflammation of one or more sinus cavities in the skull.
Sioux: of or having to do with a member of a tribe of American Indians living on the plains of northern United States and southern Canada.
soapbox: of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a speaker or speech from a soapbox: any improvised platform used by a person making an informal, often impassioned speech to a street audience, as on a current, controversial issue.
Socrates: (ca. 469-399 B.C.) Greek philosopher and teacher who believed in a "demon" whose voice warned him whenever he was about to make a wrong decision.
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solicitous: anxious and concerned about a person's welfare or comfort.
somatic: bodily or physical. Because the word pain is restimu-lative, and because the word pain has in the past led to a confusion between physical pain and mental pain, the word somatic is used in Dianetics to denote physical pain or discomfort of any kind.
somatic strip: a physical indicator mechanism which has to do with time. The auditor orders the somatic strip. The somatic strip can be sent back to the beginning of an engram and will go there. The somatic strip will advance through an engram in terms of minutes counted off by the auditor, so that the auditor can say that the somatic strip will go to the beginning of the engram, then to the point five minutes after the engram began, and so forth.
sonic: recall by hearing a past sound with the "mind's ear."
sonorous: resonant, giving a deep, powerful sound.
sooth: truth.
Spartans: the citizens of Sparta, a city in ancient Greece, who would permit a child to live only if he showed potential of becoming an asset to the state.
specious: seeming to be good, sound, correct, logical, etc., without really being so; plausible but not genuine.
Spencer, Herbert: (1820-1903) English philosopher. One of the few modern thinkers to attempt a systematic account of all cosmic phenomena, including mental and social principles.
spinbin: (slang) a mental institution.
squalling: the condition or action of crying or screaming loudly and harshly.
Stalingrad: former name of Volgograd, a city on the Volga River in the Soviet Union.
standard memory bank: recordings of everything perceived throughout the lifetime up to present time by the individual except physical pain, which is not recorded in the analytical mind but is recorded in the reactive mind.
stigma: a mark of shame, a stain on a person's good reputation.
stimuli: things that rouse a person or thing into activity or energy or that produce a reaction in an organ or tissue of the body.
stock: cattle or other farm or range animals; livestock.
Stoics: people who maintain or affect the mental attitude advocated by the Stoics, a Greek school of philosophy, founded by Zeno about 308 B.C. , holding that human beings should be free from passion and calmly accept all occurrences as the unavoidable result of divine will.
strychnine: a bitter, highly poisonous substance, used in very small doses as a stimulant.
suffrage: the right to vote, especially in a political election.
sulfa: any of a group of chemical compounds with antibacterial properties.
suppressor: the exterior forces which reduce the chances of the survival of any form.
supranational: of, for, involving or over all or a number of nations.
surgical: pertaining to or involving manual or operative procedures.
swami: lord; master: a Hindu title of respect, especially for a Hindu religious teacher.
syllogism: a form of reasoning in which a conclusion is reached from two statements, as in "All men must die; I am a man; therefore, I must die."
sylvan: of or characteristic of the woods or forests. Used figuratively, as Rousseau's philosophy of the "natural man."
symbiotic: having to do with the living together of similar or dissimilar organisms for mutual benefit.
symbolic logic: a modern type of formal logic using special mathematical symbols to stand for propositions and for the relationships among propositions.
syphilis: a contagious venereal disease affecting first some local part, secondly, the skin and mucous membranes and, thirdly, the bones and muscles and brain.
tabloid: a newspaper usually half the normal size, with many pictures and short, often sensational, news stories.
tacit consent: in the case of two preclears working on each other, each one assuming in his turn the auditor's role, a condition can arise where each prevents the other from contacting certain engrams. This is tacit consent. A husband and wife may have a mutual period of quarrels and unhappiness. Engaged upon clearing each other, working alternately as auditor, they avoid, unknowingly, but by reactive computation, the mutual period, thus leaving in place painfully emotional engrams.
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tactile: of or using the sense of touch.
talisman: an object supposed to bring good luck.
tapped: penetrated, opened up, reached into, etc., for the purpose of using something or drawing something off.
technology: the methods of application of an art or science as opposed to mere knowledge of the science or art itself.
telepathy: communication from one mind to another without the use of speech or writing or gestures, etc.
terra incognita: an unknown land; a region or subject of which nothing is known.
testosterone: a male sex hormone.
test tube: a tube of thin, transparent glass closed at one end, used in chemical experiments, etc. Used figuratively.
thalamus: the interior region of the brain where sensory nerves originate.
6: theta, the eighth letter in the Greek alphabet. Greek for thought or life or the spirit.
three-thousand-cycle note: a ringing sound with three thousand vibrations, or cycles, per second.
thyroid: a hormone that regulates the body's growth and development.
tidings: news; information.
time track: the time span of the individual from conception to present time on which lies the sequence of events of his life.
token: a very special kind of restimulator; any object, practice or mannerism which one or more allies used. By identity thought the ally is survival; anything the ally used or did is, therefore, survival.
tomes: large or scholarly books.
Tone Scale: a scale which shows the emotional tones of a person. These, ranged from the highest to the lowest, are, in part, serenity (the highest level), enthusiasm (as we proceed downward), conservatism, boredom, antagonism, anger, covert hostility, fear, grief, apathy.
tongue, slips of the: mistakes in speaking, as inadvertent remarks.
tonnage: weight, measured in tons.
topectomy: (psychiatry) an operation which removes pieces of brain somewhat as an apple corer cores apples.
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GLOSSARY
Torquemada, Tomas de: (1420-1498) first Grand Inquisitor of Spain. The Spanish Inquisition, established under Ferdinand and Isabella in 1478, was centralized by Torquemada after his appointment in 1483 as Grand Inquisitor. He gained the reputation, partly deserved, partly exaggerated, of great cruelty in his conduct of the Spanish Inquisition, which reportedly was responsible for the burning of some two thousand persons between 1481 and 1504.
track: see time track.
tractability: state of being easy to manage or deal with; docility.
transcends: goes beyond the limits of; oversteps; exceeds.
transference: (psychoanalysis) the process in and by which a person's feelings, thoughts and wishes shift from one person to another, especially this process in psychoanalysis with the analyst made the object of the shift.
transorbital leukotomy: (psychiatry) an operation which, while the patient is being electrically shocked, thrusts an ordinary dime-store ice pick into each eye and reaches up to rip the analyzer apart.
trauma: a painful emotional experience or shock, often producing a lasting psychic effect and, sometimes, a neurosis.
travail: (figurative) trouble, hardship or suffering.
treats: deals with a subject in writing or speech; speaks or writes (of).
trundle bed: a low bed moving on small wheels. It can be pushed under a regular bed when not in use.
tuberculosis: an infectious wasting disease affecting various parts of the body.
uncharted: not shown or located on a map; unexplored; unknown.
undimensional: without measurable extent or limit.
usurps: appropriates wrongly to itself (a right, prerogative, etc.).
Utopian: of or like a Utopia, any idealized place, state or situation of perfection.
vacillation: a wavering in mind or opinion.
vain: without sense or wisdom; foolish; senseless.
valence: personality. The term is used to denote the borrowing of the personality of another. A valence is a substitute for
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self taken on after the fact of lost confidence in self. A preclear "in his father's valence" is acting as though he were his father.
valence shift: getting the preclear moving around from one valence to the other.
valence wall: a sort of protective mechanism by which the charge of the case is compartmented to permit the individual to work at least some of the time.
vector: a physical quantity with both magnitude and direction, such as a force or velocity.
^feda: the most ancient sacred writings of the Hindus.
veritable: having all the qualities or attributes of the specified person or thing.
vignette: a short description or character sketch.
virus: a microscopic agent that can reproduce only within the cells of living hostsùmainly bacteria, plants and animals.
visio: recall by seeing a past sight with the "mind's eye."
vivisecting: cutting into or dissecting.
volatile: moving suddenly and often from one idea, interest, feeling, etc., to another; changeable.
volley: (figurative) a noisy, rapid outpouring or burst of many things at once.
voodoo: a form of religion based on belief in witchcraft and magical rites, practiced by some people in the West Indies and America.
wash, conies out in the: is revealed; becomes known.
wax: grow bigger or greater; increase.
WCTU: Women's Christian Temperance Union, an organization that campaigns against alcohol use.
weather-vaning: acting like a person or thing that is changeable or inconstant, especially one who veers easily to conform to the prescribed attitudes or popular beliefs of the moment.
well-nigh: very nearly; almost.
welter: a jumble or muddle.
whet: make keen or eager; stimulate.
whip hand: the position of advantage or control.
without: on the outside; outside.
wits: persons characterized by the ability to make lively, clever remarks in a sharp, amusing way.
wreaks: inflicts; causes.
yah-yah: slang term for bickering.
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GLOSSARY
"Yanks are coming, The": line from the refrain of the song "Over There" by George M. Cohan (1878-1942), American actor, songwriter, playwright and producer. The song is about the American troops sent to Europe to fight in World War I.
yardsticks: standards of measurement or judgment.
Zamba, Dr.: a made-up name for a doctor.
zealot: an excessively zealous person; fanatic.
zombiism: existence as a person who seems to have no mind or will, taken from the voodoo word for a corpse said to have been animated by some power and made to obey commands.
Zulu: a member of a large, formerly warlike, Bantu people of southeastern Africa.
zygote: the first cell of a new individual.
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Index
AA, see attempted abortion Alexander the Great, 330-331;
