Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  PRE-CLEAR: 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.”

  PRE-CLEAR: “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.

  PRE-CLEAR: (Recounts engram several times, yawns off “unconsciousness,” chuckles when he can’t find the engram any more. 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.

  PRE-CLEAR: (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 pre-clear in reverie is close up against the source material of his aberrations. 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 pre-clear in reverie beyond helping him to attack engrams. If the pre-clear contradicted any of the above, 121

  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 guessed -- and kept it to himself -- 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 communicate his guesses. This would be suggestion and might be seized upon by the patient. It is up to the pre-clear to find out. The auditor, for instance, could not have known where on the time track the pre-clear’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 psycho-somatic illness, then, is not an essential part of dianetic diagnosis.

  What we are interested in is the mechanical operation 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 establish the length of time a case should take, how difficult the case will be, etc. And we need only a few of these.

  This further simplifies into a code:

  1. Perception, over or under optimum.

  (a) Sight

  (b) Sound

  2. Recall: Under

  (a) Sonic

  (b) Visio

  3. Imagination: Over

  (a) Sonic

  (b) Visio

  In other words, when we examine a patient before we make him a pre-clear (by starting him into therapy) we are interested in three things only: too much or too little perception, too little recall, too much imagination.

  122

  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, visions 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”

  and in that kind only. An active 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” 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, extended 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 perceptions 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 “over optimum” 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.

  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 “over imagination.” In dianetics imaginary sound recall would be hyper-sonic, sight recall -- hyper-visio (hyper= over).

  Let us take specific examples of each one of these three classes and demonstrate how they become fundamental 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 continually 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 hypo-hearing (hypo = under).

  123


  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, hypo-sight.

  Then there is the case of over-perception. 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 interested 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 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 hyper-hearing.

  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 aberrees 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 mean, that 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 sometimes take five hundred hours. It simply means that such a case isn’t any stroll through the park: there is drammer back there in that reactive mind, drammer which says, “Don’t see! Don’t hear!” Some of the engrams in this case demand reduced or no recall. The organs of sight and sound may be highly extended in their reception. This does not mean that anything need be wrong with the way this person perceives sound or light waves and records them. But it does mean that after he has recorded them, he cannot easily get them back out of the standard bank because the reactive engram bank has set up circuits (occlusion demon circuits) to keep him from finding out about his past. There are, of course, greater or lesser degrees of recall.

  The test is simple. Tell the patient wide awake to go back to the time he was entering the room. Ask him what was being said. If he can “hear” it wide awake, he has sonic recall.

  The auditor knows very well what was said, for if he means to use this test, he utters a certain set of words and notes the actual sounds present. Therefore, if the patient falls into the following category, the “dub-in,” the auditor will be apprised of that.

  The sight recall test is equally simple. Show the patient a book with an illustration.

  After a time interval, ask him to “go back” while he is wide awake and look at that book “in his mind” and see if he can see it. If he can’t, this is hypo-visio.

  More tests similar to this will clearly establish whether or not our patient is recall blind and deaf or whether he falls into the next group:

  124

  The over-active imagination which enthusiastically “dubs-in” sight and sound for the patient without knowledge is something which is definitely a hindrance to fast therapy. There are many demon circuits which snarl up thinking, but these particular “dub-in” demons mean that the operator is going to get a most awful cargo of what the auditors colloquially call

  “garbage.” There is, as they further use some of the doubtlessly disgraceful terminology which, despite anything one can do, keeps rising up in this field, something at work in the brain which is a “lie factory.”

  The patient asked to recount the conversation as he entered the door by “hearing it”

  again may confidently start in to give forth all manner of speech which was entirely paraphrase or utterly fictitious. Asked to tell about the picture and page he is shown, he will “see” vividly a lot more than was there or something entirely different. If he is doubtful about it, that is a healthy sign.

  If he is certain, beware, for it is a demon circuit “dubbing in” without his analytical knowledge and the auditor will have to listen to more incidents which never happened than he could begin to catalogue and will have to sort out and pick his way through this “garbage”

  continually to get his pre-clear to a point where the data is reliable. (And it isn’t a matter of grading “garbage” by its improbability -- truth is always stranger than fiction; it is a matter of trying to reduce engrams which are not present or by-pass engrams which are present and so on in a tangled hash.)

  The optimum pre-clear would be one who had average 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. In the psychosomatic line he may have arthritis, gall-bladder trouble, dermatitis, migraine headaches and flat feet. Or he may have that much more horrible aberration -- pride in being average and

  “adjusted.” He is still a relatively easy case to clear.

  In the case which has sonic and visio shut-off without “dub-in” we are dealing with engrams which have shut down some of the primary working mechanisms of the mind. The auditor will have to slog through hours and hours and hours of trying to contact engrams when the patient cannot hear them or see them. A case which merely has a shut-down sonic recall still means that the auditor is going to do a lot more work than on an average case. This case is very, very far from impossible to resolve. That is not the idea here, to frighten off any attempt on such a case. But this case will only be resolved after a great deal of persistent effort. Such a person may be apparently very successful. He may be enormously intelligent. He may have few or no psycho-somatic ills. Yet he will prove to have a crammed engram bank, any part of which may come into restimulation at any time and swamp him. Usually, however, this type of case is quite worried and anxious about many things, and such worry and anxiety may put a little more time on the worksheet.

  In the case of the “dub-in” who doesn’t know it, where circuits are giving him back altered recall, we have a case which may very likely prove to be very long and require artful treatment. For there is a “lie factory” somewhere in that engram bank. This case may be the soul of truthfulness in his everyday life. But when he starts tackling his engrams, they have content which makes him give out material which is not there.

  Sharply and clearly, then, without further reservation or condition, this is dianetic diagnosis: The aberration is the engram content; the psycho-somatic illness is the former injury.

  The perceptions of sight and sound, under-optimum recall, over-optimum imagination regulate the length of the case.

  If the auditor wants to be fancy, he can list the general tone scale position of the individual mentally and physically. The woman who is dul
l and apathetic is, of course, around Tone 0.5, in the Zone Zero part of the dynamic scale earlier in the book. If the man is angry or 125

  hostile, the auditor can mark him down as a 1.5 or somewhere generally in the Zone One range of the survival scale. These markings would apply to the probable average tone of the aggregate engrams in the reactive mind. This is interesting because it means that a Zone Zero person is far more likely to be ill and is a slightly harder case than a Zone One person: And, as therapy raises tone to Zone Four, the 1.5 is closer to the goal.

  It is difficult to estimate time in therapy. As mentioned before, it has several variables such as auditor skill, restimulative elements in the patient’s environment and sheer volume of engrams.

  The auditor is advised, in his first case, to seek out some member of the family or a friend who is as close as possible to the optimum pre-clear, which is to say, a person with visio and sonic recall and average perceptions. In clearing this one case he will learn at first hand much of what can be expected in the engram banks of any mind; and he will see clearly how engrams behave. If the auditor himself falls into one of the harder brackets and if he means to work with somebody in one of these brackets, that poses no great difficulty, either case can be released in a hundredth the time of any former mental healing technique and they can be cleared, if any skill at all is used, in five hundred hours of work per case. But if two cases are particularly difficult, before they work on each other each would be wise to find and clear a nearly optimum pre-clear. That way each will be a competent operator when the rougher cases are approached.

  Thus, diagnosis. The other perceptions, recalls and imaginations are interesting but not vital in measuring case time. I.Q., unless it falls down into the feeble-minded level, is no great factor. And even then the I.Q. of any patient goes up like a skyrocket with clearing and rises all the while during the work.

  There are organic insanities. Iatrogenic psychoses (caused by doctors) are equivocal in dianetics, for a part of the machinery may have been wrecked. Nevertheless, with many organic psychoses a case can be improved by dianetics even if an optimum cannot be reached.