Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  A young girl, with sonic recall, but with extended hearing and such a complete imbalance of the endocrine system that she had become an old woman at twenty-two, was worked for seventy-five hours before she contacted anything in the basic area. This is almost incredible but it happened. In a patient with sonic shut-off and off his time track, seventy-five hours of work would just about get the wheels greased. But this girl, having sonic recall, should have been well on the road to being clear and she had yet to touch basic-basic.

  By repeater technique and repeater alone the case was finally resolved. It contained practically no holders or bouncers. It simply appeared that the whole prenatal area was a blank.

  Now it happens that an engram, being not a memory with reason in it, is just a set of waves or some other type of recording which impinges itself on the analytical mind and the somatic mind and runs the voice and muscles and other parts of the body. The analytical mind, to justify what it finds going forward, and cut down by the engram in dramatization, may be interjecting data to make this action seem reasonable -- to justity it. But this does not make an engram sentient. When an engram is first approached in therapy it appears to be absent entirely.

  It may be that three sessions will be required to “develop” this engram. As many are worked, this does not mean three blank sessions, but it means that the “I,” in returning, must pass over an engram a few times for the engram to “develop.” This is important to know. Just as you ask the mind for a datum one week and don’t find it (in an aberree) and ask it again the next week and find it, so with engrams. A cardinal principle in therapy is that if you keep asking for it, you will eventually get the engram. Returning over and over the prenatal area will, of itself alone, eventually develop the engrams in it so that the analytical mind can attack them and reduce them. This is slow freight. The repeater technique -- although the engram is still in need of development by several sessions -- speeds the process immensely.

  In the case of this young girl it probably would have taken another fifty or sixty hours of work to contact the engrams unless a technique like repeater had been used.

  Repeater technique resolved it when the auditor noted that she kept saying, “I’m sure there’s a good reason why I feel bad up in my childhood. After all, my brother raped me when I was five. I’m sure it’s up in my childhood, much later. My mother was terribly jealous of me. I’m sure it’s later.”

  This young lady, as might be imagined, had studied some school of mental healing in college which thought sex or eating vitamins caused aberrations of the mind and she had often held forth on the fact that while she was not averse to what she called “analysis” she did think it dull to expect a foetus to hear anything. She would go into the area before birth and declare she was quite comfortable. But birth was not in sight. That is important. The basic engram or engrams in the basic area -- around the embryo period -- cannot vanish and will not vanish short of therapy, and when birth cannot even be contacted by so much as one somatic, it is certain that something lies before it. If birth were the first engram, everybody could be cleared in five hours. Birth can even be in sight and there may still remain half a hundred severe prenatal experiences. In her case, nothing was in sight. Her educational pattern had slowed the case: she was always trying to sit in present time and “remember” with a memory so full of occlusions that she couldn’t have recalled her mother’s right name. (She had acquired this from being in the hands of mental practitioners for ten years who had asked her to do nothing but

  “remember.”) As has been said, she was quite comfortable before birth, sensed the amniotic fluid and was certain that life in the womb was a joyous life for all. The incongruity that she could experience the sensations of this amniotic fluid and floating comfort and warmth and a continued belief that there was no prenatal memory escaped her utterly. The auditor made no 141

  slightest effort to convince her. Knowing his business, he merely kept sending her back and forth, trying this mechanism or that.

  She finally wanted to know if there had to be prenatal experience and was told that what was there was there, that if there was no prenatal memory then she wouldn’t recall any but that if there was, she might. This is a good, equivocal attitude for an auditor. Dianetics, after all, as one auditor put it, “just shows the yard goods” and makes no sales effort at all.

  The auditor had been using repeater technique on varieties of phrases. She was moving on the track so there must be a denyer present. And he had utterly run out of ideas when he realized, suddenly, that she was very handy with that phrase, “much later.”

  AUDITOR: Say “Much later” and return into the prenatal area.

  GIRL: “Much later. Much later,” etc. (very bored and uncooperative).

  AUDITOR: Continue please. (Never say “Go ahead” for that means to do just that. Say

  “Continue” when you want them to keep on progressing along an engram or repeating and

  “Return over it” when re-running an engram already run once.) GIRL: “Much later. Much...” I have a somatic in my face! It feels like I am being pushed.

  (This was good news for the auditor knew she had a mid-prenatal pain shut-off which prevented later somatics from appearing.)

  AUDITOR: Contact it more closely and continue to repeat.

  GIRL: “Much later. Much later.” It’s getting stronger. (Naturally. On repeater technique, the somatic gets stronger until the phrase appears, exactly right. On a non-sonic case it impinges itself indirectly on “I”; in a sonic, the sound comes through as sound.) AUDITOR: Continue.

  GIRL: “Much...” I hear a voice! There. That’s it. Why, that’s my father’s voice!

  AUDITOR: Listen to the words and repeat them, please.

  GIRL: He’s talking to my mother. Say, this face pressure is uncomfortable. It keeps going up and down on me. It hurts!

  AUDITOR: Repeat his words please.

  GIRL: He’s saying: “Oh honey, I won’t come in you now. It’s better to wait until much later to have one.” And there’s my mother’s voice. Say, this pressure is hurting me. No, it’s eased up considerably. Funny, the minute I contacted his voice, it got less.

  AUDITOR: What is your mother saying, please, if you hear her?

  GIRL: She’s saying: “I don’t want you in there at all then!” She’s mad! Say, the somatic stopped. (Coitus had ended at this point.)

  AUDITOR: Please return to the start of this and recount.

  GIRL: (Regains the beginning, somatic returns) I wonder what they’re doing? (then a pause) I hear a squishing sound! (then a pause and embarrassment) Oh!

  AUDITOR: Recount the engram please.

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  GIRL: There’s a sort of a faint rhythm at first and then it gets faster. I can hear breathing.

  Now it’s beginning to bear down harder but a lot less than it did the first time. Then it eases up and I hear my father’s voice: “Oh, honey I won’t come in you now. It’s better to wait until much later to have one. I’m not too sure I like children that well. Besides, my job ...” And my mother must shove at him because there’s a sharper somatic here. “I don’t want you in there at all then. You cold fish!”

  AUDITOR: Return to the beginning and recount it again, please.

  GIRL: (Recounts it several times, somatic finally vanishes. She feels quite cheerful about it but doesn’t think to mention that she doubted prenatals existed.) This is repeater technique at work. This particular case had had about two hundred phrases thrown at her for repeater technique without finding one of them that would fit. In the first place, there were only a few lower engrams which the file clerk was willing to give out and the auditor was guessing at the whole gamut of deniers. A later incident might have contained -- and did but no somatic appeared -- numbers of the phrases he used. But the file clerk was willing to settle for this one for it was early and could be erased.

  The file clerk rarely hands out something in a badly occluded case which cannot be reduced to recession.
And an auditor never leaves an engram so offered until he has made every effort with many recountings to reduce it. The file clerk, in this case, by the bye, would have let down the auditor by putting forth such an engram as birth, which would not have lifted and which would have caused a lot of lost work and given the patient a headache for a few days. The auditor would have let the file clerk down if he had not reduced the engram offered by making the girl go over it several times until the somatic was gone and the voice faded out.

  The reason this engram stayed hidden was because its content said so. Actually it was a coitus. As an engram it seemed to say that the incidents would be found later on in life.

  Further, as an engram, it said that it was not to be entered.

  Repeater technique will sometimes embroil a patient in trouble of a minor sort by getting him “sucked into” incidents which will not lift. This is not common but the file clerk occasionally hands out a late incident, rather than an early one. However, this is not an error on the part of the file clerk. Remember, he has these engrams filed by subject, somatic and time, and the auditor can use any one of these. When the file clerk responds and hands out a somatic on a repeater phrase the auditor has gleaned from the pre-clear’s chatter or has guessed himself and yet that somatic will not lift or no voice appears with it (in a sonic case, or merely won’t lift with a non-sonic), the file clerk had to unstack a pile of material. Therefore, the auditor, realizing this, finding that a voice does not appear or that the somatic will not lift, has the preclear repeat the same phrase and tells him to go earlier and earlier. Another somatic may turn up in a different place in the body. The file clerk has gotten an even earlier one loose, now that a small amount of trouble has been taken from what he could first get. Now this earlier one is addressed similarly. It may get mediumly strong as a somatic, the pre-clear repeating the phrase all the while, and still no voice may appear. The auditor then sends the pre-clear earlier. The file clerk again has managed to get out an even earlier one, now that something has been taken from the second. This time again, an even earlier somatic turns on, probably down around the basic area in a case which has not previously contacted this area, and this time a voice can be heard. The engram reduces. The file clerk, in short, was willing to risk trouble in order to get several somatics unstacked and let the auditor get a basic incident.

  There are variations on this sort of thing. As the filing system is by subject, somatic and time, the auditor can use other things than phrases. He can send a pre-clear to the “highest intensity of a somatic,” and often results may be obtained, though this is not as reliable as by subject nor as foolproof. The pre-clear, incidentally, does not mind going to any “highest intensity” of somatic because somatics are about a thousandth part as strong as the original agony, though they are quite strong enough. In present time with the pre-clear not in therapy, the intensity of one of these somatics can be a drastic affair as witness the migraine headache.

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  Taking the migraine, a pre-clear can be returned to the very moment of its reception when one would think its intensity would be the highest and yet find a mild, dull ache such as one would get with a hangover. This is part of the principle that any entrance of a case is better than a case not entered at all. For by return with standard reverie technique the source is approached, and if the source is contacted at all, the power of the engram to aberrate has become reduced in strength no matter how many mistakes the auditor makes.

  Returning to “maximum intensity” of a somatic, then, is nothing very painful. Actual maximum intensity is when the pre-clear is awake before the contact with the incident is made.

  But in returning to “maximum intensity” the incident may often be contacted and reduced. If

  “maximum intensity” however, contains in its engram the phrases, “I can’t stand it!” “It’s killing me,” or “I’m terrified,” then expect our pre-clear to respond to it in some such way. If he does not respond, then he has an emotional shut-off, which is another problem which will be taken up later.

  Similarly, the auditor can handle his pre-clear in time. There exists a very accurate clock in the mind. The file clerk is very well acquainted with this clock and wherever possible will comply. The auditor who wants the patient to go “six minutes before this phrase is uttered”

  will generally find that his pre-clear is now six minutes before it, even though the incident is prenatal. The auditor can bring his pre-clear forward, then, minute by minute as he desires. He can take a pre-clear straight through an incident by announcing, “It is one minute later, it is two minutes later. Three minutes have gone by,” and so forth. The auditor does not have to wait for those minutes to elapse; he just announces them. He can make a pre-clear go through time at five minute intervals or hour intervals or day intervals, and unless there is engramic material which holds him or otherwise affects the operation, the auditor can move the pre-clear on the time track at will. It would be very nice if the auditor could send the pre-clear to conception and then tell him it is one hour later, two hours later and so forth to pick up the first engram.

  However, there are more factors involved than time, and the plan, though pretty, is not feasible. The time shift is generally used when the auditor is trying to get the pre-clear ahead of an incident to make sure that he really has a beginning. By returning the pre-clear by five or ten minute intervals, the auditor may sometimes discover that he is running backwards into a very long and complicated incident and that the headache he has been seeking to alleviate on the preclear was received, actually, hours before the period in which he thought it had initially been received. In such a case there is a second engram appended to an earlier engram and the auditor cannot lift the second one until he has the first one.

  Actually time shift is of limited use. The auditor who tries to go chasing backwards through time will find that he will have on his hands an artificially restimulated case and that the work is much impeded. Repeater technique works best and is most easily handled by the file clerk. The auditor uses a time shift to get the pre-clear as close to basic area (early prenatal) as possible and then generally, if the file clerk doesn’t simply go to work handing out engrams which can be washed, one after the other, the auditor uses repeater technique. Time shift and

  “running down a somatic” have some limited use. Some experimentation will show about how much use they have.

  The laws of regression are these:

  (1)

  A returned patient reacts more, theoretically, to those commands which are earlier than he is on the time track and less to those commands which are later than his point in time.

  (2)

  A pre-clear reacts to those engramic commands which are: (a) in chronic restimulation, or (b) to which he is nearest on the time track. Thus, if an engram says, “I’m afraid,”

  he is. If it says, “I’d rather die than face this,” he would. If the command to which he is near says, “I’m sleepy,” he will be. If it says, “Forget it,” he will. Commands in chronic restimulation give a false color to the personality: “I can never be sure of anything,” “I don’t know,” “I can’t hear anything” are all possibly in chronic 144

  restimulation. If the file clerk won’t give them up, then keep working the case anyway around these. They will give up after a while.

  (3)

  The action of the pre-clear on the time track and the condition of the track are regulated exclusively by engramic commands classifiable as bouncers, holders, denyers and groupers and misdirectors. (These conditions, it is repeated, are quite variable, as variable as language: “I don’t know whether I am coming or going,” for instance in an engram makes it very confusing. “I can’t go back at this point” makes the pre-clear keep progressing later and later.)

  (4)

  The engramic command manifests itself either in the awake speech of the pre-clear after a session of therapy or is inadvertently announced as a supposedly “analytical” thought when he nea
rs the vicinity of the command.

  (5)

  The engram is not a sentient, rationalized memory but a collection of unanalyzed perceptions, and it will develop into contact simply by the process of returning through it, to it, over it or asking for it.

  (6)

  The file clerk will give the auditor whatever can be extracted from the engram bank.

  The auditor must aid the file clerk by reducing in charge or severity everything the file clerk offers. This is done by making the patient recount it. (Otherwise the file clerk gets so much material piled around that, with this in restimulation, he can no longer get at the files. The auditor who bucks the file clerk is not rare. The file clerk who will buck an auditor except by withholding data which will not reduce has yet to be found.) The techniques available to the auditor are as follows: 1.

  Returning, in which the pre-clear is sent as early as possible on his track before therapy itself is engaged upon.

  2.

  Repeater technique, by which the file clerk is asked for data on certain subjects, particularly those affecting the return and travel on the time track, and which aid the ability of the pre-clear to contact engrams.

  3.

  Time shift, by which a pre-clear can be moved short or long distances on the track by specific announcement of the amount of time forward the pre-clear is to go or time backwards, or return or progression through intervals of time. (It is also useful to find out if the pre-clear is moving or which direction he is moving on the time track in order to discover the action some engram may be having upon him.) 4.

  Somatic location, by which the moment of reception of the somatic is located, in an effort to discover whether it is received in this engram or to find an engram containing it.

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  CHAPTER VII

  Emotion and the Life Force

  One of the largest roles in therapy is played by Emotion. In the second book we covered this subject and divided it tentatively as a theory only into three divisions: (a) the emotions contained in the command of engrams whereby physical pain became confused with emotions; (b) the emotions contained as endocrine reactions subject to the analytical mind of the clear and the analytical mind and reactive mind of the aberree; and (c) the emotions contained in engrams which bound up free units of Life force.