Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  Now let us suppose that Alexander, with only education to turn him against his father, with only prayers to ask him to conquer the world, not engrams, had been cleared. Answer: given a sufficient and rational reason, he would most certainly have been able to conquer the world and at eighty might well have been alive to enjoy it.

  How can we assume this?

  The manic with 500 units of directed purpose has been cleared. He now has 1000 units of sentiently directed purpose. He is exactly twice as forceful as he was when he was in a forceful manic and his basic purpose may be similar but now can be realized and will not turn on him the moment he has reached a goal or failed.

  This is clinical, the theory behind life force. It was formulated in an effort to explain observed phenomena.

  The theory may be wrong, the observed data is not. But the theory must be somewhere close to right because with it could be predicted considerable phenomena which had not been 150

  known to exist before: in other words, it is a profitable theory. It followed after dianetics was well formulated, for a strange fact, vital to the therapist, turned up: the pre-clear advanced in therapy in exact ratio to the amount of emotional charge released from his reactive bank.

  The purpose and persistency of the aberree was hindered in ratio to the amount of emotional charge within his engram bank. His recovery of survival potential increased in ratio to the amount of energy freed from the engram bank.

  His health increased in ratio to the amount of energy feed from the engram bank.

  The engrams which contained the greatest discharge were those which centered around loss of imagined survival factors.

  Hence, this theory of life force was formulated. Any manic cleared seemed to demonstrate far more actual power and energy than before he was cleared. And any “normal”

  cleared increased in accessible life force units to compare with any manic cleared.

  Undoubtedly further work and observation will refine this theory. At the present moment, however, it serves. It is one of those “scientific theories” thrown in to explain an operation or a long series of observations. In this case it happens to be squarely aligned with the basic tenets of dianetics, for it predicts data which can then be found and does not throw out former data predicted by the basic mathematics and philosophy of dianetics.

  Here we are speaking, actually, not of this slippery term, emotion, but, we believe, life force. This life force is considerably enhanced by success and pleasure in general and is, according to this theory, augmented in terms of arbitrary units, by pleasure. In other words, pleasure is a thing which recharges the batteries or permits them to be recharged and in a clear, far from leading to softness, leads to renewed activity since indolence is engramic.

  Pleasure is a vitally important factor: creative and constructive endeavor, the overcoming of not unknowable obstacles toward some goal, the contemplation of past goals reached all combine to recharge life force. The person, for instance, who has been an enormous success and then loses that success and so becomes ill is following no rational cycle but an engramic command cycle. In a way he has disobeyed an engramic command and having disobeyed, suffers pain. The “child wonder” who early “burns out” is actually, via therapy, about as burned out as a banked furnace. Any “child wonder” is a forced affair: think of the dreams mama must have poured through his engrams. She’s hurt: “Oh, I’ll never forgive myself! If I have ruined my child, I will never forgive myself. My child, that’s to be the world’s greatest violinist!” or “Oh, you brute! You have struck me! You have injured our child. I’ll show you. I’ll make him the greatest child pianist in all Brooklyn! He’s to be a beautiful child, a wonder child! And you’ve struck him, you brute. Oh, I am going to sit right here until you go away!” (Actual engrams.) The last computes that the way to get even with papa is to be the greatest pianist in all Brooklyn. The child is a great success -- musical ear, practice and great “purpose.” He gets this engram restimulated constantly by his mother. But then, one day he loses a contest, he knows suddenly he is no longer a child, that he has failed.

  His purpose wavers. He gets headaches (papa’s blow) and is at last “neurotic” and “burned out.” Cleared he went back to being a pianist, not as an “adjusted” person but one of the best paid concert pianists in Hollywood. Music aligned with basic purpose.

  Again, in another manic example, a patient who had been some time in therapy -- not the first to do this by far -- raved that he had been “turned-on” by dianetics. He was walking about a foot off the earth, chest punched out and so forth. His glasses suddenly would not fit him, his eyes were too good. He was a beaming, powerful case of euphoria.

  Artificial restimulation had touched a manic engram, had brought it into key for the first time in his life. He felt wonderful. The auditor knew that he was due for a complete come down within thirty-six hours to three days (the usual time) because an artificial restimulation, by therapy, had tapped the engram. It happened that his grandmother had told her daughter that 151

  she must not abort the child because someday it might become a “fine upstanding man or beautiful woman.” He was upstanding all right: it almost strained his back muscles. Another glance at the engram in therapy and the manic phase was gone.

  This manic, then, as in the case of the boy wonder, can be assumed to have gathered up available life force and suddenly channeled it along basic purpose lines, making a high level of concentration of life force. In the case of the pianist his cleared force was well above the manic force. In the other case, currently in process, a level has been reached which is approaching the former level and will surpass it by far.

  In the same way an enthusiasm for a project will channel life force along some purpose line and necessity will suddenly rob back from engrams enough power to carry an individual far, although he has no active manics whatever.

  Now we come to the heart of this matter: the pro-survival engram. It is pseudo-survival like all engramic “assist,” a mirage which dissolves and leaves burning sands.

  Formerly we spoke mainly of contra-survival engrams. These lie across the dynamics of the individual and his basic purpose.

  The contra-survival engram is, to the dynamics, like a log jam which dams a necessary river. The dynamic is blocked in some degree. Any blockage to any one of the four dynamics (or any section of that spectrum) causes a dispersal of the flow. It does not make less dynamic, particularly, but it does misdirect it in the same order that the river, blocked in its natural flow, might become five streams going in various directions or flood a fertile pasture it should merely have watered.

  The pro-survival engram alleges to assist (but does not actually assist) the dynamic on its way. It pretends it is the dynamic. In the analogy of the river, the pro-survival engram would be a canal which took the river’s force and sent it off in some unintended direction. The pro-survival engram is not a manic; it can and does contain at times manic phrases.

  A contra-survival engram says, “He’s worthless, damn him, let’s kill him.”

  The pro-survival engram says: “I am saving him.” If it added: “He is a darling and a very wonder with the ladies,” it would then be a pro-survival with a manic.

  In terms of the descriptic which defines the survival dynamic and the suppressor earlier in this book, the contra-survival engram would be part of the suppressor (an aberrated part) and the pro-survival engram would be part of the dynamic thrust (an aberrated part).

  Neither one of these things is actually a sentient and computable portion of survival dynamic or suppressor.

  The engram (delirium from illness, perhaps) which says, “I will stay with you, darling, so long as you are sick” is an apparent but wholly shadow-stuff part of the survival dynamic.

  But the reactive mind has no sense of time when restimulated and this engram, keyed-in and constantly restimulated by some concept in it such as an odor or a person’s voice who may or may not be the original person, demands that the perso
n who has it be ill just as he was ill when it was said. This way, according to our moron, the reactive mind, lies survival: “I had some one taking care of me when I was ill. I need some one to take care of me. I must be ill.”

  Here is the basic pattern of all sympathy engrams. Here is the basic pattern of the engram which will contain the chronic psycho-somatic illness in any patient. The variety is, of course, very large but all insist that the individual who has them be ill in order to survive.

  The suppressor-type engram, always contra-survival, can be cut into restimulation in exactly the same way as the pro-survival engram. An engram is an engram and all the mechanics are the same. The fact that the analytical mind cannot time the engram can make any engram seem omnipresent. Time can “heal” the experiences of the analytical mind, perhaps, but 152

  not the reactive mind which has no time, a fact which makes time not the Great Healer but the Great Charlatan. There may be no actuality at all in this suppressor data. It is false data. Such engrams let an individual, for instance, see a butterfly and then tell him it is dangerous: he then comes to detest spring because that is the time he sees butterflies. This engram may say:

  “You’re all against me. You’re against everything I do,” which was actually Mama making a stand against her husband and mother-in-law. It contains a concept, a recording of the sound of a sewing machine as well. The individual possessing this engram hears a sewing machine (if this engram has at some time been keyed-in) at a moment when he is weary and dull and, looking toward the machine (he never identifies the actual sound:these engrams protect themselves), sees his wife. She is the associative restimulator, something his analytical mind, told to scent danger, picks up as the cause. So he searches around and finds something he is angry about (something almost “rational”) and begins to tell her she is against him. Or it can be an engram of such low emotional tone that it is an apathy, and so he sits down and weeps and moans that she is against him. If, during “unconsciousness” at birth, the doctor said he’d have to spank him, the individual possessing this engram howls and gets headaches when he is spanked and when grown spanks his children as the strongest suppressor he can think of.

  There is a difference, then, between the pro- and contra-engrams, particularly the real sympathy pro-engram and the contra-engram. And it is a difference, even if we have been long on the road in this chapter, which is of vital interest to the auditor.

  All the real reluctance he will see in pre-clears during therapy will come from these sympathy pro-survival engrams. These add up into some very weird computations. They tell the patient that he had better not “get rid of it” and so the patient struggles to retain his engrams.

  Such an engram is very common. A typical case is Mama pushing off Papa, who insists he cannot afford a child: the struggle injures the child and in the “unconsciousness” he receives, of course, an engram: Mama is refusing to get rid of it. Mama is on baby’s side, therefore baby had better do exactly as Mama says and “not get rid of it.” This aligns with purpose, the deepest purpose, to survive. If he gets rid of his engrams, he will die because getting rid of it means death, for Mama said she would die if she got rid of it. Further, on up through life, Mama may have the nasty habit of telling him when he is ill that she will “take care of her baby and protect him from his father,” and this makes a new force in the old computation.

  Thus we come to the ally computation. This will be the chief and number one struggle of the auditor, the thing which will most elusively resist him, the thing which lies down close to the core of a person.

  The ally computation is severe enough that an auditor once said that a man is not victimized by his enemies, he is murdered by his friends. Engramically speaking, that is quite true.

  The only aberration and psycho-somatic ill the patient will continually hold to is a pro-survival engram which is part of an ally computation. That could be written fifty times here without being stressed enough. It is most important, it is the first thing which the auditor is going to buck when he enters a case, the first thing he must discharge if he wishes therapy to go swiftly. He may have to touch and reduce many contra-survival engrams, for the come swiftly enough when called, before he can even get an idea of what the ally computation is. But when he gets an ally computation he had better run it out and discharge all its emotion or the case will hang fire.

  The ally computation is the reactive mind level moronism that survival depends on Grandma or Aunt Sue or some serving maid thirty years dead. The attendants of the individual when he was ill, the people who begged his pregnant mother to stop trying to abort him, or fed him or otherwise tried to keep him from being hurt: these are the allies.

  The reactive mind operates wholly on two-valued logic. Things are life or they are death, they are right or they are wrong, just as the engram wording states. And the personnel of engrams are friends or enemies. The friends, the allies, mean Life! The enemies mean 153

  Death! There is no middle ground. Any restimulator or associated restimulator for the pro-survival engram means Life: and any restimulator or associated restimulator for a contra-survival engram means Death!

  The auditor, of course, may be a really restimulative person (one who is a pseudo-father, a pseudo-lover of mother before birth, etc.) but he is always an associative restimulator, the person who may take away these terribly, horribly vital things, the pro-survival engrams.

  The contra-survival engrams outbalance this factor and, of course, the analytical mind of the pre-clear is always all for the auditor and the therapy.

  The trouble comes when the analytical mind is shut down by restimulation and the auditor is seeking the ally computation. Then the pre-clear’s reactive mind dodges and avoids.

  The ally computation, however, is simple to trace. And it is very vital to trace it, for this computation may contain the bulk of all the emotional discharge of the case. Freeing the complete ally computation wholly before basic-basic is reached is wholly impossible. But as much life force as possible must be restored to the pre-clear to make the case work well.

  For the ally computation, above all things, encysts the life force of the individual. Here is caught and held the free feeling, the very heartbeat of life itself. A pre-clear is only placed in apathy by ally computations. The body can be almost dead in the presence of antagonism and still rally and fight. But it cannot fight its friends. The law of affinity has been aberrated into an entrance into the reactive engram bank. And that law, even when twisted with the murky shadows of unreason in the reactive mind, still works. It is a good law. It is too good when the auditor is trying to find and reduce engrams which are making the pre-clear ache with arthritis or bleed internally with stomach ulcers.

  Why can’t he “get rid of” his arthritis? Mama said, when she gracefully fell over a pig,

  “Oh, I can’t get up! Oh, my poor, poor baby. Oh, my baby! I wonder if I hurt my poor, poor baby. Oh, I hope my baby is still alive! Please God let him live. Please God let me keep my baby. Please!”

  Only the God to which she prayed was the Reactive Mind, which makes one of its idiot computations on the basis of everything is equal to everything. A holder, a prayer for life, a thoroughly bruised baby’s spine, Mama’s sympathy, a pig grunt, a prayer to God, all these things are equal to the reactive mind and so we have a fine case of arthritis, particularly since our patient sought “survival” by marrying a girl with a voice just like Mama’s sounded when he was in the womb. Ask him to get rid of his arthritis? The reactive mind says “NO!” Arthritis is a baby is a pig grunt is a prayer to God is wife’s sympathy is being poor is Mama’s voice and all these things are desirable.

  He’s kept himself poor and he’s kept his arthritis and he married a wife who would make a harlot blush and this is pro-survival: wonderful stuff, survival, when the reactive mind computes it! And in the case of the ulcers, here was baby poked full of holes (Mama is having a terrible time trying to abort him so she can pretend a miscarriage, and she us
es assorted household instruments thrust into the cervix to do it) and some of the holes are through and through his baby’s abdomen and stomach: he will live because he is surrounded by protein and has a food supply and because the sac is like one of these puncture-proof inner tubes that seals up every hole. (Nature has been smart about attempted abortion for a long, long time.) It so happens that Mama in this case was not a monologist, although most of Mama’s activity on this line is a dramatization and has conversation with it; but it also so happens that Grandma lives next door and she comes over unexpectedly, shortly after the latest effort to make baby meet oblivion.

  Grandma may have been an attempted abortionist in her day but now she is old and highly moral and besides, this baby is not giving her any morning sickness: she therefore finds much to censure when she sees a bloody orangewood stick in the bathroom. Baby is still 154