Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  This prenatal ESP does not in fact exist. It has been proven, after considerable test, that whenever the returned pre-clear thinks he sees something, the scenery itself is mentioned in the engrams and gives him an imaginary picture of it. There is no prenatal ESP, in other words.

  There are only descriptions and actions which suggest scenery and these suggestions, operating now upon the imagination, bring about the supposed visio.

  This is most chronic with patients who have high powered lie factories. When the auditor sees this he begins to form a notion of the case he is engaged upon, he knows “dub-in sonic” may be used and he should find and discharge all painful emotion he can reach for it is this painful emotion which so disposes a case to avoid. He can find, then, the lie factory itself, not the lie factory of the lie factory which produces lie factories, but the actual engram which causes all this delusion.

  However, never bring a pre-clear up short on this material. Don’t tell him it is imaginary, you’ll drive the lie factory into higher effort. For there are sympathy computations here, despairful losses, great prenatal pain and childhood neglect. And it would take little to shatter what self-confidence this patient has managed to assemble. Therefore walk softly, look for despair charges, allies, sympathy engrams and get the lie factory. Then the case will settle down and progress to clear.

  ELECTRIC SHOCK

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  It has been found important, in entering a case to locate and relieve all engrams caused by electric shock of whatever kind. These seem to produce a grouping of engrams, whether they are received prenatally (as some have been), accidentally, or at the hands of psychiatrists.

  Any electric shock seems to have more than usual force in the engram bank and apparently deranges the memory files of both past and future events surrounding the shock area. Further, electric shock injury contains a great depth of “unconsciousness” which thereafter holds the analytical mind in a reduced state.

  TACIT CONSENT

  In the case of two pre-clears 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.

  For example, pre-clear A has an ally computation concerning a dog. He unknowingly seeks to protect this “pro-survival” engram within himself although, of course, failure to release it will hinder therapy. As he audits pre-clear B he has a tendency to project his own problems into pre-clear B, which is to say he has some slight confusion of identity. If pre-clear B is known to have some “pro-survival” engram about a dog, then pre-clear A, auditing, will actually avoid making pre-clear B contact B’s own engram. This is a mistaken idea that by letting B keep his dog engram, A can retain his dog engram. This is “tacit consent.” It might be summed as a bargain: “If you don’t make me get well, I won’t make you get well.” This should be guarded against: once known that such a condition exists and that such reluctance to clear the other is manifested, “tacit consent” ceases.

  It may also happen that a husband and wife may have a mutual period of quarrels or 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.

  Tacit Consent is not easily recognized by the individuals so involved, and pre-clears, alternating as auditors, should be very wary of it for it cannot do other than slow a case.

  EMOTION AND PAIN SHUT-OFFS

  A case which manifests no emotion or cannot feel pain when emotion and pain should be present in some incident is suffering from a “feeling” shut-off: this most likely will be found in the prenatal area. The word “feeling” means both pain and emotion: thus the phrase, “I can’t feel anything,” may be an anesthetic for both.

  If an exteriorized view of the incident (where the patient sees himself and is not in himself) or what pretends to be prenatal “ESP” is present, the emotional shut-off probably stems from painful emotion engrams in late life or at least post-birth. If there is no exteriorized view and the patient is within himself, and yet no sharpness of pain or emotion manifests itself while he is running through an engram, an early emotional shut-off or an early pain shut-off should be suspected and should be located by repeater technique. Run the words “No emotion”

  until a paraphrase is obtained: run the words “I can’t feel,” or some other phrase meaning the same thing and the patient, if the engrams are available and are not suppressed by others, will eventually respond.

  It may happen that a case may “work” very well, which is to say that engrams present themselves and can be run and reduced, without emotion manifesting itself as part of the content and with somatics which are dull and not so much pain as simply pressure. If the pain and emotion shut-offs do not yield at first to repeater technique, many engrams may have to be 200

  run in the basic area without pain or emotion but only with pressure and word content. In such a case pain and emotion can eventually be contacted, after which therapy is more beneficial.

  EXTERIORIZED VIEWS

  Whenever you find a patient, returned, outside himself and seeing himself, that patient is off the track. He should not be told so but the despair charges, which is to say, the painful emotion engrams, should be found as soon as possible and discharged. This is something of the same mechanism as the ESP described above.

  TELEPATHY

  Every few cases some pre-clear may try to palm off telepathy as an aberrative factor.

  This is more rainbow chasing. There may be telepathy but so far as research has shown the foetus doesn’t receive any and even if he receives it, it is not aberrative in any way.

  Exhaustive tests were made on telepathy and ESP and in every case an explanation was found which did not need to go into mind reading or radar sight.

  When a patient tries to tell the auditor that he is reciting mother’s thoughts received prenatally, be certain that somewhere around there is an engram in which she says these exact words aloud. Mothers, especially when aberrated severely and especially when aberrated severely enough to attempt abortion, have many engrams they dramatize. The power of the dramatization commonly manifests itself as monologues. Some mothers have a very great deal to say to themselves when alone. All of this speech is, of course, transmitted to the child when he is injured, and he may be injured without mother being injured as in an attempted abortion.

  For considerable time after such an injury the child is usually “unconscious” and in pain; he therefore records in engrams these monologues (and often the voice is quite loud). He doesn’t hear it: it is simply cellularly recorded. All such monologuing is aberrative, of course, and produces some remarkable patterns of insanity and neurosis.

  But of telepathy, there is none that is aberrative so far as we know at this time. So the auditor should not accept telepathy any more than he would accept ESP.

  PRENATAL LIVING CONDITIONS

  It is very noisy in the womb. A person may think he has sonic and yet hear no “womb”

  sounds, which means that he does not have sonic but only “dub-in.” Intestinal squeaks and groans, flowing water, belches, flatulation and other body activities of the mother produce a continual sound.

  It is also very tight in later prenatal life.

  In a high blood pressure case, it is extremely horrible in the womb.

  When mother takes quinine a high ringing noise may come into being in the foetal ears as well as her own -- a ringing which will carry through a person’s whole life.

  Mother gets morning sickness, has hiccoughs and gets colds, coughs and sneezes.

  This is prenatal life.

  The only reason anybody “wanted” to “return to the womb” was because somebody hit mother and yelled “Come back here!” so the person does.

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  THE ENGRAM FILING SYSTEM

  Engrams are not filed in the orderly fashion managed by a cleared standard bank.

  Engrams are fi
led in a way which would defy Alexander. Hence, it is difficult to know when the proper consecutive item will appear.

  Time, topic, value, somatic and emotion are the methods of filing.

  The return from basic-basic may be an apparent orderly progress into late life.

  Suddenly a despair charge is triggered and discharged. The auditor looks back at the prenatal area and finds a whole new series of incidents in view. Progress is then begun back to present time, step by step, another discharge is triggered and another series of prenatals come into sight. These are erased and progress is made back toward present time when still another despair charge is released and still more prenatals come to view. These are erased and so forth and so on.

  The engram filing system gives out data by somatic, time, topic, value or emotion.

  Usually the file clerk hands out material on the basis of time and topic.

  E m o t i o n i n t h e

  bank keeps the file clerk from getting at a certain series of incidents; when the emotion is discharged, the incidents become available and incidents are brought out until another emotional charge stops the file clerk. The wit of the auditor is most used, not in getting prenatals, but in finding these later life emotional charges and discharging them.

  All in all the engram filing system is very poor, unlike the standard bank. But it is also very vulnerable now that we understand it.

  The engram filing system data can be erased. Standard bank data cannot be erased.

  Pain is perishable -- pleasure endures.

  ALLEVIATION

  The psycho-analyst or general counselor in human relations is occasionally faced with a type of problem which dianetics, applied in small quantity, can resolve easily.

  It is possible, when a person has been too disturbed by an event of the day to address himself to the problem at hand to alleviate his disturbance with a few minutes of work.

  A sudden change in the aspect of a patient, a sudden deterioration of his serenity, generally stems from some incident which has caused him mental anguish. Although this change of mind has its source in the restimulation of an engram, the moment of restimulation, which is a lock, may be addressed and alleviated with success.

  Using reverie or merely asking the patient to close his eyes, the analyst can request him to return and be in the instant wherein he was disturbed. That instant may be in the same day or the same week as the office call. A moment of analytical shut-down will be discovered wherein some restimulative person or circumstance upset the equilibrium of the patient. This moment is a lock. It can be recounted, ordinarily, as an engram and the latest source of tension will relieve so that work can be continued. The engram itself, upon which the lock depended, may not be accessible without a full dianetic address to the problem.

  The auditor, finding a patient much disturbed, can often save time by relieving the lock which caused the immediate disturbance of the pre-clear.

  Locating locks on a wholesale basis is unremunerative from a dianetic viewpoint since there are thousands and thousands of them in every case. Locating the last lock, which is hindering work, may be of benefit.

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  THE TONE SCALE AND REDUCTION OF ENGRAMS

  Because it is very important, the mechanism of the reduction of a late painful emotion engram must be specifically detailed.

  The uses of reduction on late engrams are wide and various. When the auditor gets into trouble with his pre-clear by some violation of the auditor’s code, he can treat the violation as a painful emotion engram and reduce it, at which moment the effect of his blunder will be gone in the pre-clear. The auditor merely returns the pre-clear back to the blunder and runs the error itself as an engram. When the husband has quarreled with his wife or she has found out some unpleasant thing about his activities, he can treat the quarrel or the discovery as a painful emotion engram and release it with the result of no further worry about it by his wife. When the little boy’s dog has just been run over, the incident can be treated as a painful emotion engram and released. When the pre-clear’s wife has just left him, treat the leaving as a painful emotion engram and release it. Whatever the shock or upset, it can be reduced in an individual by regular reduction technique and the individual will cease to be troubled by it in the painful emotion sense. It does not matter whether the engram occurred two hours or ten years ago, painful emotion can be reduced from it. It is run exactly like any other engram, beginning at the beginning of the first shock with the patient returning to it and continuing far enough along it to adequately embrace its first impact.

  The aspect of this reduction is a pattern which does not much vary. If the news struck the individual into apathy, then, as he recounts, he will, unless there is a severe emotional shutoff elsewhere, progress through the incident a time or two, perhaps, before he contacts it properly. Then there will come the tears and despair of apathy. Another two or three runs should bring up anger. Then further recounting (always from beginning to end as reexperience) brings the tone up into boredom. Further recounting should bring it to Tone 3 or 4, release or, most favorably, laughter.

  This progress of the tones is the clue which led to the establishment of the tone scale from 0 to 4. A Tone 4 is laughter.

  There is sometimes a stage in the Tone 2 area where the patient begins to be offhand and flippant. This is not Tone 4, it denotes more data present. He may resist recounting at this point, saying the incident is released. The auditor must insist on further recounting whenever he finds the pre-clear unwilling to recount again, for here is data being suppressed and more charge is present. The flippancy is generally found to be an escape mechanism and is sometimes uttered in the very words which are yet concealed. More recounting (without the auditor insisting any certain words be found) is then done until the patient reaches Tone 4.

  Here we have, in vignette, the behavior of the whole engram bank in the process of therapy. The entire bank rises from its initial tone level eventually up to Tone 4, higher and higher as more and more engrams are erased or reduced. The bank’s rise is not, however, a smooth upward curve for new engrams will be contacted with apathy in them and some have manics in them. The painful emotion engram, however, does a rather smooth rise. If it is going to release at all it will rise up the scale. If it does not rise up the scale -- apathy to anger, anger to boredom, boredom to cheerfulness or at least no concern -- then it is suppressed by an incident with similar content.

  An engram may begin at Tone 1 -- anger -- and rise from there. If it is found to be in Tone 2 at the start -- boredom -- it is hardly an engram.

  It may, however, be in a false Tone 2 and suppressed by other data so that the patient merely appears bored and careless about it. A few recountings may bring about release of it, at which moment it will sag instantly to apathy -- Tone 0 -- and then come on up the scale of the tones. Or another engram may have to be contacted.

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  The whole physical being follows this tone scale throughout a course of therapy. The mental being follows this tone scale. And painful emotion engrams follow it.

  On an erasure down in the basic area or when returning from basic-basic, two or three runs will erase an engram of whatever kind unless it is the basic on a new chain of similar incidents. But engrams which show no emotion anywhere on the track are suppressed by emotional or feeling shut-offs, late painful emotion or early engrams which simply shut off the pain or emotion in so many words.

  A case should be kept “live.” There must be variability of emotion. A monotone recounting, which is to say, one which does not vary the engramic tone but merely reduces, is necessary in the basic area at times, but anytime a patient becomes orderly and “well-drilled”

  and expresses no concern over his engrams as he recounts them, there is late painful emotion to be tapped or early emotional shut-off. Conversely, if the patient is too continuously emotional about all and anything, if he weeps awhile and then laughs hysterically, therapy is being done but one should be alert for somethi
ng engramic in the prenatal area which says he has to be

  “too emotional” -- which is to say, he has engrams which make him emotional by their command content.

  The tone scale is very useful and is a good guide. It will be most prominent in reducing post-speech engrams, but will also appear earlier.

  Any painful emotion engram can be run. If it is properly reducing and not suppressed elsewhere, it follows the tone scale upwards to Tone 4.

  IF THE PATIENT DOES NOT WORK WELL

  ON REPEATER TECHNIQUE

  If, when the patient repeats a line the auditor has given him, the patient does not move to an incident, three things can be wrong: first, the patient cannot move on the track; second, the phrase may be sensibly withheld by the file clerk until such time as it can be cleared; or third, the phrase does not exist as engramic material.

  The patient may also have strong “control yourself” engrams which manifest themselves by his snatching control from the auditor, being very bossy or simply refusing cooperation. Repeater technique, when directed at “control yourself” and “I’ve got to operate”

  and allied phrases, can then work.

  The usual reason repeater technique does not work is that the patient is in a holder. If he is returned but does not shift on the track when repeater technique is given him, use repeater technique on the holders.

  Remember that a “feeling” shut-off can deny all somatics so that the patient does not feel them. If the patient seems insensible to trouble on the track, be sure that he has a feeling shut-off.

  A large emotional charge may also inhibit repeater technique.

  The somatic strip does not go well into emotional charges -- painful emotion engrams --

  and repeater technique is therefore indictated.