Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  A special case is the derailer which “throws him off the track” and makes him lose touch with his time track. This is a very serious phrase since it can make a schizophrenic and something of this sort is always to be found in schizophrenia. Some of its phrases throw him into other valences which have no proper track, some merely remove time, some throw him bodily out of time. “I don’t have any time” is a derailer as well as a grouper. “I’m beside myself” means that he is now two people, one beside the other. “I’ll have to pretend I am somebody else” is a key phrase to identity confusion. “You’re behind the times” and many more.

  There is another special case of the misdirector. The auditor says to go to “present time”

  and the file clerk throws out a phrase with “present” in it. It does not matter if the present in the phrase was a Christmas present, if it is in the prenatal area, the pre-clear goes there, ignoring what the auditor meant. “That’s all at present,” is a vicious phrase, putting everything in present time. “It’s a lovely present.”

  And others. “Now” is sometimes confused with present time but not often. The auditor should not say “Come to now,” because if he did he would find more “nows” than he could comfortably handle. “Present” is a rarer engramic word and is therefore used. “Now” appears too frequently.

  Several severely aberrated persons who had little memory of the past have been found to be entirely off their time tracks, regressed into the prenatal area and stuck when the case was entered. As far as their wits were concerned, they had only a few months of past from where they were back to conception. And yet these people had managed somehow to function as normals.

  209

  Emotional charges usually hold the person off his track and, indeed, are the only things which give these engram commands any power according to current findings.

  DIFFERENCES

  There are two axioms about mind function with which the auditor should be familiar.

  I.

  THE MIND PERCEIVES, POSES AND RESOLVES PROBLEMS RELATING TO

  SURVIVAL.

  II.

  THE ANALYTICAL MIND COMPUTES IN DIFFERENCES. THE REACTIVE

  MIND COMPUTES IN IDENTITIES.

  The first axiom is of interest to the auditor in his work because with it he can clearly establish whether or not he is confronting a rational reaction. The seven-year-old girl who shudders because a man kisses her is not computing; she is reacting to an engram since at seven she should see nothing wrong in a kiss, not even a passionate one. There must have been an earlier experience, possibly prenatal, which made men or kissing very bad. All departures from optimum rationality are useful in locating engrams, all unreasonable fears and so forth are grist to the auditor’s mill. The auditor, with the above law, should study as well, the Equation of the Optimum Solution. Any departure from optimum is suspect. While he cares little about aberrations, at times a case will stall or seem to have no engrams. He then can observe the conduct of his patient and his patient’s reactions to life in order to gain data.

  The second law is dianetics’ contribution to logic. In the philosophic text this is more fully entered. Aristotle’s pendulum and his two-valued logic were abandoned not because of any dislike of Aristotle but because broader yardsticks were needed. One of these yardsticks was the spectrum principle whereby gradations from zero to infinity and infinity to infinity were used and Absolutes were considered utterly unobtainable for scientific purposes.

  In the second axiom the mind can be conceived to recognize differences very broadly and accurately, in its nearest approach to complete rationality and then, as it falls away from rationality, to perceive less and less difference until at last it achieves a near approach to utter inability to compute any difference in time, space or thought and so can be considered completely insane. When this follows one thought only, such as a sweeping statement that

  “All cats are the same,” it is either careless or insane since all cats are not the same, even two cats who look, act and sound alike. One could say, “Cats are pretty much the same,” and still be dealing with rather irrational thought. Or one could recognize that there was a species felix domesticus but that within it cats were decidely different not only from breed to breed but cat to cat. That would be rationality, not because one used Latin but because he could tell the difference amongst cats. The fear of cats has as its source an engram which usually does not include more than one cat and that is a very specific cat of a specific breed with a certain (or perhaps uncertain) personality. The pre-clear who is afraid of all cats is actually afraid of one cat and a cat which is most likely dead these many years at that. Thus as we swing from complete rationality down to irrationality there is a narrowing of differences until they nearly vanish and become similarities and identities.

  Aristotle’s syllogism in which two things equal to the same thing are equal to each other simply does not begin to work in logic. Logic is not arithmetic, which is an artificial thing Man invented and which works. To handle a problem in logic the mind flutters through an enormous mass of data and computes with dozens and even hundreds of variables. It does not and never did think on the basis that two things equal to the same thing are equal to each other except when employing mathematics it had conceived the better to resolve abstract problems. It is an abstract truth that two and two equal four. Two what and two what equal four? There is no scale made, no yardstick or caliper or microscope manufactured, which would justify the actuality, for instance, that two apples plus two apples equal four apples. Two apples and two apples are four apples now if they are the same apples. They would not equal four other apples 210

  by any growth or manufacturing process ever imagined. Man is content to take approximations and call them, loosely, exactitudes. There is no Absolute anything save in abstract terms set up by the mind to work out exterior problems and achieve approximations. This may seem to be a stretched conception, but it is not. The mathematician is very well aware that he is working with digit and analogue approximations set up into systems which were not necessarily here before Man came and will not necessarily be here after he is gone. Logic, even the simple logic of wondering about the wisdom of going shopping at ten, is handling numerous variables, indefinites and approximations. Mathematics can be invented by the carload lot. There is no actual Absolute, there is only a near approach. Our grammarians alone, much behind the times, insist, probably in memory of the metaphysician, on Absolute Reality and Truth.

  This is here set down partly because it may be of interest to some but mainly because the auditor must realize that he has an accurate measuring stick for sanity. Sanity is the ability to tell differences. The better one can tell differences, no matter how minute, and know the width of those differences, the more rational he is. The less one can tell differences and the closer one comes to thinking in identities (A = A) the less sane he is.

  A man says, “I don’t like dogs!” Spot it, auditor, he has an engram about one or two dogs. A girl says, “All men are alike!” Spot it, auditor, here’s a real aberree. “Mountains are so terrible!” “Jewelers never go any place!” “I hate women!” Spot them. Those are engrams right out in broad daylight.

  Those engrams which inhibit the analytical mind in differentiating are those engrams which most seriously inhibit thinking.

  “You can’t tell the difference,” is a common engram. “There is no difference,”

  “Nothing will ever make any difference to me again,” “People are all bad,” “Everybody hates me.” This is insanity bait, as the auditors say, and puts a man “spin-bin bound.”

  There is another class of identity thought and that is the group which destroys time-differentiation. “You don’t know when it happened!” is a classic phrase. “I don’t know how late it is,” and others have a peculiar effect on the mind for the mind is running on a precision chronometer of its own and the engrams can thoroughly misread the dial. On a conscious level one goes along fairly well on analytica
l time. The engrams slide around back and forth according to when they are keyed-in or restimulated. An engram may underlie today’s action which belonged forty years ago on the time track and should be back there. It is not remarks about time difference so much that aberrate, it is the untimed character of engrams. Time is the Great Charlatan, it heals nothing, it only changes the environmental aspects and a man’s associates. The engram of ten years ago, with all its painful emotion, may be encysted and

  “forgotten” but it is right there, ready to force action if restimulated today.

  The reactive mind runs on a dime-store wrist watch, the analytical mind runs on a battery of counter-checking chronometers of which a liner could be proud. The cells think that wrist watch is a pretty fair gimmick -- and it was, it was, back there in the days when Man’s ancestor was washed in by the waves and managed to cling to the sand.

  Thus, a primary test for aberration is similarity and identity, the primary test for rationality is differentiation and the minuteness or largeness with which it can be done.

  “Men are all alike,” she says. And they are too! To her. Poor thing. Like the fellow who raped her when she was a kid, like her detested father who said it.

  RELATIVE IMPORTANCESAND “BELIEVE” AND “CAN’T BELIEVE”

  The auditor will find himself confronted with two arch enemies in “you must believe it,” and “I can’t believe.”

  211

  The mind has its own equilibrium and ability and it is aided no more by engrams than an adding machine is aided by a held-down seven. One of the most important functions of the mind is the computing of the relative importances of data.

  In discovering and conducting research on dianetics, for instance, there were billions of data about the mind accumulated throughout the last few thousand years.

  Now, with a six foot rear vision mirror we can look back and see that here and there people had expressed opinions or turned up unevaluated facts which are now data in some of the axioms of dianetics or parts of its discoveries. These facts existed in the past, some exist now in dianetics, but with a tremendous difference: they are evaluated. Evaluation of the data for its importance was vital before the information was of value. Dr. Sententious might have written in 1200 A.D. that he believed actual demons did not exist in the mind; Goodwife Sofie in 1782 was heard to say that she was certain that prenatal influence had warped many a life; Dr. Zamba might have written in 1846 that a hypnotized patient could be told he was crazy and that he would thereafter act crazy. Dr. Sententious might have said also that angels, not demons, caused mental illness because the patient had been evil; Goodwife Sofie also might have said that punk water poultices cured “ravings”; Dr. Zamba might also have declared that hypnotized patients needed only a few more positive suggestions to make them well and strong. In short, for every datum which approached truth there were billions which were untrue. The missing part of each datum was a scientific evaluation of its importance to the solution. The selection of a few special drops of water from an ocean of unspecial drops is impossible. The problem of discovering true data could be resolved only by jettisoning all former evaluations of humanity and the human mind and all “facts” and opinions of whatever kind and starting fresh, evolving the entire science from a new highest common denominator (and it is true that dianetics borrowed nothing but was first discovered and organized; only after the organization was completed and a technique evolved was it compared to existing information).

  The point here is that monotone importance in a class of facts leads to nothing but the most cluttered confusion. Here is evaluation: opinions are nothing, authority is useless, data is secondary: establishment of relative importance is the key. Given the world and the stars as a laboratory and a mind to compute the relative importance of what it perceives, and no problems can remain unsolved. Given masses of data with monotone evaluation and one has something which may be pretty but is useful.

  The stunned look of fresh-caught ensigns of the Navy when they first see in the metal the things about which they have so laboriously read is a testimony to more than the faulty educational system currently employed: the system seeks to train something which is perfect --

  the memory -- ; it aligns little or nothing with purpose or use, and ignores the necessity of personal evaluation of all data both as to need for it and its use. The stunned look comes from the overwhelming recognition that whereas they have thousands of data about what they see, they do not know whether it is more important to read the chronometer when they take a sextant sight or use only blue ink in writing a log book. These gentlemen have been wronged educationally not because they have not been given thousands of data relative to ships but because they have not been told the relative importance of each datum and have not experienced that importance. They know more facts than the less educated but they know less about factual relation.

  More pertinent to the auditor, there are two species of engramic commands which give monotone evaluation to data. The persons who have either of these as a major content in the engram bank will be similarly aberrated even if each manifests the aberration with opposite polarity.

  Every now and then some unfortunate auditor finds a “Can’t believe it” on his hands.

  This case is extremely trying. Under this heading come the “I doubt it,” the “I can’t be sure,”

  and the “I don’t know,” cases.

  212

  Such a case is easy to spot for when he first comes into therapy he begins by doubting dianetics, the auditor, himself, the furniture and his mother’s virginity. The chronic doubter is not an easy case because he cannot believe his own data. The analyzer has a built-in judge which takes in data, weighs it and judges it right, wrong or maybe. The engramic doubter has a

  “held down 7” to the effect that he has to doubt everything, something much different from judging. He is challenged to doubt. He must doubt. If to doubt is divine, then the god is certainly Moloch. He doubts without inspecting, he inspects the most precise evidence, and he still doubts.

  The auditor will return this patient to a somatic which tears half his head off, which is confirmed by scars, which is confirmed by aberration, and which is doubted as an incident.

  The way to handle this case is to take his pat phrases and feed them to him in reverie or out of reverie with repeater technique. Make him go over and over them, sending his somatic strip back to them. Shortly a release of the phrase will take place. Feed all doubter phrases which the patient has used in this manner. Then continue the case. The object is not to make him a believer but to place him in a situation where he can evaluate his own data. Don’t argue with him about dianetics -- arguing against engrams is senseless since the engrams themselves are senseless.

  In ten or twenty hours of therapy such a patient will begin to face reality enough so that he no longer doubts the sun shines, doubts the auditor or doubts that he had a past of some sort. He is only difficult because he requires these extra hours of work. He is usually, by the way, very aberrated.

  The “Can’t believe it” finds difficulty in evaluation because he has difficulty giving credence to any fact more than any other fact: this produces an inability to compute relative importances amongst data with the result that he may be as concerned with the shade of his superior’s tie as with the marriage he himself is about to undertake. Similarly, the “You must believe it” case finds difficulty in differentiating amongst importances of various data and may hold equally firmly the idea that paper is made from trees and that he is about to be fired. Both cases “worry,” which is to say they are unable to compute well.

  Rational computation depends upon the personal computation of the relative importances of various data. Reactive “computation” deals exclusively with the equation that widely different objects or events are similar or equal. The former is sanity, the latter is insanity.

  The “Must believe it” case will present a confused reactive bank, for the bank embraces the most unlikely d
ifferences as close similarities. The “Must believe it” engram command can dictate that one person, a class of persons, or everyone must be believed, no matter what is written or said. The auditor, returning the patient, will find major aberrations held in place by a lock containing only conversation.

  When father is the actual source and is an ally of the patient, the auditor will discover that almost everything father said was accepted literally and unquestioningly by his child. The father may not have been aware of having established this “Must believe it” condition and he may even be a jocular man, given to jokes. Every joke will be found to be literally accepted unless the father carefully labeled it a joke, which meant it must not be literally accepted. One case folder is to hand here where father was the source of “Must believe”: one day the father took his daughter, three years of age, down to the seacoast and, through the fog, pointed to a lighthouse. The lighthouse gave an eerie aspect in the foggy night. “That’s Mr. Billingsly’s place,” said the father, meaning that Billingsly, the lighthouse keeper, lived there. The child nodded faithfully, if a little frightened, for “Mr. Billingsly” threw around a mane of hair-shadows -- glared to seaward with one eye sweeping the water and stood a hundred feet tall and “Mr. Billingsly” let out moans which sounded quite ferocious. His “place” was a ledge of rock. As a pre-clear twenty years later the daughter was discovered to be frightened of any low moaning sound. The auditor patiently traced down the source and found, much to the delight of 213

  himself and the daughter, “Mr. Billingsly.” Vast quantities of aberration, peculiar conceptions and strange notions were found to derive from casual statements the father had made. Being skilled in his task, the auditor did not bother to try to locate and erase everything the father had said -- a task which would have taken years and years: he located, instead, the prenatal “You must believe me” and its engramic locks, and all the non-engramic locks, of course, disappeared and were automatically re-evaluated as experienced data rather than “held-down sevens.” Of course there is always much more wrong with a case than a mere “You must believe me,” but the change of viewpoint which the patient experienced immediately afterwards was startling: she was now at liberty to evaluate her father’s data, which she had not been before.