Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  If the auditor undertakes an electric shock case, he should address his primary attention to the release of that shock as an engram, for there is all manner of careless chatter contained in these institutional engrams, which may further inhibit treatment. This is aside from the fact that any electric shock, anywhere in the body, has a tendency to derange the engram bank and bind it so that its incidents are more than usually snarled.

  For no other reason than the advance of dianetics, and the conservation of an auditor’s time, it should also be remarked that the third degree methods of some police departments and general police abuse of criminals or ordinary citizens may have to be released in a case before it can be further treated. Prison terms may contain large despair charges sufficient to derange the mind and yet may be hidden by the patient under the mistaken idea that the auditor is interested or will be disappointed in his “character.”

  Various other things enter into the engram bank which would not be suspected as obstacles to therapy unless mentioned. Hypnotism can be extremely aberrative and may hold up a case. An auditor should have some working knowledge of it so that he can release the engrams it makes, not so he can work dianetics. Hypnotism is the art of implanting positive suggestions in the engram bank. Here they may append themselves to engrams and become locks on those engrams. As most engram banks contain a sample of most common words, 237

  hypnotism is almost certain to be aberrative. The reduction of analytical power by artificial means places the subject in an optimum condition for the receipt of an engram. The hypnotist uses the forgetter mechanism with most of his suggestions and most people have similar engramic remarks which make it impossible for the hypnotist’s suggestion to release.

  Hypnotism can be considered as a “high-powered” lock and may be a serious obstacle in the patient’s engram bank. With clearing, the suggestions having no anchors of pain below them in engrams, vanish as locks. But hypnotic suggestions may have to be found and cleared before a case can proceed. Hypnotism is very commonly used in this society and it is very often the case that, with the forgetter mechanism, the patient is unable to recall whether he had ever been hypnotized or not. Return technique will discover it, repeater technique, making the patient return with repetition of hypnotic patter (by the patient) such as “Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep,” can be depended upon to locate it.

  Not all hypnotism is in the parlor. Perverts quite commonly use it despite the fact that the “moral” nature is supposed to rise in a hypnotized subject. Incidents even with people of repute have been found in patients when examining their childhood. These incidents were often entirely occluded to the patient, so thoroughly cowing were the commands contained in the hypnotic suggestion.

  Dianetics and hypnotism can be combined, but so can dianetics and astronomy. The auditor will find himself working with hypnotic patients and will have to be very careful with patter in order to install minimal words of his own in the engram bank so as not to turn dianetics into hypnotism.

  Any benefit derived from hypnotism is in the field of research or the installation of a temporary manic engram. The latter has far more harm than value. Hypnotic anesthetic is vastly overrated. And hypnotism as a parlor game is a thing which no society should tolerate, for it may be sufficiently destructive to cause the engrams to restimulate to a point of insanity. And the hypnotist never knows the content of the engram bank. Any good hypnotist, if he can conquer his desire to talk, should make a good auditor: but if he tries to combine dianetics and hypnotism he will find himself with a very thoroughly sick patient on his hands. Never install a positive suggestion of any kind in a patient no matter how much he may beg for one. It has proven nearly fatal.

  An entire case can be worked in deep amnesia trance. It is often possible to waken a sleeping person into a deep trance simply by speaking to him quietly several nights in succession at the same hour and finally getting him to respond to the invitation to talk. Dianetic therapy can then be entered upon and pursued and will succeed particularly if the auditor is not careless enough to artificially restimulate a late physical pain engram, treating in the post-birth life mainly engrams of painful emotion.

  If the person on whom the therapy is being done is aware of the action, he can be put into reverie so that earlier data can be reached, “I” being more powerful than the weak if wise attention units which constitute basic personality. He is alternately worked in amnesia trance and then in reverie. The case will resolve eventually even if reverie is not used. But there are grave responsibilities with amnesia trance: a canceller must always be installed and used in every session. Minimal conversation must be employed. All auditor desires should be stated as questions if possible, as these are not aberrative to the degree that commands are. This method has been successful and can be used, but reverie, even if it appears slower, even if sonic is not present, is far more satisfactory for the excellent and incontrovertible reason that the patient recovers more swiftly and recovers on a steady upgrade whereas amnesia trance may incapacitate him for days together, when incidents are apparently lifted in deep trance but nevertheless “hung up” in the awake state. Amnesia trance is definitely not advised: it has been subjected to much research and has been found to be both uncomfortable for the patient and harassing to the auditor. However, if other methods cannot be used for one reason or another (and none of those reasons include the desire of the pre-clear who, if the auditor would let him, might crave drugs, hypnotism and positive suggestion in an effort to escape his engrams and who, if allowed, would have himself a wonderfully messy case for the auditor to unsnarl), 238

  amnesia trance can be employed, but always with the greatest caution and always with the full knowledge that the patient’s recovery is retarded by as much as a factor of three, for working on a level with the engram bank leaves the analyzer circuits unused in the discharge. Reverie is best.

  EXTERNAL PROBLEMS WITH PATIENTS

  It may happen that a patient who has made progress suddenly ceases to make further progress. The answer may lie elsewhere than therapy. The environment of the pre-clear may be so intensely restimulative that he is distracted, always in restimulation and thus works slowly.

  It may be discovered, in such a case, that the pre-clear (as in one case) has made a bargain with a wife or husband who desires divorce that he or she wait until the pre-clear is cleared. Other situations of a life nature can place an environmental value on not being cleared. The auditor has no business with the private lives of his pre-clears, but in a case where therapy itself is made difficult by existing situations the auditor, with his time at stake, has every right to discover the reason. All these reasons will compute into some environmental advantage in not being clear. Removing the pre-clear temporarily from his home, for instance, may change his environment and advance therapy. The auditor has a right to ask that, clear or not, the patient resolve the problem on his own initiative. It is common with pre-clears that they do not realize that they are releases for so glittering is the goal of clear that they cease to compare themselves to the normal which they have already overpassed.

  A patient can commonly be expected to introvert to a very marked degree in the course of dianetic therapy. As the case progresses this introversion reaches an acute stage about three-quarters or thereabouts through and thereafter recedes. Ambiversion is a marked characteristic of the clear. When introversion has been marked, a fairly good gauge of the advance of the case is in the pre-clear’s interest in exterior things.

  Nearly all pre-clears talk a great deal about their engrams up to the point when they are very solid releases. If they don’t or won’t talk about their engrams in common conversation, the auditor can suspect something highly protected in the engram bank concerning the necessity to hide something: the auditor can act accordingly. Although the auditor may weary of such conversation, it nevertheless reveals much new material to him if he observes the phrases which the pre-clear uses about engrams.

  It is very, very true
that aberration is caused by what has been done to not what has been done by the patient.

  The actions of the patient in dramatizing, in committing crimes and so forth are not aberrative to the patient. Therefore the pre-clear’s activities need be no concern whatever of the auditor’s. Whole cases have been completed without the auditor’s knowing what the pre-clear did for a living. While responsibility for his actions is necessarily demanded of him by an aberrated society, antisocial activity is the resuit of engrams which dictate it. The patient is not responsible for what he himself has done. Cleared, the matter is different. A clear can be considered entirely responsible for his own actions, for he can compute rationally on the basis of his experience. But the aberree has little or no real control over his actions. Therefore, the auditor should make it plain that he does not care what the aberree who becomes a pre-clear has done in life. The problem on hand between the auditor and the pre-clear is an engram bank which contains, exclusively, what other people have done in life and what has been done to the pre-clear in moments when he could not protect himself. This approach is not only truth, it has a therapeutic value, for in so explaining himself an auditor can often obtain cooperation which would otherwise be denied.

  The auditor should never violate the auditor’s code with a patient. Extended terms of therapy inevitably result from such violations.

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  RESTIMULATION

  The mind is a self-protecting mechanism -- but so is dianetics. A science of thought which works would so closely approximate the working principles of the mind that it would follow in parallels the injunctions and provisos of the mind itself. Such is the case with dianetics: the mind is diagnosed by its reaction to therapy, therapy is improved by the reactions of the mind to it. This is a working principle of great value since it explains much observed phenomena and predicts most of the remainder. Part of this parallelism is the self-protection feature.

  It is almost impossible to injure a mind: it is an extremely tough organism. Of course, when one begins to hew and saw upon it with metal or poison it with drugs or bacteria or throw its natural armor aside as with hypnotism, unfortunate things can occur.

  Charlatanism is almost impossible where dianetics in any of its principles is being practiced. One either practices all dianetics and gets results or practices himself into a decline: that is a mechanical, scientific fact. Dianetics, as a self-protecting science, demands practice by clears or at least good releases. A clear very closely follows in all his conduct the better aspects of the auditor’s code: his ethical level is very high. Hence, anyone starting a practice of dianetics is going to find himself, no matter what his original intention, thrust toward the goal of being a clear.

  There is an excellent reason for this. There is a principle known as restimulation of the auditor. We have an understanding now of what makes an engram come into restimulation.

  When it comes into restimulation, it forces the pain or the action of the engram into being in the organism. The observation of some percept in the environment which approximates a recording, sound or sight or organic sensation, in the engram brings the engram into greater or lesser play. Similarly, when an auditor is not cleared himself or when he is not in therapy himself working toward the goal of a clear, he becomes restimulated. He is, after all, listening constantly to engramic material in a patient. This engramic material is the very stuff of which insanity is made. Anyone has engrams: sooner or later a patient is going to start going over an engram of his own which will approximate the auditor’s own engrams. This leads to great discomfort for the auditor unless the auditor is in therapy and can have the discomfort so brought forth released. So long as one is merely working late locks, this is not so much the case and has made it possible for practitioners and mental healers of the past to escape much of the penalty of their own aberrations, but when one deals with the root material of these aberrations, a constant hammering by restimulators can bring about a serious condition. This is the mechanism which causes people in asylums to fall prey themselves to psychoses, although one must have had them in the first place for them to have been restimulated.

  The auditor may run one or two cases without any serious repercussion: indeed, no matter what the repercussion, it can be eliminated by dianetics. To save his own comfort, however, he should himself be cleared or released as soon as possible. He can work as a release without too much trouble, and this makes it possible for him to make a mutual compact where he is worked on while he is working the other. A condition can then come about where two pre-clears are each auditors. This alternation between the couch and the auditor’s chair will usually work very well.

  Two persons, however, after they have begun work, may discover that they are mutually restimulative -- which is to say each is a pseudo-person in the other’s engrams or one is restimulated (voice tone, incidents) by the other. This should be no bar to therapy. It has been overcome and therapy has gone forward despite the most severe restimulative circumstances. A common avoidance technique on the part of a subject is to claim the auditor restimulates him: it is not sufficiently important to stop therapy. It may be, however, that two people can enter a third into the chain and by one clearing the next considerably ease the tension. The triangular work plan, where no person is working on the person who is working him, is quite successful.

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  A husband and wife who have quarreled long and often may find it too restimulative to clear each other. It is possible to do if other arrangements cannot be made and it is often done: but if therapy does not go well, he should find a therapy partner and so should she. Mothers who have attempted abortion on their children or otherwise maltreated them can accomplish therapy on those children, but in any case of restimulative circumstance such as this, the greatest precaution must be taken by the auditor to adhere severely to the auditor’s code -- to do otherwise might bring much more stress into therapy than is necessary. In such a case, the mother had better herself have at least a release accomplished upon her before she attempts to clear her children -- and she should not touch those children until they are at least eight.

  The subject of auditor-restimulation, where the auditor restimulates the pre-clear or the pre-clear restimulates the auditor, does not include the routine aspect of therapy that the preclear is always being artificially restimulated via standard therapy. An engram can be restimulated by being touched several times and so it will lift. The auditor-restimulation problem is a specific one where the auditor is a pseudo-enemy, a similarity to a person who has harmed the patient. Wild antagonism on the part of a patient to an auditor is usually traced to this. Some patients have such a hatred of men that only women can work them, some have such a hatred of women that only men can work them. But even when there is a wild antipathy, if there exists no other auditor or person who can be trained quickly as one, therapy can proceed anyway: and it will accomplish results.

  REBALANCING A CASE

  Any case dropped out of therapy will rebalance itself in a few weeks, which is to say, it will settle to a new high for the individual. Unless drug hypnotism or some other dianetically illegal method is used, all cases will so rebalance, much benefited. Restimulations can be expected to die down if they are due to therapy. The patient will gradually find his own level in the released state. Cases do not have to be carried forward to clear if auditor time is short, but it is, of course better if they are and, indeed, the majority of patients will insist that they be.

  WORKING TIME IN THERAPY

  The usual period of a dianetic treatment is two hours. In these two hours, with the usual patient, everything is going to be accomplished which can be accomplished on that day.

  Working every day is not necessary, but working every two days or every three days is desirable. Working with periods a week apart is not optimum, for the case tends to rebalance.

  Further, there is a “sag” in a case, usually every fourth day when it is not worked in periods as short as three days. The fourth da
y “sag” is a natural mechanical thing: an engram, keyed-in, when it is restimulated in life, takes about four days to cut in sharply. In therapy, three days is sometimes required to “develop” an engram. This does not mean that three days have to elapse before it is available and it does not mean that work has to stop for three days, but it does mean that engrams, not being memories and articulate as such, take three days, sometimes, to come to the surface.

  To be more clear, an engram can be asked for on day one and will be found on day three. Meanwhile the auditor is getting other engrams. This process is so automatic that it requires no attention and will not come to notice except in cases that are being worked once a week. The engram is asked for on day one, is ready to reduce on day three, sags on day four and is rebalanced by day seven.

  The three day aspect is interesting in another sense. This time of three days is just an observation of the average behavior of pre-clears. Precision investigation may fix it at 2.5 days or 3.6 days (it varies in individuals), but three days is close enough for our purposes. When one is doing just a release on a case, he will sometimes find that it is necessary to take a late engram and run it: the physical pain engram of later life (post-birth) will appear to rise, will remain constant for three days and then will “sag.” When it sags, the auditor will have to go 241

  back to it and run it again. Taking out these “sags” will eventually make the later life engram stay in a recessed state.

  Euphoria often sets in on a case when the auditor touches an engram which contains a manic. The patient will then go around saying how wonderful dianetics is because he is now in magnificent condition and is so happy. Watch out. In three or four days this manic will have sagged back to a depressive state. Be wary if somebody experiences one of these sky-rocket