Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (11 page)

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operator may touch his tie many times and each time receive action on the part of the subject.

At last the subject may become aware, from the expressions on people’s faces, that something is wrong. He will not know what is wrong. He will not even know that the touching of the tie is the signal which makes him take off his coat. He will begin to grow uncomfortable. He may find fault with the operator’s appearance and begin to criticize his clothing. He still does not know the tie is a signal. He will still react and remain in ignorance that there is some strange reason he must take off his coat -- all he knows is that he is uncomfortable with his coat on whenever the tie is touched, uncomfortable with his coat off every time the tie is released.

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These various actions are very important to an understanding of the reactive mind.

Hypnotism is a laboratory tool. It is not used to any extent in dianetic therapy, but it has served as a means of examining minds and getting their reactions. Hypnotism is a wild variable. A few people can be hypnotized, many cannot be. Hypnotic suggestions will sometimes “take”

and sometimes they won’t.

Sometimes they make persons well and sometimes they make them ill -- the same suggestion reacting differently in different people. An engineer knows how to make use of a wild variable. There is something which makes it unpredictable. Finding out the basic reason hypnotism was a variable helped to discover the source of insanity. And understanding the mechanism of the post-hypnotic suggestion can aid an understanding of aberration.

No matter how foolish a suggestion is given to a subject under hypnosis, he will carry it out one way or another. He can be told to remove his shoes or call someone at ten the following day or to eat peas for breakfast and he will. These are direct orders and he will comply with them. He can be told that his hats do not fit him and he will believe that they do not. Any suggestion will operate within his mind unbeknownst to his higher levels of awareness.

Very complex suggestions can be given. One such would be to the effect that he was unable to utter the word “I.” He would omit it from his conversation, using remarkable makeshifts without being “aware” that he was having to avoid the word. Or he could be told that he must never look at his hands and he will not. These are repressions. Given to the subject when drugged or in a hypnotic sleep, these suggestions operate when he is awake. And they will continue to operate until released by the hypnotic operator.

He can be told that he has an urge to sneeze every time he hears the word “rug” and that he will sneeze when it is spoken. He can be told that he must jump two feet in the air every time he sees a cat and he will jump. And he will do these things after he has been awakened.

These are compulsions.

He can be told that he will think very sexual thoughts about a certain girl but that when he thinks them he will feel his nose itch. He can be told that he has a continual urge to lie down and sleep and that every time he lies down he will feel that he cannot sleep. He will experience these things. These are neuroses.

In further experiments he can be told, when he is in his hypnotic “sleep,” that he is the president of the country and that the secret service agents are trying to murder him. Or he can be told that he is being fed poison in every restaurant in which he attempts to eat. These are psychoses.

He can be informed that he is really another person and that he owns a yacht and answers to the name of “Sir Reginald.” Or he can be told that he is a thief, that he has a prison record, and that the police are looking for him. These would be schizophrenic and paranoid-schizophrenic insanities respectively.

The operator can inform the subject that the subject is the most wonderful person on earth and that everybody thinks so. Or that the subject is the object of adoration of all women.

This would be a manic-type insanity.

He can be convinced, while hypnotized, that when he wakes he will feel so terrible that he will hope for nothing but death. This would be the depressive-type insanity.

He can be told that all he can think about is how sick he is and that every malady of which he reads becomes his. This would make him react like a hypochondriac.

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Thus we could go down the catalogue of mental ills and by concocting positive suggestions to create the state of mind, we could bring about, in the awakened subject, a semblance to every insanity.

Understood that these are semblances. They are similar to insanity in that the subject would act like an insane person. He would not be an insane person. The moment the suggestion is relieved -- the subject being informed that it was a suggestion -- the aberration (and all these insanities, etc., are grouped under the heading of aberration) theoretically vanishes.* * An injunction here. These are tests. They have been made on people who could be hypnotized and people who could not be but who were drugged. They brought forth valuable data for dianetics. They can be duplicated only when you know dianetics unless you want to actually drive somebody insane by accident. For these suggestions do not always vanish. Hypnotism is a wild variable. It is dangerous and belongs in the parlor in the same way you would want an atom bomb there.

The duplication of aberrations of all classes and kinds in subjects who have been hypnotized or drugged has demonstrated that there is some portion of the mind which is not in contact with the consciousness but which contains data.

It was the search for this portion of the mind which led to the resolution of the problem of insanity, psycho-somatic ills and other aberrations. It was not approached through hypnotism, and hypnotism is just another tool, a tool which is of only occasional use in the practice of dianetics and is, indeed, not needed at all.

Here we have an individual who is acting sanely, who is given a positive suggestion and who then temporarily acts insanely. His sanity is restored by the release of the suggestion into his consciousness, at which moment it loses its force upon him. But this is only a semblance of the mechanism involved. The actual insanity, one not laid now by some hypnotist, does not need to emerge into the consciousness to be released. There is this difference and others between hypnotism and the actual source of aberration; but hypnotism is a demonstration of its working parts.

Review the first example of the positive suggestion. The subject was “unconscious,”

which is to say, he was not in possession of complete awareness or self-determinism. He was given something he must do and the something was hidden from his consciousness. The operator gave him a signal. When the signal occurred, the subject performed an act. The subject gave reasons for the act which were not the real reasons for it. The subject found fault with the operator and the operator’s clothing but did not see that it was the tie which signaled the action. The suggestion was released and the subject no longer felt a compulsion to perform the act.

These are the parts of aberration. Once one knows exactly what parts of what are aberrations, the whole problem is very simple. It seems incredible at first glance that the source could have remained so thoroughly hidden for so many thousands of years of research. But at, second glance, it becomes a wonder that the source was ever discovered. For it is hidden cunningly and well.

“Unconsciousness” of the non-hypnotic variety is a little more rugged. It takes more than a few passes of the hand to cause “unconsciousness” of the insanity-producing variety.

The shock of accidents, the anaesthetics used for operations, the pain of injuries and the deliriums of illness are the principal sources of what we call “unconsciousness.”

The mechanism, in our analogue of the mind, is very simple. In comes a destructive wave of physical pain or a pervading poison such as ether and out go some or all of the fuses of the analytical mind. When it goes out, so go what we know as the standard memory banks.

The periods of “unconsciousness” are blanks in the standard memory banks. These missing periods make up what dianetics calls the reactive mind bank.

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The times when the analytical mind is in full operation plus the times when the reactive mind is in operation are a continuous line of consecutive recording for the entire period of life.

During the periods when the analytical mind is cut out of circuit in full or in part, the reactive mind cuts in in full or in part. In other words, if the analytical mind is unfused so that it is half out of circuit, the reactive mind is half in circuit. No such sharp percentages are actually possible, but this is to give an approximation.

When the individual is “unconscious” in full or in part, the reactive mind is cut in in full or in part. When he is fully conscious, his analytical mind is fully in command of the organism. When his consciousness is reduced, the reactive mind is cut into the circuit just that much.

The moments which contain “unconsciousness” in the individual are contra-survival moments, by and large. Therefore it is vital that something take over so that the individual can go through motions to save the whole organism. The fighter who fights half out on his feet, the burned man who drags himself out of the fire -- these are cases when the reactive mind is valuable.

The reactive mind is very rugged. It would have to be in order to stand up to the pain waves which knock out other sentience in the body. It is not very refined. But it is most awesomely accurate. It possesses a low order of computing ability, an order which is sub-moron, but one would expect a low order of ability from a mind which stays in circuit when the body is being crushed or fried.

The reactive bank does not store memories as we think of them. It stores engrams. *

These engrams are a complete recording, down to the last accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of partial or full “unconsciousness.” They are just as accurate as any other recording in the body. But they have their own force. They are like phonograph records or motion pictures, if these contained all perceptions of sight, sound, smell, taste, organic sensation, etc.

The difference between an engram and a memory, however, is quite distinct. An engram can be permanently fused into any and all body circuits and behaves like an entity.

In all laboratory tests on these engrams they were found to possess “inexhaustible”

sources of power to command the body. No matter how many times one was reactivated in an individual, it was still powerful. Indeed, it became even more able to exert its power in proportion to its reactivation.

The only thing which could even begin to shake these engrams was the technique which developed into dianetic therapy, which will be covered in full in the third section of this volume.

This is an example of an engram: A woman is knocked down by a blow. She is rendered “unconscious.” She is kicked and told she is a faker, that she is no good, that she is always changing her mind. A chair is overturned in the process. A faucet is running in the kitchen. A car is passing in the street outside. The engram contains a running record of all these perceptions: sight, sound, tactile, taste, smell, organic sensation, kinetic sense, joint position, thirst record, etc. The engram would consist of the whole statement made to her when she was

“unconscious”: the voice tones and emotion in the voice, the sound and feel of the original and later blows, the tactile of the floor, the feel and sound of the chair overturning, the organic sensation of the blow, perhaps the taste of blood in her mouth or any other taste present there, the smell of the person attacking her and the smells in the room, the sound of the passing car’s motor and tires, etc.

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These would all be considered something on the order of a “positive suggestion.” But there is something else here which is new, something which is not in the standard banks except by context: pain and painful emotion.

These things are what make the difference between the standard banks and the reactive engram banks: physical pain and painful emotion. Physical pain and painful emotion are the difference between an engram, which is the cause of aberration, all aberration, and a memory.*

* In dianetics, a memory is considered to be any concept of perceptions stored in the standard memory banks which is potentially recallable by the “I.” A scene beheld by the eyes and perceived by the other senses becomes a record in the standard memory banks and later may be recalled by “I” for reference.

We all have heard that bad experience is helpful to living and that without bad experience, man never learns. This may be very, very true. But it doesn’t embrace the engram.

That isn’t experience. That is commanded action.

Perhaps before Man had a large vocabulary, these engrams were of some use to him.

They were survival in ways which will be developed later. But when Man acquired a fine, homonymic (words that sound the same but mean different things) language, and indeed, when he acquired any language, these engrams were much more a liability than a help. And now with Man well evolved, these engrams do not protect him at all but make him mad, inefficient and ill.

The proof of any assertion lies in its applicability. When these engrams are deleted from the reactive mind bank, rationality and efficiency are enormously heightened, health is greatly increased and the individual computes rationally on the survival conduct pattern, which is to say, he enjoys himself and the society of those around him and is constructive and creative. He is destructive only when something actually threatens the sphere of his dynamics.

These engrams, then, are entirely negative in value in this stage of Man’s development.

When he was nearer the level of his animal cousins (who have, all of them, reactive minds of this same kind), he might have had use for the data. But language and his changed existence make any engram a distinct liability, and no engram has any constructive value.

The reactive mind was provided to secure survival. It still pretends to act in that fashion. But its wild errors now lead only in the other direction.