Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (12 page)

There are actually three kinds of engrams, all of them aberrative: First is the contra-survival engram. This contains physical pain, painful emotion, all other perceptions and menace to the organism. A child knocked out by a rapist and abused receives this type of engram. The contra-survival engram contains apparent or actual antagonism to the organism.

The second engram type is the pro-survival engram. A child who has been abused is ill.

He is told, while he is partially or wholly “unconscious,” that he will be taken care of, that he is dearly loved, etc. This engram is not taken as contra-survival but pro-survival. It seems to be in favor of survival. Of the two this last is the most aberrative since it is reinforced by the law of affinity which is always more powerful than fear. Hypnotism preys on this characteristic of the reactive mind, being a sympathetic address to an artificially unconscious subject.

Hypnotism is as limited as it is because it does not contain, as a factor, physical pain, and painful emotion: things which keep an engram out of sight and moored below the level of

“consciousness.”

The third is the painful emotion engram which is similar to the other engrams. It is caused by the shock of sudden loss such as the death of a loved one.

The reactive mind bank is composed exclusively of these engrams. The reactive mind thinks exclusively with these engrams. And it “thinks” with them in a way which would make 48

Korzybski swear, for it thinks in terms of full identification, which is to say identities, one thing identical to another.

If the analytical mind did a computation on apples and worms, it could be stated, probably, as follows: some apples have worms in them, other don’t; when biting an apple one occasionally finds a worm unless the apple has been sprayed properly; worms in apples leaves holes.

The reactive mind, however, doing a computation on apples and worms as contained in its engram bank, would calculate as follows: apples are worms are bites are holes in apples are holes in anything are apples and always are worms are apples are bites, etc.

The analytical mind’s computations might embrace the most staggering summations of calculus, the shifty turns of symbolic logic, the computations requisite to bridge-building or dress-making. Any mathematical equation ever seen came from the analytical mind and might be used by the analytical mind in resolving the most routine problems.

But not the reactive mind! That’s so beautifully, wonderfully simple that it can be stated, in operation, to have just one equation: A = A = A = A = A.

Start any computation with the reactive mind. Start it with the data it contains, of course. Any datum is just the same to it as any other datum in the same experience.

An analytical computation done on the woman being kicked, as mentioned, would be that women get themselves into situations sometimes when they get kicked and hurt and men have been known to kick and hurt women.

A reactive mind computation about his engram, as an engram, would be: the pain of the kick equals the pain of the blow equals the overturning chair equals the passing car equals the faucet equals the fact that she is a faker equals the fact that she is no good equals the fact that she changes her mind equals the voice tones of the man equals the emotion equals a faker equals a faucet running equals the pain of the kick equals organic sensation in the area of the kick equals the overturning chair equals changing one’s mind equals.... But why continue?

Every single perception in this engram equals every other perception in this engram. What?

That’s crazy? Precisely!

Let us further examine our post-hypnotic positive suggestion of the touched tie and the removed coat. In this we have the visible factors of how the reactive mind operates.

This post-hypnotic suggestion needs only an emotional charge and physical pain to make it a dangerous engram. Actually it is an engram of a sort. It is laid in by sympathy between the operator and subject, which would make it a sympathy engram -- pro-survival.

Now we know that the operator had only to touch his tie to make the awakened subject remove his coat. The subject did not know what it was which caused him to remove his coat and found all manner of explanation for the action, none of which was the right one. The engram, the post-hypnotic suggestion in this case, was actually placed in the reactive mind bank. It was below the level of consciousness, it was compulsion springing from below the level of consciousness. And it worked upon the muscles to make the subject remove his coat. It was data fused into the circuits of the body below the command level of the analytical mind and operated not only upon the body but also upon the analytical mind itself.

If this subject took off his coat every time he saw somebody touch a necktie, society would account him slightly mad. And yet there was no power of consent about this. If he had attempted to thwart the operator by refusing to remove the coat, the subject would have experienced great discomfort of one sort or another.

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Let us now take an example of the reactive mind’s processes in a lower echelon of life: a fish swims into the shallows where the water is brackish, yellow, and tastes of iron. He has just taken a mouthful of shrimp when a bigger fish rushes at him and knocks against his tail.

The small fish manages to get away but he has been physically hurt. Having negligible analytical powers, the small fish depends upon reaction for much of his choice of activity.

Now he heals his tail and goes on about his affairs. But one day he is attacked by a larger fish and gets his tail bumped. This time he is not seriously hurt, merely bumped. But something has happened. Something within him considers that in his choice of action he is now being careless. Here is a second injury in the same area.

The computation on the fish reactive level was: shallows equals brackish equals yellow equals iron taste equals pain in tail equals shrimp in mouth, and any one of these equals any other.

The bump in the tail on the second occasion keyed-in the engram. It demonstrated to the organism that something like the first accident (identity thought) could happen again.

Therefore, beware!

The small fish, after this, swims into brackish water. This makes him slightly

“nervous.” But he goes on swimming and finds himself in yellow and brackish water. And still he does not turn back. He begins to get a small pain in his tail. But he keeps on swimming.

Suddenly he gets a taste of iron and the pain in his tail turns on heavily. And away he goes like a flash. No fish was after him. There were shrimp to be had there. But away he went anyway.

Dangerous place! And if he had not turned away, he would have really gotten himself a pain in the tail.

The mechanism is survival activity of a sort. In a fish it may serve a purpose. But in a man, who takes off a coat every time somebody touches a tie, the survival mechanism has long outlived its time. But it is there!

Let us further investigate our young man and the coat. The signal for the coat removal was very precise. The operator touched his tie. This is equivalent to any or all of the perceptions the fish received and which made the fish turn back. The touch of the tie could have been a dozen things. Any one of the dozen might have signaled the removal of the coat.

In the case of the woman who was knocked out and kicked, any perception in the engram she received has some quality of restimulation. Running water from a faucet might not have affected her greatly. But water running from a faucet plus a passing car might have begun some slight reactivation of the engram, a vague discomfort in the areas where she was struck and kicked, not enough yet to cause her real pain but there all the same. To the running water and the passing car we add the sharp falling of a chair and she experiences a shock of mild proportion. Add now the smell and voice of the man who kicked her and the pain begins to grow. The mechanism is telling her that she is in dangerous quarters, that she should leave.

But she is not a fish, she is a highly sentient being, to our knowledge the most complex mental structure so far evolved on Earth, organism of the species, Man. There are many other factors in the problem than this one engram. She stays. The pains in the areas where she was abused become a predisposition to illness or are chronic illness in themselves, minor it is true in the case of this one incident, but illness just the same. Her affinity with the man who beat her may be so high that the analytical level, being assisted by a normally high general tone, may counter against these pains. But if that level is low, without much to assist it, then the pains can become major.

The fish that was so struck and received an engram did not disavow shrimp. Shrimp might have made him a little less enthusiastic afterwards, but the survival potential of shrimp-eating made shrimp equal far more pleasure than it did pain.

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A pleasant and hopeful life in general -- and never think we intimate that the woman stays for food alone whatever the wits say about women -- has a high survival potential, and that can overcome a very great deal of pain. As the survival potential diminishes, however, the level of pain (Zone 0 and Zone 1) is more closely approached and such an engram could begin to be reactivated severely.

There is another factor here, however, besides pain -- in fact, several more factors. If the young man with the detachable coat had been given one of the neurotic positive suggestions as listed a few pages back, he would have reacted to it on signal.

The engram this woman has received contains a neurotic positive suggestion quite in addition to the general restimulators such as the faucet and the car and the overturning chair.

She has been told that she is a faker, that she is no good, and that she is always changing her mind. When the engram is restimulated in one of the great many ways possible, she has a

“feeling” that she is no good, a faker, and she will change her mind.

There are several cases to hand which peculiarly illustrate the sadness of this. One case in particular which was cleared had been beaten severely many times and told a similar thing each time, all derogatory. The content inferred that she was very loose morally and would cohabit with anyone. She was brought in as a case by her father -- she had since been divorced

-- who complained that she was very loose morally and had cohabited with several men in as many weeks. She herself admitted that she was, she could not see how it could be and it worried her, but she just “could not seem to help it.” Examination of the engrams in her reactive mind bank brought forth a long series of beatings with this content. Because this was a matter of research, not treatment -- although that was given -- her former husband was contacted. An examination, independent of her knowledge, demonstrated his rage dramatization to contain these very words. He had beaten his wife into being a morally loose woman because he was afraid of morally loose women.

All cases examined in all this research were checked, the patient’s engrams against the engrams in the donor. The contents of the incidents were verified wherever possible and were found uniformly to agree. Every safeguard was made to prevent any other method of communication between donor and patient. Everything found in the “unconscious” periods of every patient, when checked against other source, was found to be exact.

The analogy between hypnotism and aberration bears out well. Hypnotism plants by positive suggestion one or another form of insanity. It is usually a temporary planting, but sometimes the hypnotic suggestion will not “lift” or remove in a way desirable to the hypnotist.

The danger of running experiments with hypnosis. on uncleared patients is found in another mechanism of the reactive kind.

When an engram such as our example above exists, the woman obviously was

“unconscious” at the time she received the engram. She had no standard bank memory (record) of the incident beyond the knowledge that she had been knocked out by the man. The engram was not, then, an experience as we understand the word. It could work from below to aberrate her thinking processes, it could give her strange pains -- which she attributed to something else

-- in the areas injured. But it was not known to her.

The key-in was necessary to activate the engram. But what, precisely, could key it in?

At some later time when she was tired the man threatened to strike her again and called her names. This was conscious level experience. It was found to be “mentally painful” by her. And it was “mentally painful” only because there was real, live, physical pain unseen under it, which had been “keyed-in” by the conscious experience. The second experience was a lock. It was a memory but it had a new kind of action in the standard banks. It had too much power and it gained that power from a past physical blow. The reactive mind is not too careful about its time clock. It can’t tell one year old from ninety, in fact, when a key-in begins. The actual engram moved up under the standard bank.

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She thinks she is worried about what he said in the lock experience. She is actually worried about the engram. In this way memories become “painful.” But pain doesn’t store in the standard banks. There is no place in that bank for pain. None. There is a place for the concept of pain and these concepts of what is painful are good enough to keep the sentient organism called Man away from all the pain he believes is actually dangerous. In a clear there are no pain-inducing memories because there is no physical pain record left to ruin the machinery from the reactive mind bank.

The young man with the detachable coat did not know what was worrying him or what made him do what he did. The person with an engram does not know what is worrying him.

He thinks it is the lock and the lock may be a very long way removed from anything resembling the engram. The lock may have similar perceptic content. But it may be on another subject entirely.

It is not very complicated to undersand what these engrams do. They are simply moments of physical pain strong enough to throw part or all the analytical machinery out of circuit; they are antagonism to the survival of the organism or pretended sympathy to the organism’s survival. That is the entire definition. Great or little “unconsciousness,” physical pain, perceptic content and contra-survival or pro-survival data. They are handled by the reactive mind, which thinks exclusively in identities of everything equals everything. And they enforce their commands upon the organism by wielding the whip of physical pain. If the organism does not do exactly as they say (and believe any clear, that’s impossible!), the physical pain turns on. They steer a person like a keeper steers a tiger -- and they can make a tiger out of a man in the process without much trouble -- and give him mange into the bargain.