Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (30 page)

Yesterday’s cliches and absurdities become, tragically enough, today’s engramic commands. One very, very morose young man, for instance, was found to have as the central motif of his reactive mind Hamlet’s historic vacillations about whether “to be or not to be, that is the question.” Mama (who was what these colloquially-minded auditors call a “loop”) had gotten it by contagion from an actor-father whose failure to be a Barrymore had driven him to drink and wife beating; and our young man would sit for hours in a morose apathy wondering about life. To classify his psychosis required nothing more than “apathetic young fellow.”

Most of engram content is merely cliches and commonplaces and emotional crash drives by Mama or Papa. But the auditor will have his moments. And when he suddenly learns about them, the pre-clear will have his laughs.

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In other words, aberration can be any combination of words contained in an engram.

Thus, to classity by aberration is not only utterly impossible but completely unnecessary. After an auditor has run one case, he will be far more able to appreciate this.

As for psycho-somatic ills, as classified in an earlier chapter, these depend also upon accidental or intentional word combinations and all the variety of injury and unbalanced fluid and growth possible. It is very well to call an obscure pain “tendonitis” but more probably and more accurately, it is a fall or injury before birth. Asthma comes fairly constantly from birth, as do conjunctivitis and sinusitis, but when these can occur in birth, there is generally prenatal background. Thus it can be said that wherever a man or woman aches is of minor importance to the auditor beyond using the patient’s chronic illness to locate the chain of sympathy engrams, and all the auditor needs to know of that illness is that some area of the body hurts the patient. That, for the auditor, is enough for psycho-somatic diagnosis.

It happens that the extent of aberration and the extent of psycho-somatic illness are not the regulating factors which establish how long a case may take. A patient may be a screaming lunatic and yet require only a hundred hours to clear. Another may be a “well-balanced” and moderately successful person and yet take five hundred hours to clear. Therefore, in the light of the fact that the extent of aberration and illness has only a minor influence on what the auditor is interested in -- therapy -- classification by these is so much wasted time.

Oh, there are such things as a man being too sick from heart trouble to be worked very hard and such things as a patient worrying so continuously as a manifestation of his usual life that the auditor finds his work difficult, but these are rarities and again have little bearing on the classification of a case.

The rule in diagnosis is that whatever the individual offers the auditor as a detrimental reaction to therapy is engramic and will prove so in the process. Whatever impedes the auditor in his work is identical to whatever is impeding the patient in his thinking and living. Think of it this way: the auditor is an analytical mind (his own) confronted with a reactive mind (the preclear’s). Therapy is a process of thinking. Whatever troubles the patient will also trouble the auditor; whatever troubles the auditor has also troubled the patient’s analytical mind.

The patient is not a whole analytical mind: the auditor will find himself occasionally with a patient who does nothing but swear at him and yet when the appointment time arrives, there that patient is, anxious to continue therapy; or the auditor may find a patient who tells him how useless the entire procedure is and how she hates to be worked upon and yet if he were to tell her, “All right, we’ll stop work,” she would go into a prompt decline.

The analytical mind of the patient wants to do the same thing the auditor is trying to do, fight down into the reactive bank; therefore, the auditor, when he encounters opposition, adverse theory about dianetics, personal criticism, etc., is not listening to analytical data but reactive engrams and he should calmly proceed, secure in that knowledge, for the patient’s dynamics, all that can be brought to bear, will help him so long as the auditor is an ally against the pre-clear’s reactive mind, rather than a critic or attacker of the pre-clear’s analytical mind.

This is an example:

(In reverie -- pre-natal basic area)

PRE-CLEAR: (Believing he means dianetics) I don’t know. I don’t know. I just can’t remember. It won’t work. I know it won’t work.

AUDITOR:

(repeater technique, described later) Go over that. Say, “It won’t work.”

PRE-CLEAR: “It won’t work. It won’t work. It won’t work... etc. etc.” Ouch, my stomach hurts! “It won’t work. It won’t work. It won’t work ...” (Laughter of relief.) That’s my mother. Talking to herself.

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AUDITOR:

All right, let’s pick up the entire engram. Begin at the beginning.

PRE-CLEAR: (Quoting recall with somatics [pains]) “I don’t know how to do it. I just can’t remember what Becky told me. I just can’t remember it. Oh, I am so discouraged. It won’t work this way. It just won’t work. I wish I knew what Becky told me but I can’t remember.

Oh I wish...” Hey, what’s she got in here? Why, God damn her, that’s beginning to burn! It’s a douche. Say! Let me out of here! Bring me up to present time! That really burns!

AUDITOR:

Go back to the beginning and go over it again. Pick up whatever additional data you can contact.

PRE-CLEAR: Repeats engram, finding all the old phrases and some new ones plus some sounds. Recounts four more times, “re-experiencing” everything. Begins to yawn, almost falls asleep (“unconsciousness” coming off), revives and repeats engram twice more. Then begins to chuckle over it. Somatic is gone. Suddenly engram is “gone” (refiled and he cannot discover it again. He is much pleased.)

AUDITOR:

Go to the next earliest moment of pain or discomfort.

PRE-CLEAR: Uh. Mmmmm. I can’t get in there. Say, I can’t get in there! I mean it. I wonder where...

AUDITOR:

Go over the line, “Can’t get in there.”

PRE-CLEAR: “Can’t get in there. Can’t...” My legs feel funny. There’s a sharp pain. Say, what the hell is she doing? Why damn her! Boy, I’d like to get my hands on her just once. Just once!

AUDITOR:

Begin at the beginning and recount it.

PRE-CLEAR: (Recounts engram several times, yawns off “unconsciousness,” chuckles when he can’t find the engram any more. Feels better.) Oh, well, I guess she had her troubles.

AUDITOR:

(Carefully refraining from agreeing that Mama had her troubles, since that would make him an ally of Mama) Go to the next moment of pain or discomfort.

PRE-CLEAR: (Uncomfortable) I can’t. I’m not moving on the time track. I’m stuck. Oh, all right. “I’m stuck, I’m stuck.” No. “It’s stuck. It’s stuck that time.” No. “I stuck it that time.”

Why damn her! That’s my coronary trouble! That’s it! That’s the sharp pain I get!

AUDITOR:

Begin at the beginning of the engram and recount, etc.

Each time, it can be seen in this example, that the patient in reverie encountered analytically the engram in near proximity, the engram command impinged itself upon the patient himself, who gave it forth as an analytical opinion to the auditor. A pre-clear in reverie is close up against the source material of his aberrations. An aberree wide awake may be giving forth highly complex opinions which he will battle to the death to defend as his own but which are, in reality, only his aberrations impinging against his analytical mind. Patients will go right on declaring that they know the auditor is dangerous, that he shouldn’t ever have started them in therapy, etc., and still keep working well and efficiently. That’s one of the reasons why the auditor’s code is so important: the patient is just as eager to relieve himself of his engrams as could be wished, but the engrams give the appearance of being a long way from anxious to be relieved.

It will also be seen in the above example that the auditor is not making any positive suggestion. If the phrase is not engramic, the patient will very rapidly tell him so in no uncertain terms and although it still may be, the auditor has no great influence over the pre-clear in reverie beyond helping him to attack engrams. If the pre-clear contradicted any of the above, 121

it means that the engram containing the words suggested is not ready to be relieved and another paraphrase is in order.

Diagnosis, then, is something which takes care of itself on the aberration and psychosomatic plane. The auditor could have guessed -- and kept it to himself -- that a series of attempted abortions were coming up in the above example before he entered the area. He might have guessed that the indecisiveness of the patient was from his mother. The auditor, however, does not communicate his guesses. This would be suggestion and might be seized upon by the patient. It is up to the pre-clear to find out. The auditor, for instance, could not have known where on the time track the pre-clear’s “coronary pain” was nor the nature of the injury.

Chasing up and down looking for a specific pain would be just so much wasted time. All such things will surrender in the course of therapy. The only interest in them is whether or not the aberrations and illnesses go to return no more. At the end of therapy they will be gone. At the beginning they are only complication.

Diagnosis of aberration and psycho-somatic illness, then, is not an essential part of dianetic diagnosis.

What we are interested in is the mechanical operation of the mind. That is the sphere of diagnosis. What are the working mechanics of the analytical mind?

1.

Perception. Sight, hearing, tactile and pain, etc.

2.

Recall. Visio-color, tone-sonic, tactile, etc.

3.

Imagination. Visio-color, tone-sonic, tactile, etc.

These are the mechanical processes. Diagnosis deals primarily with these factors and with these factors can establish the length of time a case should take, how difficult the case will be, etc. And we need only a few of these.

This further simplifies into a code:

1. Perception, over or under optimum.

(a) Sight

(b) Sound

2. Recall: Under

(a) Sonic

(b) Visio

3. Imagination: Over

(a) Sonic

(b) Visio

In other words, when we examine a patient before we make him a pre-clear (by starting him into therapy) we are interested in three things only: too much or too little perception, too little recall, too much imagination.

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In Perception we mean how well or how poorly he can hear, see and feel.

In Recall, we want to know if he can recall by sonic (hearing), visio (seeing) and somatic (feeling).

In Imagination we want to know if he (recalls) sonics, visions or somatics too much.

Let us make this extremely clear: it is very simple, it is not complex, and it requires no great examination. But it is important and establishes the length of time in therapy.

There is nothing wrong with an active imagination so long as the person knows he is imagining. The kind of imagination we are interested in is that used for unknowing “dub-in”

and in that kind only. An active imagination which the patient knows to be imagination is an extremely valuable asset to him. An imagination which substitutes itself for recall is very trying in therapy.

“Hysterical” blindness and deafness or extended sight or hearing are useful in diagnosis. The first, “hysterical” blindness, means the patient is afraid to see; “hysterical”

deafness means he is afraid to hear. These will require considerable therapy. Likewise, extended sight and extended hearing, while not as bad as blindness and deafness, are an index of how frightened the patient really is and is often a straight index of the prenatal content in terms of violence.

If the patient is afraid to see with his eyes or hear with his ears in present time, be assured there is much in his background to make him afraid, for these actual perceptions do not

“turn-off” easily.

If the patient jumps at sounds and is startled by sights or is very disturbed by these things, his perceptions can be said to be extended, which means the reactive bank has a great deal in it labeled “death.”

The recalls in which we are interested in diagnosis are those which are less than optimum only. When they are “over optimum” they are actually imagination “dubbed in” for recall. Recall (under) and imagination (over) are actually, then, one group, but for simplicity and clarity we keep them apart.

If the patient cannot “hear” sounds or voices in past incidents he does not have sonic. If he does not “see” scenes of past experiences in motion color pictures, he does not have visio.

If the patient hears voices which have not existed or sees scenes which have not existed and yet supposes that these voices really spoke and these scenes were real, we have “over imagination.” In dianetics imaginary sound recall would be hyper-sonic, sight recall -- hyper-visio (hyper= over).

Let us take specific examples of each one of these three classes and demonstrate how they become fundamental in therapy and how their presence or absence can make a case difficult.

A patient with a mild case of “hysterical” deafness is one who has difficulty in hearing.

The deafness can be organic but if organic it will not vary from time to time.

This patient has something he is afraid to hear. He plays the radio very loudly, makes people repeat continually and misses pieces of the conversation. Do not go to an institution to find this degree of “hysterical” deafness. Men and women are “hysterically” deaf without any conscious knowledge of it. Their “hearing just isn’t so good.” In dianetics this is being called hypo-hearing (hypo = under).

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The patient who is always losing something when it lies in fair view before him, who misses signposts, theater bills and people who are in plain sight is “hysterically” blind to some degree. He is afraid he will see something. In dianetics this is being called, since the word

“hysterical” is a very inadequate and overly dramatic one, hypo-sight.