Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (44 page)

to other things such as a restimulation of what she called her own “death instinct” (which was, in reality, engramic chatter by mother about wanting to die and get it all over with). Actually the aunt had been a large factor in dissuading the mother from “getting rid of” the child and had made the mother promise that she would not. The aunt had also tended the child, postnatally, through illnesses and was, in fact, the only refuge for the girl when a termagant mother and a religiously bigoted father would converge on her, for neither had wanted her and there had been a number of efforts to terminate the pregnancy pre-term.

Her father communicated the information to the girl with a sonorous voice and appropriately long face. “I want you to be very respectful at the funeral, Agatha.” (“What funeral?”) “Your aunt just passed to the great beyond.” (“She’s dead?”) “Yes, death must come to us all and we must all be prepared some day to meet the fate which waits for us at the end of the road. For it is a long path, life, and God and flaming hell wait at its other end and someday we all must die. Be sure you are very respectful at the funeral.” She had begun to pale at the word “funeral,” she was to all purposes “unconscious” when she heard the first mention of

“death” and she remained “unconscious,” if moving about, for two whole days. The case had been very slow until this engram was discovered and run. An enormous discharge of grief took place, which had never before manifested itself. It was reduced to boredom in eight recountings, at which the first moment of the aunt’s intervention in the abortion attempts was automatically contacted and released.

Thereafter the case made progress in the prenatal area, prohibition against “getting rid of it” having been removed and (according to theory, free units being available), the charge had come off the prenatal area. There were five other allies in this case, the girl, with parents who had been so wicked to her, having attached herself to anyone who would show her interest and refuge. As lower physical pain came into view, more allies showed up and more painful emotion engrams were discharged, permitting new physically painful engrams to display themselves.

The next example is an engram from a patient who had all his life been reared and cared for by “moneyed parents.” He had a very severe prenatal area which yet would not lift to view.

It was discovered at length that his nurses had been his only source of love and affection and that his mother, being a woman who liked to unsettle the household as often as possible, would discharge a nurse every time she found the child had grown fond of her, even though the mother herself made it plain that she considered the child “nasty.” The engram: the boy sees his nurse coming out of the house with her suitcase in her hand: he stops playing in the yard and runs to her to “scare her”: she is quite angry from the scene she has just had -- an Irish girl

-- and yet she smooths her face and kneels down beside him. “I am leaving, Buddy. I can’t stay here any more. No, I can’t be your nurse now. But there, there, you’ll have another one.

Don’t cry. It’s not good for little boys to cry. Good-bye, Buddy. I love you.” And she goes off out of sight.

He was stunned from the first instant she said she was leaving. The prohibition against crying was from an ally: whatever an ally says must be good and must be believed because allies are survival and one must survive: allies therefore must be believed. He had not cried except on rare occasions of enormous sorrow in all the years thereafter. Eight of these departures were touched without result but with this one, they all loosened and discharged, one after the other.

Any departure of or from an ally contains an emotional charge which, if it will not display itself, is elsewhere suppressed.

The third example of the painful emotion engram is the third type, loss of an ally by reversal. A wife loved her husband very dearly. They had gotten along well together until his parents came into the vicinity and began to malign his wife. He was furious with them for it and quarreled with them. His wife was a pseudo-ally and unfortunately that ally had told the child to believe his parents. (This is fairly chronic with allies -- if they would give the child correct data when he is emotionally disturbed or ill, there would be less trouble. A remark such 172

as, “Well, you’ll grow up some day and be able to care for yourself,” is much better than a hat full of Emersonian platitudes.) This brought about a tragic reversal. The reactive mind, restimulated at the sight of his wife (the husband was emotionally disturbed, very restimulated already by his parents) threw in the data that one must believe one’s parents. This made his wife no good, as per their aberrative chatter. He went into his father’s valence to escape this imponderable situation and that valence beat women. He struck his wife repeatedly, dramatizing one of his father’s engrams: “I hate you. You are no good. I should have listened to them sooner. You’re no good.”

The wife was in therapy. This charge suppressed itself, not out of shame for her husband’s actions but for the mechanical reason that the early area had to be relieved before this one would discharge (smart file clerk). Her case had slowed down to a point where the board looked entirely clear although somatics (which she attributed to natural causes) and aberrations (which she said were reasonable reactions) still manifested themselves. Suddenly this incident appeared when repeater technique was used on the auditor’s random guess: “I hate you,” for it was known that she said this now and then to her husband. Three recountings discharged this painful emotion despite its violence (it made her weep until she almost choked). Immediately twelve prenatals, all fights between her mother and father (an ally, of which her husband was the pseudo-ally) wherein the mother beat her abdomen and cursed the child, appeared and were erased and the case progressed to clear.

Loss of dogs, dolls, money, position, even the threat of a loss, anything may bring about a painful emotion engram so long as it is loss. It may be loss by death, loss by departure, loss by reversal. Anything connected with the life of the patient and associated by him with his own survival seems to be capable of locking up life units when lost. A condition of such painful emotion is that it has early physically painful engrams upon which to append. The physically painful engram is still the villain but it has an accomplice in the painful emotion engram.

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CHAPTER IX

THE CASE ENTRANCE

Every case presents a new problem of entrance. No two human beings are exactly alike and no two cases will follow the exact pattern. However, this presents no problem to dianetics since the mechanics are always the same.

There are three case classifications: the sonic-recall, the non-sonic recall and the imaginary recall (what auditors call a “dub-in” recall).

In the sonic recall case, the entrance is very easy. But in all cases the basic procedure is the same. Put the patient in reverie (and don’t worry too much if he doesn’t go into a very deep reverie because reverie only serves to fix his attention on himself and the auditor and you can at least accomplish that). Install a canceller. Return him to childhood to pick up a pleasant incident and then find a minor pain incident such as a slap in the face. Run him through this a few times just to let him get the idea. If he doesn’t respond well, put him into yesterday and let him ride to work and ask him about sounds and sights, then send him to childhood again.

The object of finding a minor incident such as a slapped face is to find out if the patient has a pain shutoff. A pain shut-off is not particularly difficult in dianetics. You can get back before the command which installed the anesthesia, but it is interesting to know about it because you want to look for it early in the case. See then if the patient has an emotional shutoff. This again is not particularly embarrassing but again is data you want to find eventually.

Test now to find out if the patient is within himself or if he is outside himself, watching himself. If he is exteriorized, you are working a case which has considerable walled up emotion in it which must be discharged.

Now make a try to basic-basic. You might surprise yourself and get it. And you might work fifty hours for it, releasing the case the while. Get whatever the file clerk will give you in the prenatal area and what you get, reduce.

Whether basic-basic is contacted or not, locate as many prenatals as will present themselves without much coaxing and reduce each one.

If you find no prenatals, bring the patient up to present time but remind him to keep his eyes closed. Now ask him a few questions about his family, his grandparents, his wife or, if the pre-clear is a woman, her husband. Ask about any former husbands or wives. Ask about children. And ask particularly about death. You are looking for a painful emotion engram, an instant of loss which will discharge.

Finding out about one, even if it is just the death of a favorite dog, return the pre-clear to it and run it from the first moment he hears the news of it and for the ensuing few minutes of it. Then start it again. Reduce the moment as an engram. You want an emotional discharge.

Run it several times. If you don’t get a discharge, find some other moment of loss, some failure, something, anything which will discharge: but do it all quietly as if with sympathy.

Lacking any success, start in repeater technique, never for a moment giving any intelligence that you are anything but calmly concerned for his welfare (even if some of his gyrations worry you). Try such phrases as “Poor little -- “ using his or her childhood name.

When the pre-clear has repeated this several times (the auditor at the same time stating that somatic strip will return to any incident containing the phrase to assist the “suck down”), he may find himself in a high tension incident which will discharge. If nothing discharges yet, 174

keep calm (all this work will pay dividends in the next session or the next or next), keep searching, keep observing. There is emotional charge here somewhere which will discharge.

Try other combinations of words such as those which would be said to a sick and worried child, make the pre-clear repeat them.

If you have had no success as yet, make another test, without saying it is a test, to see if the pre-clear is actually leaving present time. Don’t let him “try to remember” -- you want him to return and that is another process, although it is just as natural to the brain. If he is stuck in present time, start him on repeater technique again, suggesting bouncers: “Get out and never come back!” “You can’t ever return!” etc., which would account for his being still in present time. If he is not returning after some of this, start in with holder phrases: “I’m stuck!” “Don’t move!” and so forth.

Stay calm, never appear anxious. If you get neither a discharge nor an engram with repeater technique in this first session and if you get no motion on the track, read this manual again and try your patient not later than three days after this first session. At that time some of the data you have asked for may be available.

Ordinarily, however, you will receive either a prenatal or a discharge and if you get a discharge, then ask the somatic strip to go back for the prenatal it was sitting on. Reduce everything you can find. If birth turns up and seems to be in full recall, try to reduce that but do so in the knowledge that it probably will not lift very far and in the knowledge that you had better run it over and over and over to de-intensity it all you can.

Sometimes the pre-clear will go into a deeper reverie than you wish. But do not try to wake him into a higher level. Work him where he is. But if he seems to be in something approaching hypnotic trance, be very careful of your language. Never tell him, for instance, to go back there and stay there until he finds something. That’s a holder. Don’t use holders and bouncers and groupers et al. on anyone in dianetics. “Will you please return to the prenatal area?” “Let’s see if the somatic strip can locate an early moment of pain or discomfort.” “Please pick up the somatic at the beginning and roll the engram.” “What do you hear, please?”

“Continue” (when you want him to keep on going from the point of the engram where he is to the later end of the engram). “Recount that again, please.”

There’s nothing to be nervous about. If you get nervous, then he’ll get nervous.

Sometimes you run into a pain shut-off. This has a tendency to put the pain into the muscles and the muscles will jump and quiver and the patient may sense this and still feel nothing more. Once in a great while a patient will have such a thorough pain shut-off that he bounces about, all unconscious of the action, and almost falls from couch to floor. If you run into this, do not be alarmed: the pain is locked in somehow. Get early enough and you’ll locate a somatic he can feel, or go late and find an emotional charge.

Don’t be misled if he tells you, with regard to emotion, that he has worked it all out in psycho-analysis or some such thing. He may have walled in the death of his wife or sweetheart or child, but the whole engram is still there, crammed with captured units, ready to be run exactly as an engram.

If you run into a heavy emotional charge, simply let the patient weep, keep him at the business of running the engram in a soft, sympathetic voice, have it recounted until there is no charge left in any of it and then run him early into the prenatal area or early childhood to get a physical pain engram that must have been below that emotional charge and held it in place.

The extravagance of emotional discharge is nothing to be alarmed about. Bringing the patient out of it and to present time suddenly would cause him unhappiness about it. Running the painful emotion engram will discharge, in a few recountings, sorrow which society has believed could never be countered or relieved except by repression. Get the moment he first heard the news or observed the thing which made him feel so bad. Run it far enough from its 175

beginning to make sure that you have the initial shock -- a few minutes of engram time will do