Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (66 page)

Make a series of careful observations.

A.

These observations must be repeated, and are acceptable as observations only if many people following the prescribed techniques can duplicate the results.

B.

Variations of the prescribed techniques must be tried to eliminate the possibility that the observed results might be due to a factor other than that intended. As a gross example, suppose it is reported that a magnet will attract objects.

Demonstration show it does attract and lift iron balls; that is Step A above.

Now variations of the experiment show that the magnet attracts iron but not copper, silver, etc. The observed effect -- attraction -- is real. Variation of the original experiment is needed to show the actual limits of the effect.

2.

Combining all relevant data, from all relevant experiments, formulate a hypothesis.

A.

The hypothesis must explain all observed data.

B.

It must not demand as a consequence of its logical development, the existence of phenomena that do not, in fact, exist.

C.

But it should indictate the existence of real, hitherto unobserved facts.

3.

Using the hypothesis, predict new facts.

A.

A logical structure broad enough to explain all observed, relevant phenomena will necessarily imply further phenomena that have not yet been observed. Use this mechanism to predict the existence of something which, under previous theories, would not exist.

4.

Perform an experiment and make observations on these predictions.

5.

As a result of the experiment, discard the hypothesis, or advance it now to the status of

“Theory.”

6.

Make further predictions, further experiments, and collect more observational evidence until a contradictory relevant fact is found.

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7.

Discard the old theory, take the new total of observational data, and form a new hypothesis.

8.

See Step Three.

This process seems, at first glance, a completely circular, going-nowhere system. It isn’t; the 50-passenger airliner flying by just overhead testifies to that. Notice that each time round that cycle the new hypothesis shows how to get new data, new experimental evidence, new information. The process is not circular; it’s an expanding spiral, and each sweep around it covers a broader and broader field of understanding.

But the most important step of all -- the one that took men longest to make once the idea of organized knowledge was started -- is Step Seven. “Discard the old theory ... and start all over again.” It’s hard for men -- who are basically conventional, status-quo animals! to give up the comfortable familiarity, the nice, easy routine, of that Old Time Theory, to embark on a completely new system that calls for a total revision of all their thoughts. It’s so easy and comfortable to believe that the old theory is Truth, and doesn’t and won’t ever need changing, even if it doesn’t work all the time. Like an old pair of shoes, it is comfortable, and familiar, even if the holes are apparent.

The true scientist is in a somewhat different position. He starts off with any theory and finds it useful only so long as it works. If it no longer works, it should be discarded, and a new, better one fashioned.

And that is an old, comfortable familiar theory that you can settle down into, and stick with for life. Expect change; you can be sure you won’t be disappointed.

John W. Campbell, Jr.

Nuclear Physicist,

Author of The Atomic Story

NOTE: Formulation of this Scientific Methodology was contributed in part by the engineers of

“Ma Bell”, the Bell Telephone research laboratories -- to whom thanks are extended.

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APPENDIX III(A)

Mind Schematic

The mind schematic is a block diagram illustrating analogically the observed operation of the mind in the organism. It may be likened to the schematic diagram of an electrical circuit, in which the position and relationship of elements derive from the connections to them and not from their placing on the page. The connecting lines represent paths for the transmission of messages which control activity. In this activity we can trace three separate behavior patterns.

First is the basic cycle of automatic physical adjustment, involving only the Life Function Regulator as it regulates the life processes of the Organism. This cycle involves the continuous metering of body conditions, such as heart rate, temperature, digestion, with the issue of orders through the automatic nervous system to correct untoward conditions as they develop. Here lies control of circulation, respiration, perspiration, endocrine secretion and all other body fluid flow, and hence control of metabolism itself for each part of the body and for the whole. The Life Function Regulator, like the governor of an engine, balances the life processes against each other and against the environment of the Organism, through the simple cycle of measure and correct, measure and correct, measure and correct.

It is to be noted that the Life Function Regulator in operating to regulate the Organism regulates the physical aspects of the Analyzer, the Standard Memory, the Reactive Mind and the Learned Motion Pattern Responder, all of which are parts of the Organism. The functions of these parts are described at suitable points in the development of the behavior patterns involving them.

Second is the cycle of reasoned behavior. The phases of this cycle are the receipt of percepts by the Analyzer, the comparison of these percepts with the contents of the Standard Memory and the selection of relevant data, the computation of possible actions and the choice of action to be taken, and the transmission to the Organism of orders which result in that action. These orders are ordinarily converted from relatively simple to complex patterns in the Learned Motion Pattern Responder, whose function is commonly attributed to the spinal cord.

Reasoned behavior is rarely recyclic, because each act changes the relationship of the Organism to its environment, thereby changing the percepts, so that the next act differs in a progressive pattern.

The Standard Memory, on which the Analyzer depends fur data, is a tremendous file of recordings covering every sight, sound, smell or other perception of the individual’s life, awake or asleep. The only exceptions are that it does not record pain and that it does not receive data when the Gate is closed during “unconsciousness.” Such data are recorded in the Reactive Mind, to be discussed later, and cannot be transferred automatically to the Standard Memory after consciousness is restored, because the recordings of pain and unconsciousness with them prevent access by the Analyzer. For the same reason they are not available for conscious recall. The contents of the Standard Memory are complete and detailed, including shades of colors and timbres of sounds, and are indexed accurately by time, by topic, and by value to the Organism.

The Analyzer is a calculating machine arranged to analyze each situation in the light of available data and to determine and direct the next acts of the Organism so as best to enable the individual, his progeny, associates, and environment to survive. Except for bias toward survival, which is essential to the continued exercise of its faculties, the Analyzer is self-determined, and is the seat of choice in the human being. Its ability is so highly developed that it can handle several problems at once, involving procedures whose basic patterns are compare-select-act or compare-select-combine. This computing is ordinarily carried on below the level of awareness, not in language but in concepts, with only the premises and solutions appearing.

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In emergencies which raise the necessity level the Analyzer not only orders the voluntary kind of behavior but also assumes control of the Life Function Regulator in order to quicken the whole performance of the bodily machine. By this means it suppresses the behavior of the Reactive Mind.

Third is the cycle of reactive behavior. This cycle compasses automatic, or stimulus-response, behavior of such elaborateness that it is often mistakenly supposed to be volitional and deliberate. The phases of this cycle are the receipt of percepts by the Reactive Mind, where they stimulate reactions, the transmission of these reactions to the Organism as commands, the physical response of the organism to these reactive commands, and new percepts arising from the physical activity. This cycle of perceive and react, perceive and react, may occur once, may repeat in a spiral of increasing vigor, or may develop a series of cycles progressively varied in their nature. Each of these response patterns will contain emotion, speech, motion and psychosomatic disturbances in varying proportions.

The exact nature of reactive behavior will follow precisely, congruently, the content of memories in the Reactive Mind. These memories cover only perceptions received and recorded during “unconsciousness” and in the presence of pain. They therefore cover events or groups of events in which the individual has been a passive participant, but include data from all the senses.

Reactive Mind memories are restimulated, or triggered, by percepts which are at least fragmentarily congruent with them, such as a word or group of words, a smell, a scene or a blow. The effect of repeated or extensive restimulation is to increase the sensitivity of the stimulus-response cells in which these memories may be conceived to be held, so that smaller and smaller restimulations suffice to trigger reactive behavior. Conversely, in the absence of restimulators these cells become less and less sensitive, so that strong, extensive or repeated restimulation becomes necessary to produce reactive behavior. It is to be noted that this threshold is lowered by illness, injury or fatigue, as we often see in when people go “all to pieces” in a state of over-fatigue. The variation of sensitivity with degree of restimulation is independent for each memory of an event or group of events deriving from a separate period of

“unconsciousness.” It is apparent, however, that if portions of two or more such memories are identical, they will have common restimulators and will restimulate each other through their dramatization in reactive behavior.

Since Reactive Mind memories contain pain and “unconsciousness,” it follows that these will appear to some degree in the dramatizations of these memories in reactive behavior, through action on the Life Function Regulator. The dramatization of pain, with its concomitant life function disturbances, can interfere seriously with organic function, particularly by affecting all kinds of body fluid flow. This mechanism is at the root of psycho-somatic illness.

The dramatization of “unconsciousness” can interfere with rational behavior by causing temporary or partial Analyzer shutdown, with the filing of additional memories in the Reactive Mind instead of the Standard Memory. Through this mechanism the content of the Reactive Mind can multiply itself in the presence of chronic restimulators until the behavior of the individual becomes mostly or entirely reactive and the person is judged insane.

The three cycles of activity described may be followed readily on the diagram, where each forms a closed loop. The tempo of the whole is determined by the Life Force of the individual, which manifests itself physically as tenacity in life and mentally as vigor and persistence. This Life Force is not to be confused with physical vigor, which depends also on health, or with “energy,” which depends in part on the content of the Reactive Mind. The Life Force should not be looked on as the fuel for the engine, but rather as the ignition.

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APPENDIX III(B)

Analyzer Schematic

This schematic diagram is a device which enables us to resolve the Analyzer into components with an arrangement capable of explaining analogically its observed behavior as the conscious computing, counselling and control agency of the Organism. The schematic does this by placing the various elements conveniently and interconnecting them with circuit pathways to show the flow of signals and messages.

The key to understanding the Analyzer is the idea of multiple attention. It possesses a considerable number of units of attention, perhaps a score, and can devote them to a large or a small area of activity. Each of these units may be considered to be a separate computer circuit capable of compare-choose-combine or compare-select-act calculations. The input, or attention, end of each of these computers may then be considered to be one of the lines of an attention switchboard. The incoming trunks from any area of activity to which attention is paid will carry in all perceptions, data from the Standard Memory and, when necessary, output data from the computers themselves.

Complementary to the attention switchboard we must postulate an action switchboard which can direct the results of thought to the Organism as action orders, to other computers for further thought, or to the Standard Memory for filing or for delayed action.

The diagram shows these two switchboards with the computers between them, the incoming and outgoing trunk lines, and a group of interconnecting trunk lines which handle information being routed back from output to input fur further use. It also shows separately a control center and a consciousness monitor, which must be described carefully in order to avoid errors in using such words as “awareness” and “consciousness.”

The control center monitors all circuits and orders attention and action by acting as switchboard operator. It is thus another and more elaborate compare-select-act computer, exercising the function of personality. The diagram shows the connections for monitoring and control, and also the Life Force connection through which the whole Analyzer is animated. It is important to note that the control center operates continuously (but in varying degree of alertness), whether the individual is awake or asleep, going entirely out of operation only during complete unconsciousness.

The consciousness monitor is that element which defines our conscious awareness, our continuity of past, present and future, our ability to look out of our eyes and say, “This is I, looking out of here.” While the control center is aware as a normal part of its operation cycle of perceive, judge and act, the consciousness monitor is more than aware; it is aware of being aware. It integrates the pattern of perception, not on a calculator basis, but on a display basis, producing a unified outlook. It is partly like the display panel in the control room of a large machine, which, when a button is pressed, shows in moving light the inner working of the machine, whose processes go on whether the button is pressed or not.