Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  And if the bubonic plague bacillus overloads its own suppressor in an area and then ceases to trouble its food and shelter, the animals, then the animals consider themselves benefited.

  Reckless and clever and well-nigh indestructible, Man has led a course which is a far cry from “tooth and claw” in every sphere. And so have the redwood tree and the shark. Just as a life form, Man, like every life form, is “symbiotic.” Life is a group effort. Lichens and plankton and algae may do very well on sunlight and minerals alone, but they are the building blocks. Above such existence, as the forms grow more complex, a tremendous interdependence exists.

  It is very well for a forester to believe that certain trees willfully kill all other varieties of trees around them and then conclude a specious “attitude” of trees. Let him look again. What made the soil? What provides the means of keeping the oxygen balance? What makes it possible for rain to fall in other areas? These willful and murderous trees. And squirrels plant trees. And Man plants trees. And trees shelter trees of another kind. And animals fertilize trees.

  And trees shelter animals. And trees hold the soil so less well rooted plants can grow. Look anywhere and everywhere and we see life as an assist for life. The multitude of the complexities of life as affinities for life is not dramatic. But they are the steady, practical, important reason life can continue to exist at all.

  A redwood tree may be first out for redwood trees and although it does an excellent job of seeming to exist as redwood alone, a closer glance will show it has dependencies and is depended upon.

  Therefore the dynamic of any life form can be seen to be assisted by many other dynamics and combines with them against the suppressive factors. None survive alone.

  Necessity has been declared to be a very wonderful thing. But necessity is a word which has been taken rather loosely for granted. Opportunism seems to have been read largely into necessity. What is necessity? Besides being the “mother of invention,” is it a dramatic, sudden thing which excuses wars and murders, which touches a man only when he is about to starve? Or is necessity a much gentler and less dramatic quantity? “Everything,” according to Leucippus, “is driven by necessity.” This is a keynote of much theorizing down through the ages. Driven, that is the key to the error. Driven, things are driven. Necessity drives. Pain drives. Necessity and pain, pain and necessity.

  Recalling the dramatic and overlooking the important, Man has conceived himself, from time to time, to be an object of chase by necessity and pain. These were two anthropomorphic (manlike) things which, in full costume, stuck spears at him. It can be said to be a wrong concept merely because it does not work to produce more answers.

  Whatever there is of necessity is within him. Nothing is driving him except his original impetus to survive. And he carries that within himself or his group. Within him is the force with which he fends off pain. Within him is the force with which he attracts pleasure.

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  It chances to be a scientific fact that Man is a self-determined organism to the outermost limit that any form of life can be, for he still depends upon other forms of life and his general environment. But he is self-determined. This is a matter which will be covered later. But right here it is necessary to indicate that he is not inherently a determined organism in the sense that he is driven on this wonderful stimulus-response basis which looks so neat in certain text books, and works so completely unworkably in the world of Man. The happy little illustrations about rats do not serve when we are talking about Man. The more complex the organism, the less reliably these stimulus-response equation works. And when one reaches that highest complexity, Man, he has reached a fine degree of variability in terms of stimulus-response.

  The more sentient, the more rational an organism, the more that organism is self-determined.

  Self-determinism, like all things, is relative. Compared to a rat, however, Man is very self-determined indeed. This is only a scientific fact because it can easily be proven.

  The more sentient the man, the less he is a “push-button” instrument. Aberrated and reduced he can, of course, in a limited degree, be made to perform like a marionette, but then it is understood that the more aberrated a person is, the closer he approaches the intelligence quotient of an animal.

  Given this self-determinism, it is interesting to observe what a man does with it. While he can never escape the “didn’t know it was loaded” equation in terms of cataclysm or the unexpected gain of some other life form, he operates in a high zone level of survival potential.

  But here he is, self-determined, rational, his primary weapon, his mind, in excellent working order. What are his necessity instincts?

  Necessity, according to that very sentient if rapidly subject-changing article, the dictionary, is “the state of being necessary; that which is unavoidable; compulsion.” It also adds that necessity is “extreme poverty,” but we don’t want that. We are talking about survival.

  The compulsion mentioned can be re-evaluated in terms of the survival dynamic. That is interior in the organism and the race. And what is “necessary” to survival?

  We have seen and can prove clinically that there are two factors at work. The necessity of avoiding pain is a factor because, degree by degree, little things, not much in themselves, can amount to large pains which, compounded in that rapid geometric progression, bring on death. Pain is the sadness of being bawled out for poor work, because that may lead to being fired, which may lead to starvation, which may lead to death. Run any equation into which pain has entered and it can be seen that it reduces down to possible non-survival. And if this were all there were to surviving and if necessity were a vicious little gnome with a pitch-fork, it seems rather obvious that there would be scant reason to go on living. But there is the other part of the equation, pleasure. That is a more stable part than pain, Stoics to the contrary, as clinical tests in dianetics prove.

  There is therefore a necessity for pleasure, for working, as happiness can be defined, toward known goals over not unknowable obstacles. And the necessity for pleasure is such that a great deal of pain can be borne to attain it. Pleasure is the positive commodity. It is enjoyment of work, contemplation of deeds well done; it is a good book or a good friend; it is taking all the skin off one’s knees climbing the Matterhorn; it is hearing the kid first say daddy; it is a brawl on the Bund at Shanghai or the whistle of amour from a doorway; it’s adventure and hope and enthusiasm and “someday I’ll learn to paint”; it’s eating a good meal or kissing a pretty girl or playing a stiff game of bluff on the stock exchange. It’s what Man does that he enjoys doing; it’s what Man does that he enjoys contemplating; it’s what Man does that he enjoys remembering; and it may be just the talk of things he knows he’ll never do.

  Man will endure a lot of pain to obtain a little pleasure. Out in the laboratory of the world, it takes very little time to confirm that.

  And how does necessity fit this picture? There is a necessity for pleasure, a necessity as live and quivering and vital as the human heart itself. He who said that a man who had two 28

  loaves of bread should sell one to buy white hyacinth, spoke sooth. The creative, the constructive, the beautiful, the harmonious, the adventurous, yes, and even escape from the maw of oblivion, these things are pleasure and these things are necessity. There was a man once who had walked a thousand miles just to see an orange tree and another who was a mass of scars and poor-set bones who was eager just to get a chance to “fan another bronc.”

  It is very well to dwell in some Olympian height and write a book of penalties and very well to read to find what writers said that other writers said, but it is not very practical.

  The pain-drive theory does not work. If some of these basics of dianetics were only poetry about the idyllic state of Man, they might be justified in that, but it happens that out in the laboratory of the world, they work.

  Man, in affinity with Man, survives, and that survival is pleasure.

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  CHAPTER IV

  The Four Dynamics

  In the original equations of dianetics, when the research was young, it was believed that survival could be envisioned in personal terms alone and still answer all conditions. A theory is only as good as it works. And it works as well as it explains observed data and predicts flew material which will be found, in fact, to exist.

  Survival in personal terms was computed until the whole activity of Man could be theoretically explained in terms of self alone. The logic looked fairly valid. But then it was applied to the world. Something was wrong: it did not solve problems. In fact, the theory of survival in personal terms alone was so unworkable that it left a majority of behavior phenomena unexplained. But it could be computed and it still looked good.

  Then it was that a nearly intuitive idea occurred. Man’s understanding developed in ratio to his recognition of his brotherhood with the Universe. That was high flown but it yielded results.

  Was Man himself a brotherhood of Man? He had evolved and become strong as a gregarious being, an animal that hunted in packs. It seemed possible that all his activities could be computed in terms of the survival of the group. That computation was made. It looked good. Man survived, it was postulated, solely in terms of the survival of his group. It looked good but it left a majority of observed phenomena unexplained.

  It was attempted, then, to explain Man’s behavior in terms of Mankind alone; which is to say, it was assumed that Mankind survived for Mankind in a highly altruistic way. This was straight down the sylvan path of Jean Jacques Rousseau. It could be computed that Man lived alone for the survival of all Mankind. But when addressed to the laboratory -- the world -- it did not work.

  Finally, it was recalled that some had thought that Man’s entire activity and all his behavior could be explained by assuming that he lived for sex alone. This was not an original assumption. But some original computations were made upon it and it is true that, by a few quick twists of the equation, his survival activity can be made to resolve on only the sexual basis. But when this was applied to observed data, again it failed to explain every phenomenon.

  An examination was made of what had been attempted. It had been assumed that Man survived only for himself as an individual; it had been computed that he survived only for the group, the pack, for society; it had been postulated that he survived only for Mankind; and finally, it had been theorized that he lived only for sex. None worked alone.

  A new computation was made on the survival dynamic. Exactly for what was man surviving? All four of these factors, self, sex, group and Mankind were entered into a new equation. And now it was found, a theory was in hand which worked. It explained all observed phenomena and it predicted new phenomena which were discovered to exist. It was a scientific equation, therefore!

  From the survival dynamic, in this fashion, were evolved the four dynamics. By survival dynamic was meant the basic command, SURVIVE! which underlay all activity. By dynamic was meant one of the four purpose divisions of the entire dynamic principle. The four dynamics were not new forces; they were sub-divisions of the primary force.

  DYNAMIC ONE is the urge toward ultimate survival on the part of the individual and for himself. It includes his immediate symbiotes*, the extension of culture for his own benefit, and name immortality.

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  DYNAMIC TWO is the urge of the individual toward ultimate survival via the sex act, the creation of and the rearing of children. It includes their symbiotes, the extension of culture for them, and their future provision.

  DYNAMIC THREE is the urge of the individual toward ultimate survival for the group. It includes the symbiotes of the group and the extension of its culture.

  DYNAMIC FOUR includes the urge of the individual toward ultimate survival for all Mankind.

  It includes the symbiotes of Mankind and the extension of its culture.

  Life, the atom and the universe and energy itself are included under the symbiotic classification.

  It will be seen immediately that these four dynamics are actually a spectrum without sharp division lines. The survival dynamic can be seen to sweep out from the individual to embrace the entire species and its symbiotes.

  None of these dynamics is necessarily stronger than any of the others. Each is strong.

  They are the four roads a man takes to survival. And the four roads are actually one road. And the one road is actually a spectrum of thousands of roads contained within the four. They are all in terms of past, present and future in that the present may be a sum of the past and the future may be the product of the past and present.

  All the purposes of Man can be considered to lie within this spectrum and all behavior becomes explained.

  That Man is selfish is a valid statement when one means an aberrated Man. That Man is anti-social is an equally valid statement if one adds the modifier, aberration. And other such statements resolve equally. * The dianetic meaning of symbiote is extended beyond the dictionary definition to mean “any or all life or energy forms which are mutually dependent for survival.” The atom depends on the Universe, the Universe on the atom.

  Now it happens that these four dynamics can be seen to compete, one with another, in their operation within an individual or a society. There is a rational reason for this. The phrase

  “social competition” is a compound of aberrated behavior and sentient difficulties.

  Any man, group or race may be in contest with any race, group or man and even in contest with sex on an entirely rational level.

  The Equation of the Optimum Solution would be that a problem has been well resolved which portends the maximum good for the maximum number of dynamics. That is to say that any solution, modified by the time available to put the solution into effect, should be creative or constructive for the greatest possible number of dynamics. The optimum solution for any problem would be a solution which achieved the maximum benefit in all the dynamics. This means that a man, determining upon some project, would fare best if he benefited everything concerned in the four dynamics as his project touched them. He would then have to benefit himself as well for the solution to be optimum. In other words, the benefiting of the group and Mankind dynamic but the blocking of the sex dynamic and the self dynamic would be much poorer than the best solution. The conduct survival pattern is built upon this equation of the optimum solution. It is the basic equation of all rational behavior and is the equation on which a clear functions. It is inherent in Man.

  In other words, the best solution to any problem is that which will bring the greatest good to the greatest number of beings, including self, progeny, family associates, political and racial groups, and at length to all mankind. The greatest good may require, as well, some destruction, but the solution deteriorates in a ratio to the destructiveness employed. Self-sacrifice and selfishness are alike reductive of the optimum action equation and alike have been suspected and should be.

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  This is entirely a matter of: does it work? Even on an unaberrated basis there are times when one or another of these dynamics rave to be dropped from the computation of some activity or other and indeed, few problems are so entirely intense that they must take into account

  the dynamics. But when a problem achieves such intensity and time is not an important factor, serious errors can follow the omission of one or another of the dynamics from the factors considered.

  In the case of a Napoleon “saving France” at the expense of the remainder of Mankind in Europe, the equation of the optimum solution was so far neglected that all the revolutionary gains of the French people were lost. In the case of Caesar “saving Rome,” the equation was so poorly done that the survival of Rome was impeded.

  But there are special cases when the equation of the optimum solution becomes so involved with time that certain dynamics must be neglected to permit other dynamics to persist.

  The case of a sailor giving his own life to save his ship answers the group dynamic. Such an action is a
valid solution to a problem. But it violates the optimum solution because it did not answer for Dynamic One: self.

  Many examples of various kinds could be cited where one or another of the dynamics must, of necessity, receive priority, all on an entirely rational basis.

  On an aberrated basis the equation is still valid but complicated by irrationalities which have no part of the situation. Many solutions are bad merely because of false educational data or no data at all. But these are still solutions. In the case of aberrated solutions, the dynamics are actually and actively impeded, as will later be outlined in full.

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  CHAPTER V

  Summary

  The dynamic principle of existence is survival.

  This survival can be graduated into four zones, each one progressively portending a better opportunity of reaching the potential of immortality. Zone 0 borders from death and includes apathy; Zone 1 borders from apathy and includes violent effort; Zone 2 borders from violence into mediocre but not entirely satisfactory success; Zone 3 borders from the mediocre to the excellent chance. These zones are each occasioned by the ratio of the suppressor to the survival dynamic. In apathy, Zone 0, the suppressor appears too great to be overcome. In the area of violence, Zone I, the suppressor more or less overbalances the survival dynamic, requiring enormous effort which, when expended without result, drops the organism into the Zero Zone. In the area of mediocrity, Zone 2, the suppressor and the survival dynamic are more or less evenly balanced. In the area of Zone 3 the survival dynamic has overcome the suppressor and, the chances of survival being excellent, is the area of high response to problems. These four zones might be classed as the zone of no hope, the zone of violent action, the area of balance and the area of high hope. Clinical experiment is the basis of these zones since they follow a progress of mental or physical being as it rises from the death area into high existence.