Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  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.

  If man had not invented language, or, as will be demonstrated, if his languages were a little less homonymic and more specific with their personal pronouns, engrams would still be survival data and the mechanism would work. But Man has outgrown their use. He chose between language and potential madness and for the vast benefits of the former he received the curse of the latter.

  The engram is the single and sole source of aberration and psycho-somatic illness.

  An enormous quantity of data has been sifted. Not one single exception has been found. In “normal people,” in the neurotic and insane, the removal of these engrams wholly or in part, without other therapy, has uniformly brought about a state greatly superior to the current norm. No need was found for any theory or therapy other than those given in this book for the treatment of all psychic or psycho-somatic ills.

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  CHAPTER III

  The Cell and the Organism

  The reason the engram so long remained hidden as the single source of aberration and psycho-somatic ills is the wide and almost infinitely complex manifestations which can derive from simple engrams.

  Several theories could be postulated as to why the human mind evolved exactly as it did, but these are theories, and dianetics is not concerned with structure. A comment or two as a stimulation to future workers in that field might be made, however, wholly as a postulate, that there is a definite connection between any electriclike energy in the body and the energy effusion of cells undergoing injury. A theory could be constructed along the lines that injured cells, further injuring their neighbors by a discharge of electric-like energy, forced the development of a special cell which would act as a conduit to “bleed off” this painful charge.

  The conduits of cells might have become neurons and the charge might have been better distributed so through the body with less likelihood of local incapacitation at the point of the injury impact. These conduits -- neurons -- might have been started in fo
rmation by impacts at the extremity of the body toward the direction of locomotion. This would make the skull the greatest mass of neurons. Man, walking upright, might have had another new point of impact, the forehead, and so gained his pre-frontal lobes. And maybe not. That is just theory, with only a few data to support it which have a scientific value. And it has not been subjected to experiment of any kind whatever.

  This much, however, has to be advanced as theory on structure. The cell is one of the basic building blocks of the body. Cells, the better to survive, seem to have become colonies which, in turn, had the primary interest, survival. And the colonies developed or recruited into aggregations which in turn were organisms, also with the sole purpose of survival. And the organisms developed minds to coordinate the muscles and resolve the problems of survival.

  Again, this is still theory and even if it was the track of reasoning which led toward dianetics, it can be completely wrong. It works. It can be pulled away from dianetics and dianetics will remain a science and go on working. The concept of the electronic brain was not vital but only useful to dianetics and it could be swept away as well -- dianetics would still stand. A science is a changing affair as far as its internal theory goes. In dianetics we have our wedge into an enormous scope of research. As dianetics stands, it works and it works every time and without exception. The reasons why it works will undoubtedly be mulled over and changed here and there to its betterment -- if they aren’t, an abiding faith in this generation of scientists and the future generations will not have been justified.

  Why we talk about cells will become apparent as we progress. The reason we know that past concepts of structure are not correct is because they don’t work as function. All our facts are functional and these facts are scientific facts, supported wholly and completely by laboratory evidence. Function precedes structure. James Clerk Maxwell’s mathematics were postulated and electricity was widely and beneficially used long before anyone had any real idea about the structure of the atom. Function always comes before structure. The astounding lack of progress in the field of the human mind during the past thousands of years is partly attributable to its “organ of thought” lying within a field, medicine, which was and long may be an art, not a science. Basic philosophy to explain life will have to come before that art makes much further progress.

  What the capabilities of the cell are, for instance, have been but poorly studied. Some work has been carried on in recent years to find out more, but basic philosophy was absent.

  The cell was being observed, not predicted.

  The studies of cells in Man have been largely done from dead tissue. An unknown quality is missing from dead tissue, the important quality -- life.

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  In dianetics, on the level of laboratory observation, we discover much to our astonishment that cells are evidently sentient in some currently inexplicable way. Unless we postulate a human soul entering the sperm and ovum at conception, there are things which no other postulate will embrace than that these cells are in some way sentient. Entering a new field with postulates which work in all directions -- and the basic philosophy of survival is a pilot which leads us on and on into further and further realms, explaining and predicting phenomena on every hand -- it is inevitable that data will turn up which does not agree with past theory.

  When that data is as scientific as the observation that when an apple is dropped under usual conditions on Earth it falls, one cannot help but accept it. Abandoning past theories may do damage to treasured beliefs and one’s nostalgic love of the old school tie, but a fact is a fact.

  The cells as thought units evidently have an influence, as cells, upon the body as a thought unit and an organism. We do not have to untangle this structural problem to resolve our functional postulates. The cells evidently retain engrams of painful events. After all, they are the things which get injured. And they evidently retain a whip hand of punishment for every time the analyzer fails them. The story of the engram seems to be a story of a battle between the troops and the general every time the general gets some of the troops killed off.

  The less fortunate this general is in protecting these troops, the more power the troops assume.

  The cells evidently pushed the brain on an upward evolution toward higher sentience. Pain reversed the process as though the cells were sorry they had put so much power in the hands of a central commander.

  The reactive mind may very well be the combined cellular intelligence. One need not assume that it is, but it is a handy structural theory in the lack of any real work done in this field of structure. The reactive engram bank may be material stored in the cells themselves. It does not matter whether this is credible or incredible just now. Something has to be said about it to give one a mental hold on what happens during moments of “unconsciousness.”

  The scientific fact, observed and tested, is that the organism, in the presence of physical pain, lets the analyzer get knocked out of circuit so that there is a limited quantity or no quantity at all of personal awareness as a unit organism. It does this either to protect the analyzer or to withdraw its power in the belief that an engram is best in an emergency -- with which the analyzer, by the way, on observed experience, does not agree.

  Every percept present, including physical pain, is recorded during these non-analytical moments. Whenever pain is present -- physical pain -- that is, the analyzer gets shut down to a small or large extent. If the duration of the pain is only an instant, there is still an instant there of analytical reduction. This can be proven very easily -- just try to recall the last time you were seriously hurt and see if there isn’t at least a momentary blank period. Going to sleep under anaesthetic and waking up some time later is a more complicated sort of shut-down in that it includes physical pain but is initially caused by a poison (and all anaesthetics are poisons, technically). Then there is the condition of suffocating, as in drowning, and this is a shut-down period to greater or lesser extent. And there is the condition caused by blood, for one cause or another, leaving the area or areas which contain analytical power -- wherever they are -- and this again causes a greater or lesser degree of analytical shutdown: such incidents include shock (in which the blood tends to lake in the center of the body), the loss of blood by surgery or injury or anemia and the closing of the arteries leading through the throat. Natural sleep causes a reduction of analytical activity but is actually not very deep or serious; by dianetic therapy any experience occurring during sleep can be recovered with ease.

  It can now be seen that there are many ways in which analytical power can be shut down. And it can be seen that there is greater or lesser reduction. When one burns one’s finger with a cigarette, there is a small instant of pain and a small amount of reduction. When one undergoes an operation, the duration may be in terms of hours and the amount of shut-down may be extreme. The duration and the amount of reduction are two different things, related but quite dissimilar. This is not so very important but it is mentioned.

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  We have seen, reading in dianetics this far, that the principle of the spectrum has been quite useful to us. And it can be seen that the amount of reduction in analytical power can be described in the same way that survival potential can be described. There can be a very little bit and there can be a very great deal. Going back and taking a look at the survival potential range, one can see that there would be death at the bottom and immortality at the top. There is

  “infinite” survival. Whether or not there can be infinite analytical power is a matter of mysticism. But that there is a definite relationship between individual tone and the amount of analytical shutdown is a scientific fact. Put it this way: with the individual well and happy and enthusiastic, analytical power can be considered to be high (Zones 3 and 4). With the individual under the wheels of a truck, “unconscious” and in agony, the analytical power may be considered to be ranging in Zone 0. There is a ratio between potential survival and analytical power. As one goes down, so does t
he other. There is more data to be concluded from this than one would think at first glance. It is a very important ratio.

  All the percepts are included in an engram. Two of these percepts are physical pain and painful emotion. A third is organic sensation, which is to say, the condition of the organism during the moment of the engram. And how was the organism when the engram was received?

  Greater or lesser “unconsciousness” was present. This meant that there was an organic sensation of reduced analytical power, since analytical power derives, evidently, from an organ or organs in the body. If an engram is reactivated by a restimulator or restimulators -- that is to say if the individual with an engram receives something in his environment similar to the perceptions in the engram -- the engram puts everything it contains -- its percepts such as faucets and words -- into greater or lesser operation.

  There can be greater or lesser restimulation. An engram can be put into force just a little bit by restimulators in the environment of the individual or, with many restimulators present and the body in an already reduced state, the engram can go into a full force display (which is covered later). But whether the engram is slightly restimulated or greatly restimulated, everything in it goes into effect one way or another.

  There is just one common denominator of all engrams, just one thing which every engram has and which is possessed by every other engram. Each contains the datum that the analyzer is more or less shut-down. There is a shut-down datum in every engram. Therefore, every time an engram is restimulated, even though physical pain has not been received by the body, some analytical power turns off, the organ or organs which are the analyzer are fused out of circuit in some degree.