Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  The sympathy engram pretends to be pro-survival. As one preclear said, a man is not victimized by his enemies but by his friends. An engram comes about always from a greater or lesser moment of “unconsciousness.” There is no engram without “unconsciousness.” It is only when the analyzer is out of circuit that the exterior world can come interior, 73

  unrationalized, and work from within. The second the analyzer identifies one of those engrams as such, that engram loses about twenty percent of its value to aberrate and usually a hundred percent of its value to cause a psycho-somatic illness. Pain is extremely perishable. Pleasure is recorded in bronze. (Not poetry here, science. Physical pain will delete with brief attention, a pleasant or even a media-media experience is so solidly fixed in the mind that no treatment known to dianetics will shake it and a great deal of effort has been leveled at pleasure recordings just to test them for permanence. They are permanent; physical pain is perishable.

  Too bad, Schopenhauer, but you were a most mistaken man.) Exposing a lock to the analyzer -- a moment of “mental anguish” -- once the engram which gave it power is gone causes that lock to blow away like chaff. The analyzer works on the Doctrine of the True Datum: it has no truck with anything which it once discovers to be false. Just exposing an engram without relieving it has some therapeutic value -- twenty percent

  -- and this gave rise to a belief that all one had to do was know about his ills and they would vanish. Nice if it were so.

  The most aberrative engram, then, is one which is held down by the reactive mind’s --

  that moron’s -- concept that it is needed in the survival of the individual. This sympathy engram is the one which comes forward and stays chronic as a psycho-somatic illness. There are two reasons for this: one is usually in one’s own valence when a sympathy engram is received; and one’s reactive mind, knowing well the value of affinity, puts forward the psychosomatic illness to attract affinity. There is no volition here on the part of the individual’s “I”

  analytical self. But there is every “volition” on the part of the reactive mind.

  A sympathy engram would go something like this: a small boy, much victimized by his parents, is extremely ill. His grandmother attends him and while he is delirious soothes him and tells him she will take care of him, that she will stay right there until he is well. This puts a high “survival” value on being sick. He does not feel safe around his parents; he wants his grandmother present (she is a winning valence because she orders the parents around), and he now has an engram. Minus the engram there would be no psycho-somatic illness. Sickness,

  “unconsciousness” and physical pain are essential to the receipt of this engram. But it is not a contra-survival engram. It is a pro-survival engram. It can be dramatized in one’s own valence.

  The psycho-somatic illness, in such a case as this, would be a “precious possession.”

  “I” doesn’t even know the computation. The analyzer was out when the engram went in. The analyzer cannot recall that engram with anything short of dianetic therapy. And the engram will not clear away.

  Now with this engram we have a patient with sinusitis and a predisposition to lung infections. It may be that he was luckless enough to marry a counterpart of his mother or his grandmother. The reactive mind cannot tell the difference between grandmother or mother and wife if they are even vaguely similar in speech, voice-tone or mannerisms. The wife is not sympathetic. In goes the engram to demand that sympathy. And even if the wife thinks that sinusitis and lung infection are repulsive enough to lead to divorce, the reactive mind keeps that engram keyed-in. The more hatred from the wife, the more that engram keys-in. You can kill a man that way.

  The above is a standard sympathy engram. When a therapist tries to get that engram away from the patient, the reactive mind balks. The “I” doesn’t balk. The analyzer doesn’t balk. These are hopeful that this engram will spring. But the reactive mind keeps it nailed down until the dianeticist puts a crowbar under it. Then it is gone. (Enough locks may be lifted, by the way, to alleviate this condition. But the patient will dig up another engram!) Resistance to past therapies has resulted from these sympathy engrams. Yet they lie right there on the surface, fully exposed as chronic psycho-somatic illness.

  Feeding a patient with a psycho-somatic ill any number of drugs can result in only temporary relief. “I” doesn’t want the illness. The analyzer doesn’t want it. But the body has it 74

  and if anybody succeeds in curing it short of removing that engram, the body, at the command of the reactive mind, will find something else to substitute for that ill or develop an “allergy” to the drug or annul the effect of the drug entirely.

  Of course one can always rip living tissue out of the skull with knives, ice-picks or shock in wholesale quantities. This will cure a psycho-somatic ill. It also, unhappily, cures the personality, the intellect and all too often, life itself.

  In dianetics the application of technique to relieve the engrams causing these ills has brought the uniform relief of all patients treated without relapse. In short and in brief, psychosomatic ills can now be cured. All of them.

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  CHAPTER VI

  Emotion and the Dynamics

  Emotion is a theta quantity, which is to say that it is so involved with life forces that dianetics at this stage handles it with invariable success but does not attempt to give forth more than a descriptive theory. Much research must be done on emotion; but so long as the therapy embraces it and releases it with success, further data can be dispensed with up to a point.

  Emotion would have to be divided sharply into minus emotions and plus emotions. The minus emotion would be non-survival in character, the plus emotion would be pro-survival.

  The pleasant and pleasurable emotions are not of any great concern to us here. It is believed that all emotion is the same thing but in its aspects above Zone 1 it can be by-passed as unnecessary to explain at this time for the purpose of this book.

  In Zones 1 and 0, emotion becomes very important to therapy. As has been covered earlier, Zones 1 and 0 are the anger and apathy zones respectively. From death up to the border between anger and fear is Zone 0. From this borderline to the beginning of boredom is anger, Zone 1.

  It is as if the survival dynamic, in becoming contracted into Zone 1, first began to display hostility, then, on further suppression toward death, anger. On further suppression, rage began to be displayed. Then fear as the next lower level, then terror and finally, just above death, apathy.

  And as the dynamic is suppressed, the cells react forcefully to the menace, it could be said, by resisting the menace. The analyzer resists down to the top border of Zone 1, but in ever decreasing control. From here on down the cells, the actual organism, do the resisting in a last ditch effort. The reactive mind is thoroughly in command from the top border of Zone 1

  straight on down to death, and it is in ever increasing command of the organism as the dynamic is suppressed.

  Emotion seems to be inextricably connected up with the actual force of life. That there is a life force no engineer could doubt. Man and medicine usually look at the pitcher and forget that the pitcher is only there to hold milk and that the milk is the important quantity. Life force is the helium which fills the free balloon. Out goes the helium, down comes the balloon. When this type of energy is located and isolated as itself -- if it is just an energy type -- then medicine can start moving forward in strides which will make all former steps look like those of a man in a sack race. Medicine doesn’t have any spare helium, for one thing.

  How high this life force can go on the survival scale is not known. Above Zone 3 is the area of question marks. A clear goes up into a level of persistence, vigor, tenacity, rationality and happiness. Perhaps some day a clear will attain the nebulosity the author used to hear about in India which marked the man who was all soul.

  How far down it can go is definitely known. A man dies. He doesn’t move or think.

  He
dies as an organism, then he dies as cells. There are different periods of “life after death”

  for the cells and biologists remark that the hair and nail cells do not die for months. So here is a spectrum of death, first the organism and then, colony by colony, the cells.

  That is from the bottom of Zone 0 downward. But what we are interested in is the area from Zone 1 down to the bottom of Zone 0. It could be postulated that the analytical mind has its greatest bounce against the suppressor, its highest ability to care for the organism, when it is in the third zone. As the suppressor thrusts downward against it, the analyzer, within lower Zone 3 thrusts heavily back. This is necessity at work. The necessity level can rise, in this action, to a point which keys-out all engrams!

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  It must be realized that the analyzer considers future suppressors and is continually engaged upon computations which pose problems of the future which the analyzer resolves --

  this is one of the functions of the imagination; it must further be realized that the analyzer is engaged upon a multitude of computations about the present: for the analytical mind is dealing continually with an enormous number of factors which comprise the suppressor of the present and the suppressor of the future. It computes for instance on the alliances with friends and symbiotes and its greatest victories are achieved by taking some of the suppressor and turning it into an alliance factor.

  The individual can be visualized, on the survival spectrum, as being at the tip of the survival dynamic. The suppressor thrusts down, or future suppressors threaten a thrust and the analytical mind thrusts up with solutions. The level of the individual is determined by how well these suppressors are apparently met.

  We speak now of the clear and until further mention we will continue to use the clear.

  The clear is an unaberrated person. He is rational in that he forms the best possible solutions he can on the data he has and from his viewpoint. He obtains the maximum pleasure for the organism, present and future, as well as for the subjects along the other dynamics. The clear has no engrams which can be restimulated to throw out the correctness of computation by entering hidden and false data into it. No aberration. Hence the reason we use him here as an example.

  The survival dynamic is high, more than balancing the suppressor. Take this as a first condition. This would place the dynamic in Zone 3, Tone 3.9. Now increase the suppressor.

  The dynamic is pushed back to Tone 3.2. Necessity surges up. The suppressor is thrust back.

  The dynamic is once more at Tone 3.9. This action could be termed an enthusiastic resurgence.

  The individual has actually gotten “angry” -- that is to say, he has called upon his being to furnish power for thought and action.

  Mentally he calls upon whatever constitutes mental energy. Physically, if the suppression was physical, he would call upon his adrenalin. This is proper use of the endocrines, to use them for regaining position in relation to the suppressor. Any and all body function is under analytical (but not necessarily monitored) command.

  Now let us suppose that the suppressor surges down against the dynamic and drives the dynamic to 3.0. Necessity level comes up. Action is taken. The full force of the being is thrown against the suppressor. Now let us suppose that a new factor comes into the suppressor and makes it much, much stronger. The individual still attempts to resurge against it. But the suppressor weighs heavier and heavier against him. He is beginning to exhaust his supplies of mental or physical energy (and this suppressor can be on either a mental or physical level.) Wearying, the individual drops down to a 2.5. The suppressor again increases. Resurgence is attempted once more. The last supply of available energy or data is thrown out. And another factor comes into the suppressor, increasing its weight. The individual sags down to 2.0.

  At exactly this point the analyzer, having failed, finally cuts out. Here is entered the top of Zone 1. Hostility sets in. The suppressor is down, pressing down against actual cellular survival. And it drops lower. The individual goes into anger, recruiting cellularly but not sentiently, the last forces. Again the suppressor gets new weight. The individual goes into rage. Once more the suppressor drops. The individual goes into fear, Tone 0.9. Again the suppressor lowers, recruiting new factors. The individual is thrust down to 0.6 and here is in terror. Once more the suppressor drops with new force. The individual slides into fear paralysis, 0.2.

  Suppose we parallel this in a very simple, dramatic example so that we do not have to consider a thousand subtle factors.

  A clear, inexperienced in hunting, determines to shoot a grizzly. He has a fine rifle. The grizzly appears to be easy game. The man is at 3.9 or above. He feels good. He is going to get 77

  that grizzly as the grizzly has been threatening the man’s stock. High enthusiasm carries him to the lair. He waits, he finally sees the grizzly. There is a cliff above the man which he could not ordinarily climb. But to get a good shot before the grizzly vanishes, the man has to climb the cliff. Seeing he was in danger of losing the game brought the man down to 3.2. Necessity sends him up the cliff. He fires but in firing falls back down the cliff. The grizzly is wounded.

  He starts toward the man. Necessity surges up. The man recovers the gun and shoots again.

  He is at 3.0 the moment he shoots. He misses. He fires again but the miss, with the grizzly charging, brought him down to 2.5. He shoots once more. The grizzly takes the ball and keeps on coming. The man shoots again but he has suddenly realized that his rifle is not going to stop this grizzly. His tone drops to 2.0. He begins to snarl and feverishly work his gun. His bullets go wild. He experiences rage at the gun, the grizzly, the world, and throws the gun away, ready to meet the grizzly, almost upon him, with bare hands. Suddenly the man knows fear.

  His tone is 1.2. It drops to 0.9 with a smell in his nostrils of the bear. He knows the bear will kill him. He turns and tries to claw up the cliff and get away but his efforts are frenzied. He is at Tone 0.6, stark terror. The bear strikes him and knocks him from the cliff-side. The man lies still, breathing almost halted, heart-beat slowed to nearly nothing. The bear hits him again and the man lies still. Then the bear decides he is dead and walks away. Shaken, the man eventually comes around, his tone gradually rising up to 2.0, the point where his analyzer shut off. He stirs more and gets up. His tone is back to 2.5: he is analytically afraid and cautious.

  He recovers his gun. He begins to leave the scene. He feels a great necessity to recoup his own self-esteem and his tone comes to 3.2. He walks away and reaches a safe area. Suddenly it occurs to him that he can borrow a friend’s Mauser. He begins to make plans to get that bear.

  His enthusiasm mounts. But, completely aside from the engram received when the bear knocked him out, he acts on his experience. Three days later he kills the bear and his tone rises to 4.0 for the space of contemplation and telling the tale and then his mind occupies itself with new matters.

  Life is much more complicated than the business of killing grizzlies, usually a lot less dramatic but always full of situations which cause a fluctuation of the suppressor. The gaining of all pleasurable goals -- a bear killed, a woman kissed, a seat in the front row at the opera, a friend won, an apple stolen -- are sweeps through various levels of tone. And the individual is generally carrying on three or three thousand computations at once and there are thirty or thirty thousand variables in his computations. Too many unknowns, too many entrances of “didn’t know the gun was loaded” factors, all these can throw the analyzer from a direct alignment into the scattered dispersal of non-function. The analyzer can be considered to cut out when Tone 2.0 is reached. From 2.5 down the computations it makes are not very rational -- too many unknowns, too many unexpected factors, too many discoveries of miscalculations.

  This is living on a “clear” basis. When our hunter was hit by the bear he received an engram. That engram, when it keyed-in, would give him a fear, an apathy attitude, in the presence of certain factors: every perceptic present -- the smell of tha
t ground, twigs, bear-breath, etc. But he killed the bear. The chances of that engram keying-in are remote. Not because he killed the bear but because he was, after all, a grown man. And, if a clear, he could have thought back and cleared the whole thing himself.

  This is a complete cycle of emotion. Enthusiasm and high pleasure are at the extreme top. Fear and paralysis are at the bottom. Feigned death, in Man, is very close to the actual thing on the tone scale. It is a valid mechanism. But it is complete apathy.

  So long as the analyzer is operating, the receipt of an engram is impossible. Everything files in the standard banks. As soon as the border 2.0 is passed on the way down,

  “unconsciousness” can be judged to have set in and anything registered, in company with pain or painful emotion, is an engram. This is not a shift of definition. The analyzer cuts out, with surgical anaesthetic, at 2.0. The anaesthetic may depress the level of awareness further. Pain may depress it even more. But depressing the level of awareness is not necessarily depressing emotion.

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  How much conceived danger or sympathy is present in the environment? This is what depresses the tone scale. There can be a reactive engram which contains a Tone 4.0 or one that contains a 1.0 or another that contains a 0.1. This is not, then, quite two-dimensional, this emotion.

  The level of depth of consciousness can be affected by painful emotion, poisons or other things which depress awareness. After that it is all engram and the engrams have their own tone scale which runs from 4.0 down to 0.1.

  It can be seen now that two things are at work. First is the state of physical being. It is this which tunes down the analyzer. Then there is the mental state of being.

  This is what tunes down the emotional tone scale.