Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  These are the five mechanisms: attack, flee, avoid, neglect or succumb.

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  All actions can be seen to fall within these courses. And all actions are visible in life. In the case of a punishment course, the reactive mind can succumb, neglect, avoid, flee or attack it. The action is dictated by a complexity of engrams and depends upon which one comes into restimulation. This maelstrom of reaction generally resolves itself, however, in one of the five courses. * In dianetics considerable slang has been developed by patients and dianeticists and they call the “black panther mechanism” a neglect of the problem. One supposes this stems from the ridiculousness of biting black panthers.

  If a child is punished and thereafter obeys, he can be considered to have succumbed.

  And the value of a child who will succumb to punishment is so slight that the Spartans would long since have drowned him, for it means he has sunk into an apathy unless it so happens that he himself has computed the idea, by-passing all reaction, that the thing for which he was punished was not bright (he can’t be assisted in this computation if punishment is entered into the reactive mind by the source trying to assist him). He can flee the punishment source, which at least is not apathy but merely cowardice by popular judgment. He can neglect the matter entirely and ignore the punishment source -- and would have been called a Stoic by the ancients, but might be called merely dull-witted by his friends. He can avoid the punishment source, which might give him the doubtful compliment of being sly or cunning or pandering.

  Or he can attack the punishment source either by direct action or by upsetting or fouling the person or the possessions of the source -- in which instance he would be called, on direct action, a valiant fool, taking parental size into account, or in a less direct fashion he could be called “covertly hostile” or could be said to be “negating”; as long as a human being will attack as a response to a valid threat, he can be said to be in fair mental condition -- “normal” -- and a child is said to be “just acting like any normal child.”

  Enter punishment into the computation and it no longer computes. It is entirely different in the case of “experience.” Life has plenty of painful experience waiting for any human being without other human beings complicating the score. A person who is still unblocked in his dynamics or who has been unblocked by dianetics can absorb the most amazing amount of hammering in the business of living. Here, even when the reactive receives engrams as a result of some of this experience, the analytical mind can continue to cope with the situation without becoming aberrated in any way. Man is a tough, resilient, competent character. But when the law of affinity begins to be broken and such a breaking of affinity gets into the reactive bank, human beings, as antagonistic sources of non-survival, become a punishment source. If no contra-survival engrams involving human beings are in the earlier (before 5 years) content of the engram bank, pro-survival engrams are taken as a matter of course and are not severely aberrative. In other words, it is the breaking of affinity with his fellows on an engramic level which most solidly blocks the dynamics. Man’s affinity with Man is far more a scientific fact than it is a poetic and idyllic idea.

  The cycle, then, of life which will be “normal” (current average state) or psychotic is an easy thing to draw. It begins with a large number of engrams before birth, it gathers more in the dependent and rather helpless condition post-birth. Punishment of various kinds entering now as locks key-in the engrams. New engrams which will involve the earlier ones enter. New locks accumulate. Illness and aberrated action set in most certainly by the age of forty or fifty.

  And death ensues sometimes afterwards.

  Short of the optimum solution of clearing the engrams, there are several things which can be done about aberration and psycho-somatic ills. That these methods are uncertain and of only limited value does not mean that they will not occasionally meet with some astonishingly beneficial responses.

  Such methods can be classified under the headings of environmental change, education and physical treatment. Taking factors out of the environment of an aberree or taking the aberree out of the environment in which he is unhappy or ineffective can bring about some astonishingly swift recoveries: this is valid therapy; it removes the restimulators from the individual or takes the individual away from the restimulators. It is ordinarily quite hit-or-miss and more miss than hit, and it will not remove all the restimulators by nine-tenths since the 99

  individual himself carries the bulk of these around with him or is compelled to contact them.

  One is reminded of a case which had severe asthma. He had received it in a very severe birth engram; his frantic parents carried him to every mountain asthma resort suggested and spent tens of thousands of dollars in these jauntings. When this patient was cleared and the engram refiled, it was discovered that the restimulator for his asthma was clean, cold air! The only certainty in the environment approach is that a sickly child will recover when removed from restimulative parents and taken where he is loved and feels safe -- for his sickness is the inevitable result of restimulation of prenatal engrams by one or the other or both his parents.

  Somewhere along the line there is probably a husband or a wife who has descended chronically into the first two zones after marriage after having married pseudo-mother or pseudo-father or pseudo-abortionist.

  In the educational field, new data or enthusiasms may very well key-out engrams by overbalancing the reactive mind in the light of a new analytical surge. If a man can simply be convinced he has been fighting shadows or if he can be persuaded to hang his fears on some indicated cause, whether that cause is true or not, he can be benefited. Sometimes he can be

  “educated” into a strong faith in some deity or cult which will cause him to feel so invulnerable that he rises above his engrams. Raising his survival potential in any way will raise his general tone to a point where it is no longer on a par with the reactive bank. Giving him an education in engineering or music, where he can receive a higher level of respect, will often defend him from his restimulators. A rise to a position of esteem is actually a change of environment, but it is also educational since he is now taught he is valuable. If a man can be made busy at a hobby or work by personal or exterior education that it is good for him, another mechanism comes into being -- the analytical mind becomes so engrossed that it takes to itself more and more energy for its activity and begins to align with a new purpose.

  Physical treatment resulting in improved physical condition will bring about hope or change a man’s reactions by shifting him on his time track. It may key-out engrams.

  These methods are valid therapy: they are also, in reverse, the things which cause aberrations to manifest themselves. There are wrong ways to act and wrong things to do and wrong ways to treat men which, in the light of what we know now, are criminal.

  Thrusting a man into an environment which restimulates him and making him stay there is a slice of murder. Making him keep an associate who is restimulative is bad: making a man or a woman stay with a marriage partner who is restimulative is unworkable mores unless dianetic therapy is used; making a child stay in a home where he is restimulated is most certainly inhibitive, not only of his happiness but of his mental and physical development -- a child should have many more rights about such things, more places to go.

  On the physical therapy level anything as violent as surgery or exodontistry in the psycho-somatic plane is utter barbarism in the light of dianetics. “Toothache” is normally psycho-somatic. Organic illnesses enough to fill several catalogues are psycho-somatic. No recourse to surgery of any kind should be had until it is certain that the ailment is not psychosomatic or that the illness will not diminish by itself if the potency of the reactive mind is reduced. Mental-physical therapy is too ridiculous, with the source of aberration now a science, to be seriously mentioned. For no thinking doctor or psychiatrist possessed of this information would touch another electrode for electric shock therapy or even glance at a scalpel or
ice-pick to perform an operation on the pre-frontal lobes of the brain unless that doctor or psychiatrist is himself so thoroughly aberrated that the act springs, not from any desire to heal but from the most utter and craven sadism to which engrams can bring a man.*

  * Many persons investigating the treatment of the mentally ill by psychiatrists and others in charge of mental institutions are prompted, when they discover just what the pre-frontal lobotomy, the trans-orbital leukotomy and electric shock actually do to patients, to revile the psychiatrist as unworthy of trust and accuse him of using it to conduct vivisection experiments on human beings. That any possible hope of recovery via dianetics may be gone for these unfortunate patients in the majority of cases should not be blamed upon the psychiatrist and 100

  neuro-surgeon. These people have only followed their teachings in various universities and have practiced such actions merely because they believed the problem of the mind could not be solved by anyone. A witch-burning attitude toward these people is very far from the one adopted by dianetics. Pointing to the fact that they have murdered minds which would otherwise have recovered, labeling them “mind snatchers” and making a horror story out of their actions is far from rational conduct. On the whole these people have been entirely sincere in their efforts to help the insane. By contagion of aberration such people have been subjected to enormous stresses in this work, having had their own engrams in continual restimulation.

  They can be cleared and their experience is valuable. Legislation against them such as that recently mentioned by a senator who was familiar with dianetics, horror stories about them in newspapers and a general public antipathy as well as the medical doctor’s traditional distrust of them cannot but bring about a disorderly condition. Dianetics is a newly discovered science and is nonpartisan.

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  CHAPTER X

  Preventive Dianetics

  There are many branches in dianetics. It is actually a family of sciences covered by a single set of axioms. There is, for instance, Educational Dianetics, which contains the body of organized knowledge necessary to train minds to their optimum efficiency and to an optimum of skill and knowledge in the various branches of the works of Man. And there is Political Dianetics, which embraces the field of group activity and organization to establish the optimum conditions and processes of leadership and inter-group relations. And again there is Medical Dianetics. And there is Social Dianetics. There are many such subdivisions which are sciences within themselves guided by their own axioms.

  We are dealing in this volume, actually, with basic dianetics and dianetic therapy as applied to the individual. This is the most immediately important and the most valuable to the individual.

  But no book on dianetic therapy would be complete without a mention of a branch of dianetics which, some say, is even more important to the race than the therapy. This is Preventive Dianetics.

  If one knows the cause of something, he can usually prevent the cause from going into effect. The discovery and proof of Ronald Ross that the malaria germ was carried by the mosquito makes it possible to prevent the disease from committing the ravages it once enjoyed at the expense of Mankind. Similarly, when one knows the cause of aberration and psychosomatic illness, he can do a great deal toward preventing them.

  While Preventive Dianetics is a large subject, infiltrating the fields of industry and agriculture and other specialized activities of Man, its basic principle is the scientific fact that engrams can be held to minimal content or prevented entirely with large gains in favor of mental health and physical well-being as well as social adjustment.

  The engram is actually a very simple thing: it is a moment when the analytical mind is shut down by physical pain, drugs or other means, and the reactive bank is open to the receipt of a recording. When that recording has verbal content, it becomes most severely aberrative.

  When it contains antagonism on an emotional level, it becomes very destructive. When it is intensely pro-survival in content it is most certainly capable of thoroughly deranging a life.

  The engram, amongst other things, determines fate. The engram says that a man has to fail to survive and so he contrives numerous ways to fail. The engram commands that he can only experience pleasure amongst the members of another race and so he goes amongst them and abandons his own. It commands that he must kill to live and so he kills. And far more subtly, the engram weaves its way from incident to incident to cause the catastrophe which it dictates.

  A recent case was plotted out to have actually gone to enormous lengths to break his arm, for with a broken arm he received the sympathy without which the engram said he could not live. The plot covered three years and half a hundred apparently innocent incidents which, when netted together, told the story.

  The accident prone person is a case where the reactive mind commands accidents. He is a serious menace in any society for his accidents are reactively intentional and they include the destruction of other people who are innocent.

  Drivers with several accidents on their records are generally accident prone. They have engrams which command them to have accidents. When you have run a case, just one, you will see how thoroughly and maliciously disposed this moronic thing, the reactive mind, can be 102

  about such things. Cleared drivers could have accidents only through two sources: (a) mechanical failure and, more important, (b) because of accident prone people. The terrible and awesome death toll taken by our automotive transport is almost all attributable to reactive mind driving rather than learned response driving. The apathy of this society is measured by the fact that it does not act severely to prevent all automotive accidents; just one broken windshield is one too many: now that an answer is to hand action can take place.

  The aberree in thousands of ways complicates the lives of others. Preventive Dianetics makes it possible to sort out the aberree who is accident prone and bar him from activities which will menace others. This is one general aspect of Preventive Dianetics. That the aberrees so isolated can be cleared is another type of problem.

  The other general aspect of Preventive Dianetics, and the more important, is the prevention of engrams and modification of content both on the social and the individual scale.

  On the social scale one would delete from the society the causes of aberration in that society as if he were deleting engrams from the individual. In the same way, one can prevent the social causes from occurring in the first place.

  In the individual, the prevention of engrams is a very easy matter. Once the source of aberration and illness is known, one can prevent the source from entering a life. If the source has been known to enter, one can prevent the next step, in key-in. Of course, the final answer in all this is therapy to a clearing, but there is one aspect of the source which is not so answered.

  The child cannot be safely cleared until he is at least five years of age and current practice is to place this figure at about eight years. Improved address to the problem may reduce this figure, but it cannot be reduced below the age of speech unless some one in the future invents a catalyst which simply clears out the reactive mind without further treatment (not as wild as it may sound). But just now and probably for a long time to come the child will remain a problem to dianetics.

  Childhood illness is chiefly derived from engrams. It is most likely to be severe before the age of speech and the number of deaths within the first year of life, while medicine may reduce them, is yet a serious thing.

  Preventive Dianetics addresses this problem in two phases: first the prevention of engrams, and second, the prevention of the key-in.

  Taking the key-in first, there are two things which can be done to prevent it. The child can be given a calm and harmonious atmosphere which is not restimulative or, if the child appears to be restimulated despite kindly treatment, he can be removed to another environment which will be minus the two most certain sources: his father and mother, and which will contain a source of affection. The test of whether or not a child is
restimulated, pre-speech or post-speech, is very simple. Is he susceptible to illness? Does he eat well? Is he nervous?

  There can be actual physical things wrong with the child, of course, but these are quickly established by a doctor and they lie in the category of physical derangement.

  Quarrels within the hearing of a child, loud noises, frantic conduct, drooling sympathy when he is sick or hurt, these things are some of the key-in catalogue. These make a child ill physically and aberrated mentally by keying-in his engrams. And nobody can say how many he has!

  The primary source of prevention lies in the field, oddly enough, of the regard in which another person is held -- his mother.

  It is not “biological love” which makes mother play such an enormous role in the life of a human being. It is the simple mechanical truth that Mother is a common denominator to all the child’s prenatals. The prenatal engram is far more serious than the post-natal. Any such engram 103

  a person has contains his mother or his mother and another person, but always his mother.

  Therefore her voice, the things she says, the things she does, have an enormous and vast effect upon the unborn child.

  It is not true that emotion gets into a child through the umbilical cord as people always suppose the moment they hear of prenatals. Emotion comes on another (more electrical than physical) type of wave -- what type is a problem for structure. Therefore, anyone who is emotional around a pregnant woman is communicating that emotion straight into the child. And mother’s emotion is, in the same manner, so conducted to his reactive mind.

  Whether or not the unborn child is “unanalytical” has no bearing on his susceptibility to engrams. The prenatal engram is just another engram. Only when the child is actually struck or hurt by high-blood pressure or orgasms or other sources of injury does he become