If repeater technique “the worst thing that could happen to a baby” and so forth and from his conversation may be garnered new phrases for repeater work which will take the patient into an engram.
SINGLE WORD TECHNIQUE
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Words as well as engrams exist in chains. There is always a first time for the recording of each word in a person’s life. The whole common language may lie within the engram bank.
The possible combinations of that common language may well approach infinity. The ways various denyers, bouncers et al., can be phrased are always beyond count.
Two “happy” facts exist, however, to reduce the auditor’s labors. First, the dramatis personae of his engrams are at this date aberrated. Each aberree has standard dramatizations which he repeats over and over in restimulative situations. The reaction, for instance, of the father to the mother is repetitious: if he utters a set of phrases in one engramic situation, he will utter it in subsequent similar situations. If the mother, for example, has an accusative attitude toward the father, then that attitude will be expressed in certain terms and these terms will appear in engram after engram. The second fact is that where the father or mother is abusive to the other, the other will eventually begin to suffer contagion of aberration and will repeat the other’s phrases. In a first-born child, where parental brutality is present, one can observe the parents through the engrams of the patient and see one or the other gradually take up the other’s phrases either to worry about themselves or to redeliver them. All this tends to make the engrams appear in chains of incidents, each incident much like the next. When one has the basic on each type of chain, the subsequent incidents on that chain are sufficiently similar to permit many incidents to be reduced or erased immediately after the first is found. The first incident on the chain, the basic for that chain, holds the others more or less in place and out of sight; therefore, the basic of the chain is the goal.
Each word in the bank can be discovered to have been delivered to the bank for the first time. Words also reduce in chains with the virtue that each subsequent appearance of the word in the bank locates automatically a new engram, which, of course, is reduced or erased as soon as it is contacted or as soon as its basic can be located.
Single word technique is very valuable and useful. It is a special kind of repeater technique. On most patients, the repetition by themselves of one word will cause the associated words to suggest themselves. Thus, one asks the patient to repeat and return on the word Forget. He starts repeating the word Forget and shortly has an associated set of words, making a phrase, such as “You can never forget me.” Here we have a phrase in an engram and the remainder of the engram can then be run.
When a late engram has had to be contacted to progress a case and yet will not relieve, it is possible to take each word or phrase of that late engram and run it back with repeater technique. Thus the earlier engrams which hold this late engram in place can be located and reduced, and eventually one will have reduced the late engram itself. This, by the way, is a common and useful practice.
There is a law about this: When any phrase or word in an engram will not reduce, the same phrase or word occurs in an earlier engram. One may have to discharge late emotion to get the earlier phrase, but ordinarily single word repeater or phrase repeater will attain it.
There are only a few dozens of words necessary to get almost any engram. These would be the key single word repeaters. They are such words as these: forget, remember, memory, blind, deaf, dumb, see, feel, hear, emotion, pain, fear, terror, afraid, bear, stand, lie, get, come, time, difference, imagination, right, dark, black, deep, up, down, words, corpse, dead, rotten, death, book, reed, soul, hell, god, scared, miserable, horrible, past, look, everything, everybody, always, never, everywhere, all, believe, listen, matter, seek, original, present, back, early, beginning, secret, tell, die, found, sympathy mad, crazy, insane, rid, fight, fist, chest, teeth, jaw, stomach, ache, misery, head, sex, Anglo-Saxon four letter words of sex and profanity, skin, baby, it, curtain, shell, barrier, wall, think, thought, slippery, confused, mixed, smart, poor, little, sick, life, father, mother, familiar names of parents and any others of household during prenatal and childhood period, money, food, tears, no, world, excuse, stop, laugh, hate, jealous, shame, ashamed, coward, etc.
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Bouncers, denyers, holders, groupers, misdirectors et al., each have their common single words and these are few. The bouncer would contain: out, up, return, go, late, later, etc.
The holder would contain: catch, caught, trap, trapped, stop, lie, sit, stay, can’t, stuck, fixed, hold, let, lock, locked, come, etc.
The grouper would contain: time, together, once, difference, etc.
The single word technique shines nowhere brighter than in the Junior Case -- where the patient carries the name of one or another parent or grandparent. By clearing out the patient’s name from the prenatal engrams (where it is applied to another person but misinterpreted by the patient as himself) the patient can regain his own definition and valence. Always use the patient’s first name and last name (separately) as repeater, Junior or not.
If the engram bank is blank on a phrase, it probably is not blank on a common word.
Any small dictionary will provide an ample fund for single word technique. Use also any list of familiar first names, male and female, and you may discover allies or lovers not otherwise contactable.
The painful emotion engram sometimes yields slowly by simply directing the somatic strip to it. Sometimes the patient finds it difficult to approach an overcharged area. Single word technique using the name of the ally, if known, or words of sympathy, endearment, death, rejection or farewell and the love name of the patient as a child in particular will often yield swift results.
By the way, in using repeater technique, word or phrase, the auditor must not stir the case up too much.
Get what shows and reduce that. Reduce the somatic the person manifests when he goes into reverie and always try to find it for a while, even if you don’t succeed. If you stir up something en route down a chain which won’t reduce, mark it to be reduced when you have the basic.
Using single word technique one often obtains phrases which would otherwise remain hidden but which come into view when the key word is tapped. Using “hear” as a single word, for instance, the following phrases came to light which had thoroughly impeded the progress of the case. No effort was being made to contact such an engram in the prenatal area. Indeed, the “fight” chain had never been suspected since the patient had never dramatized it and because such a violent prenatal fight chain existed the fact that his parents fought violently in the home was utterly struck from the standard banks so that he would have denied such a thing with shocked surprise had it been suggested. The somatic was unusually severe, caused by the father kneeling on the mother and choking her:
Patient repeated “hear” several times, the auditor asking him to return to an incident containing that word. The patient continued to repeat and then suddenly sank into a stupor when he reached the prenatal area. He remained in this “boil-off” for about thirty minutes and then, the auditor rousing him occasionally to make him repeat the word “hear,” manifested a strong somatic. “Hear” became “Stay here!” The somatic became stronger and “Stay here” was repeated until the patient could move freely on the track through the engram. He contacted his father’s voice and was most reluctant to carry on with the engram, due to its intense emotional violence. Coaxed and edged into it by the auditor, the engram was recounted.
FATHER: “Stay here! Stay down, damn you, you bitch! I’m going to kill you this time. I said I would and I will. Take that! (Intensified somatic as his knee ground into the mother’s abdomen) You better start screaming. Go on, Scream for mercy! Why don’t you break down? Don’t worry, you will! You’ll be blubbering around here, screaming for mercy!
The louder you scream the worse you’ll get. That’s what I want to hear! I’m a punk kid,
am I?
You’re the punk kid! I could finish you now but I am not going to! (Auditor suddenly has trouble, patient taking last phrase literally and stopping his recounting; auditor starts him again) 206
This is just a sample. There’s a lot more than that where it came from! I hope it hurts I hope it makes you cry! You say a word to anybody and I’ll kill you in earnest! (Patient now running ahead with such an emotional surge that commands are less active on him. This command to remain quiet disregarded) I’m going to bust your face in. You don’t know what it is to be hurt!
(Somatic lessened by removal of the knee) I know what I’m going to do to you now! I’m going to punish you! I’m going to punish you and God is going to punish you! I’m going to rape you! I’m going to stick it into you and tear you! When I tell you to do something you’ve got to do it! Get up on the bed! Lie down! Lie still! (Crack of bones as she is struck in the face with a fist. Blood pressure coming up and hurting baby) Lie still! You’ll always be here! I’m going to finish this! You’re unclean! You are dirty and diseased! God’s punished you and now I’m going to punish you! (Coitus somatic begins, very violent, further injuring child) You’ve got something terrible in your past. You think you’ve got to be mean to me! You try to make me feel like nothing! You’re the one that’s nothing! Take it, take it!” (String of sexual banalities screamed for about five minutes) The patient recounted this three times and it erased. It was basic-basic! Three days after conception as nearly as could be judged by the subsequent days to the missed period. It threw into view almost all the other important data in the case, which then resolved and was cleared.
The single word might have landed the patient on some other of the “hears” in the case.
In this event it would be necessary to pick it up at its earliest moment or the remainder of the engram might not erase or reduce.
The word “hear” might also have landed the patient later on the track in which case the engrams would have had to have been traced back earlier until one was found which would erase, reducing each one as it was encountered until the earliest was reached when all would erase.
In using single word repeater as in phrase repeater, the auditor should not permit a rapid, unmeaning repetition but a slow repeat, the auditor requesting the somatic strip to return the while and asking the patient to contact anything else which might associate with the word.
Caution: if the patient is not moving on the track, do not give him repeater words or phrases at random as these will pile up engrams where the patient is stuck. Use only efforts to get the patient moving on the track by discovering and reducing the phrase that is holding him.
Caution: basic-basic does not always have words in it, often being only painful and accompanied with womb sounds. It will, nevertheless, hold everything in place by its perceptics.
SPECIAL CLASSES OF COMMANDS
There are several distinct classes of commands. They are outlined here for ready reference with some samples of each.
Aberrative commands can contain anything. The auditor does not much concern himself with them. Refer back to our young man and the coat in Book II and there we find, in the guise of hypnotic commands, some idea of what aberrative commands are. “I am a jub-jub bird,” “I can’t whistle Dixie,” “The world is all against me,” “I hate policemen,” “I am the ugliest person in the world,” “You haven’t any feet,” “The Lord is going to punish me,” “I always have to play with my thing,” may be very interesting to the patient and even amusing to the auditor and may have caused a considerable amount of trouble in the patient’s life. Where dianetic therapy is concerned, these all come up in due course. Looking for a specific aberration or a specific somatic is sometimes of interest and sometimes of some use, but it is not usually important.
These aberrative commands may contain enough data to make the patient a raving zealot, a paranoid or a catfish, but they are nothing to the auditor. They come up in due course.
Working on them or about them is secondary and less.
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The primary business of the auditor in any case is to keep the patient moving on the track, keep his somatic strip free to come and go and reduce engrams. The moment the patient acts as though or responds as though he was not moving or the moment the file clerk will not give forth data, then something is wrong and that something has to do with a few classes of phrase: there are thousands of such phrases contained in engrams, variously worded, but only five classes:
DENYERS
“Leave me alone,” which means, literally, that he must leave the incident alone. “I can’t tell” means he can’t tell you this engram. “It’s hard to tell” means it is hard to tell. “I don’t want to know” means he has no desire to know this engram. “Forget it” is the classic of the sub-class of denyer, the forgetter mechanism. When the engram simply won’t come to view but there is a somatic or a muscle twitch, send the somatic strip to the denyer. It is often
“Forget it” or “Can’t remember” as a part of the engram. “I don’t know what’s going on” may be Mama telling Papa something but the pre-clear’s analyzer, impinged, then doesn’t know what’s going on. “It’s beyond me” means he is right there but he thinks he isn’t. “Hold on to this, it’s your life!” makes the engram “vital” to existence. “It can’t be reached,” “I can’t get in there,” “Nobody must know,” “It’s a secret,” “If anybody found out, I’d die,” “Don’t talk,”
and thousands more.
HOLDERS
The holder is the most frequent and the most used since whenever the pre-clear can’t shift on the track or come to present, he is in a holder. A holder combined with a denyer will still hold: if it can’t be found, look for the denyer first, then the holder. “I’m stuck” is the classic phrase. “That fixed it” is another. “I’m caught” doesn’t mean to the pre-clear what Mama meant when she said it. It may mean to her that she is pregnant but it tells the pre-clear he is caught on the track. “Don’t move,” “Sit there until I tell you to move,” “Stop and think”
(on this last phrase, when it is uttered on a first recounting the auditor may have to start him going again for he does just that, he stops and thinks and he would stop there and think for some time: the auditor will see this strange obedience to this literal nonsense as he works a case). And thousands more. Any way words literally understood can stop a person or keep him from moving.
BOUNCERS
The bouncer could best be demonstrated by a curve. The pre-clear goes back into prenatal and then finds himself at ten years of age or even present time. That’s a bouncer at work. He goes early on the time track: it says come back up.
When the pre-clear can’t seem to get earlier, there is a bouncer ejecting him from an engram. Get a comment from him on what’s happening. Take the comment or some phrase which would be a bouncer and use repeater technique until he settles back down on the engram. If he contacts it easily, it won’t bounce him again. “Get out” is the classic bouncer.
The patient usually goes toward present time. “Can’t go back at this point” may mean Mama has decided she will have to have the baby after all or finish the abortion but to the pre-clear it means he must move on up the time track or that he can’t get any earlier period. “Get up there.” “Run a mile” (“Beat it,” would not be a bouncer; it would mean the pre-clear should beat the engram). “I must go far, far away,” so he does. “I’m growing up,” “Blow you higher than a kite,” “Batter up.” And thousands more.
GROUPER
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The grouper is the nastiest of all types of command. It can be so variously worded and its effect is so serious on the time track that the whole track can roll up into a ball and all incidents then appear to be in the same place.
This is apparent as soon as the pre-clear
hits one. The grouper will not be discovered easily. But it will settle out as the case progresses and the case can be worked with a grouper in restimulati
on. “I have no time” and “Nothing makes any difference” are the classic groupers. “Everything comes in on me at once” means just that. “They’re all in there together,” “Screwed up,” “Balled up,” “It’s all right here.”
“You can remember all this in present time” (a serious auditor error if he uses this to a suggestible patient, for it will gloriously foul a case). “You associate everything.” “I am tangled up,” “Jam everything in there at once,” “There’s no time,” and thousands more.
MISDIRECTOR
This is an insidious character, the misdirector. When it appears in an engram, the patient goes in wrong directions, to wrong places, etc. “You’re doing it all backwards.” “All up now” is a grouper and a misdirector. “Always throwing it up to me” puts the pre-clear up the track some distance and from there he tries to pick up engrams. “You can’t go down” is partly bouncer, partly misdirector. “We can’t get to the bottom of this” keeps him off from basic-basic. “You can start over again” keeps him from finishing the recounting, whereupon he goes back to the beginning of the engram instead of running it. “Can’t go through that again” keeps him from recounting. “I can’t tell you how it began” keeps him starting his engrams in the middle and they will not then reduce. There are many such phrases. “Let’s settle down” and all “settlings” make him drift backwards down the track. “I am coming down with a cold” puts the aberree in a common cold engram. This can be counted upon to make every cold much worse. “Come back here” is really a call back but it directs him away from where he should be. A patient who reaches present time with difficulty and then begins to go back has a “Come back here” or a “Settle down.” “Down and out” misdirects him not only away from present time but to the bottom of the track and off it. This is a misdirector and a derailer all at once. “Can’t get past me” is a misdirector on the order of a reverser. “You don’t know down from up” is the classic phrase. “I’m all turned around.”
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health Page 41