Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  There is an axiom here which is well not to slight in working a patient: ANY CHRONIC PSYCHO-SOMATIC ILLNESS HAS AT ITS SOURCE A SYMPATHY ENGRAM.

  And another:

  A REACTIVE MIND WILL NOT PERMIT AN INDIVIDUAL TO BE ABERRATED

  OR CHRONICALLY PSYCHO-SOMATICALLY ILL UNLESS THE ILLNESS

  HAS SURVIVAL VALUE.

  This does not mean that the individual has a power of choice analytically. It does mean that the reactive mind, working quietly and hitherto hidden so well, chooses, on identity computation, physical and mental conditions to match any circumstance even remotely similar to any concept in the engram bank.

  There is such a thing as necessity level. This rises and keys-out engrams and can key out the control of the reactive mind itself. Necessity level often rises. The individual can force it to rise analytically whether or not actual cause exists. A person may have no engram about going to the electric chair for murder and yet have an engram about murdering people.

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  Necessity level rises and analytically overwhelms all impulse to kill for the analyzer knows all about electric chairs. When the necessity level cannot rise, then one is dealing with a low dynamic individual. An artist, terribly aberrated about his work through the kind efforts of obligingly caustic critics, can yet boost himself by his necessity bootstraps to do another piece of work and damn the aunt who said he gave her too many chins in her portrait and ripped the work to shreds or damn the critics who said he was too new and his work too swift. Necessity level can soar above the reactive mind by, as the marine sergeant said, “Sheer guts.” Given too many current restimulators, used too hard by life, an individual, caught in the dwindling spiral of reactivated engrams, may come at last to a point where he cannot longer remain well. If this is his first serious sag and if the sag is deep, a psycho-somatic illness will appear and become more or less chronic and, this is important, it will stem directly from a sympathy engram.

  All psycho-somatic ills carry with them, if less obvious, aberrative commands which mean that a person suffering from psycho-somatic illness, whether he relishes the idea or not, is also suffering from the aberration which is part of the same engram.

  If the auditor wants to find the real holders, the real reasons his case appears to resist getting well, the real aberrative factors and illnesses, he will look to the ally or allies, for any case may have many. He will exhaust from them the painful emotion of loss or denial and backtrack immediately to find the underlying engrams.

  Remember too that the reactive mind is not bright enough to realize that two sides of the same person are the same person. Hence we can have Mother-the-white-angel and Mother-the-howling-harridan. As the white angel she is implicitly followed, as the harridan she is negated against. Father may be Father-the-beneficent and Father-the-baby- killer. And so with all allies.

  But only the pure, the absolute, the never changing ally who, resolute and firm, stayed the cold sharp hand of death and placed tenderly in the expiring hand of the wistful child the strong and flaring torch of life (or at least said, “Poor baby, you feel so bad; please don’t cry,”) is the model, the paragon, the gold-footed idol with free access to the gods. (This was grandpop: he drank too much and he cheated at cards, but the reactive mind doesn’t see it that way because grandpop hauled baby through pneumonia and was darned sure baby got well: good acts if he hadn’t been so melodramatic about it and if he hadn’t talked so much while the poor kid was

  “unconscious.”)

  Question the patient adroitly about Father and Mother: if he isn’t much disturbed by their deaths (if they are dead) or if he is simply careless of them or if he bares his teeth, they are antagonists; the allies are elsewhere. If the mother and father are indifferently or angrily or propitiatively regarded, be very sure then, that the patient had a rough time of it between conception and birth and later and be sure, if this is the case, that there will be allies in plenty for the child will have sought them out in every scrape or injury. But you will not find the allies, usually, by mere questions. The reactive mind considers them to be pure gold even if the engrams in which they appear have somatics enough to wreck a person for life. It hides allies.

  The auditor has to look for them through discharging painful emotion. The death, departure or denial by an ally is a certain painful emotion engram. One way or another, working at it from later painful emotion or earlier physically painful engrams, the ally will eventually uncover and can be entered as memory in the standard banks and erased as illness out of the engram bank.

  The solution of chronic psycho-somatic ills lies largely in the field of sympathy engrams. These will not erase early, however, for they are the inner bastion behind which the reactive mind crouches and observes the storming of the outer defenses by antagonists. The painful emotion of ally losses masks, at times, not only allies but antagonists as well. The sympathy engram is not the only source of psycho-somatic illness by far, but it is the source of the chronic psycho-somatic ill.

  By the way, nothing in this dissertation about allies should be construed to mean that one should not show love to a child. Observers in the past have jumped at questionable conclusions when they felt that demonstrated affection aberrates a child. Lack of affection may kill him, but the reverse is not true. The only way an ally can aberrate a child is by talking to 219

  and sympathizing with a child who is very ill or “unconscious” from injury. If he does this he alloys the child’s personality with his own, creates an eventual possibility of psycho-somatic illness and aberration and may generally disable the child for life (except for dianetics, of course). Love a child best and do for him best when he is well. Do anything you please with him when he is well, say what you please. When he is sick or hurt, it is best, as the bosun said, “Patch him up and keep God-damned quiet!”

  TOKENS

  The tale of the magic amulet, the lucky talisman, the belief in the charm and the long catalogue of fetishes, the objects and mannerisms which one keeps as sakes are the “dearly beloveds” of the reactive mind.

  There is nothing wrong with a man keeping llamas in the parlor or wearing purple and green suspenders or rubbing fire plugs for luck, nor is there anything wrong with sighing over a stolen lady’s slipper or smoking Pittsburgh stogies. Any Rights of Man should provide for such eccentricities. But the auditor can use this data to detect vital information.

  In dianetics, the term token is defined to embrace the objects and habits which an individual or society keeps by not knowing they are extensions of an ally.

  By identity thought there are associative restimulators for every restimulator in the environment -- these things connected with the restimulator. Being blank on the subject, the analytical mind, apprised by physical reaction that a restimulator of something is nearby, then picks up the associative restimulator but does not select the actual restimulator. (In Book II, the young man’s signal to remove his coat was a touch of the tie: he did not cite the tie in his complaint, the nearest he came to it was the person and clothing of the hypnotic operator.

  These were associative restimulators.)

  A restimulator for a contra-survival engram might be an electric light; the aberree looks to the shade, the pull chain, the room or the person under the light to be a source of annoyance, and not only does he not know that a restimulator is present but supposes that the associated objects have some evil in themselves.

  The associative restimulator for a contra-survival engram needs no name other than that, associative restimulator. The pain is the thing, the things associated in any way with the thing are the thing, are other things, etc. is the reactive equation which fills the world of the aberree full of fear and fills him full of anxiety. Leave a child in a place or a room where he has been unhappy and he may become ill, for he is confronted with some restimulator and he can at best explain, like the adult, his fear in terms of things not rationally connected to the restimulator. This is the mechanism of engramic restimulation.


  It is mostly terribly uncomfortable to any aberree who, try as he might, cannot say why he does not like some person or object or locale and who cannot connect any of the three with the actual item which is the restimulator and does not know he has an engram about it. This method of detecting engrams leads nowhere quickly since one cannot select objects, persons or locales and know they are restimulators. They may be only associative restimulators to the actual restimulator item in the environment. (Words contained in engrams, by the way, and any other precise restimulator can “push-button” the aberree into action or apathy if they are used upon him. In words it has to be the exact word; for instance painted will not do when painter is in the engram. What is painted, however, may be an associative restimulator and the aberree may declare he does not like it; that he does not like it does not mean that it will “push his buttons” and made him cough or sigh or get angry or get sick or whatever the engram containing the word dictates he should do.)

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  The token is a very special kind of restimulator. While the auditor may not find much use for the associative restimulator as applied to contra-survival engrams, he can employ the token as a means of detection to locate allies.

  The token is any object, practice or mannerism which one or more allies used. By identity thought the ally is survival; anything the ally used or did is, therefore, survival. The valence of the ally is that one most frequently employed by the aberree. While the clear can shift himself into valences he imagines or beholds at will and convenience and out of them at will and can stabilize in his own at will, the aberree skids around into valences without his knowledge or consent and is most likely to be in any valence but his own. The person who seems to be a different person every time he is met or a different person to each person he meets, with special valences manifesting here and others manifesting there, is shifting into various winning valences; interfered with in his shifts, he goes into secondary valences; if forced into his own valence he becomes ill. It is understood, of course, that all valences manifest something of himself.

  Shifting into ally valences is the fundamental practice of the aberree. He will feel most at ease when his own valence is alloyed to some degree with an ally valence. So long as the ally or the pseudo-ally is not available, the aberree reminds himself of the ally valence with tokens. These tokens are the things the ally possessed, practiced or did.

  An aberree will often inextricably associate himself with a pseudo-ally, as in marriage, and then make the astonished discovery that he is not partnered with the optimum ally conduct.

  (Mother was an ally, Mother baked bread; wife is pseudo-Mother though neither she nor he knows it; wife does not bake bread: Mother frowned on lipstick, wife wears lipstick; Mother gave him his way, wife has a bossy attitude; wife is pseudo-Mother because she has similar voice tones only.) The aberree then reactively and unknowingly attempts to coax wife or partner into the ally valence by assuming that the moment of the sympathy engram is present time -- a mechanical shift caused only by the restimulation of the sympathy engram because of voice tones or some such thing -- and proceeds to manifest the ghost of the engram illness or injury or operation as a psycho-somatic sickness. The computation of the reactive mind is simple -- just like Simple Simon -- one forces the ally into being by manifesting the somatic with which the ally sympathized. This can also be an effort to turn a partner in which the reactive mind thinks it has discovered an ambivalent friend-enemy into the sympathy valence.

  Wife is cruel.

  Mother was cruel until the injury, then she was nice. Manifest the injury as a chronic psycho-somatic illness and wife will be nice. Actually wife isn’t nicer, so the computation gets stronger, the illness gets stronger, and down into the dizzy dwindling spiral we go. The psycho-somatic illness is also a denial of dangerousness, a plea of helplessness -- a shade of opossum playing, fear paralysis: “I’m no menace to you. I’m sick!”

  The aberree goes into his own valence of the time of the sympathy engram in his bid for sympathy and his denial of his own dangerousness. The valence of himself, of course, is complicated by the age-tab and somatic of the engram in which he was immature and not well.

  The psycho-somatic illness is, as well, a token, which is to say it is a reminder of a time when he once had love and care and was told so. He needs it about as much as he needs to be atom bombed, of course, but this is good, solid reactive mind “survival” and the reactive mind is going to make it so he can survive if it kills him.

  This is all mechanical and is actually merely restimulation of an engram, but it is better understood as a low order computation.

  In the absence of an ally, and even in the presence of the ally, he uses reactive mimicry.

  Conscious mimicry is a wonderful way to learn. Reactive mimicry is most alloying to the personality. Reactively, he once had an ally and imitates the ally. Consciously he may not even recall the ally or the habits of the ally.

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  The ally, remember, is somebody who has entered the interior world of the mind when the analyzer was shut down by illness or injury or an operation and gave forth sympathy or protection. The ally is part of the sympathy engram. If a child had grandparents he liked and was lucky enough not to be ill around them or be talked to by them in sympathetic terms when he was ill or injured, the grandparents would still be much loved. In dianetics an ally is only some one who has offered sympathy or protection in an engram. We don’t have to have engrams to be loved or to love: quite the contrary, one is better loved and loves more without engrams.

  The token applies, dianetically, only to the ally and is an object, practice or mannerism similar to an object, practice or mannerism of the ally.

  The ally smoked Pittsburgh stogies, so the aberree may smoke Pittsburgh stogies no matter what they do to his throat or his wife. The ally wore bowlers, the lady aberree dotes on riding habits but has never ridden a horse. The ally knitted, the aberree specializes in wearing knit things or a lady at least makes a pretense of knitting and sometimes wonders why she ever took it up, she is so bad at it. The ally used profanity, the aberree uses the same profanity. The ally wipes his nose on his sleeve and picks his nose, the aberree wipes his nose on a dinner jacket and fiddles with his nostrils.

  The token may be a reminder of pure ally or it may be a reminder of the friend side of an ambivalent friend-enemy. And it may be a winning valence that was also ambivalent toward the aberree. The token is never an associative restimulator in the meaning that it reminds of some antagonist, for associative restimulators are abhorred.

  The most chronic token, the most constant habit, practice or mannerism of the pre-clear is a direct arrow to the pure ally. And the pure ally is the one the reactive mind will guard to its highest level of the beset donjon keep. And that is the target of the auditor. He may have to relieve the majority of the engram bank before he can erase the engram which is most likely to aberrate the individual, to saddle him with strange practices and to make him chronically ill.

  Observe your pre-clear and see what he does and says that are strange to his personality, things he does but does not much seem to enjoy. See what he uses and what his mannerisms are. Amongst this collection you may, by asking discreet questions, jog an ally into his memory which he had forgotten and so jogging, reach swiftly toward the sympathy engram in which that ally is contained or reach toward, for an emotional discharge, the painful emotion engram of the loss of that ally, his illness or incidents concerning him.

  Another but special token is that which stems from a “die if you don’t” command.

  Fathers, for instance, suspicious of paternity, sometimes claim while trouncing or upsetting mothers that they will kill the child if it isn’t just like Father. This is a very unhappy type of token to say nothing of being, usually, a bad engram; it can go to the extent of remodeling structure, of making noses long or hair absent; it may compel an aberree into a profession he does not admire and all out of the engramic command that he m
ust be like the parent. As this type of command is usually given before birth it is often addressed, unknowingly, to a girl, fathers not being gifted ordinarily with clairvoyance; in such a case it will bring about a most remarkable structural change in a woman and form some unusual mannerisms, “ambitions”

  (like the dog that gets whipped if he doesn’t fetch the duck) and some habits which, to say the least, are astonishing. Father, post-birth, to accomplish the reactivation of such an engram, must be quite ambivalent so that the friend-enemy compute comes into being. Not to be like father is to die: to force father into his sympathy engram self the reactive mind must manifest the token of illness. Token and likeness is the answer to such a computation. And recall, all such computations are not simple but are made further complex by the addition of dozens of other engramic computations.

  The friend-enemy is rather easy to find as an enemy, not too hard to find as a friend.

  Standard technique with its repeater and return et al. would in themselves at last locate any 222

  engram and erase the bank so that it properly refiles. The use of the token facilitates the auditing.

  In the case of the pure ally, the champion of the right, standard technique also at last arrives. But here how smooth the use of the token sometimes makes the road! For the token may be as alarmingly strange as an elephant in a bird cage. It takes a real ally to keep some of these odd habits around.

  Measure the pre-clear against his environment and education and his society and profession. See what doesn’t seem to belong amid the things he uses, the objects he adores and the mannerisms his friends find so strange. Then find out if he or the spouse knew of anyone who did those things or liked those things.