Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  Aside from dianetic reverie, some pre-clears have been foolish enough to attempt auto-hypnosis and thus reach their engrams. Hypnotism in any form is unwarranted in dianetics.

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  Auto-hypnosis used in dianetics is probably as close to fruitless masochism as one can get. If a patient places himself in auto-hypnosis and regresses himself in an effort to reach illness or birth or prenatals, the only thing he will get is ill. Of course, people will try. None are ever convinced until they have tried once they begin to agitate about auto-control. But be sure to have a friend and this book handy so that he can audit away the headaches and such that suddenly turn on.

  Dianetic reverie, which means with an auditor present, is not dangerous or severe.

  Auto-control is often very uncomfortable and often fruitless. It should not be attempted.

  The clear alone can auto-control his whole time track back to conception and does when he wants specific data from anywhere in his life. But he is clear.

  ORGANIC MENTAL ALTERATIONS

  There are several things which can happen to the nervous system including the brain which can cause structural change. These are called in dianetics, organic mental alterations.

  They are not called “organic neuroses,” or “organic psychoses” because the alteration of structure does not necessarily produce aberrations. There has been a confusion in the past between behavior caused by organic differences and behavior caused by engrams: this confusion came about because the engram bank and the reactive mind were not known.

  Any human being with an organic mental alteration also has engrams. The behavior dictated by the engrams and the action caused by alteration are different things. Engrams carry dramatizations, delusions, tantrums and various inefficiencies with them. Alterations establish inabilities to think or perceive or record or recall. For instance the radio set may have new filters and circuits added to it which change and vary its performance and reduce it from optimum; these would be engrams: the radio set might have original tubes or circuits deleted from it or it might have some of the wires crossed; this would be organic mental alteration.

  The sources of organic mental alteration are as follows: 1.

  Variation of the blueprint of structure by reason of a changed gene pattern. Some parts of the body would grow too much or too little to establish any alteration of structure.

  This is usually so gross a change that it is obvious. The feeble-minded and so on may suffer either from engrams or an altered blueprint, but usually both.

  2.

  Alteration of the nervous system by disease or growths which divides into two classes: (a) Disease destruction as in paresis. (b) Additional construction as in the case of tumors.

  3.

  Alteration of the nervous system by drugs or poisons.

  4.

  Alteration by physical disorder as in the case of a “paralytic stroke” wherein certain tissues are inhibited or destroyed.

  5.

  Physical change in structure due to injury as in the case of a head wound.

  6.

  Alteration of structure by surgery as a necessity to remedy injury or disease.

  7.

  Iatrogenic alterations (caused by doctors) undertaken under a misapprehension of brain function. These can be divided into two classes: (a) Surgical, to include such things as the trans-orbital leukotomy, pre-frontal lobotomy, topectomy and so forth. (b) Shock

  “therapies” of all kinds including electric shock, insulin shock, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

  etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.etc.etc.

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  The first six sources of organic mental alteration are much less common than has been supposed. The body is an extremely hardy mechanism and its repair facilities are enormous. If an individual can be made to speak or follow orders at all, it is conceivable that the techniques of dianetics can be applied to reduce the engrams in the engram bank, bringing about considerable improvement in the condition and mental ability of the individual. When these various sources are so severe that they inhibit any use of therapy, and when it is certain that no recourse to therapy is possible and that it is utterly impossible to reach the engram bank by standard technique, hypnotism or drugs, such cases can be considered beyond help of dianetics.

  Category 7 presents another problem. Here we have selective experimentation at work and it would be flatly impossible to conceive, without months of study of their experimental subjects, how many brands and varieties of operation have been performed and how many odd and bizarre shocks have been used.

  All iatrogenic alterations of the nervous system can be considered under the heading of

  “reduced ability,” in other words, inability. In each case something has been done to reduce the ability of the individual to perceive, record, recall or think. Any of these complicate a case for dianetics, but they do not inevitably bar dianetics from working.

  In shock cases, such as electric shock, tissue may have been destroyed and the memory banks may in some way have been scrambled, the time track may be altered and other conditions may exist.

  In all such iatrogenic alterations, the results of dianetics must be considered equivocal.

  BUT IN ALL SUCH CASES, PARTICULARLY THOSE OF ELECTRIC SHOCK, DIANETICS SHOULD BE USED IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY IN AN EFFORT TO

  IMPROVE THE PATIENT.

  All shocks and operations should be picked up for what they are -- engrams.

  NO PERSON WHO CAN PERFORM ROUTINE TASKS OR WHOSE ATTENTION

  CAN BE ATTRACTED AND FIXED SHOULD FEEL DESPAIR OR BE CONSIDERED

  HOPELESS.

  Any person who has been subjected to such treatment may not be able to reach optimum mental efficiency but he may be able to reach a level of rationality even yet in excess of the current normal. The thing to do is try. In spite of what has happened or what has been done, in the large majority of cases there may be a chance of excellent recovery.

  ORGANIC DERANGEMENT

  A standard class of prenatal engrams has as its content the worry of the parents that the child will be feeble-minded if not now aborted in earnest. This adds an emotional overload to such engrams and it adds, as importantly, an aberrative condition in the now grown patient that he is “not right,” “all wrong,” “feeble-minded,” and so forth. The difficulty of aborting the child is nearly always underestimated: the means used are often novel or bizarre: the worry because the child has not come out of the womb after the abortion attempt is acute, and the concern that he is now damaged beyond repair all combine to make severely aberrative engrams and, because of their content, engrams which are difficult to reach.

  The aberrative quality of the “feeble-minded” species of remark is of course, high. The worry that the child may be born blind or deaf or otherwise incapacitated is common. The former class of engramic remarks can bring about actual feeble-mindedness; the latter concern over blindness and so on bring about, at best, impaired visio and sonic recall.

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  The shut-off of the recalls is occasioned as well by an engramic belief in the society at large that the unborn child is blind, unfeeling and not alive. This belief is introduced into AA (attempted abortion) engrams by people’s self-justification remarks while attempting an abortion: “Well, he can’t see, feel or hear anyway.” Or, “It doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s blind, deaf and dumb. It’s a sort of growth. It isn’t human.”

  The greater part of all sonic and visio recall shut-off has as its source the remarks made at such times or by painful emotion and other engramic data. Hundreds of hours of therapy may pass before these recalls turn on.

  The bulk of all shut-offs will turn on in the course of therapy. There are thousands of engramic remarks and emotional situations which will deny the pre-clear his recall and that recall can be expected ordinarily to restore.

  A very low dynamic patient (for people have various native strengths of the dynamic) may have recalls shut-off rather easily. A high dynamic patient wo
uld require much more aberration before the recalls are closed down.

  These recalls can be turned on simply by running out the physically painful and painful emotion engrams.

  It must not pass unremarked, however, that the abortion attempts actually can, if rarely, derange the brain and nervous mechanisms beyond the foetal ability to repair. The result of this is actual, physiological disability.

  Children and adults now classified as feeble-minded may then be separated into two groups: the actual, physiological class and the aberrated class. Further, recall shut-offs must be classified into two classes as well, regardless of the dynamic and intelligence of the individual: those occasioned by brain damage received during an attempted abortion and those which are solely aberrational and derived from engramic commands and emotion.

  The ability of the foetus to repair damage is phenomenal. Brain damage can ordinarily be repaired perfectly regardless of how many foreign substances were introduced into it. Just because the brain was touched in an attempted abortion is no reason to suppose that the recall shut-off has this as a source, for this is the rarer of the two causes.

  It is understood that this is being read by many with recall shut-offs and it is understood that it may well produce a considerable upset. But remember this, sonic and visio recall are not vital to a nearly full release. This comment about organic damage does not mean that a release cannot be effected which will leave the person more competent and happier, for this can always be done regardless of the recalls. And remember this, recalls almost always turn on even if it takes five hundred hours or more. This condition is only remarked because it will be found in some few cases.

  The “tests” and “experiments” with human brain vivisection in institutions are not, unfortunately, valid. For all the pain and trouble and destruction caused by these

  “experiments,” they were done without a proper knowledge of aberration and mental derangement. None of such data is of any value beyond showing that the brain can be cut in various ways without entirely killing the man. For the patients used responded both to engramic disorder and the physical disorder caused by the psychiatrist, and there is no way to differentiate between these after the operation except by dianetics. Conclusions drawn from this data are then invalid conclusions, for the response of the patient after the operation might have stemmed from a number of sources: engramic, the engram of the operation itself, attempted abortion damage early in life, brain disability on account of the operation and so forth. Hence, draw no conclusions that impairment of conceptual thinking, for instance, results only when a part of the brain is removed, that recall is shut off only when the brain is vivisected and so on.

  From a scientific standpoint no such “findings” were conclusive of anything except that the brain can be damaged late in life without entirely killing a man and that surgery of any kind often brings about a mental change in the patient. True, it may have been discovered that this 230

  or that portion of the switchboard called the brain, when removed, removed also some ability to perform.

  DIANETIC FIRST AID

  It will be of interest to those associated with emergency hospital work particularly that the healing and recovery of any patient can be enormously benefited and the term of illness shortened by removing the engram occasioned at the moment of injury.

  The accident case sometimes dies, in a few days, from shock, or does not recover and will not heal swiftly. In any injury -- a burn, cut, a bruise of whatever kind -- a trauma lingers in the injured area. The moment of the injury created an engram. This engram inhibits the release of the trauma. The fact that the injured part still hurts is an organic restimulator which depresses the ability of the patient to recover.

  Using reverie or merely working the patient with his eyes closed, and working the patient as soon after the injury as possible, the doctor, nurse or relative can return the injured person to the moment when the injury was received and usually recover and exhaust the incident as a usual engram. Once the engram of the injury is reduced, the general mental tone of the patient improves. Further, the injured area is no longer inhibited from healing.

  Some experimental work on this demonstrated that some burns would heal and disappear in a few hours when the engram which accompanied their reception was removed.

  On more serious injuries tests showed definite and unmistakable acceleration of the rate of healing.

  In operations, when anesthetics have been used, dianetics is useful in two ways: (1) as a preventive measure and (2) as a recovery measure. In the first, no conversation of any kind should be held around or with the “unconscious” or semi-conscious patient. In the second, the trauma of the operation itself should be recovered and relieved immediately afterwards.

  A PROBLEM IN MUTUAL THERAPY

  R and his wife C cleared each other in eight months with dianetics, working four hours a night four nights a week, each of them auditing the other for two hours of the four. This mutual arrangement had been complicated by the fact that whereas R was very eager to be cleared, his wife was quite apathetic about the work: he had managed only after much persuasion to get the cases started.

  He was a high dynamic case with much emotion encysted; she was an apathy case who entirely neglected her troubles (black panther mechanism). He was troubled with a chronic ulcer and anxieties about his job; she was troubled with a general allergic condition and a chronic carelessness in domestic affairs. They were not to any great degree mutually restimulative, but they had problems about tacit consent, avoiding the subjects which had most upset them while together, such as a miscarriage she had had and the loss of their home by fire many years before, as well as other shocks. Further they were faced by R’s intensity on the one hand and his introversion, which caused him to slight her therapy, and C’s apathy on the other hand, which at once aided R’s effort to take more time as the pre-clear than she and which made her less interested in being a good auditor.

  Further complication took place because C did not understand the auditor’s code or its use and on several occasions had become angry and impatient with R when he was in session and returned, an attitude which tended to force R into an anger valence.

  Along this uncertain course therapy had been continuing. R was then informed of tacit consent and told he had better release some of their mutual painful emotion. He thereafter 231

  addressed the engram of the burning home and suddenly found himself able to audit some early sympathy engrams of his wife’s which had not heretofore been available. It was discovered that her allergies stemmed from a father sympathy compute and that R was the pseudo-father.

  This resulted in a marked improvement in C’s case. She began to suffer less from her allergies and a chronic heart pain she had had so long that she no longer heeded it vanished as well. She became interested in being a good auditor and studied the subject. She became slightly annoyed with R when he demanded more than his share of therapy time. (This increase of interest is always true of any apathy case which began with neglect of engrams.) R, however, was much inhibited by her periods of anger and found that he now operated almost exclusively under auto-control, a condition wherein he decided what should be run and what should not be run in himself. This auto-control is, of course, useless, since if he knew about his aberrations and the data in his engrams, they would not be engrams. He, therefore, started on a period of refusing to display any emotion since she had mocked him about it, would not follow her directions and was, in short, obeying the engrams which she had given him when angry with him during past sessions. C was advised to pick up the moments of anger she had displayed as an auditor during therapy and when these were reduced, it was found that R worked well again and cooperated.

  His ulcer stemmed from an attempted abortion. His father, an extremely aberrated individual, had sought to abort the baby when it was seven months in the womb. The mother remonstrated that the baby might be born alive. The father said that if it were alive when born he would k
ill it as soon as it came out. He had said, further, that the mother had to hold still while he operated. On another occasion the father had said that he would lock the mother in a closet until she decided to abort the child. (This case was much complicated because the mother had been afraid to tell the father and had pretended not to be pregnant for three months, giving the husband the belief that the child, seven months along, was actually only four months along.

  Therefore, there was much secrecy in the case, much confusion and conflicting data.) This meant that R had a severe holder in the prenatal area: he was held by the engram which included a penetration of his stomach. This was the key engram, which is to say other engrams, by the mechanism of similar somatic and content, had gathered around it to suppress it. This was the tangle of incidents which C was confronting unknowingly: it had become more tangled by her anger. R would now cooperate but his time track had wound into a ball around the holder engram, the key. Two exodontistries for the removal of wisdom teeth with nitrous oxide anesthesia were also suppressing the prenatals.

  C worked for some time trying to get at the late extraction engrams, which contained an enormous amount of conversation between the dentist and his assistants and R’s mother, who, unfortunately for his sanity, had accompanied him to the dentist’s office.

  R was made intensely uncomfortable by the continual restimulation of engrams which yet could not be reached. He was no more uncomfortable than he had often been in the past and his discomfort would have been absent had C understood and followed the auditor’s code.

  The case made no progress for several weeks.

  C’s therapy was progressing. It was intensely restimulative to R to work upon her and increase his discomfort, but the more he worked on her the better auditing she did and the more intelligent she was (her I.Q. went up about fifty points after five weeks of therapy). C desired to know how she could break the impasses in his case and was informed that she was now practicing tacit consent, for she had many times been needlessly thoughtless of R long before therapy was undertaken and she now realized what she had done to him and yet could not bring herself to face the fact that she was a responsible party to so much of his unhappiness -- she had quite ordinarily used angry language to him which she well knew would “push-button”