Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

by L. Ron Hubbard

  7.

  The pre-clear should understand that any attitude of antagonism or skepticism or even apathy or a “desire” to neglect his engrams is derived wholly from the engrams themselves and that these dictate his attitudes in a large measure. If he does not like the 263

  auditor personally, then the auditor has some counterpart in an engram. Other auditors can be found, but this is not a good enough excuse to shift auditors.

  8.

  Bombarded by his engrams, the pre-clear is apt to conceive the idea that he talks and acts only from those engrams and that he is never thinking analytically. Repeater technique tends to give this conception. It is not a fact, however, that the pre-clear operates only on engrams. The best and most effective portions of his life, all his rational acts, concerns and conclusions, are analytical. During therapy he has a tendency, at first, to believe everything must be engramic but this is not true. His analytical mind is powerful and active and as therapy progresses he is more and more in command of his actions and words.

  9.

  At first, in therapy, the pre-clear is apt to introvert markedly. This is a temporary condition, usually, but may extend for some distance into therapy. Gradually he begins to extrovert. Finally he is no longer interested in his engrams, though he may be interested in those of others.

  10.

  There has long been an incorrect theory that neurosis is the source of mental vigor and ambition. This is emphatically false. If the pre-clear believes that his engrams are of any assistance to him let him go hit his hand hard with a hammer and then argue that he will now be better at his profession because he has a bruised skin. No engram has any value. The engram is a parasite, regardless of its pretension that it aids the individual.

  Anything the pre-clear does with engrams he can do far better without engrams. It is true and valid that experience plays a major role in educating a man and determining his ambitions. Engrams are not experience; they are hidden commands. Only when they have been processed by dianetics can their content be properly used in thought and classified as valid experience. Knowledge of the exact content of his engrams makes a man wiser, but until he knows what they contain they can only drive him and hound him with pain and reduce his general health and ability to think.

  11.

  Once he knows, in the most general sense, that he has engrams, a man can raise his necessity level to a point which will overcome them. He does not have to obey his engrams.

  12.

  If the pre-clear is being audited by one who is engaging his first case and has lately studied dianetics, no apprehension need be felt. No damage can result, even if a large number of mistakes are made. The brain cannot be damaged by dianetic therapy.

  Engrams may be restimulated which contain such a phrase as “Stop it, you are taking my mind away, piece by piece!” or “You will be well as long as I am with you,” but these are just engrams and their actual effect may well have been to make the individual quite ill. Have confidence in your auditor. He will become skilled with practice and the skills of dianetics themselves will carry you through. If he is clever and experienced, your auditor may bring about a quicker clear and a more comfortable passage through therapy. If he is not experienced, you and he may have some interestingly involved times. But no damage can be done.

  13.

  If the pre-clear finds his auditor becoming angry with him, the pre-clear should refer to the Auditor’s Code. It is there mainly to accelerate therapy and to protect the auditor, but it is of considerable use to the pre-clear who, by every right, should insist that it be observed. The engrams, when the pre-clear is returned to an early place on the time track he follows in therapy, often dictate irrational statements. The auditor should understand this. While engrams give the pre-clear no license to abuse an auditor when the pre-clear is not in session, in actual work the pre-clear should maintain his rights in the code to be treated fairly no matter what he does or says.

  14.

  The pre-clear should not expect the auditor to shoulder all his burdens. The end of therapy is to make the pre-clear much less a “push-button” machine, pushed around at the whim of the world which uses his aberrations. The sooner the pre-clear asserts his 264

  own self-determinism and exercises his power of decision in his own affairs, the faster therapy will advance. Self-determinism comes about automatically. It can be artificially induced by the pre-clear himself who, raising his necessity level to act with entire self-determinism, can meet the end half-way. The auditor is there to audit, not to be an adviser in the pre-clear’s conduct of existence.

  15.

  If the pre-clear catches himself lying to the auditor, he should know that he is only slowing therapy. If one has pretended war wounds never received or a glittering past, dianetic therapy is no place to carry out the illusion. Such pretenses stem from aberrations and a clear is not responsible for his own errors in the past once he is cleared, though society may for some time attempt to dictate, aberratedly, otherwise.

  16.

  If the pre-clear is being audited by a marriage partner with whom there have been many quarrels, the way of therapy may be difficult. Either be as forbearing as possible or persuade some one outside the home to audit. Wrangles over therapy between marriage partners markedly slow therapy.

  17.

  If the pre-clear is a child and is being audited by a parent, the child should be advised to express what he feels in therapy, not argued into different or false attitudes from some mistaken parental idea of respect. The parent is already restimulative to the child, being contained in many of the child’s engrams; it is therefore possible for the parent to reactivate engrams by being overbearing. The child as a pre-clear should have every right of an adult including recourse to the Auditor’s Code.

  18.

  It is usually worthless for the pre-clear to seek data from relatives. The data is being sought from a source not necessarily unaberrated, with memory occlusions, and which has a personal interest in making everything in the past as creditable as possible. Such a relative may have great power over the pre-clear, being a part of the pre-clear’s engrams. The seeking of data is always an effort to avoid confronting the engrams themselves and use the relative’s account as a by-pass memory. Experience has taught that even when such a relative knows the data and remembers it, some personal interest may be served in delivering a distorted idea to the pre-clear. If the pre-clear wants his data checked by mother or father, be sure that mother or father has inflicted pain on him and is a source of much trouble in the engram bank, no matter what the pre-clear thinks. If the pre-clear wants a confirmation, take it after therapy is completed.

  19.

  Should the pre-clear discover that anyone is attempting to prevent him from starting or continuing dianetic therapy, the fact should be communicated immediately to the auditor for this is a useful datum.

  Anyone attempting to stop an individual from entering therapy either has a use for the aberrations of that individual -- on the “push-button” order -- or has something to hide.

  In the former case, a fear may exist that when the individual becomes stronger he cannot be handled easily by the complainant or that he may take revenge upon the complainant for past acts. In this case, it is true that the clear has no puppet strings and the fear is well-grounded. As for revenge, the clear, being free from the fears and commands in his engrams, holds no grudges: his understanding combines with his strength; a person is only a menace as long as he is aberrated and he poses no insane threats when he ceases to be aberrated. When the complainant against the undertaking of therapy fears the disclosure of information, this is the very data which the auditor most needs and which he can obtain through standard therapy. No matter how wonderfully logical are the arguments a wife or a relative may advance against therapy, it has its root in either fear that their control over the patient will be slacked or fear that data exists in the patient’s engram bank which is detrimental to them. There is a furth
er extension of this case: wives with children may have a fear that therapy will eventually be applied to the children, in which case much information might come to light which the husband or society “should never know.” In any case, the aberrations of the person 265

  arguing against the undertaking of therapy choose self-interest rather than the welfare of the pre-clear. There is no altruistic motive in any attempt to stop therapy.

  20.

  The pre-clear should not regard himself as neurotic or insane merely because he wishes to undertake dianetic clearing. The greatest majority of those who will be processed will be “normal” people. The end of dianetic therapy is not to relieve subnormality but to create the optimum individual. Its concern is not with mental derangement but with the creation of mental freedom. Should anyone infer that the pre-clear engages to be cleared because he is “crazy” and that the critic scornfully does not need such a thing, the pre-clear need only point out that one of the ancient tests for insanity was whether or not the person boasted of his sanity. The average person today contains scores of major engrams. The pre-clear need only indictate that he must be the more sane because he is doing something about his engrams and is attempting to gain a more rational plane of existence. Psychiatry and psycho-analysis in specializing in neurosis and psychosis have fostered a public belief that when anyone does anything about his mind he must be neurotic or psychotic. Education is also doing something about the mind and yet none would declare all children in schools were neurotic and psychotic.

  Dianetic therapy specializes in creating the clear and though as a matter of course it resolves mental derangement, a clear is to a current normal person as the current normal person is to the insane -- such are the gulfs.

  21.

  The pre-clear may find himself begging for amnesia trance, hypnosis, drugs and other means to “facilitate therapy.” Such yearnings are not derived from any other reason than that the pre-clear is afraid to face his own engrams; deep trance does not resolve this problem. It can be used but is useful mainly on the insane. Dianetic reverie keeps a steady progress and is accompanied by a steady rise in the individual’s health and outlook. Short-cuts have not proven practical. If they had, they would be included in dianetic therapy.

  22.

  It is useful to advise the pre-clear that while he may grow as angry as he please at his relatives when he discovers what they have done to him, when he is clear he will no longer be angry and will then have the sometimes arduous task of making friends again. This does not excuse the relatives nor does it mean that the auditor should take umbrage at the pre-clear’s enthusiasm for revenge when he discovers what Mama may have done to him or what Papa said; it does mean that whenever a pre-clear has given voice to these rancors to the offenders, he has afterwards had to patch up broken relations, for when therapy is ended there is no reason nor desire for rage. Therapy passes up a tone scale from apathy, through anger to cheerfulness. At the beginning of the case the pre-clear may feel very propitiative toward offenders against him and not even know they are offenders. Half through a case he may become incensed at the offenders and indeed, should become angry if the case is progressing at all. At the end of the case he realizes that he was dealing, after all, with aberrees, and he weighs their disfavors with their favors and understands without anger. If the pre-clear is a child who has been badly abused, the auditor may have a difficult time trying to keep him from being extremely angry and generally impolite to his parents. The phase is, after all, only a phase. When cleared the child can love his parents of his own free will and not out of fear and necessity. Such cases invariably right themselves. When one parent is the auditor, he may have upon his hands at one or another stage of the case, a very impertinent and even caustic youngster: if the parent wants the phase to pass, he will permit the rage to reign and vigorously follow the auditor’s code, giving the child all the dignity of his righteous anger. After all, the child is entitled to a demonstration after keeping it in and living with it for years. He will not recover his feeling of love if that anger is checked and scolded.

  23.

  The health of the pre-clear can be expected to take a roller-coaster aspect during therapy. It will not get steadily better on an even curve of progress. It will surge upward and fall back many times during one session of therapy and will be inconstant from day to day as new engrams restimulate and old ones reduce. He will not become 266

  seriously ill and he cannot become as sick as he ordinarily was. But it is disconcerting to the pre-clear to have a nose cold three days after his birth engram was accidentally touched before it could be reduced; it would alarm a physician who did not know the patient was in dianetic therapy to watch blood pressure vary and the physical tone change so rapidly from lows to highs. Yet nothing serious happens and indeed the bulk of therapy is spent in improved and improving physical comfort. But a pre-clear should not be disheartened or dismayed to find himself with a flicker of “coronary trouble” on Tuesday, the shadow of a “migraine” on Saturday and a cough on Wednesday. These are somatics which sometimes come into restimulation before they can be reduced. Anything so restimulated by therapy cannot reach any dangerous heights and is of passing duration. They are the illnesses he will never have again and he should be glad to see them go. A very clever auditor can conduct a whole case without restimulating in the period after a session more than an occasional slight ache.

  But if somatics manifest themselves after and between sessions, do not be surprised, and above all do not interrupt therapy because of these aches and pains; they are less in any case than even a minor illness and are at worst merely uncomfortable. The point is, do not believe, as some patients are apt to do, that the presence of an unidentified ache or pain means anything serious is forecast in the way of illness. In therapy sessions some mild reproduction of past pain is felt and these may continue on a milder scale between sessions, that is all. You won’t get sick, you are getting well.

  24.

  The daily work of the pre-clear should never be interrupted and laid aside in the thought that a week or two of dianetics and nothing but dianetics will solve all problems. In grade school, high school, and college 18,000 hours are consumed making an individual a storehouse of knowledge and skill. Many more thousands of hours are spent gathering experience on how to apply the knowledge and develop the skill. In dianetic therapy, a clearing of all occlusions puts the individual into possession of all he has ever studied, heard and learned and takes away the clumsiness and errors which may have inhibited his reaching the height where he belongs. It would be worth 10,000

  additional hours of time to recover and be able to use and apply the knowledge, experience and skills of a lifetime. One receives a bonus of increased health, happiness and longevity, an increase in longevity which is at least a hundred to one for every hour of therapy. Yet therapy all the way to a clear takes far, far less than 10,000 hours of work. A case is as long as it has quality and quantity of engrams: if it takes a thousand hours, then blame the parents, not therapy. Yet few cases should consume a thousand hours even in unskilled hands and the bulk of them should take at most two or three hundred hours, a paltry amount of time compared to the thousands of hours of

  “forgotten” education, the tens of thousands of hours of occluded reading and experience which will be recovered, completely in addition to health, happiness and longevity. There is no Royal Road to Clear; it takes as long as it takes. The pre-clear should then settle his mind on the fact that he will be in therapy for some time. He should not hold off making decisions or hang his life on the end product of being cleared. Of course he will be impatient. Of course he will attempt to speed the process all he can and that is good.

  But he should not forget to carry along his life nor should he abandon his diversions or his work. It has been proven that pre-clears follow a rapidly advancing curve of progress and that from week to week their potential rises. It has been observed that they neglect to remember (since it is no lo
nger important to them in any way) that aberrations are fleeing from them at a rapid rate. In dianetics one does not “learn how to live with his troubles.” The troubles vanish like the bubbles in a ship’s wake. One does not keep them in mind and remember that the reason one does not like spinach was because Papa beat him when he would not eat it. The engram, refiled, does not inhibit the eating of spinach and Papa’s beating is no longer a source of pain. The troubles are gone.

  Therefore, it sometimes appears to the pre-clear, who looks only at the engrams ahead, that he is standing still. The auditor may have to ask him how he felt this time last August and make the pre-clear ponder it well before the pre-clear recalls that last August 267

  whenever he tried to write a letter he became nervous, that he hated his children’s racket, and that rain made him wonder about suicide. When he has compared his existence at his present level in therapy and his level shortly after he entered therapy, the pre-clear will agree he has made progress.

  In the next breath he is asking the auditor about possible identity of the ally they have just scented in the case. The pre-clear, in other words, recognizes no progress, since all progress is by loss of aberration; blind to this he tends to be extremely anxious and aggressive about getting along with therapy and does not stop being so (unless he is near the start and is a “neglect-engram” case) until one day he finds himself cleared. On that day he takes a glance at the fact that he is cleared and is already wading knee-deep in the enthusiastic business of living. So do not stop looking at the exterior world or living in it for the period of therapy. Take clearing interestedly but as routine to be followed. Give as much time to it as can be afforded and give the rest to life. And don’t scold the auditor because work was started Tuesday and here it is Thursday and one is not yet cleared.

  25.

  The pre-clear should thank the auditor after each session. And he should tell the auditor when he feels better and that he appreciates progress whenever progress has been made. The pre-clear introverts and forgets that the auditor deserves some courtesy. This is more important than is readily realized. Even the best of auditors are human.