Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (3 page)

The words of an Authority carry much more weight than do those of a mere authority.

They are sacrosanct, holy, not to be questioned; the words themselves are Authority. And, in time, another change occurs; Authority becomes confused with knowledge and is accepted blindly, unthinkingly. A man can even become an authority himself by knowing a great deal about the things Authority said.

Perhaps the epitome of this sort of foolishness is exemplified in the attitude of numerous doctors toward the work of Harvey, the man who first described the circulation of the blood. Harvey’s views, even though they were well founded in observation and experimentation, ran counter to those held by his predecessor, Galen, who was the great medical Authority of that day. So great was the controversy that some men took the stand,

“Male errare cum Galen qualm veritam Harveii amplecti.” (“I would rather err with Galen than accept Harvey’s truth.”)

Now, respect for authority is all very well. There are certain brands of authority which we may tacitly agree to accept, such as customs and morals; there are other brands of authority which we may vote to accept, such as our laws. But we should be wary of self-constituted authority, especially the type I have called Authority. We should feel free to examine the basic assumptions of any body of knowledge we wish, without fear of committing lese majeste. If any system of thought is going to wither in the light of investigation, it does not deserve the title of Authority.

The originator of DIANETICS has, without the slightest effort towards being iconoclastic, succeeded in dislodging a good many of our false gods of Authority from their pedestals. perhaps the job wasn’t too difficult -- so many of the idols who bear that name have feet of the poorest sort of clay. Those authorities whose work was sound and valid are still in their proper places in the temple of Knowledge, and will no doubt continue to remain.

In early 1948 I first heard about DIANETICS from a colleague. I studied it, getting reports from others who were familiar with aspects of the therapy. Shortly thereafter I corresponded with the originator of dianetics, which resulted in my traveling East to study with him, and finally, in my experiencing personal dianetic therapy under his supervision.

For the past year I have been practicing DIANETICS on my patients, on my friends, and on my family. For the first time in my life, I’m satisfied that there is a method by which many questions, hitherto unanswerable, can be answered with definiteness and proven correct.

Correct, insofar as the improved health of the patient is concerned. Correct, insofar as his well-being has been implemented by a feeling of security. Correct, insofar as his approach to living has become more advanced, interesting, and productive of growth. To me this correctness is meaningful and worthy of acceptance.

Let me state that this is my opinion. I do not urge you to accept that opinion; I would much prefer that you make your own tests of DIANETICS, carefully, impartially, and arrive at your own opinion. This statement is directed towards doctors in general, psychiatrists, psychologists, psycho-analysts, etc., as well as the layman.

DIANETICS is a science. It has certain laws, and by following these laws we can predict the results which will be obtained under given circumstances. These laws have no exceptions -- or at least, no exceptions have been found. In this respect the laws of 8

DIANETICS are like the law of gravity: if you suspend a mass heavier than air above the ground and then remove the support, it will fall. It won’t fall seventy per cent of the time or eighty per cent of the time; it will always fall. And if it doesn’t fall, we are justified in reexamining the law.

The discovery that engrams (the ability of the cell to record a lasting trace of an event) are recorded on a cellular level when the higher sphere of the mind is “unconscious,”

insensitive, and not recording (as, for instance, in severe injury, delirium, or surgical anaesthesia) and that the recorded engrams then received are highly reactive, portends a new trend for psychological and psychiatric thought and practice. The engram recorded during a period of “unconsciousness” is susceptible to reactivation during future periods of mental anguish. This fact has been found to be a single, direct source of aberrated behavior. Its discovery and isolation with the mechanics of its operation within the psyche, bring new and brilliant light to hitherto obscure phenomena of the mind and its behavior. The engram, hidden beneath unexplored layers of “unconsciousness,” possesses a power of command not unlike that of a hidden and unsuspected monitor upon the conscious mind; it produces effects which are comparable to those of a post-hypnotic suggestion, though in a far more insidious and involved manner and with greater and more tragic effect.

The technique of DIANETIC therapy is basically simple and can be understood and applied to each other by any two reasonably intelligent people after a brief study of this volume, which is the operating manual for therapy. (Dianetic psychiatric treatment of severe derangements is also delineated.) No previous background in psycho-analysis or psychology is necessary. The therapeutic technique offered in DIANETICS is independent of hypnotism or narco-synthesis.

1.

DIANETICS will help you to eliminate any psychosomatic illness from which you may suffer.

2.

DIANETICS will help you achieve at least one-third more than present capacity for work and happiness.

3.

DIANETICS offers to the medical profession, to psychiatrists, to psycho-analysts, to all who are interested in the advancement of their fellow men, a new theory and technique which makes accessible for therapy diseases and symptoms which hitherto were unusually complex and obscure.

4.

DIANETICS is the most advanced and most clearly presented method of psycho-therapy and self-improvement ever discovered.

At this point, I step out -- the job ahead is yours.

J. A. Winter, M. D.

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HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

Dianetics is an adventure. It is an exploration into Terra Incognita, the human mind, that vast and hitherto unknown realm half an inch back of our foreheads.

The discoveries and developments which made the formulation of dianetics possible occupied many years of exact research and careful testing. This was exploration, it was also consolidation. The trail is blazed, the routes are sufficiently mapped for you to voyage in safety into your own mind and recover there your full inherent potential, which is not, we now know, low but very, very high. As you progress in therapy the adventure is yours to know why you did what you did when you did it, to know what caused those Dark and Unknown Fears which came in nightmares as a child, to know where your moments of pain and pleasure lay. There is much which an individual does not know about himself, about his parents, about his

“motives.” Some of the things you will find may astonish you, for the most important data of your life may be not memory but engrams in the hidden depths of your mind, not articulate but only destructive.

You will find many reasons why you “cannot get well” and you will know at length, when you find the dictating lines in the engrams, how amusing those reasons are, especially to you.

Dianetics is no solemn adventure. For all that it has to do with suffering and loss, its end is always laughter, so foolish, so misinterpreted were the things which caused the woe.

Your first voyage into your own Terra Incognita will be through the pages of this book.

You will find as you read that many things “you always knew were so” are articulated here.

You will be gratified to know that you held not opinions but scientific facts in many of your concepts of existence. You will find, too, many data that have long been known by all, and you will possibly consider them far from news and be prone to underevaluate them: be assured that underevaluation of these facts kept them from being valuable, no matter how long they were known, for a fact is never important without a proper evaluation of it and its precise relationship to other facts. You are following here a vast network of facts which, reaching out, can be seen to embrace the whole field of Man in all his works. Fortunately you do not have to concern yourself with following far any one of these lines until you are done. And then these horizons will stretch wide enough to satisfy anyone.

Dianetics is a large subject, but that is only because Man is himself a large subject. The science of his thought cannot but embrace all his actions. By careful compartmenting and relating of data, the field has been kept narrow enough to be easily followed. Mostly this handbook will tell you, without any specific mention, about yourself and your family and friends, for you will meet them here and know them.

This volume has made no effort to use resounding or thunderous phrases, frowning polysyllables or professorial detachment. When one is delivering answers which are simple, he need not make the communication any more difficult than is necessary to convey the ideas.

“Basic language” has been used, much of the nomenclature is colloquial; the pedantic has not only not been employed, it has also been ignored. This volume communicates to several strata of life and professions; the favorite nomenclatures of none have been observed since such a usage would impede the understanding of others. And so bear with us, psychiatrist, when your structure is not used, for we have no need for structure here, and bear with us, doctor, when we call a cold a cold and not a catarrhal disorder of the respiratory tract. For this is, essentially, engineering and these engineers are liable to say anything. And “scholar,” you would not enjoy being burdened with the summation signs and the Lorentz-Fitzgerald-Einstein equations, so we shall not burden the less puristic reader with scientifically impossible Hegelian grammar which insists that absolutes exist in fact.

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The plan of the book might be represented as a cone which starts with simplicity and descends into wider application. This book follows, more or less, the actual steps of the development of dianetics. First there was the dynamic principle of existence, then its meaning, then the source of aberration, and finally the application of all as therapy and the techniques of therapy. You won’t find any of this very difficult. It was the originator who had the difficulty.

You should have seen the first equations and postulates of dianetics! As research progressed and as the field developed, dianetics began to simplify. That is a fair guarantee that one is on a straight trail of science. Only things which are poorly known become more complex the longer one works upon them.

It is suggested that you read straight on through. By the time you get into the appendix, you should have an excellent command of the subject. The book is arranged that way. Every fact related to dianetic therapy is stated in several ways and is introduced again and again. In this way, the important facts have been pointed up to your attention. When you have finished the book you can come back to the beginning and look through it and study what you think you need to know.

Almost all the basic philosophy and certainly all the derivations of the master subject of dianetics were excluded here, partly because this volume had to stay under half a million words and partly because they belong in a separate text where they can receive full justice.

Nevertheless, you have the scope of the science with this volume in addition to therapy itself.

You are beginning an adventure. Treat it as an adventure. And may you never be the same again.

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A science of mind is a goal which has engrossed thousands of generations of Man.

Armies, dynasties and whole civilizations have perished for the lack of it. Rome went to dust for the want of it. China swims in blood for the need of it; and down in the arsenal is an atom bomb, its hopeful nose full-armed in ignorance of it.

No quest has been more relentlessly pursued or has been more violent. No primitive tribe, no matter how ignorant, has failed to recognize the problem as a problem, nor has it failed to bring forth at least an attempted formulation. Today one finds the aborigine of Australia substituting for a science of mind a “magic healing crystal.” The Shaman of British Guiana makes shift for actual mental laws with his monotonous song and consecrated cigar.

The throbbing drum of the Goldi medicine man serves in the stead of an adequate technique to alleviate the lack of serenity in patients.

The enlightened and golden age of Greece yet had but superstition in its principal sanatoria for mental ills, the Aesculapian temple. The most the Roman could do for peace of mind for the sick was to appeal to the penates, the household divinities, or sacrifice to Febris, goddess of fevers. And an English king, centuries after, could have been found in the hands of exorcists who sought to cure his deliriums by driving the demons from him.

From the most ancient times to the present, in the crudest primitive tribe or the most magnificently ornamented civilization, Man has found himself in a state of awed helplessness when confronted by the phenomena of strange illnesses or aberrations. His desperation, in his efforts to treat the individual, has been but slightly altered during his entire history, and until this twentieth century passed mid-term, the percentages of his alleviations, in terms of individual mental derangements, compared evenly with the successes of the shamans confronted with the same problems. According to a modern writer, the single advance of psycho-therapy was clean quarters for the madman. In terms of brutality in treatment of the insane, the methods of the shaman or Bedlam have been far exceeded by the “civilized”

techniques of destroying nerve tissues with the violence of shock and surgery, treatments which were not warranted by the results obtained and which would not have been tolerated in the meanest primitive society, since they reduce the victim to mere zombie-ism, destroying most of his personality and ambition and leaving him nothing more than a manageable animal.