Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (45 page)

-- and then get him to recount it again. He may observe himself to be far outside himself when you start. The moment may not discharge until you have run it several times. Remember, he is returned to the incident, he is not running it as a memory, a thing which would do no good whatever.

Do not let him replay anything, ever. Repay is a bad habit some pre-clears have of playing over what they remember they said the last time instead of progressing through the engram freshly on each recounting and contacting what is contained in the engram itself. Tell the pre-clear there may be some more in it, ask him what color the bed in the room he is returned to is, keep his attention, by any quiet mechanism, upon the scene. And do not let him replay ever, not on any engram at any time: he could replay forever without therapeutic value, each time saying what he remembered he said the last time. There is a difference between this and the repeated re-experiencing of the engram to gather additional data and to get rid of the charge.

Discharge emotion, reduce incidents of physical pain as early prenatally as possible. If you can’t get into the prenatal area at first, it has many bouncers in it and repeater technique will take you there.

If the patient keeps saying such a thing as “I can’t remember,” be patient -- always follow the code. Have him start running that phrase as repeater technique. If he gets a somatic but contacts nothing else, send him earlier. If he gets another and still can’t contact on “I can’t remember,” send him earlier, his whole engram bank must be strewn with them -- poor fellow.

Somebody really didn’t want him to know what had happened to him. Eventually you will get back to an engram which will release a phrase. When he has gone over the phrase a few more times, he will smile or chuckle or perhaps merely feel relieved. Now you can either run the engram in which you found the earliest phrase, which is best, or you can come back toward present time, lifting the phrase as it later appeared. Or you can start on something else which may block the case.

The goal and the whole goal is to place the standard bank in entire conscious reach of the individual by deleting (a) early and subsequently all physical pain engrams; (b) all demon circuits (which are merely contained in engrams and come up more or less automatically); and (c) all painful emotion engrams.

The process of work is to get as early as you can, preferably prenatal and very early in that, and try to find and reduce an engram, complete with all somatics (pain) and perceptics (words and other sensations). If you fail in this, you go late, any time from birth forward to present time, and find a moment of loss or threatened loss from which you can get an emotional charge. Then you go back early, early, early and find the engram on which it rested.

You try always, until you are certain you have it, to get basic-basic, the earliest engram. You reduce as many early engrams as you can find, using the file clerk and repeater system, and when you seem to run out of material, you go later into life and try to find another emotional charge.

The physically painful engrams cover up later emotional charges. Emotional charges cover up physically painful engrams. Back and forth, back and forth. Run as much as you can get early: when it seems to be running out or getting too unemotional, get some later material.

This is the way you work a case. No matter what kind of a case it is, no matter what the state of its recall, no matter if the case is normal, psychotic or neurotic or what, this is the way.

These are the tools:

(1)

Reverie or fixed attention if you cannot get reverie.

(2)

Return.

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(3)

Repeater technique.

(4)

A knowledge of bouncers, holders, groupers, misdirectors, denyers.

(5)

A knowledge of the painful emotion engram.

(6)

The reduction or the erasure.

(7)

The flash answer.

(8)

The valence shift.

This is all you need to do:

(1)

Keep the patient mobile, able to move on the track.

(2)

Reduce or erase everything you get your hands on.

(3)

Deduce from the remarks of the patient, in or out of therapy, what must be his bouncers, holders, groupers, misdirectors, denyers.

(4)

Keep it solidly in mind that the number one goal is basic-basic, the earliest moment of pain and “unconsciousness.”

(5)

Keep in mind that the patient may have “computations” which make his illness or his aberrated state “valuable” to him and discover whence those “computations” come by flash answer to your questions.

(6)

Keep the case progressing, gaining, work only for progress and gain, not for sudden, soaring results. Worry only when the case remains static and worry then in terms of finding the engram which is balking everything. Its content will be a close approximation to the way the patient says he feels about it and will contain the same or similar words.

(7)

Get the patient back to present time each time you work and feed him the canceller. Test him with an age flash, get his first reply to how old he is, find the holder at that age if he is not at present time.

(8)

Keep your temper no matter what the patient says.

(9)

Never try to tell him what his data means: he knows and he alone knows what it means.

(10)

Keep your nerve and run dianetics; like Farragut said, “Damn the torpedoes! Go ahead.”

(11)

Wife, son, whatever you may be to the pre-clear, you are the auditor when you are auditing. He cannot compute his own engrams to find them -- if he could they would not be engrams. You can compute them. Do what you think a good auditor would do, never what the patient says save only when he accidentally concurs in his opinion that a good auditor would do that. Be the auditor, not a recording device. You and the file clerk in his mind are running the case: what his engrams and his analytical mind believe should have no force in any of your computations. You and his file clerk know. He, as

“I” doesn’t know.

(12)

Be surprised at nothing. Audit.

These are the things you must not do:

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(1)

Dilute dianetics with some practice or belief of yesteryear; you will only slow or sidetrack a case. Analyzing data received on any other basis than getting more engrams leads to delay and confusion for the pre-clear. It is a temptation to use this material for other reasons than getting engrams if one has been trained in another field than dianetics. Yielding to that temptation before one knows how dianetics works is a very unfair test of dianetics, completely aside from the way it snarls a case. The temptation is great because, with dianetics, you get such a wealth of data.

(2)

Do not bully the patient. If the case is not progressing, then the fault lies with the auditor. Do not surrender to an old practice of getting mad at a patient just because he doesn’t get well. You may be sure the engram you have just reduced out of his reactive engram bank is the reason he won’t take baths, but if he still refuses to bathe, be certain there is an earlier reason.

(3)

Don’t assume grandly that you have a “different” case just because it doesn’t resolve swiftly. They are all “different” cases.

(4)

Don’t run for help to somebody who does not know dianetics if your nerve fails you.

The reason the case did not progress or became involved is right there -- your nerve failed you. Only dianetics can work a problem in dianetics.

(5)

Do not listen to a patient’s complaints as complaints; use them as data to get engrams.

(6)

Do not suppose that just because you cannot reach prenatal engrams in a case that they are not there. There are scores and scores of them in every case. Remember that an engram isn’t a memory, it has to be developed to become within recall. There is no human being walking on earth today who does not have a plentitude of prenatals.

(7)

Do not allow the patient to use his mother or his memory of what he has been told as a by-pass of prenatals. Every time you find a patient talking in past tense instead of present tense he is not returned to an incident. Unless he is returned, the engram will not lift.

(8)

Do not suppose that because a patient does not feel bad today about a sorrow of yesterday that a despair charge is not located back on his track when he received the impact of that despair. Time may encyst, it does not heal.

(9)

Do not think in terms of “guilt complexes” or “shame” unless you think of them as engram content for there they will be found. Never suggest to a patient that he may be at fault in an engram.

(10)

Any departure from optimum behavior or conduct or rationality on the part of the patient is engramic: don’t make “allowances for human nature” any more than you, as a mathematician, would make allowances for an adding machine which brought up wrong answers.Sexual fears, repressions, defenses are not “natural” as they have been regarded in the past.

(11)

Don’t worry about the patient’s aberrations. Work to contact and reduce and erase engrams. You will find, in any patient, enough aberrations to fill a dictionary.

(12)

Don’t fret if your patient does not become a clear in an evening or a month. Just keep working. You’ll have him above normal so quickly you won’t realize when you passed it. Above that you are shooting for a very high goal.

STUCK IN PRESENT TIME

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Cases, when they are entered, are found in various positions and situations on the time track; sometimes they are off the time track entirely and sometimes the time track is all snarled up in a ball. Now and then the time track is found to be in good condition and the engrams available, but this is not ordinary.

No case can be said to be more difficult than another except in the matter of recalls,

“dub-ins” and shut-offs. But the case which seems to be “stuck in present time” and on whom no repeater phrase works is very often quite puzzling to an auditor. The pre-clear will not return to engrams. Ordinarily there may be pain and emotional shut-offs and the painful emotion cannot be quickly discharged. Sometimes somatics will turn on but no content can be gained. Sometimes there is no somatic but content. The situations are quite various.

There are several things an auditor can do. The first of them is to use his wits. The next is to indoctrinate the patient into returning. This indoctrination is quite simple. The auditor takes the patient back a few hours and has the patient tell what he sees. The sonic and visio may be occluded but the patient may have some idea of what is taking place. The auditor then takes him back a few days, then a few months and finally several years, each time getting the patient to describe his “surroundings” as best he can. The patient now has the idea of returning.

He can travel at least along portions of his life which are not occluded by engrams.

When the patient is returned to some early moment in his life, begin to use repeater technique on him, aiming toward obvious things such as feeling shut-offs (going over the word “feel”) or forgetter mechanisms (such as “forget”). An engram may then be contacted and reduced.

If repeater technique still does not work and still does not get data, diagnose by his behavior in therapy and his statements what must be troubling him or occluding his recalls and again use these guesses as repeater. For instance he may have no recollection of some member of his family. Have him repeat the familiar name. Or have him repeat his own childhood nickname until an incident is contacted.

Should this still fail, then find some light locks, incidents which contain minimal pain, and run those. Such things as falls from a tricycle, getting sent from the table, getting spanked or scolded, being kept after school and so forth will serve. After he has reduced several locks, again try to find an engram.

The running of locks will not bring about any great recovery, and there are thousands and thousands of locks in any case, most of which will vanish without assistance from the auditor once the severe engrams are located. But locks may be used to indoctrinate the patient into returning and therapy in general and may even bring about an improved condition in him by demonstrating to him that he can face his past.

The foremost things to do in any case at the beginning are to (1) attempt to locate and erase basic-basic, and (2) discharge painful emotion. The sooner emotion can be released, the better, and there is always emotion on a case just as there are always a plenty of prenatal incidents.

But when a case is stuck in present time either when it is opened or during progress, it is highly charged with occluded emotion and it is obeying a restimulated engram to the effect that it must go all the way to now and stay there. The wording of this engram will generally be expressed by the patient himself in complaining of his trouble. Repeater technique is used with this clue. That failing, indoctrinate the patient by taking him back to what he can contact and when indoctrination is done, as above, start using repeater technique again.

There is one motto which applies to all therapy, “If you keep asking for it, you’ll get it.” Any and all engrams surrender on the basis of returning the patient to the area time and again, session after session. The engram bank may be balky but enough asking will bring forth any data in it sooner or later. Just keep asking, keep the routine of therapy running. Even a 179

“stuck in present time” case will eventually begin to return on the sole principle of repeater technique.

There are certain things that the auditor may be doing which are wrong. He may be trying to work the case on data taken from parents or relatives, which is usually fruitless in view of the fact that it undermines the preclear’s faith in his own data (all the data will check with the relatives; just don’t worry about checking it until the case is finished). Or he may be trying to work the case in the presence of other people. Or he may be violating the auditor’s code. A list of these deterrents to progress is to be found elsewhere in this volume.