Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (68 page)

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 longer 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.

26.

The pre-clear has his own responsibility in aiding his own case. He has just as active a part in locating engrams as the auditor. The pre-clear who expects to be run through dianetic therapy as though he were a car, with no volition of his own, slows his case enormously.

27.

The pre-clear who is being handled by an auditor less forceful than himself either from inherent personality or aberrations is liable to dictate to the auditor where they will look for engrams and what they will do about them. Remember that if a man knew his engrams they would not be engrams. Only an exterior mind, the auditor, knows what is best for the case. The pre-clear who attempts this is wasting his and the auditor’s time.

At the start of the session the pre-clear may dictate that, as he has a headache, they should put him back to a certain accident and see if that is it and so get rid of the headache. The headache isn’t important, ever. Getting engrams that will erase or reduce is important. All such dictations are “dodges,” aberrated efforts to avoid engrams. The less forceful auditor, man or woman, should recognize a “dodge” when they see one and the pre-clear, knowing this, should abandon this avoidance technique and let the auditor audit.

28.

The pre-clear should understand that the auditor is restrained in many ways by the Auditor’s Code. The pre-clear should know the code and, knowing it, should not impose unreasonably upon the auditor’s time or patience, for the auditor also has a life to live and out of courtesy and the code, may be imposed upon without being able to prevent it. Be thoughtful.

29.

There is one major motto in therapy for the pre-clear: “The only way out of it is through it!” Remember this. When the auditor says to go through the engram, be it ever so threatening, do not beg to come to present time for that brings the engram with it.

Two or three runs and the power of that engram is broken forever. “The only way out of it is through it!” Remember that.

30.

The pre-clear is the only one who “knows” what has been done to him. It may not be immediately in conscious recall, it may require dozens of hours to find specific information as to what people have done. But all the data is there, available for recall in therapy. If the data is not there, then it is not aberrative; if the data is there, it is aberrative. Only the pre-clear “knows” how long the case will take, only the pre-clear

“knows” how many allies he is trying to disguise. The pre-clear may not be able to 268

immediately recall it, but the information is there; he “knows” it. All knowledge of his whole lifetime is available to him via dianetic therapy. The auditor can use technique to attain the information, but it is the pre-clear who does the work, does the recalling. He is assisted by the auditor and by dianetics. Neither the auditor nor dianetics “knows”

what the content of the pre-clear’s engrams may be; only he knows that. The auditor and dianetics furnish the process, the pre-clear has the information necessary to resolve his case.

Good hunting!

269

GLOSSARY

ABERRATION: Any deviation or departure from rationality. Used in dianetics to include psychoses, neuroses, compulsions and repressions of all kinds and classifications.

ABERREE: Dianetic neologism for any aberrated individual.

ANALYTICAL MIND: That mind which computes -- the “I” and his consciousness.

AUDITOR: The individual who administers dianetic therapy. To audit means “to listen” and also “to compute.”

BASIC: The first engram on any chain of similar engrams.

BASIC-BASIC: The first engram after conception, the basic of all chains by sole virtue of being the first moment of pain.

BOUNCER: Any engram command which, when approached by the analytical mind on the time track, makes the patient move back toward present time.

CHAINS: Any series of incidents in the engram bank which have similar content.

CIRCUIT: See DEMON.

CLEAR: The optimum individual; no longer possessed of any engrams. A clear is an individual who, as a result of dianetic therapy, has neither active nor potential psycho-somatic illness or aberration. Dictionary: Bright; unclouded, hence, serene; clean; audible; discriminating; understanding; free from doubt; sure; innocent; net, as profit over expenses; free from debt; free from any entanglement. V.t. To make clear, as of dirt or obstruction; to enlighten; to free from guilt, blame, etc.; to open for passage; to disentangle. V.i. To become clear and bright.

N. A clear space or part.

DEMON: A by-pass circuit in the mind, called “demon” because it was long so interpreted.

Probably an electronic mechanism.

DENYER: Any engram command which makes a patient believe that the engram does not exist.

DIANETICS: Greek, dianoua -- thought -- or more correctly, DIA (Greek) “through,” NOUS

(Greek) “soul.”

DYNAMIC: The urge, thrust and purpose of life -- SURVIVE! -- in its four manifestations: self, sex, group, and Mankind.

ENGRAM: Any moment of greater or lesser “unconsciousness” on the part of the analytical mind which permits the reactive mind to record; the total content of that moment with all perceptics.