Reference: Hubbard 1950: Dianetics TMSMH
These are some comments on Book Two, Chapter 10, “Preventive Dianetics” from DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH.
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Comments on
Preventive Dianetics
KEY WORDS: Silence, Calm environment
When one knows the cause of aberration and psychosomatic illness, he can do a great deal toward preventing them. The cause are engrams. When an engram has verbal content, it becomes most severely aberrative. When it contains antagonism on an emotional level, it becomes very destructive. When it is intensely pro-survival in content it is most certainly capable of thoroughly deranging a life. Understanding engrams, we may prevent them or, at least, hold them to minimal content.
Engrams are traumatic sensations of shock, injury and confusion that did not get assimilated. They manifest as aberrations and psychosomatic illnesses only when restimulated continually.
Engrams can make one accident prone. Preventive Dianetics addresses this problem in two phases: first the prevention of engrams, and second, the prevention of the key-in.
Engrams are prevented by maintaining silence in the presence of injury. Do what has to be done for the injured and do it in silence. Maintain silence in the presence of birth. Say nothing while a person is being operated upon. Say nothing when there is a street accident. Don’t talk! To speak, no matter what is said, is to threaten his sanity. And the maintaining of silence does not mean a volley of “Sh’s,” for those make stammerers.
The maintenance of silence around any “unconscious” or injured person is second in importance only to preventing the “unconsciousness” in the first place.
Preventive Dianetics, in the sphere of the home, must place emphasis on the woman in order to safeguard the child. A woman who is pregnant should be given every consideration. If she falls, she should be helped—but silently. She must not be expected to carry heavy things. Women who lead peasant lives, doing heavy labor, are subject to all manner of accident. When it is known that any injury to the mother can create an engram in the unborn child, it should be the concern of all those present during such an injury, including the mother, to maintain a complete and utter silence. Any remark is aberrative in an engram.
The mother, then, should be extremely gentle on herself during pregnancy and those around her should be entirely informed of the necessity for silence after any jar or injury.
Preventive Dianetics, then, on the level of the individual, asks for cleared parents and then precaution against the aberrating of the child, and further precaution against the keying-in of any aberration the child might have received. Key-in is prevented by providing a calm and harmonious atmosphere which is not restimulative. If the child appears to be restimulated despite kindly treatment, he can be removed to another environment. Drooling sympathy, when the child is sick or hurt, should be avoided.
A kind, affectionate and unrestimulative environment is necessary for a child’s growth.
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