Category Archives: Dianetics

DIANETICS: The Scientific Method

October 28, 2021 – 3:09 PM

Reference: Hubbard 1950: Dianetics TMSMH

These are some comments on “The Scientific Method” from Appendix II of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

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Appendix II
The Scientific Method

The following is a summary of the article by John W. Campbell, Jr.:

The Scientific Method is, while based on certain readily cited rules, far more than those rules. It must be lived up to to be fully understood. It implies that a scientist’s best friend will review his work starting with the premise that it’s all wrong and do his best to prove it’s wrong. The triumph comes from producing a new theory that stands up, and is useful, even when the most knowing make deliberate attempts to find a flaw. The critical rules are

  1. Argument by appeal to authority is of no value whatever.
  2. The observation, not the observer’s report, are the important data.
  3. No theory, however well-established or long-held, can stand in the face of one relevant, contradictory fact.

Appeal to authority can be hidden  under phrases like “Everybody knows,” “of course,” “naturally”. Saying a thing is “theoretically impossible” is, actually, appeal to the authority of present theories. So far as the Great Name argument goes, those are easy to spot, and their value comes into focus very quickly if you simply substitute an arbitrary name for the Great Name. It is the scientist— who operates on the principle that he doesn’t already know all the answers—who is out looking for new and better answers.

Ideally, the scientific method follows seven steps:

  1. Make a series of careful observations.
  2. Combining all relevant data, from all relevant experiments, formulate a hypothesis.
  3. Using the hypothesis, predict new facts.
  4. Perform an experiment and make observations on these predictions.
  5. As a result of the experiment, discard the hypothesis, or advance it now to the status of “Theory.”
  6. Make further predictions, further experiments, and collect more observational evidence until a contradictory relevant fact is found.
  7. Discard the old theory, take the new total of observational data, and form a new hypothesis.
  8. Go back to step 3.

Notice that each time round that cycle the new hypothesis shows how to get new data, new experimental evidence, new information. The process is not circular; it’s an expanding spiral, and each sweep around it covers a broader and broader field of understanding.

But the most important step of all is Step Seven. It’s so easy and comfortable to believe that the old theory is Truth, and doesn’t and won’t ever need changing, even if it doesn’t work all the time. The true scientist starts off with any theory and finds it useful only so long as it works. If it no longer works, it should be discarded, and a new, better one fashioned.

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DIANETICS: The Philosophic Method

October 27, 2021 – 10:32 AM

Reference: Hubbard 1950: Dianetics TMSMH

These are some comments on Appendix I, “The Philosophic Method” from DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH.

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Appendix I
The Philosophic Method

The following is excerpted from the writings of Will Durant:

Science seems always to advance, while philosophy seems always to lose ground. Yet this is only because philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open to the methods of science—problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death; so soon as a field of inquiry yields knowledge susceptible of exact formulation it is called science. 

Philosophy is dealing with very complex problems, with lot of variables. Science enters when precise relationships among variables start to develop.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement. Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown, … or of the inexactly known … it is the front trench in the siege of truth. Science is the captured territory; and behind it are those secure regions in which knowledge and art build our imperfect and marvelous world. Philosophy seems to stand still, perplexed; but only because she leaves the fruits of victory to her daughters the sciences, and herself passes on, divinely discontent, to the uncertain and the unexplored. 

Philosophy moves forward always dealing with the uncertain and the unexplored.

Shall we be more technical? Science is analytical description, philosophy is synthetic interpretation. Science wishes to resolve the whole into parts, the organism into organs, the obscure into the known. It does not inquire into the values and ideal possibilities of things, nor into their total and final significance; it is content to show their present actuality and operation, it narrows its gaze resolutely to the nature and process of things as they are. 

Science examines in a very objective fashion isolating anomalies and resolving them with least bit of assumptions.

The scientist is as impartial as Nature in Turgenev’s poem: he is as interested in the leg of a flea as in the creative throes of a genius. But the philosopher is not content to describe the fact; he wishes to ascertain its relation to experience in general, and thereby to get at its meaning and its worth; he combines things in interpretive synthesis; he tries to put together, better than before, that great universe-watch which the inquisitive scientist has analytically taken apart. 

Philosophy looks beyond into the realms only faintly visible and into the possibilities that may exist.

Science tells us how to heal and how to kill; it reduces the death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom—desire coordinated in the light of all experience—can tell us when to heal and when to kill. To observe processes and to construct means is science; to criticize and coordinate ends is philosophy: and because in these days our means and instruments have multiplied beyond our interpretation and synthesis of ideals and ends, our life is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. For a fact is nothing except in relation to desire; it is not complete except in relation to a purpose and a whole. Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom. 

Today we have neither science nor philosophy at its best. Science has not grappled with the complex structure of man. So many anomalies are unresolved. And philosophy has not moved forward.

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DIANETICS: Past and Future

October 25, 2021 – 11:17 AM

Reference: Hubbard 1950: Dianetics TMSMH

These are some comments on Book Three, Chapter 10, “Dianetics—Past and Future” from DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH.

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Comments on
Dianetics—Past and Future

THE HISTORY OF DIANETICS
Dianetics is addressing a problem that has been known since ancient times. For example, the facsimile has been known as “samskāra” in Hinduism since Buddha’s time (500 BC). The ancient solution has been the yogic meditation. 

Dianetics resurrected the old knowledge and presented it in modern scientific terms. Dianetics original contribution to this field of knowledge is its therapeutic method of the “repeater technique.” Subsequent research has brought about the methods of Scientology as presented on its Grade Chart. These methods have been efficient.

All these methods have involved an auditor working on a preclear. The insertion of an auditor has presented its own set of new difficulties, which makes a broader application very expensive and practically unfeasible. The yogic method has been broadly available because a person can apply it to himself, but it lacks the efficiency of the methods of Dianetics and Scientology.

The development of the Subject Clearing approach eliminates the need for an auditor, while retaining the efficiency of Dianetics and Scientology methods. Subject Clearing allows a person to apply the Yogic, Dianetics and Scientology methods to himself or herself with great ease and efficiency.

JUDICIARY DIANETICS
Judiciary Dianetics presents the science of judgment. The problems of jurisprudence and, indeed, all judgment, are inextricably interwoven with the problems of behavior. An ideal society would be a society of unaberrated persons conducting their lives within an unaberrated culture.

The Subject Clearing approach allows the refinement of this science. By having correct definitions in the subject of jurisprudence a correct solution can be reached with regard to any action or actions of Man. The civil equity which will not lead to injustice can only then be established and formulated. 

In his attitude toward one’s fellows or toward society at large, a person can gain nothing by reprimanding and judging past error in the light of current sentience. Not only can he gain nothing but he can inhibit progress. It is a remorseless fact that the attack upon unreason has begun. Attack unreason, not the society or the man.

DIANETICS AND WAR
The social organisms which we call states and nations behave and react in every respect as though they were individual organisms. An individual society has as well its reactive mind as represented by the prejudices and irrationalities of the entire group. This reactive mind is served by its facsimiles wherein lie past painful experiences and which dictates reactive action on certain subjects whenever those subjects are restimulated in the society. This, all too briefly, is an analogy used in Political Dianetics.

A society, working in complete cooperation toward common goals would be a free society. A society governed by the mystery and superstition of some mystic body would be a bound society. The quarrel of society with society, nation with nation, has many causes, all of them more or less irrational. No nation ever finally triumphed by force of arms. The problem is in the control of Man.

There is no national problem in the world today which cannot be resolved by reason alone. There is no justification for war. The solution lies in the definition of political theory and policy in such terms that there can be no mistaking the rational goals toward which societies can collectively and individually work. The enemy of Man is not Man. Man’s primary fight is with those elements which oppress him as a species and bar his thrust toward high goals.  

THE FUTURE OF THERAPY
Hubbard predicted that in twenty or a hundred years the therapeutic technique which is offered in this volume will appear to be obsolete. It has now been three-quarters of a century since Dianetics was first developed. There has been much refinement through Scientology; but Subject Clearing is the first breakthrough that makes the auditor, and the problems with auditing, obsolete.

Hubbard indicated, “There are two definite drawbacks to this present technique. It demands more skill of the auditor than should be necessary and it is not as swift as it could be. The auditor should not be required to do any computing whatever and indeed, a therapy technique could be envisioned where no auditor at all was necessary, for he is vital at the present time.” I believe that Subject Clearing meets these requirements, and its application will only improve.

Dianetics came up with its axioms that numbered in hundreds. In Subject Clearing we have a tool that has helped organize the data of those axioms in much simpler form. As we organize these truths better, we also discover simpler techniques to remove the causes of man’s ills.

We can now specify Subject Clearing at least as follows: Subject Clearing is the method of chipping away at the restimulation of the facsimile by noticing anomalies and resolving them through meditation. You start resolving the anomalies as you study a subject, until you have drilled them down to the basic postulates of the subject. You then take up the next subject. Most people usually select the subjects that they studied in school or grew up with. Religion is one of those subjects. Studying a Subject provides you with some basic instructions for subject clearing. From this link you can obtain the link to the whole course on Subject Clearing.

We can now report back to Hubbard, “Sir, the better bridge has been built and it is now available.”

Please see:

  1. Running Dianetics with Subject Clearing
  2. Subject: Human Condition
  3. Subject: DIANETICS

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DIANETICS: Mechanisms and Aspects of Therapy Part II

October 24, 2021 – 1:09 PM

Reference: Hubbard 1950: Dianetics TMSMH

These are some comments on Book Three, Chapter 10, “Mechanisms and Aspects of Therapy Part II” from DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH.

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Comments on
Mechanisms and Aspects of Therapy Part II

KEY WORDS: Single word technique, Tokens, Lie factory

Note: These sections provide quick summaries. If you need details, please consult the section in the book.

EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION

There is no such thing as ESP in the recall as a fetus. The prenatal engram is not a memory but a recording of pain and percepts. A person returned to an engram is supposed to run out the engrams and their contents. But he may interpret that recording in some fantastic ways. Simply look for despair charges, allies, sympathy engrams and the source of his “dub-in”.

ELECTRIC SHOCK

When there have been electric shocks, it is important to relieve them first as they form a grouping of engrams. Apparently, the electric shocks derange the memory files and generate a great depth of “unconsciousness”.

TACIT CONSENT

The applies to two people auditing each other, in which case, they avoid running common engrams. But in case of the subject clearing approach, you simply watch out for mental resistance to resolving some anomaly. Once you recognize such a resistance it goes away.

EMOTION AND PAIN SHUT-OFFS

The word “feeling” means both pain and emotion: thus the phrase, “I can’t feel anything,” may be an anesthetic for both. Run the words “No emotion” until a paraphrase is obtained: run the words “I can’t feel,” or some other phrase meaning the same thing. If the engrams are available and are not suppressed by others, will eventually be accessed. After this the therapy is more beneficial.

EXTERIORIZED VIEWS

Whenever you find yourself, returned, outside yourself and seeing yourself, you are off the track. The painful emotion engrams, should be found as soon as possible and discharged. 

TELEPATHY

When there is a sense of telepathy when returned, such as, receiving mother’s thoughts prenatally, be certain that somewhere around there is an engram in which she says these exact words aloud. 

PRENATAL LIVING CONDITIONS

It is very noisy in the womb. Intestinal squeaks and groans, and other body activities of the mother produce a continual sound. It is also very tight in later prenatal life

THE ENGRAM FILING SYSTEM

Time, topic, value, somatic and emotion are the methods of filing. Engrams are not filed in the orderly fashion. It is difficult to know when the proper consecutive item will appear. You may be progressing from prenatal to later life  Suddenly a despair charge is triggered and discharged. You look back at the prenatal area and find a whole new series of incidents in view. These are erased and progress is made back toward present time when still another despair charge is released and still more prenatals come to view.

ALLEVIATION

A sudden deterioration of serenity, generally stems from some incident which has caused you mental anguish. Although this change of mind has its source in the restimulation of an engram, the moment of restimulation, which is a lock, may be addressed and alleviated with success. Simply close your eyes and return to the instant wherein you were disturbed. A moment of analytical shut-down will be discovered wherein some restimulative person or circumstance upset your equilibrium. This moment can be recounted, ordinarily, as an engram and the immediate source of tension will relieve. The engram itself, upon which the lock depended, may not be accessible without a full dianetic address to the problem.

THE TONE SCALE AND REDUCTION OF ENGRAMS

Whatever the shock or upset, it is run exactly like any other engram, beginning at the beginning of the first shock with you returning to it and continuing far enough along it to adequately embrace its first impact. Subsequent recountings may take you through apathy (grief), anger, boredom and cheerfulness. When there is flippancy and unwillingness to recount again, data is being suppressed and more charge is present. Further recounting should bring it to, most favorably, laughter. These are the tones 0 to 4 of the Tone Scale. A Tone 4 is laughter. Engrams which show no emotion anywhere on the track are suppressed by emotional or feeling shut-offs. There must be variability of emotion.

IF THE PATIENT DOES NOT WORK WELL ON REPEATER TECHNIQUE

If you do not move to an incident with repeater technique, three things can be wrong: first, you cannot move on the track; second, the phrase may be sensibly withheld by the file clerk until such time as it can be cleared; or third, the phrase does not exist as engramic material. The usual reason repeater technique does not work is that a holder is active. A large emotional charge may also inhibit repeater technique.

SINGLE WORD TECHNIQUE

Words as well as engrams exist in chains. There is always a first time for the recording of each word in a person’s life. Aberrative phrases in engrams tend to repeat themselves. This tends to make the engrams appear in chains of incidents, each incident much like the next. The first incident on the chain holds the others more or less in place and out of sight; therefore, the basic of the chain is the goal. The repetition by themselves of one word will cause the associated words to suggest themselves. For example, repetition of the word Forget may suggest a phrase, such as “You can never forget me.” Here we have a phrase in an engram and the remainder of the engram can then be run.

There are only a few dozens of words necessary to get almost any engram. They are such words as these: forget, remember, memory, blind, deaf, dumb, see, feel, hear, emotion, pain, fear, terror, afraid, bear, stand, lie, get, come, time, difference, imagination, right, dark, black, deep, up, down, words, corpse, dead, rotten, death, book, reed, soul, hell, god, scared, miserable, horrible, past, look, everything, everybody, always, never, everywhere, all, believe, listen, matter, seek, original, present, back, early, beginning, secret, tell, die, found, sympathy mad, crazy, insane, rid, fight, fist, chest, teeth, jaw, stomach, ache, misery, head, sex, words of sex and profanity, skin, baby, it, curtain, shell, barrier, wall, think, thought, slippery, confused, mixed, smart, poor, little, sick, life, father, mother, familiar names of parents and any others of household during prenatal and childhood period, money, food, tears, no, world, excuse, stop, laugh, hate, jealous, shame, ashamed, coward, etc.

Single word technique using the name of the ally, if known, or words of sympathy, endearment, death, rejection or farewell and the love name as a child in particular will often yield swift results. In this repeater technique, it should not be a rapid, unmeaning repetition but a slow repeat, while contacting anything else which might associate with the word.

SPECIAL CLASSES OF COMMANDS

In Dianetic, we find (hypnotic) “commands”, such as, “The world is all against me,” which then translate into some aberration. They come up in due course. Working on them or about them is secondary and less. Of primary importance are the classes of commands that keep one from moving on the track. The are:

DENYERS: “Forget it” is the classic of the sub-class of denyer, the forgetter mechanism. When the engram simply won’t come to view but there is a somatic or a muscle twitch. You send the somatic strip to the denyer. 

HOLDERS: “I’m stuck” is the classic phrase. “That fixed it” is another. The holder is the most frequent and the most used since whenever the pre-clear can’t shift on the track or come to present, he is in a holder.

BOUNCERS: “Get out” is the classic bouncer. The patient usually goes toward present time. When the pre-clear can’t seem to get earlier, there is a bouncer ejecting him from an engram. Get a comment from him on what’s happening. 

GROUPER: “I have no time” and “Nothing makes any difference” are the classic groupers. It can be so variously worded and its effect is so serious on the time track that the whole track can roll up into a ball and all incidents then appear to be in the same place. But it will settle out as the case progresses and the case can be worked with a grouper in restimulation.

MISDIRECTOR: “You don’t know down from up” is the classic phrase. When a misdirector appears in an engram, the patient goes in wrong directions, to wrong places, etc. A special case is the derailer, such as, “Down and out”, which throws him off the track and makes him lose touch with his time track. This is a very serious phrase since it can make a schizophrenic. Emotional charges usually hold the person off his track.

DIFFERENCES

There are differences and identities that always consist of gradients. Absolutes are unobtainable for scientific purposes. Optimum is a reality that is continuous, consistent and harmonious. All departures from optimum are useful in locating engrams. One should observe one’s conduct and reactions to life to gain data. Irrationality arises when one cannot see things for what they are. Sanity is the ability to see things as they are.

RELATIVE IMPORTANCES AND “BELIEVE” AND “CAN’T BELIEVE”

One of the most important functions of the mind is the computing of the relative importances of data. Evaluation of the data for its importance is vital before the information is of value. For every datum which approaches truth there are billions which are untrue. The missing part of each datum is a scientific evaluation of its importance to the solution. Monotone importance in a class of facts leads to nothing but the most cluttered confusion. Establishment of relative importance is the key.

There are people who doubt everything. Such a person inspects the most precise evidence, and he still doubts. He has difficulty giving credence to any fact more than any other fact. This produces an inability to compute relative importances amongst data. Similarly, a person who believes everything finds difficulty in differentiating amongst importances of various data. Both cases “worry,” because they are unable to compute the relative importances of various data. The thing to do is to place such persons in a situation where they can evaluate their own data. 

PHYSICAL PAIN AND PAINFUL EMOTION COMMANDS

Running a physically painful incident without a somatic is worthless. If the incident contains pain but the somatic is not turned on, the patient will wriggle his toes and breathe heavily and nervously or he may have jumping muscles. There are four additional classes of phrases: shut-offs, exaggerators, derailers and lie factories. All pain felt is genuine, even if exaggerated. Imaginary pain is non-existent. The painful emotion is only a surface manifestation of the physical pain engrams and would not be painful if the physical pain did not co-exist or exist priorly. When emotion and pain shut-offs exists, one is normally tense of muscle and nervous, given to twitching or merely tension. When pain and emotion are exaggerated by commands, there is lot of dramatization.

THE ALLY VERSUS THE ANTAGONIST

The reactive mind distinguishes violently between friend and foe. It considers everything about an ally to be right, and everything about an antagonist to be wrong. The reactive mind with its two-valued logic is very certain. However, there is such a thing as necessity level that can key out the control of the reactive mind. The solution of chronic psycho-somatic ills lies largely in the field of sympathy engrams. The real factors for such illnesses are allies. Look for them and exhaust from them the painful emotion of loss or denial and backtrack immediately to find the underlying engrams. 

TOKENS

The token is any object, practice or mannerism, which is an extension of an ally. It may be used to detect vital information that may help  locate the ally. Tokens could be his habits that you pick up, or the sympathy you expect from a family member. Token is what you say that is strange to your personality, or things you do but not much seem to enjoy. This is all mechanical and is actually merely restimulation of an engram. Once you have identifies the ally, reach swiftly toward the sympathy engram in which that ally is contained or reach toward the painful emotion engram of the loss of that ally, his illness or incidents concerning him, for an emotional discharge.

WHAT TO DO IF A CASE STOPS PROGRESSING

Check for the special classes of commands, especially a holder. Look for pain or emotional shut-offs. This is especially the case when the muscles often get very tense. See if you are feeling emotion without feeling the pain. There may be a feeling shut-off early in the prenatal area. There could be an emotional upset in the present.

IF A CASE “REFUSES” TO GET WELL

Whenever this happens, the engrams are resisting. Usually it is an ally computation “not to get rid of it,” or if he parts with any engrams, “he will lose his mind.” Yet another computation is one of secrecy. One secrecy computation stems from the mother’s fearing to tell the father that she is pregnant. Such computations yield to the repeater technique.

DRUGS

Dianetics wakes people up; it does not try to drug them or hypnotize them. Hence, the hypnotic drug is worthless to the auditor. Vitamin B1 seems to reduce nightmares and DT’s among people getting audited.

AUTO-CONTROL

According to Hubbard one cannot do dianetic therapy alone because somebody is needed there to listen, to provide insistence, and to compute the trouble one is having and remedy it. This is because the dianetic therapy requires a high gradient of confront.

On the other hand, the subject clearing approach chips away at the facsimiles at a gradient that the person can handle. At the same time, it builds up the analytical sense with which to handle the facsimiles. Therefore, a person can handle his facsimiles by himself, though it may take a bit longer at first, but then it gradually speeds up. 

ORGANIC MENTAL ALTERATIONS

In this category, we have people who have suffered strokes, paralysis, severe injuries, severe drug side-effects etc. Such people, if able, can apply dianetics through the subject clearing approach, as it is quite safe.

ORGANIC DERANGEMENT

This section discusses organic derangements as a result of engrams. Obviously, the physiological damage is best addressed through medical approach. But there would also be an aberrational component that may be resolved with dianetics through the subject clearing approach.

DIANETIC FIRST AID

A return to a recent injury or accident in contemplation can be very helpful in assimilating the related trauma. This may considerably speed up the recovery.

A PROBLEM IN MUTUAL THERAPY

Problems of mutual therapy are not relevant when one is applying the dianetic therapy to oneself using the subject clearing approach.

A PROBLEM IN A RESTIMULATED CASE

This is an interesting case study that shows the difficulties the auditor may run into outside the case that he would have to address. A person engaged in applying dianetic therapy to oneself must address external and internal situations alike through subject clearing.

ADVICE TO THE AUDITOR

Reason for non-assimilation is too much motion too fast. This appears as physical and emotional pain. The mind is confronted with intensity of charge. It is difficult to see through the sheer irrationality of short circuiting. The problem is to discover and discharge the painful emotion engrams. Just apply the fundamentals of dianetics. The subject clearing approach of dianetic therapy is obviously limited to those who are able to apply it to themselves. This section contains interesting insight regarding hypnotism. Use of hypnotism and amnesia trance is not advised.

EXTERNAL PROBLEMS WITH PATIENTS

Progress may be retarded by intensely restimulative environment. In such a circumstance the environment needs to be handled first. It is best to look at your environment as well as your own case from an extroverted viewpoint. As you progress through the dianetic therapy you will become increasingly extroverted. The aberration is primarily caused by what has been done to the person (the facsimile). The secondary effect of that is the person dramatizing that facsimile.

RESTIMULATION

The mind is a self-protecting mechanism. The mind is diagnosed by its reaction to life. You then learn to handle these reactions while respecting mind’s self-protection mechanism. The better you understand the principles of Dianetics and Subject Clearing, the more you can keep the restimulation level low, and be able to resolve your case. Discussion in subject clearing is a cooperative effort that helps handle the cases of all those involved.

REBALANCING A CASE

Any case dropped out of therapy will rebalance itself in a few weeks, much benefited. Restimulations can be expected to die down if they are due to therapy. 

WORKING TIME IN THERAPY

With subject clearing approach, the dianetic therapy can be done in sessions of 20 minutes to 2 hours, and as many sessions in a day as feasible. The engram is asked for on day one, is ready to reduce on day three, sags on day four and is rebalanced by day seven. On subject clearing approach one starts to get realizations from day one. As he continues he attains higher and higher states of clarity as he assimilates his knowledge and cleans up his traumas.

DATA FROM RELATIVES

It is a uniform experience that the data obtained from relatives, parents and friends is absolutely and utterly worthless. More accurate data can be obtained through dianetic therapy. The correct data is that which makes one well.

STOPPING THERAPY

The dianetic therapy satisfies a very basic goal to get better. The mind naturally wants to unwind, in spite of the resistance from the facsimiles. The therapy is attacked only when no results are forthcoming. You can remedy the situation only by delivering results as promised.

AUDITOR EVALUATION

You evaluate only to make sure you are not accepting imagined or incomplete data. An incident will not lift unless the data in it is correct: this is automatic. Even if the contents seem improbable run the incident. If there is a lie factory, find the lie factory by using appropriate phrase. Simply make a quiet estimate of the situation, reduce everything which seems valid and keep on trying to get the reason why the case is not functioning as well as possible. Facsimiles are just collections of remarks contained in periods of “unconsciousness.” A facsimile is basically illogical and irrational; don’t try to read rationality into one! See things as they are. The objective is to reduce the facsimiles.

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DIANETICS: Mechanisms and Aspects of Therapy Part I

October 3, 2021 – 3:09 PM

Reference: Hubbard 1950: Dianetics TMSMH

These are some comments on Book Three, Chapter 9, “Mechanisms and Aspects of Therapy Part I” from DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH.

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Comments on
Mechanisms and Aspects of Therapy Part I

KEY WORDS: Reduction, Erasure, Somatic strip, Boil-off, Lock

Note: These sections provide quick summaries. If you need details, please consult the section in the book.

THE CASE ENTRANCE

In Dianetics the goal is basic-basic, which is the earliest moment of pain and “unconsciousness.” You right away try for basic-basic and then for prenatal area. Reduce as many prenatal facsimile as you can. Then look for later painful emotion facsimile, instant of loss, failure, and discharge it. Lacking any success, start in repeater technique. Let the somatic strip travel. You may or may not get a discharge, keep searching, keep observing. Try the most likely phrases. Use your knowledge of bouncers, holders, groupers, misdirectors and denyers. If you get a discharge ask the somatic strip to go back for the prenatal it was sitting on. You alternate between early physical pain and later painful emotion facsimiles. Whenever you encounter a non-optimum thought or feeling, see if it could be traced back to a facsimile. 

In the subject clearing approach the goal is to exteriorize the attention from being introverted into the self. You start by clearing the subject of self. Handle facsimiles as they come up. If that gets tiring, alternate the subject of Self with an entirely different subject, such as, sports or literature, that extroverts your attention.

STUCK IN PRESENT TIME

When no repeater phrase works and you seem to be “stuck in present time,” then restudy the mechanism of returning. Practice returning to a moment a few hours ago, then a few days ago, then a few months and finally several years. When you are returned, start using repeater technique with  words like “feel” and “forget.” Make a guess what must be troubling you or occluding your recalls and again use these guesses as repeater. Should this still fail, then find some light locks, incidents which contain minimal pain, and run those. There is one motto which applies to all therapy, “If you keep asking for it, you’ll get it.”

In subject clearing start clearing up words and concepts in the subject of self. Study the relationships among these concepts by making examples that are really real to you. As you make examples from your personal experience you might run into facsimiles. To handle such facsimiles, you contemplate over the experience using the discipline of subject clearing.

BASIC-BASIC

Basis-basic contains the first moment when the analyzer was turned off. When this moment is gained, subsequent engrams are much more easily reduced. Dianetics assumes such a moment to occur weeks before mother’s first missed period. In practice, try to get the earliest moment of pain or discomfort you can reach every session. If you can reach nothing early, seek to discharge a late emotional facsimile.

In subject clearing try to clear up the earliest concept from available materials on which the whole subject is based.

THE REDUCTION AND THE ERASURE

To reduce means to take all the charge or pain out of an incident. A reduced incident will never be as aberrative as it was before. To “erase” means to recount it until it has vanished entirely. If a facsimile is early enough and no material exists earlier which will suspend it, that the facsimile will “erase.” In other words, it gets assimilated in the mental matrix.

In subject clearing, words and concepts may lead to other words and concepts. Finally a word or concept at the bottom of the chain will fully clear up. Then you come back up the chain clearing rest of the words and concepts.

HANDLING THE SOMATIC STRIP

When the mind is working well, the “somatic strip” can be commanded to go to any part of the time track day by day, hour by hour. It will pick up the somatic first, usually, and then pick up the content. As the somatic strip moves physical sensations turn on and off. If the somatic strip does not respond according to command, then a bouncer, a holder, a misdirector, or a grouper has been restimulated and should be discharged. 

“Somatic strip” are attention units that are detached and can look at the experiences objectively. 

PRESENT TIME

It happens now and then that after returning, the strip does not get back to present time because it has struck holders en route. Repeater technique with holders will generally free the strip and get it to present time.

In Subject Clearing approach simply contemplate under the discipline of subject clearing. This will help you return to the present time.

THE FLASH ANSWER

The flash answer is the first thing which comes into a person’s head when a question is asked him. Much valuable data can be recovered by clever use of the flash answer. If there is no answer at all, it means that the answer is occluded and there is some kind of a cover-up.

DREAMS

Dreams are puns on words and situations in the facsimiles. They are not much used in dianetics. 

VALENCE SHIFT

A person assumes a valence when he dramatizes a personality (from a facsimile) that is not himself. He says and does rather much what the person in the winning valence did in that facsimile. When running a trauma, the person may first run it in valences that did not suffer pain as it makes it easier to go through the trauma. This can flush out phrases that can then be used to run out the trauma in his own valence.

TYPE OF CHAINS

A chain means a series of incidents of similar types. The chains one can most easily contact are the least charged. The most aberrative chains will usually be the hardest to reach because they contain the most active data. 

DIANETIC DON’TS

Many of these don’ts are common sense and doesn’t explicitly apply when you are using the subject clearing approach. Just don’t get angry or upset with yourself. Don’t get frightened when there are reactions. They will soon run out. Don’t expect anything; let things happen as they may. Stick to the procedure. Handle any anomaly as far as you can, don’t leave it in the middle.

TYPES OF SOMATICS

There are two kinds of somatics, those which properly belong to the person and those which belong to some other person in the facsimile.

“UNCONSCIOUSNESS”

“Unconsciousness” has two special manifestations: the yawn and the “boil-off.” Yawns are an indicator of approaching awareness. “Boil off” is a condition of being groggy and floundering around. One appears as if drugged. Five or ten minutes of “boil-off” are not uncommon. A period when the person was almost dead is coming up to the surface.

LOCKS

A lock is a moment of mental discomfort containing no physical pain and no great loss. It can be recalled easily and reduced. But there are just too many of them. The key-in of a painful facsimile is the primary lock. All locks discharge automatically the moment the painful facsimile holding them is erased.

THE JUNIOR CASE

If father was named George and the patient is called George, beware of trouble. A Junior case is seldom easy.

RESTIMULATING THE ENGRAM

“Ask often enough and you will receive,” is always true when working the facsimiles. Simply by returning into an area enough times facsimiles will appear. If it is not there today, it will be there tomorrow. But if it is not there tomorrow, it will be there the day after and so forth. Emotional discharges are most certainly located by asking for them time after time, returning over the part of the track where the charge is expected to lie. What repeater technique will fail to do can be done by returning, session after session, to a portion of your life. Sooner or later it will come into view.

OCCLUDED LIFE PERIODS AND PEOPLE

Whole areas of the time track and persons will be found occluded. They come to view after a few facsimiles have been lifted in basic or the area has been developed as above.

ANIMOSITY TOWARD PARENTS

As a person gets better he will go through a phase of anger. It is a natural by-product of therapy and it cannot be avoided. When he is released or cleared, he feels no animosity whatever toward his parents or others who had caused his aberrations. 

PROPITIATION

Propitiation is a state wherein the person, in deep fear of another, offers expensive presents and soft words, turns the other cheek, offers himself as a doormat and generally makes a fool out of himself. It is an apathy effort to hold away a dangerous “source” of pain. This is an indicator of sympathy facsimile not yet suspected or tapped.

LOVE

Love can be compulsive, dictated by nothing more reasonable than aberration. Here is a meeting of minds — but the minds are on the lowest computational level possessed by man. Driven together by compulsion, men and women mate who will find in that mating nothing but sorrow and reduction of their hopes. Where there are children, divorce does not answer, clearing does. And with clearing comes a fresh new page of life on which happiness can be written.

THE ERASURE

Once you get the basic-basic things start to erase rather than reduce. You erase all the early painful facsimiles, always the earliest you can find, and you keep discharging painful emotion facsimiles in the later periods after birth and later in life. You erase as much as you can find in the early part of the case, then you release all the emotion you can find later in the case and then you come back and find early material. Not until you have worked out every moment of physical pain and discharged all the moments of painful emotion will the case be cleared. A cleared person is no longer interested in facsimiles.

THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CASE

The best remedy for such a case is to get help from somebody who knows both the language used in the prenatal area and the present tongue. Another remedy is to take a dictionary and figure out the bouncers et al. from the dictionary.

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