Auditors Skill - Part II (500713)
Date: 13 July 1950
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
I want to go over any points on Standard Procedure now which you may have any doubts or questions about.
Male voice: If you can get basic area engrams, why run emotion?
Ah! Ah! Yeah, why run emotion?
Listen. If you can get painful emotion off a case, you have obtained at that moment a more lasting release than you will get in the same amount of time in any other way Getting emotion off a case is important. It is very important. If you run into a case which insists merely upon emoting, “I put my doll up on the bureau, boo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.” Mama says, “Come to breakfast.” “Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-” Look for a circuit that says “Cry.” But we’re talking now about real grief, loss. We can get off the case a death, a departure of an ally, a disappointment, a great disappointment in life. If we can get that off, we have in some degree proofed the case against a slump or a break. It is very important. If you could get all the painful emotion off a case right at the beginning of the case, you can do this, you will have a stable case. The case will work easily and well. Painful emotion occludes the basic area. No matter if you get something in the basic area, it will be more difficult to reach if a great deal of painful emotion exists upon the case than after you have blown that painful emotion. So that does belong there and it is a good, proper thing to do. [to a student] And what emotion are you avoiding?
Male voice: Got one that’s shut off.
Who’s dead? (snap) (pause) When did they bury your dog? (snap) Male voice: Dog? I haven’t had one that died.
Second male voice: That’s what you think.
Male voice: My parents had a dog (laughter) Second male voice: Almost certainly tied in with emotion?
What?
Second male voice: It’s most certainly tied down with emotion?
Well, I didn’t mean to go all the way on this because we start talking about painful emotion, we’ve really got something there. Painful emotion is a terrifically interesting mechanism. Oh, I may had better go into it. All right. I haven’t been into it here for a couple of weeks and a lot of people . . . All right.
Painful emotion: Here’s the time track, [drawing on blackboard] here’s conception, here’s birth, here’s present time. Here is a series of prenatal engrams, early. Here’s Grandma’s death. Now, Grandma’s death doesn’t sit here on the track. It apparently does but it doesn’t. You’ll reach it on that time span. But if you can go over it, you’ll pull it into view and discharge it, if it’s going to be discharged, here.
That is not lying there. It is lying here, in just about that foggy a state. There is evidently a conversion mechanism at work. I won’t go all out on this because we don’t know, we haven’t tested it yet. But painful emotion comes into being, exists, persists and aberrates only because it depends on lower physical pain engrams.
The physical pain engram is picked up and recharged by painful emotion. When you have painful emotion on a case, you have charged circuits . . . [gap] . . . that I know of on a case is by painful emotion. A person can go along for years getting along fine, having no trouble. And suddenly somebody dies and after that they go into a constant state of anxiety, their illnesses kick in, their life goes wrong for them.
If we can reverse the process by pulling up the painful emotion of that death, we have knocked out the basic hold-down, the hold-down of the anxiety, and we have brought into view [tapping on blackboard] very aberrative early physical pain engrams. Therefore painful emotion is of very great importance. There are some speculations about it in the book; these speculations—we have a little more material than we had then, a little better picture of it.
You will find that whenever you go in for painful emotion, discharge it [taps on blackboard], you will discover immediately with it a physical pain engram lying there ready to be picked up, right under it. If you discharge this long one and you discharge it thoroughly, you may not be able to discover instantly that physical pain engram; but in some cases (enough of them to warrant your looking), as soon as you fully discharge the painful emotion as an engram—now let’s go early to find what this was sitting on. Actually the person doesn’t move a quarter of an inch. When you contact it they’ll start to run out a physical pain engram which will reduce.
Female voice: Would you do that right then and there or . . . ?
Right then and there, immediately.
Yes?
Male voice: Will that work in reverse, Ron?
Yes, you sometimes have the painful emotion engram sitting on a physical pain engram early in the bank. The physical pain engram says, “Don’t cry, don’t be so emotional, control yourself. After all, you know all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” And you have not been able to get any physical—I mean painful emotion off the case. All you could run were a few prenatals. And you strike (snap) this one, all of a sudden we (snap) find ourselves with Grandpa’s death, right there, available.
Male voice: In order for a complete release of painful emotion is it necessary to get all the way up to tone 4?
Yes. Then any time that you release painful emotion, and it doesn’t come up to at least a great carelessness about it—not necessarily laughter, but great carelessness about it—the person still recounts it sadly and so on, there’s more emotion there which is repressed someplace else. But mind you, you’ll have painful emotion in the prenatal area. Don’t overlook this fact. Don’t think that painful emotion is always in late life. Mama’s Papa may have died while little Willie was on the way and now death becomes a very strange thing to this person. It will all sit on a physical pain engram which has painful emotion in it and in this case you really have a sad, sorry mess. But you can clean it up. You can reach that death, discharge it or reach some later death and then discharge the earlier death. The painful emotion seems to go from the top down, and physical pain from the bottom up. You will have a person in good shape.
Now, when you are treating psychotics or treating severely neurotic people, the best way you can guarantee a release on that person is by discharging the painful emotion on the case. And I would not ever certify completely and utterly any severely neurotic or psychotic person who had not discharged any painful emotion. That person I would consider a liability until painful emotion was discharged off the case.
The importance of painful emotion is very great. You must try to discharge it as early as possible. You will get more sudden advance in the general aspect of a case as a general rule by discharging painful emotion than by doing any other single thing.
Male voice: Let’s say your patient says, “Well, Grandpa and Grandma are dead, Mama and Papa are dead on both sides but I never cried at the funerals,” So you re trying to find the circuit that says it but anyhow, you run some painful emotion and get a little bit of tension off the case, but not much of this . . .
If you don’t get any of this, you’ve gotten nothing off the painful emotion.
Male voice: Well, my question is, that once the circuit is found and you go back through this—hasn’t really yet been discharged, would you get it even though it wasn’t present at the time of the funeral?
Yeah, its—partial discharge at the time is better than no discharge. By the way, now you’re really running into a control circuit. There, in such a case if—the person is probably way out of valence and is laboring under a very heavy control circuit. And these two things, resolved, should turn on your painful emotion.
Female voice: What about the Christian Science angle of it? In my case, Grandmother’s funeral I cried a little at the funeral, but the attitude was “everything’s fine, she’s gone to the great beyond, and she’s happy and we’re happy—yap, yap, yap.” Well, you never know what’s going to happen, (laughter) That’s all right.
Second female voice: In discharging the painful emotion, do you expect the patient to go through the range of the Tone Scale including the laughter and the sarcasm and so forth?
Mm-hm. Quite often. Quite often. However, there is a sense of dignity enters into it when you’re discharging the death—the emotion on the death, let’s say, of a father who was very much loved, it will come up to a careless cheerfulness.
Male voice: Back to the question, I noticed an observation in some auditors not going for painful emotion discharge. That could be their own engrams there, that they duck that Tacit consent occurs more readily in the search for painful emotion than in anything else in Dianetics.
Male voice: Now, one follow-up of this: would not the situation be that if a group of people came to take the Professional Course, that it was so rigged up that before they went into any course, at least a release was obtained in the . . .
Under optimum training conditions this would be very good. But the uncertainty of such a proceeding, the fact that very few good auditors are available, a lot of other factors militate against it.
Male voice: Well, what I mean is, most of the people here, it seems, are reaching toward becoming a Clear.
That’s correct.
Male voice: Now, does it validate that or throw that out, if they should have the nearer goal for the time being?
If we had departments which were equipped to handle the person before the person was enrolled, we could do that. I’m talking about the practicality of it. The desirability of it is unquestioned. The practicalness of it is not.
Now, this is one place where mutual auditing—not co-auditing, but two-auditor team auditing, where you have two auditors working on a case—comes very, very much into play. If you have two auditors running one case, the tacit consent problem breaks down. Because one auditor sees the other one is avoiding something in this case, he will spot it and vice versa. So that when a case is overloaded with painful emotion, two auditors should be used if either of them has any painful emotion on his own case. I have actually seen . . .
Pardon?
Male voice: What if both auditors have a lot of painful emotion and still block themselves?
All right. That’s possible. But I know of such a situation, and that one auditor—this is quite recent—one auditor was sitting there and he knew goddamn well all he had to do was just shift valence on this person and coax it just a little bit more because it was right there on the brink, and he would have gotten a painful emotion discharge. And he started to sheer off from the engram. He gave one order to move the person off the engram, the other auditor said, “Shift his valence” and the guy—kind of a beaten look comes over him and so he put the fellow back through the engram again. And he was handling it so diffidently that the other auditor kicked through and says, “Go back to the beginning of it now, let’s roll it again,” and we got an emotional discharge off the case because valence was shifted in this case. Just a command to shift valence released the painful emotion in this particular case, which won’t happen always.
Tacit consent, such as that we saw last night in the night course (the fellow’s a paranoid—he is just leaking charge, it’s about ready to stream out of him like a fire hose—that was in the night course) who was saying that he and his wife weren’t getting anyplace. He’s quite jealous. He’s afraid to find out. He won’t audit his wife. His wife is afraid of him, afraid he’ll explode in her face. So she is very well apprised of the exact line which, used by repeater technique, will break his case down like that. And she won’t do it, he won’t do it, and so both of them get mad at me and Dianetics.
Male voice: The point I’d like to make about that on that—that is, on the road to Clear, how much longer, very roughly, is it liable to take if you head for Release first and then Clear, than if you go straight up the line to Clear?
Well, I’m willing, for instance, on a release where I’m trying to release somebody who is asthmatic and so on, I’m willing to spend, oh, ten hours if necessary knocking the person’s birth out. And that’s an interesting process, by the way. If birth can be run on the case, you run it. You get all the perceptics out of it and you run it and you run it and you run it and you run it. You haven’t been back to the prenatal area, maybe you’ll get one prenatal which will reduce in such a case. But you run birth and run it and run it. Then you bring the person up to present time when birth is reduced on the ground, and you run birth in present time on the patient and you run it and run it and run it. By that time his asthma is gone. You have a release. You have obtained one rather rapidly. If you’ve also gotten some painful emotion off of this release, you will have a release which will stay stable.
Now you see, that’s not the same technique. You’re taking great care not to stir up anything in the case that you will have to put in time resolving. You’re going in straight. You say how much longer does it take? It would be a waste of time to take any of you and suddenly grind, grind, grind, grind, grind on birth this way.
Male voice: Well, I was thinking more of going specifically after painful emotion.
Painful emotion is what you go after in any case. And if you have to solve something—solve some circuitry in order to get the painful emotion available, fine. The patient will—that really pays dividends, painful emotion does. That’s why it’s on that order on the chart here.
Second male voice: Why do you run birth again in present time?
Well, that’s very interesting. Seems it’s the way it goes. When you’re going out for a Release you want to get rid of this engram, birth otherwise is liable to do a sag in about three days. The way you get away from it sagging is to bring the whole incident up to present time and run it. It seems to run it on a different part of the track or something of the sort.
Second male voice: You mean because it’s been run before basic-basic, it’s still not been erased . . .
Oh, yeah.
Male voice: . . . it’s just reduced and so . . . ?
Sure. You want the thing to stay flat. You want to knock it in the head so it’ll stay down and it won’t sag, you can bring it up to present time and run it. A number of you who have used this technique, the tiny number of times you use it is very, very few.
Male voice: How many times would you run it again in present time?
Four or five. It’s gone. Doesn’t worry anybody anymore. It’s another mechanism by which . . . [gap] Male voice: . . . does that work for other engrams that are reduced but not erased, and you want to get rid of them before . . . ?
I don’t know. Why don’t you try it out?
If this is working a release, the fellow’s got asthma, you run his somatic strip through birth and he’s getting big somatics on it so you say, “Let’s go back to the beginning of it and run it.” He gets no real good somatics as you go through birth so you say, “The hell with this, we’re not going to do anything on it.” Male voice: If he gets good somatics on . . .
If he gets fine somatics on it and so on, sure. You can reduce it, you go to it with malice aforethought. You’re not working with the file clerk now, you’re working for a release. You want to release a specific engram which you think is specifically holding up the case.
This is very unreliable, it’s not very satisfactory, but it will sometimes get some patient off of your neck that you don’t want around for more than ten or twelve hours.
In the case of running for Clear, you put off worrying about this chap’s asthma or sinusitis to way the hell down the line and you take it when you can get it, way off sometime. You’re not going to put any hard, slugging effort on it at that time. Somewhere down along the line you may knock it out.
Male voice: Unless it’s seriously bothering him.
Oh well, if it’s so seriously bothering him that he can’t make progress in the case, he’s probably stuck in it very thoroughly and he can’t move on the track.
All right. Now, are there any other questions about these steps?
Female voice: So when you re erasing painful emotion will the person find it hard to remove, or is it . . . ?
Oh, no. No, wait a minute. A painful emotion engram is called an engram so that people will run it as an engram. We could also call it a “zut” or a “plakle.” But when you call it anything else but an engram, people won’t run it. If you expect a painful emotion engram to disappear as another—as a real physical pain engram will, it won’t do it. So we don’t speak really of erasing a painful emotion engram, Male voice: The entire content remains.
The entire content remains but it has no charge on it and what you’re doing is, to be technical, bleeding it. You take all of the charge off of it and after that you never have to come back to it. It never sags, it stays stet. It doesn’t behave precisely like a real physical pain engram. We call it an engram because it’s got to be handled like an engram. It gathers locks like an engram. And you have to start at the beginning and run it and run it and run it and run it.
The first time or two that you run a painful emotion engram, by the way, let me make this as a comment, you will find that it has this characteristic. The person is outside himself sometimes. He is watching himself. Nowhere on the track, nowhere else, he may be outside himself, but in this painful emotion he will be. In any case which has a great deal of exteriorization of self, there’s emotion on this case as well as valence shift. Because it is the emotion which locks in a valence.
That’s the other thing that painful emotion does. It charges up a valence and it makes these valences just sharp. You can watch the patient go across these valences, Ptock! Ptock! They don’t shift over and roll up in a ball. They scream in one valence and then scream in the other one in different voice tones, Male voice: One point on that, Ron, that I have seen a couple of times in auditing is where you get, say, father telling sonny-boy about the death of his mother, where a patient doesn’t remember anything about it at all and he wont remember anything about it unless you intentionally put him in his father’s valence to run it for the first two or three times and take enough charge off. . .
A valence shift. Now, I’ve handled painful emotion and gotten it to discharge with this: “All right. How would you tell a little kid about Mama’s death? How would you tell a little kid about Mama’s death?” “Well, I guess I’d just come in and start telling her,” “Well, what would you say? What would you say?” “Well, I’d walk in and say, ‘Well, your ma’s dead. You’re out of luck,’” And “Well now, where would you be standing when you told the little kid about it?” In other words, you haven’t told him to be Papa and tell, you have him artificialize it. This is one phase—physical pain you do most anything you want to, but in painful emotion it is one phase that requires a very artistic approach.
If you go through the mechanical rigmarole of putting the person in reverie, sometimes, you won’t get painful emotion. But you start talking to the person in present time about somebody’s death, you can see their eyes water up, you can see the emotion start in on it. But now we say, “Ah boy, we’ve really got this one, we can get this one right away. Now close your eyes. Let’s go back to the incident.” I never do that. Yeah, because too many times I’ve seen it shut off emotion. Instead of that you say, “Well, how did he look? Where was he lying? What was the doctor saying?” First thing you know, the fellow is running the engram, and he is back to it and he is returned into it. And then you can—he is there and now you can stiffen up the approach. “Well, look at his face again. How does his face look? What is the nurse saying?” The person’s going right on through and by this time he’s got the thing turned on full blast and you’re getting the emotion off of it. You should beware of introducing any artificial factor into—Miles here was bringing that up the other day.
It’s a good thing, a very, very good thing to keep in mind that the introduction of the fact that he is in therapy and not there, the introduction of that fact may cut off the discharge. You have called his attention, by putting him in reverie, to the fact that he is here, not there. Whereas for a moment he was there. So by putting him in reverie we’ve actually pulled him out of the incident.
If we let a guy start into an incident and then suddenly bring him up short and say, “Well now, got to do this a little more properly,” to yourself, “now, let’s come up to present time,” we start all over again. Hm-mm.
Make it as real as you can make it because God knows it rests in the engram bank as being unreal enough.
I better tell you something else about painful emotion. For the benefit of those that haven’t seen this, let’s say this is the time track. [drawing on blackboard] People’s time tracks lie on the side and upside down and some of them go obliquely. But let’s say this is conception. Here’s a series of engrams lying along here and here’s painful emotion lying here. This painful emotion is actually on the track somewhat along this order.
We’re not getting anything much off of the engrams. These engrams are inaccessible until this engram is discharged. Because the painful emotion is distributed along the track here in some degree. It is occluding certain things, apparently. Now, it so happens that the reactive bank isn’t a nice filing system so we’re liable to get some engrams up here.
Now, if these engrams are up here they’re suppressing this painful emotion there, because this painful emotion discharge is actually here, follow me? So we can’t get painful emotion but we go back into the basic area and we run some engrams. We’ll run out these engrams. And when we’ve run out these engrams, painful emotion may be available. So remember that just because you don’t hit painful emotion on Monday is no reason why it won’t be there on Friday.
Male voice: I noticed that you said certain of these basics such as “once in every session try for basic-basic.” Right.
Male voice: How about “once in every session try for a release of a painful emotion”?
Well, that’s because you can judge whether or not painful emotion is ready to some degree. You can pull out a circuit—a nice “control yourself” circuit; “Don’t cry” and so forth—you get that out and you say, “Ah, now. Now we’ll take a dive for painful emotion.” Painful emotion is approached less mechanically than basic-basic is. Painful emotion is tough. The file clerk and somatic strip will very often sheer right off of painful emotion. They don’t seem to be able to penetrate it. And it doesn’t mean they’re not working, it merely means they won’t respond on command to going there.
Male voice: All right, a further question. You’ve got a case that’s going along One day the person comes in and you can see by his attitude that that painful emotion incident or something has been keyed in. Try for it?
Mm-hm. Oh yeah. Painful emotion’s something you have to keep your eye on. Keep your eye open and keep yourself working toward running a nice solid painful emotion discharge. Keep your mind open for beginning the erasure. These two things are very important, extremely important. The most important of the two happens to be going for Clear, basic-basic. That is the key to the case.
Male voice: Observation of your patient sometimes . . .
Now, you’re trying to point up the fact that you better observe your patient.
Male voice: Well . . .
Right.
Male voice: Some days you may get a little more “control yourself” . . .
Uh-huh.
Male voice: . . . evident in the—just the preliminary speech. “Die for that” that day—does that mean that he’s vulnerable that day, maybe, and can restimulate it, might . . .
Very possibly. Something may have kicked in.
Male voice: What if they come in asking—they say, “í want some painful emotion off of the case,” Well, try to take it off-It’s common that a patient, for reasons best known to himself . . . You start him into painful emotion. All right, because the painful emotion is latched up at the basic area, he goes sheering off and goes into the basic area. After a while he may begin to compute that the basic area is a safe place to be, and that’s why he’s going there. And you’ve got all sorts of computations on this. Fact of the matter is, the file clerk wants him in the basic area along this line. But I’ve never seen a file clerk volunteer painful emotion yet. I hope to see it someday. From the charge—the way circuits get charged up, is with painful emotion. Out of valence, with a heavily charged circuit, it is very difficult to reach painful emotion. So these circuits exist because painful emotion exists. Painful emotion can’t be gotten off the case because these circuits exist. You’ve got one against the other. But if you know you’re playing these two things one against the other, you’re going to get the painful emotion sooner or later because you’re just going to go from the painful emotion to the circuit to the valence. The valence, painful emotion, the circuit. The circuit, so on.
Just playing them back and forth until you’ve finally gotten the “Don’t cry, you’ve got to get a grip on yourself,” any one of these things, “Now, don’t show your emotions; get a grip on your emotions. Now, you mustn’t let yourself go all to pieces.” Of course nobody wants himself to go all to pieces. Okay? [gap] . . . because it really stinks. It’s a bad computation. The catharsis which I have seen released by psychoanalysis, by other things, this release of affect of which I have heard very often has, well, occasionally been presented to me as having been accomplished.
The person says, “Well, I spent three years in psychoanalysis getting rid of my husband’s death and we have it very nicely under control now. It was so bad that for the first two years after his death I did nothing but cry. But we’ve gotten rid of all that. We needn’t go back to it.” The auditor is just a dumb fool if he lets that statement stand. Because it is wrong. It was the most baffling thing to one psychoanalyst who was in Dianetics who had spent exactly that length of time—three years—laying the ghost of her husband’s death, to be told to go back to her husband’s death. And she sat up on the couch and started to argue with me about it. She didn’t know anything much about Dianetics. “But there is no reason to go back to my husband’s death. After all we took care of all this and so on. And as a matter of fact I have sublimated the whole thing.” And it is now really the reason why and so on that she’s doing so well and trying to help others and therefore we mustn’t disturb this thing; it’s a sacred portal that one just wouldn’t dare enter. And besides, she had some other factors in the thing. And I took her straight back and said, “Let’s go back to the moment you heard about your husband’s death. All right. What are the first words?” And ba-wang! We got painful emotion off of this case which ran for three sessions and about a whole box of Kleenex. This person was very sick with psychosomatic illnesses. After the discharge of that painful emotion, the illnesses went whooof, the whole thing keyed out. That was the big key-in.
Now, that’s interesting to me. It isn’t a condemnation of anything. It is an effort to impress you with the fact that you must never permit yourself to be fooled by this computation because it’s going to confront probably every one of you. One chap who was in Reichian convulso—, yes, well, this Reichian method of producing the convulsion so that we could get a catharsis which would do something or other.
Now, of course we know mechanically that if you induce the emotion, just working on this basis, we induce the emotion—actually you could possibly get a person restimulated on the basis of he starts himself crying and then we ease him back as he is crying into an incident where he was crying, we might be able to release the thing. If we go right on handling it as an engram, we’ll get somewhere with it. But if we just quick pick up the basis of his crying and just let him cry, it doesn’t matter how many tears he sheds off site when he is not on the site of the engram. He is not getting any real release from the thing.
So, what we get in such a degree, in such a case, this person says, “Well, I took it all out when I read the book” or “I played over all his favorite records, and I sat there and I relived all the moments when we had been together.” You know Dianetics. Was it those moments when they were together that produced any painful emotion? No. It was the moment he said, “Well, goodbye babe, we had a nice time.” That’s something that you must know. Run it on the site, as it happened.
How you get him into it, that’s something else. You may be able to restimulate an emotional mood with music, with something or other.
Get him up to a point where he is feeling very sorry about the whole thing. And then coast him gently into the incident, but then run it as an engram even though you don’t appear to be doing so. And you’ll get the painful emotion off the case and the patient will stay stable. After anything else, he won’t. Okay?
You will make no mistake on a painful emotion. It turns on, (snap) the person cries it out, he goes over it and over it. First two or three times over a painful emotion incident, maybe nothing. But then all of a sudden he gets into his own valence, he’s crying in his own valence. He starts crying, he cries it out, he runs the engram, he runs it. And it’s a little less and finally there’s practically no tears on it. And then he’s a little bit bored with it. And then the next thing you know, he’s, “Well, so he’s dead . . .” And then you run it a couple of more times and he’s perfectly cheerful.
Female voice: If you can’t run it out in that session, what point do you pick to . . .
I was just telling you.
Female voice: . . . end that particular session?
That’s just what I was telling you. You get ahold of a painful emotion charge and go off and leave it, just because it’s late, and if you get a patient running in it—there aren’t very many of these on a case—and you break it off in some fashion, you are going to encyst the remainder of the charge. So, ride ’em, cowboy. Once you get that thing going, keep it going until it’s gone.
Male voice: How did you handle it then when you ran this psychoanalyst’s painful emotion off in three sessions?
Ah! Because there were three periods of death.
Male voice: Three different ones.
There were three different ones. The first one had to do with the receipt of a telegram saying her husband had been killed. The next one had to do with her parents suddenly phoning in from somewhere and talking to her about it. The next one had to do with them sending his clothes and effects home. These were months apart. But each one of them said “He’s dead.” Loss of an antagonist doesn’t mean painful emotion. Loss of an ally does. And you will find somebody doing this one on you: “Well, that’s Aunt Gertie, yeah, she’s dead.” “When did she die?” “Oh, she died last year.” “Well, how did you feel when she died?” “Well, after all, Aunt Gertie, for heavens sakes—scrawny old maid, and she didn’t do anybody any good in the world.” “Okay. Well, let’s see if we can tap it.” And you get a painful emotion discharge on it sometimes. And it is there if Aunt Gertie was the child ally and there was a rupture in relationship later. This means that one’s present-day computation on Aunt Gertie is that she was a scrawny old maid. But she’s actually, in the childhood sector, life itself. And there’s painful emotion on this.
I thought, by the way—let me give you a personal example on that—I thought that my grandfather who had been greatly run down and so on was—it didn’t excite me at the time it happened. It was a strange coincidence that everything went wrong after this. But it didn’t excite me or worry me. And I didn’t have much of an inkling about it.
I went over the incident the first couple of times, well, I went over it a couple of sessions. There was no discharge on it. But long after, I opened up a bunch of “control yourself” circuits and blew those and one day just casually going up the track, happened to clip on an incident which preceded this and found myself just carried along on a tide right straight into this painful emotion and boy, that was the real boom! on the case.
I had always thought my grandmother was my ally. My grandfather was a rough, tough, drinkin’ son of a gun. Nobody would ever pay any attention to that. And it contained the real charge. So the personal opinion of the person with regard to this is invalid. What is valuable is an examination of the bank. Whose words were aberrative? That’s the ally.
Male voice: It’ll be there about 99 percent of the time, Ron, even with somebody who the person doesn’t think they like. Susan was just asking me before about what did I think about this and I don’t know, I felt the same way: that the business of a person being in prenatal in the presence of Grandma or Grandpa whom in later life they don’t particularly care for, they’re suddenly in cling I figure that somewhere in prenatal life something must have been said or something must have been done that might make them an ally and I found about 99 percent of the cases it’s so. I got a guy who hates the hell out of his grandfather. God, he hates his guts. “He’s responsible for every damn thing that’s wrong with me. They used to tell me all the time I’m just like Grandpa—stubborn. The old son of a bitch, if I get my hands on him I’d kill him.” And I got him down there and “Ohh-hhhhh, Grandpa died, my lord!” (laughter) Yeah, that’s right. The present time opinion is extremely colored by the whole engram bank computation. Now, something else could well startle you sometimes, is the person says, “I hate my father, I don’t like him.” You find out in most cases Father’s words are not aberrative, so on.
There is something which has been oversimplified with this label “ambivalence.” The first ambivalent person I run into I’m really going to shake him by the hand because he will be the first one I have found. I’ve never found two valences in an individual I’m not twisting the word to define it with Dianetics, but they’re observably there.
Here is Grandma treating a sick child. She’s one person. Here is Grandma making the child eat, another person. I mean just in normal course of discipline. Here is Grandma arguing with Mama, a different person—one hell of a fighting witch; very bitter, mean person. And so as you go down the line you’ll find that usually Papa and Mama are ambivalent toward the child. And it so happens that their own valences will get shifted by various experiences. Therefore they will go through as many valences as they have, around the child. And one of those valences, Papa, for instance, may be very tough on the idea of having a child.
All through the prenatal bank we may find Papa. Papa’s a bum and so forth. He wants to—he may be a partner in a mutual AA, all that sort of thing. So we hate Papa. But we move up into a sector postpartum and we find out that every time the kid got sick, every time the kid had something wrong in his life, there was only one guy who really stood by him. And that was Papa.
Papa worried when the kid got sick. Papa worried about this. Papa tried to take care of the kid. Papa had a sense of the fact that he’d done something wrong anyway; he was trying to make up for it. He was a pretty white guy. He’d go out and help the kid fly kites, he’d play catch with him and he’d do this and he’d do that. And because of the existing earlier area, all of this goes out of sight. So there’s a lurking ally in the case and that is Papa’s ally valence. Now, that is never as strong as a 100 percent ally, somebody who is always out for the kid. Now, that one is really strong. But nevertheless, Papa in his ally valence and Mama in her ally valence are very strong allies. And you mustn’t overlook this just because the patient says, “I didn’t like Papa and I didn’t like Mama.” Don’t take that as the final datum.
Female voice: Providing a relative, an aunt, was not in the same locale during the prenatal period, subject gets to know that aunt later on for a while, is she neither here nor there or must you always expect an emotional discharge on her death?
Oh, no. No, no. This is allies. Somebody has aligned himself with the survival dynamics of the individual . . .
Female voice: No . . . [gap] . · · some of the survival dynamics went by the boards.
Because the body, the brain, nervous system, works in sympathy with, in affinity with the rest of mankind, you will find that pain, antagonism and so forth is minor compared to—let us say, months and months of cruelty may have made no great impression, and ten minutes of kindness will leave a lasting impression for life.
Female voice: But there must be something . . .
Oh yes, yes indeed. Somebody must have stood up for the kid, some way or the other. Somebody somehow insinuated himself as part of a survival computation of the child. Okay?
Male voice: Could have even been the dog Huh?
Male voice: That could have even been the dog You bet your life! I found a dog ally one time that every time somebody tried to lay a hand on this kid, this dog, who was a great big mastiff, used to come around and plant himself right in front of the kid. And somebody would try to grab the kid out from behind the mastiff and he would show them the most beautiful pianoforte. And the dog would very often back the kid up in a corner and lie down when he figured the kid was in trouble. And this kid was always in trouble. And this dog was an ally amongst allies. And by the way, when this fellow was being very kind or very funny, something like that, he would show his teeth or snarl or laugh like this dog. And there was a dog valence there. It was very amusing.
Male voice: Fellow didn’t say a doggoned word either (laughter) He didn’t say a word, but all through the thing you’ll find “That goddamn dog.” The baby’s maybe sick or something, and they’re talking about “that goddamn dog, he’s no good.” This had absolutely no effect upon the child. Even if the child was sick, he never said, “That goddamn dog.” He might be lying there unconscious and receive this. Just got kicked right out of the bank.
Because that dog was really a friend. The kid gets sick, the dog would come in, sit down very calmly and sit around and wait. And the kid would start crying, something like that, the dog would lick his face. And oh, it was very amusing running this case out because we had to run out dog incidents—dog, dog, dog—out of it. And the dog would go and pester Mama whenever the baby got in trouble. This dog was a nurse, there was no doubt about it. And you will find a lot of dogs will do that.
Male voice: Yes. For instance, another boy has a dog ally—I didn’t remember it till just this moment I was talking. He had a big police dog who weighed about eighty-five pounds and that police dog was meaner than a gut-shot bear, as my grandpappy used to say. And it amounted to the fact that when . . . The kid could pull the dog’s hair and so forth. And the dog would get mad, so forth, if the child was left crying—really get mad, go into the kitchen and so forth and walk around and nip at people’s heels, like that, and snap and snarl and so on. And they’d say, “What the hell’s wrong with the dog?” And then they’d listen out, you know, “Oh, the baby’s crying.” Yeah, he’s got a dog ally. I don’t know what depth or what length, but he has one.
Male voice: Incidentally, Ron, the death of that dog as an ally would be a very painful . . .
Oh, believe me! And the death of all other dogs lie on top of that one dog. Yeah, and they’re all painful.
Male voice: Where can I get some more information about who the Reichians . . . I have a number . . .
Don’t get it from the books.
Male voice: Well, that’s it, you see. The books, according to what you say, are misleading I also have a number of friends who are in Reichian treatment And I happened to mention this business of dramatization to them. And they said, “Whoever said that is lying absolutely, there is no truth in it whatsoever. Orgone boxes, yes. Psychotherapy, yes, but none of that stuff” Very interesting.
Second male voice: You should have seen the case.
Cases, cases. I think very possibly that this is the situation. Reich has put out a certain line of literature on the subject, and has put out his orgone boxes. And I think that his personal treatment of a patient is this convulsive type therapy. His own personal treatment.
Male voice: Oh, his own personal treatment.
That’s correct.
Male voice: Because I asked Dr. Sithy about it while he was here, and then I asked about Dr. Sithy and I was told that Dr. Sithy was not looked upon as a so-called orthodox Reichian. He was a guy who was working his own way around it, you see. So I said, “What the hell is this orthodox Reichian business? Are we down to an orthodox Freudian routine now? What is this orthodox . . . ?” With crosses.
Male voice: And the most I could get was this psychotherapy, orgone boxes, the release of whatever electrostatic force there was in the body, et cetera, so forth.
Ah sure, but this is a method of releasing it that Reich himself practices. Look . . .
Second male voice: I talked to another Reichian about that, and one of the theories, as I get it from this other Reichian who has studied with Reich, is that the combativeness, the aggressiveness the child feels toward his father is locked up in the muscles, and must be worked out by the muscles. So the kid redramatizes, in effect, Papa beating him up, only on the proposition that he is beating up Papa now.
Male voice: Well then, how widely does this . . . ?
By the way, since I am unaccustomed, sir, by being given to lie, I will appreciate the names of these people so I can send them my card, Male voice: Absolutely.
Okay.
Third male voice: Ron, when do you and when don’t you leave the somatic down to come to present time to close the case for the hour, close the session?
Deintensify it. That’s why you shouldn’t start in on a long one. You should take it out sectionally If you think you’re going into a very, very long sequence, and glance at your time on the thing, take a section of it out and you will be better off, rather than restimulate the whole thing. Because you can make a person extremely ill, particularly if he’s fairly neurotic, by leaving an incident that is not wholly deintensified.
Male voice: Well, is there ever any time that it is permissible to leave the somatic down and close the case?
I try like hell not to. I better . . .
Male voice: I’ve heard it being done around here, I’ve heard it many times with my own ears, and I don’t want to criticize anybody, I’m just wondering when do you and when don’t you?
Well, on my own grounds on the thing, I normally have somebody standing by and if my own time is pushed and I’ve got the thing running more or less pianola on that particular engram, I turn it over to somebody else and make them run it out until it’s flat.
Male voice: Unless you have someone, it’s not advisable, is that it?
Hm?
Male voice: Unless you have someone standing by, if you re doing this professionally you should finish it up.
If you’re doing it professionally, and you haven’t got an understudy, you’re going to waste a lot of time. Because cases are hard to crack and easy to run. And as a professional you ought to bring it up to a level where you’re cracking cases, not grinding away on cases.
Think of this: You could handle in about—oh, I don’t know, in six months, you might be able to process twenty, thirty people pretty well through, working hard. Working very hard. Whereas you have around you people who are very anxious to learn what you are doing and to learn about it and study with you.
If you don’t use their services—which is a great aid to them, by the way—if you don’t use their services in this matter, you’re going to be wasting your time, energy and skill. Because the more cases you break, the more you’re going to know about them. You can always check back and ask the guy, “Did it reduce all right?” “Yes, yes, it’s fine.” That’s all you have to know. Well, maybe it’ll only take you a half an hour of diagnosis and maybe ten, fifteen minutes of probing and all of a sudden you’ve got the engram. You’ve got it running and you run it through once, you take the main tension out of it again, you know this person isn’t going to fly out of it at all angles and so forth. Turn it over to somebody else that is studying and let him run it.
In this way we’ll get lots of Dianetic Clears in the world. If I thought you people were going out and individually run all the way through every case, I would sigh very deeply. Because you are the experts.
Okay. That’s this random discussion this morning; I hope you learned something. That’s all.