DMSH 1950 Book 3 Chapter 1
← Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950)
The Mind's Protection
The mind is a self-protecting mechanism. Short of the use of drugs as in narco- synthesis, shock, hypnotism or surgery, no mistake can be made by an auditor* which cannot be remedied either by himself or by another auditor. Those things which are stressed, then, in this book, are ways to accomplish therapy as swiftly as possible with minimal errors; for errors take time. Auditors are going to make errors, that is inevitable. If they make the same error repeatedly, they had better get some one to guide them through therapy.
There are probably thousands of ways to get into trouble with mental healing, but all these ways can be classed in these groups: (1) use of shock or surgery on the brain; (2) use of strong drugs; (3) use of hypnosis as such; and (4) trying to cross-breed dianetics with older forms of therapy.
The mind will not permit itself to be seriously overloaded so long as it can retain partial awareness of itself; it can only be overloaded when its awareness is reduced to a point where it cannot evaluate anything: it can then be thoroughly upset. Dianetic reverie leaves a patient fully aware of everything which is taking place and with full recall of everything which has happened. Types of therapy which do not do this are possible and useful but they must be approached with the full knowledge that they are not foolproof. Dianetics, then, uses the reverie for the majority of its work and using the reverie an auditor cannot possibly get himself into any trouble from which he cannot extricate himself and the patient. He is working with an almost foolproof mechanism as long as the mind retains some awareness: a radio or a clock or an electric motor are far more susceptible to injury in the hands of a workman than the human mind. The mind was built to be as tough as possible. It will be found that it is difficult to get it into situations which make it uncomfortable and impossible, with the reverie, to embroil it enough to cause neurosis or insanity.
In the U.S. infantry manual there is a line about decision: “Any plan, no matter how poorly conceived, if boldly executed is better than inaction.”
In dianetics, any case, no matter how serious, no matter how unskilled the auditor, is better opened than left closed. It is better to start therapy if it is to be interrupted after two hours of work than not to start therapy at all. It is better to contact an engram than to leave an engram uncontacted even if the result is physical discomfort for the patient — for that engram will not thereafter possess as much power and the discomfort will gradually abate.
This is scientific fact. The mechanism dianetics uses is an ability of the brain which Man as a whole did not know he had. It is a process of thought which everyone possesses inherently and which was evidently meant to be used in the overall process of thinking but which, by some strange oversight, Man has never before discovered. Once a person has learned that he possesses just this one new faculty, he is better able to think than he was before, and he can learn this faculty in ten minutes.
Further, when one approaches an engram with this faculty (which, when intensified, is the reverie) some of that engram’s sub-level connections are broken and the aberrative factors no longer have as much force either in the physical or mental spheres. Further, the knowledge that there is a solution to mental ills is a stabilizing factor.
Approaching an engram with the reverie is very far from the same as restimulating the engram exteriorly as is done in life. The engram is a powerful and vicious character only so long as it is untapped. In place and active it can be restimulated to cause innumerable mental and physical ills. But approaching it with reverie is approaching it on a new circuit, one that disarms it. The power of the engram is partly the fear of the unknown — knowing brings stability by itself.
Do not think that you will not make patients uncomfortable. That is not true. The auditor’s work, when it taps engrams which cannot be lifted, may cause the patient to have headaches, various aches and pains and even mild physical illness, even when the work is carefully done. But life has been doing this to the patient on a much grander scale for years and no matter how badly the case is mauled around, no matter how many aberrations spring into view to plague the patient for a day or two, none are as serious as those which can be occasioned by the environment acting upon the untapped engram.
The auditor can do everything backwards, upside down and utterly wrong and the patient will still be better, provided only that he does not try to use drugs before he has worked a few cases, that he does not use hypnotism as hypnotism and he does not try to cross dianetics with some older therapy. He can use drugs in dianetics if he knows his dianetics and if he has medical concurrence. He can use all the techniques of hypnotism so long as he is thoroughly experienced with dianetics.
And once he has used dianetics, he will not fall back to mystic efforts to heal minds. In short, the point which is offered here is that so long as the auditor takes a relatively simple case at first to see how the mechanisms of the mind work and uses only the reverie he cannot get into trouble. There will be those, certainly, who believe they are so vastly experienced in tom- tom beating or gourd rattling that they won’t give dianetics a chance to work as dianetics but will sail in and begin to plague the patient about “penis-envy” or make him repent his sins, but the patient who starts to get this will be smart to simply change positions from the couch to the auditor’s chair and clear up some of the aberrations of the auditor before work proceeds.
Anybody who has read this book once through and procured a patient with sonic recall for a trial effort will know more about the mind, in those actions, than he has ever known before, and he will be more skilled and able to treat the mind than anyone attempting to do so, regardless of reputation, a very short while ago. This does not mean that men who have had experience with mental patients will not, knowing dianetics (knowing dianetics) have an edge on those who do not realize some of the foibles of which Man in an aberrated state is capable. And on the other hand it does not mean that some engineer or lawyer or cook with a few dianetic cases under his belt, will not be more skilled than all other practitioners of whatever background or kind. In this case, the sky is no limit.
One could not say, offhand, that an able hypnotist or an able psychologist, ready and willing to jettison and unlearn yesterday’s mistakes, is not better prepared to practice dianetics. In the field of psycho-somatic medicine the medical doctor, with a vast fund of experience in healing, might very well be far and above other auditors in dianetic work. But it is not necessarily the case, for in research it has been proven that men and women with most unlikely professional backgrounds have suddenly become auditors superior in skill to those in fields you might suspect were more closely allied. Engineers particularly are excellent material and make excellent auditors. Again, dianetics is not being released to a profession, for no profession could encompass it. It is insufficiently complicated to warrant years of study in some university. It belongs to Man and it is doubtful if anyone could manage to gain a corner on it for it does not fall within any legislation of any kind in any place and if dianetics were legislated into a licensed profession, then it is to be feared that listening to stories and jokes and personal experience would also have to be legislated into a profession. Such laws would put all men of good will who lend a sympathetic ear to a friend’s troubles inside the barbed wire. Dianetics is not psychiatry. It is not psycho-analysis. It is not psychology. It is not personal relations. It is not hypnotism. It is a science of mind and needs about as much licensing and regulation as the application of the science of physics. Those things which are legislated against are a matter of law because they may in some way injure individuals or society.
Legislation exists about psycho-analysis in some three states in the Union, legislation against or about psychiatry exists everywhere. If an auditor wishes to constitute himself a psychiatrist with the power of vivisecting human brains, if he wants to constitute himself a doctor and administer drugs and medicines, if he wants to practice hypnotism and pour suggestions into a patient, then he must square it with psychiatry, medicine and the local laws
about hypnotism, for he has entered other fields than dianetics. In dianetics hypnotism is not used, no brains are operated upon and no drugs are given unless the local medico is part of the staff. Dianetics is not in any way covered by legislation anywhere for no law can prevent one man sitting down and telling another man his troubles, and if anyone wants a monopoly on dianetics, be assured that he wants it for reasons which have to do not with dianetics but with prof it. There are not enough psychiatrists in the country to begin to staff the mental institutions.
Surely this generation, particularly with all the iatrogenic field is the treatment of the insane by definition and that has nothing to do with thee and me. In psychology, dianetics drops into line without disturbing anything concerned with staffs or research or teaching posts, for psychology is simply the study of the psyche and now that there exists a science of the psyche it can go ahead with a will.
Thus dianetics is the enemy of none and dianetics falls utterly outside all existing legislation, none of which anticipated or made any provision for a science of mind.