General Lecture - Straightwire (7ACC 540629)
Series: 7th Advanced Clinical Course (7ACC)
Date: 29 June 1954
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
Let's talk a little bit about the use of Straightwire. Straightwire is a very old process—a very old process. The first instance of Straightwire of which there is any historical data whatsoever was a medicine man by the name of Ug, and that was 221,000 years ago to be absolutely precise, in June.
And the occasion on the matter was and the discovery in the matter was a very simple one: A caveman had a bellyache and he was brought in to the medicine man. And the medicine man, up to that time, had cured bellyaches by the very practical method of simply driving out the evil spirit by hitting the patient on the wounded part with a war club.
They were rather emphatic in those days about what they did. And the medicine man felt rather tired: he'd just treated several patients in this fashion. So he asked the fellow, "Ah, well, when did you get this bellyache?" And the caveman that had been brought in thought for a moment and all of a sudden didn't have a bellyache.
Well, no clinical record was made of this, but as the years went on at a high and rapid state of evolution, it only took 221,000 years of very hard work on the part of phrenologists and other "-ologists" to finally get to the point where they could put more significance into this question than it formerly had had.
Now, the amount of significance into the question, of course, reached an all-time high in 1894 with the release of the libido theory. It kind of looked like you didn't want to know when he got the bellyache. You wanted to know when he had violated his sister. This would have been the deep significance. And although this never cured anything, the theory was still with us, even that long ago.
Well, any time a psychotherapy gets into desperate straits, it falls back on very specific, highly permissive Straightwire—any time. "Where did you fall down?" Any time when things get real desperate, all you have to do is ask for the original incident which started the chain of considerations which led to the existing condition. That little law might or might not have been known by Ug, WD, but it's certainly known to us now. It should have been known to Freud. When Freud produced remarkable results, it was because he had triggered a straight recall into an original incident, starting a concatenation of such incidents. That was when he produced results. When psychoanalysis does produce results, that is what has occurred.
Well, of course, all Straightwire has this slight frailty: it has a dependency upon memory, unless it is specifically directed to present time. So we get our second type of Straightwire when we get a Present Time Straightwire and you say, "This is a funny kind of Straightwire." No, it isn't. It's a kind we should have been using all along.
The basic law which is used then— the basic Straightwire—the one which always presents itself obviously when a psychotherapy gets into trouble is, "Let's see if we can get a straight recall on the first incident with some reality, on the first incident of this type which occurred to you." When the going is awfully rough and they're shooting from all directions, why, sometimes this one produces a result. But that is an address to and a validation of the past and has that as a frailty and liability.
The more you validate the past, the more past a guy has. Interesting, isn't it? The more you validate the present, the more present he has. In view of the fact that it is very, very difficult to get your day's work done yesterday, although many people believe this is possible (particularly in the government), the fact of the matter is that Straightwire addressed to the present is more effective. And you want more present time for the preclear. All right. Let's validate present time. It's as simple as that.
Now, let's look at a second type of Straightwire, which is Present Time Straightwire. Funny part of it is, it goes off immediately into Future Straightwire and gives us a third type of Straightwire: a Straightwire addressed to the subject of predictability which takes into it Q and A, which is really the first public issuance of duplication as such. And where we have the factor of predictability entering into Straightwire, we have present time and future in play. We have these two things in play, present time and the future. So this would look like quite a Straightwire, wouldn't it? Well, it is. It is. It's more important to put your preclear into contact with the present environment than it is to put him in contact with the past. The reason why is, he hasn't got any past in the first place.
All therapies which address themselves to the past run fresh out of past because it's not there. You see, this is rather obvious. So that they would produce a certain degree of recovery and then would fail to produce that recovery because anything that's troubling with the preclear is really not in the past, it is in present time.
Now, we could do a lot of theorizing about this, but he does not have a stomachache in the past. The stomachache which he had in the past comes into present time. Therefore, you really might as well address the stomachache in present time, hm? You might as well. I mean there's where the stomachache is even though it's a past stomachache which has advanced up to present time.
Now, past type of Straightwire produces this rather frail result (and it's a frail result): by asking him about his present time stomachache into the past, we sometimes move the stomachache back into the past, as Ug, WD, did. And there we get a result, we get an effect. This stomachache belonged in the past and here it was in the present and he asked when the fellow got it and the fellow recalled that it was really in the past and so it moved back into the past.
Well, that counts on an automaticity, doesn't it? There's an automaticity involved here. Something else did it. He recalled and then we depended on an automaticity of some sort or another to complete the job. It was an accidental effect. It's much more effective—and, by the way, it's quite amusing how covert Man is. He has become such a thinking machine that he would rather deal in coverts than frontal attacks any day. But it is quite amusing, if Ug had merely asked a number of his patients simply to turn off their stomachaches, why, they probably would have done so. Or if he'd asked them simply to go into communication with their stomachaches, why, probably their stomachaches would have blown infar more incidence than would have blown if he'd asked when they first got the stomachache.
Let's take these two types of therapy and let's take twenty-one preclears who have stomachaches. And we ask each one of these preclears, one right after the other, "When did you first get this stomachache?" That's all we ask them, you see? And we check off and find out how many of these preclears lost their stomachache. And maybe two did, see? Maybe two out of the twenty-one did—something like that.
Now, let's take another twenty-one preclears with stomachaches, not the same first group at all. And we ask these preclears, one after the other, to turn off their stomachaches. And we'll find five or six of them will be able to do this.
Now, we take another twenty-one preclears (the place we're getting all these preclears with stomachaches, by the way, is down here at the army camp kitchen; they've had a bad cook there lately) and these twenty-one, on the third series, we simply ask them, "Communicate with your stomachs." They ask them to communicate with their stomachs, you see. Now, we probably find out that ten or twelve of the twenty-one stomachaches would turn off.
Now, this is highly theoretical and no such experiment has ever been arranged. No such experiment has ever been done. This is just taken broadly out of practice and the workability of therapies in general. Of course, if this had been done in the field of psychology, you would have, naturally, beautiful charts drawn up and everything fixed up there and it'd be very effective and entirely convincing and so forth. The only thing wrong with it was, equally, the experiment never would have been done. This is a frailty there, too.
All right. Where it comes, then, to processing, asking somebody to communicate with the present will be found to be more effective as a general process than Straightwire processes. But how would this be otherwise than a Straightwire process? Why do we still keep around this ancient word—clear back 1950—this word Straightwire, this phrase?
Well, it means "trying to string a straight communication line from cause to effect without any relay points." That's exactly what it means, see? The auditor is hanging wire. He wants a straight piece of wire from cause to effect. That's all. He wants a straight communication from cause to effect.
Now, if you could just get your preclear to get into a frame of mind where he was willing to string straight communications, he would be several feet outside of his body managing it quite beautifully or making nothing out of it quite adeptly. It would be a matter of great certainty if he himself knew that he was at source-point and the body was at effect-point. Hence, the stringing of straight wire is trying to establish simply, cause to effect. That's all: one wire, one line. He knows who source is and he knows who receipt is and that's what he knows and that's what happens. And that's why we call it Straightwire.
So, of course, this is involved in present time. And you can see by this then, actually, that in Opening Procedure you are doing a Straightwire process.
Now, the more covert we get, the further into the past we would go. The more covert and the less able an individual is to confront the present, the more he runs his communication lines through the past just to make sure that he's right by accumulating to himself a large number of experiences. He's checking what he's doing against all these experiences. And if they run through all these experiences and he's still got the line on the other side, he says, "Well, it was perfectly free and clear."
Actually, a facsimile-computing machine is one of the simplest things you ever saw in your life: it's a whole bunch of facsimiles, the winning valences of which are all strung together in a line. And an impulse being sent through them goes through the winning valences, which are the most highly charged command valences, and they go from the winning valence to the losing valence to the winning valence to the losing valence to the winning valence to the losing valence. And where you don't have a positive winning valence and a positive losing valence, you get a maybe, and the machine hangs up at that point. See, I mean, it's just this elementary. Actually, you could build one out of cardboard—the most fabulously elementary thing imaginable.
The thetan sometimes starts looking around and he says, "Well, I've got these packages of facsimiles." Why does he have packages of facsimiles? Naturally, you get all the winning valences lined up and all the losing valences lined up, then you know where you are, see? I mean, this is quite easy and elementary. And then you shoot a beam through the thing. If a beam goes all the way through all of this class of experience—all the way through—why, naturally, one can win by doing this action or one can lose by doing this action, whichever one wants.
But supposing there's a maybe in there? There isn't a winning valence and there isn't a losing valence. Well, you'll get a short circuit in the machine and you won't get an answer back out of the computer. Do you see that clearly?
Well, that isn't straightwire in, then, is it? There wasn't a winning valence and there wasn't a losing valence. There wasn't really a source-point nor an effect-point anyplace along there. It was simply a confusion. And so he'll drop that problem as a mystery: unanswered problem. Whenever he tries to string a straight wire through it—winds up as unstringable in a maybe and that's what it looks like. All right.
Therefore, "maybe situations" and "maybe people" are often very trying to be around. Let's just stop adding this up to facsimiles which, after all, is the composite and anatomy of machines and look at present time. All right.
Now, let's see if there are winning valences and losing valences in present time or are there bunches of maybes. Is Mother the winning valence or is she the losing valence? That's a present time Mother, you see, not past Mama.
Are the people you associate with—are they winners or losers? It's easy to associate with either kind. It's very difficult to associate with, "Well, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. It's hard to tell." When you start dealing with that sort of person, they just take the easy course, you know. They don't really win, they don't really lose. They're like kind of jelly, sliding around in present time. It's very hard to be around people like that, very difficult.
And it's very difficult to be around things like that, too. Supposing you looked out here and you expected to see a palm tree —a palm tree was growing. You expected to see a growing palm tree. You didn't see a growing palm tree. You saw a palm tree which was—well, a lot of the fronds were dead and it was being watered and cared for but . . there a palm tree there or isn't there? Well, there is one there, but is there going to be one there? Well, that's so hard to tell. You know, it's really not winning. It's not disappearing and it's really not appearing."
And we look around and, well, it's the guy walking down the street. We look at him, is he really going to get to the corner or isn't he? Look at the way he's walking there: he may or may not get to that corner. And he's a "maybe" kind of a person, you see? And you couldn't quite predict this.
And when one is surrounded by one of these societies and one of these environments which—"Well, maybe it'll arrive and maybe it won't arrive and maybe it'll survive and maybe it won't. Who knows?" —so on. Why, a person gets into an interesting frame of mind himself. He gets violated on prediction.
Now, there are two things that you can predict as far as conditions are concerned: one, that something is going to win or that it has won, or that it's going to lose. Of course, the fact is, you see, that it has won. The prediction is, that it's going to win or that it's going to lose or that it has lost. So it's going to win or it's going to lose. And this is translated in terms of communication. It is going to arrive or it's going to depart, see? It's going to depart or it's going to arrive.
Now, if you wanted to drive somebody utterly batty, you could stand them in a large amphitheater and you could take a rocket with some kind of a guide on its tail which would give it an unpredictable course—just to say, it would move in one direction or move in another direction or it'd go up and then turn and come down and it'd go around in circles and so on. But it would more or less balance out from the walls, so that it wouldn't run into any of the walls.
Now, we put this person in the middle of this arena and we turn loose this rocket. You know, he's going to keep watching it. He will. He'll watch it all right. You see, he's not sure whether that thing is going to go away from him or whether it's going to go toward him. Much less, he can't answer this one: Is it going to hit him or isn't it going to hit him? He doesn't know this. Well, of course, what he's watching there is the predictability of something and he has considered it has very low-level predictability. So he can't make up his mind about it—which is to say, he has to keep his attention fixed on it. And this is the condition of uncertainty.
The dichotomy is "certainty versus unpredictability." It's not "certainty versus no certainty." That is not a dichotomy. The dichotomy is "certainty versus unpredictability." That's all the mind is worried about.
The most important of the certainties is certainty of prediction. When you add this up, then, and you just look at it broadly in the mind, although it doesn't seem to make good semantic sense, the fact of the matter is that it's certainty versus unpredictability. And that is the battle of life.
Something that's totally unpredictable has become an utter mystery. When unbaled a little bit and looked at a little more closely, it's found just to be a mere confusion which would drive you crazy if you looked at it any longer.
That's why, when you uncloak a mystery on a preclear, he's liable to get rather spinny because you're forcing him to look at something which is very confusing. Well, he made a confusion certain a long time ago. He said, "It's a mystery," you know? Which is to say, "I don't want to have any more communication with it—nothing to do with it" and "The devil with it" and "Skip it."
Or "If I just had the nerve," he sometimes says, "if I just had the nerve, I would look at it a little more closely and find out how much of a mystery it is." Well, at that moment, he gets absorbed again in the amount of confusion that is present there and so his attention is fixed on it.
But what is this thing called fixation of attention? There is a law on it. You can put this down. There is a law on it. And this law is that one has to fix attention on anything he cannot adequately predict.
He can take his attention off of anything he can predict. Naturally, human beings, thirsty for attention will, then, rig themselves as being predictable [unpredictable].
It isn't necessarily true that a high-toned person is unpredictable. There is a level, however, where the individual still wants attention from his fellows and at this point he will become relatively unpredictable. That is the finest way in the world to get consistent and continuous attention. Even if the attention is occasionally quite irate, it's still attention, you see? That's what's important.
You could understand a great deal about the conduct and activity of people if you recognized that they merely wanted attention and any attention was better than no attention. And they'll keep on doing some of the darnedest things even though they know they'll just be beaten to a pulp for it. That's attention. That's better than being ignored.
Now, I've been keeping a little record of them. I know three marriages that have gone on the rocks simply because the amount of uproar and scolding and so forth—in other words, attention had ceased. The other party that had hitherto been scolding and roaring and being mean and snarling and all that sort of thing, he had finally decided or she had finally decided, you see, that all was going to be kind and sweet and tranquil and we're going to try to make a go of it. And immediately their marriage blew up. Why did it blow up? I mean, attention factor. See, they just weren't getting attention anymore.
You take somebody who can only know if something is there if he feels it. Well, this person, of course, only knows he's getting attention if he's having his block knocked off, you see, or if he's being screamed at or rage is being poured at him. He knows he's getting attention—a very curious thing.
Well now, let's look at this business of fixed attention and unpredictability. You might say that a thing gets unpredictable and more unpredictable and more unpredictable—attention will more and more and more fix on it. And where we have a black area such as outer space with its great unpredictability (and believe me that ir unpredictable, you don't know what is going to show up in blackness), an individual will fix his attention on blackness. You get your occluded case, which is another type of anatomy for the occluded case. It has proven unpredictable and so he must put his attention on it. He can't take his attention off of the blackness. Tells you that occlusion resolves by attention drills. Well, believe me, it sure does. Fixing attention and certainty and unpredictability.
Where we have, then, an individual who is certain that something won or certain that something lost, whether or not he's the winner or the loser amounts to nothing, he's certain. In other words, he doesn't have to continue to keep his attention on it. See? He doesn't have to keep his attention on it. He's sure of it. In other words, that's what certainty means. He's sure that it's something or he's sure it's nothing or sure it won or certain it lost or whatever it is, he's certain.
Now, let's take the other factor: He's not sure whether it won, he's not sure whether it lost, he's not sure whether it was really something, he's not sure whether it was really nothing. Ah, oh boy, do we get fixed attention. In other words, unpredictability, because he doesn't know what it's going to do next.
And when these factors in facsimile form are left in past computing machines, the individual's attention starts through the computing machine to select out all the winning valences, you see, to test the future. See, he's already lost his ability to predict the future; otherwise, he wouldn't be using a computer to figure out, from experience, what was going to happen in the future. And he must feel there's a terrific liability to the future; otherwise, he wouldn't be testing it in this fashion.
All right. And he puts his attention through one of these old computers which has, right in the middle of it, a facsimile where we didn't know whether anything lost or we didn't know whether anything won and we just didn't know and so his attention fixes right on the middle of that packet. And, of course, you are looking straight at unreality and the sensation of unreality which alternates as you do Straightwire with the preclear, which alternates with the certainty. He will feel things are certain and then he'll feel they're very uncertain. And then he'll feel they're certain again and then he'll feel they're uncertain again.
As long as you drive his attention overtly through the computer by continuous questioning on various recalls, you will come up at the other end with an increased certainty because you will have knocked out this area of what won, what lost, what fog. See, you will have gone through that area. So if you just ran Straightwire on a person until it was all unreal, you simply would have left him hung up in the middle of one of these computers. And maybe two or three days it would take for him to get his attention off the center of that nebulous area.
Now, let's take somebody who is in an environment where it's very confusing. He goes downtown and it's during the rush hour and the cars are going in all directions and he, all of a sudden, you know, he doesn't know whether they're going to arrive where he is or depart from where he is or just what's going to happen during that period. And he will wind up, himself, in a state of confusion. Right after he returns from that area, he himself will be in a state of confusion about it. He won't have decided.
Well, after he's been there a number of times and found out they didn't hit him, then he can achieve a new certainty about it. And so we get the cockiness of somebody who, through the business of living, has learned not to be afraid of something. He just learned that it didn't hit him. He could climb the water tower a dozen times and finally get over being afraid of it. What does he do? He just finds out, when he climbs the water tower, it doesn't fall over, nothing strange happens. He wins, in other words, in that he keeps on living, which is a low level of win. That is a low level—survive is a low level of win. The big levels of win are create and destroy, the other extremes of the same curve. All right. Well, let's look at this in a Straightwire proposition, then. Lees have somebody look around and see how he could increase his tolerance on immediately viewing his surroundings. And we would find out that he conceived that various things in his surroundings were unpredictable and therefore he couldn't look through them. He couldn't look beyond them and he had to fix his attention on them and we get the whole mechanism of restimulators. Remember Book One and associative restimulators where the individual is alerted to danger in the environment by some unseen and hidden factor he has no real comprehension of. And that's his problem.
He sees these things and they're not a win, not a lose. They're something simply that he cannot predict and therefore have become such a mystery to him that he doesn't even see them as they stand there. And that's quite curious. I mean, somebody is in such a maybe on the subject of this and that, that he can look at some object representing it and not even see it.
Well, of course, there are associative restimulators. It is associated with something that was unpredictable and therefore is dangerous, such as his mother-in-law's possessions. Two weeks after his mother-in-law has visited them, he happens to go into the guest bedroom and finds in the guest bedroom that his mother-in-law has left a twist of hair in the comb and brush there. And this is very upsetting to him, indeed. Or if he's just a little bit worse off on the subject of the unpredictability of his mother-in-law, he's liable to feel afraid in that room or feel upset in that room and feel there's something strange there, shouldn't have anything to do with. In other words, merely a part of the actual restimulator still remains and yet the restimulator is so powerful that he can't even see the part of it.
Sooner or later, if you were to ask this fellow what his mother-in-law looked like, he would not be able to tell you. She would simply fade out of view. See, she's too unpredictable. Well, where's his attention all this time? His attention first fixes on something unpredictable and then disperses all over the place and he can't even remember anything about it. That's why, when you take an assessment, the last person mentioned is the one you want. See, the others are just associative restimulators. The last person mentioned is the one you want—the last town mentioned, when you're doing orientation-points.
Well, the purpose of all of these Straightwires is simply to bypass these unpredictable things and show the individual he can see in spite of their continued existence. And that is, actually, the purpose of Straightwire—cause to effect, in spite of all these unpredictable maybes.
CERTIFICATES OF DIANETICS AND SCIENTOLOGY
GENERAL LECTURE: PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 2 7ACC-06 - 29.06.54
STRAIGHTWIRE