Paralleling the Mind (500825)
Date: 25 August 1950
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
As far as psychoanalysis is concerned—I quote now Clara Thompson in her Introduction to Psychoanalysis and so on. If you care to read that book, it’s the latest authoritative work on psychoanalysis. Her basic conclusion at the end of the thing is that it’s not a therapy. It’s not an adequate therapy, and she even goes further to say that it doesn’t develop or go anyplace. So, there’s nothing wrong with psychoanalysis. It was good trying.
A friend of mine commented on the subject once, however. An atomic physicist—he said, “The formulae of James Clerk Maxwell on electronics was available in 1894, was being used in 1894, the same time that Freud postulated his libido theory after his work with Breuer. We now have an atom bomb, and we still have psychoanalysis.” It has not changed materially, actually. There have been many branches of it in about sixty years. Its development was not along a scientific line, in that it did not predict data. Now, in scientific methodology, the first challenge of a theory is will it predict new data which, if looked for in reality, will be found? And if that piece of scientific methodology is violated, then the theory should be abandoned and another theory applied. Actually, Dianetics, psychoanalysis, whatever you want—men are all trying to do the same thing, trying to make men think.
Male voice: Has it been your experience that there has been no case that can’t be handled with Dianetic procedure?
Yes, there are people who, physically, don’t have enough analyzer left to contact. Those cases don’t respond to Dianetic procedures. Neither do dead men. But that’s about the limit on it. Now, for instance, such questions as these normally come up through very poor knowledge of the subject. It sounds easy in this class when you say, “If it doesn’t roll, you ask if there’s a holder, bouncer or so forth, until you find one. Then ask what it is.” But what do you do if the answer for each question is “no”? If the file clerk starts answering “no” on everything you say, what would you do?
Now, the trouble with Dianetics is, it’s too obvious. People try to get socko about the whole thing. They try to move around back of it and figure it out in some complex way. It’s like a mathematician, you know, who will go up the line about 15 steps beyond the fundamental he should have started with, will then begin to calculate about 464 variables, will throw in 100 what they call “buts” factors, began to write an equation in a very small hand, one that will go all the way around this room, and everybody says, “What a brilliant mathematician this man is!” And you look this man over and you say, “Isn’t this guy being a little bit more clever, rather than just intelligent?” You go back over the thing and you find out—he was trying to find out why horses wore harnesses when they were attached to carts and so forth. And he has completely overlooked the fact that there must be tension between the horse and the cart. And if he picked up that as a fundamental, he would then have been able to go out along the whole field of pulling things, and he wouldn’t have found any equation.
This is a fascinating subject, by the way, the substitution of complexity and terrific cleverness for fundamentals. If we were to knock out five fundamental principles in physics and just say they didn’t exist, the science of physics would cease to be a science. And the explanations necessary to explain phenomena in this world would probably fill—just written at one time—you’d have to have enough books to fill practically every library there is in the world to explain physics by knocking out these fundamentals.
Therefore we are interested in fundamentals. We are not interested in a concept of high complexity and so on. Most of the errors being made right now by student auditors are being made because of overreaching on the problem. It’s simple. It’s literal. It’s as literal as Simple Simon stepping in pies, and it’s very easy to overlook this terrific simplicity, and you get very clever about the whole thing.
Now, for instance, we have this “no,” So the file clerk keeps answering “no,” All right. There’s a “no” there. There’s nothing simpler than that, I heard this the other day: “You suppose it’s because of an association with psychologists who have been telling him that so and so and so?” No, it’s because he has got an engram that says, “I can’t believe it,” Now, let’s get right back to the fundamental basic. The person says, “I am terribly worried about my marriage, I know it’s going to break up.” Now, let’s not look for a religious contagion. Let’s look for the words “I am so worried about my marriage, I am afraid it’s going to break up.” You will run into this continually running engrams. The fellow’s just been dodging this engram and dodging it. You know there’s one there, but you just can’t locate it.
In one case, the whole case stalled down for fifty hours, which is one devil of a long time, on this phrase: “It’s your lifeline; hold to it until you are dead.” The most unlikely phrase in the world, but the computation that was given to me about this case originally was that one didn’t dare lose his neuroses, because if he did he would not have any life left in him.
Now, it was almost along in those same lines. Of course, this thing was never repeated. Most of the fear of losing engrams is because somebody is saying there, “I am afraid I am going to lose it.” You saw that on the stage here the other day. “I am afraid I am going to lose it.” “If you make me get rid of this, I will lose my mind.” That was almost standard back around the turn of the century. Papa and Mama arguing, “If you make me get rid of it, I will lose my mind.” You will run into this continually, these apparent superrational computations.
Now, we take that rationality, we build upon that rationality, the fellow begins to explain to you about this, about that, about something else. There is the same thing I was talking about. He is worrying about something. The phrases which dictate the worry are right inside the statement of that worry. But he will build up over the top of it a super-rationality, a “rationality” so strong and so powerful sometimes, his logic is so excellent, evidently, that one is just dismayed by it. And he says, “Why, obviously, this man must be right,” something or other. And it lasts just about long enough to get down the track someplace and maybe blow a grief discharge, loosen the case up a little bit, get in and knock out a couple of basic engrams, and the person stops worrying about this. For instance, I have had people come around, and there is a lapse of hearing on certain things. This is very interesting to you as auditors. You go along talking to people in the same volume and suddenly the person says, “What did you say?” And sometimes it appears that you have just run on so fast, he didn’t understand you. But actually, the words that you have just used appear in an engram that is in restimulation, and you have used those words, and those words have just been swallowed by the reactive bank.
The reactive bank opened, grabbed them and shut up again. The analyzer shut off and went on again. And those words are now on again. And those words now are housed in the reactive mind, you will notice this continually. I mean, particularly working around people when you know what is happening and you know that that occurs. Watch it occur sometime. You will see it, and you will be surprised how often it happens.
Male voice: That would be a good way of diagnosing what might be an engram.
Yes. As a matter of fact, you occasionally use the thing as diagnosis. You say to some fellow sometime, “Well, very few mothers are very mean.” And he says, “What did you say?” And at the same time you have been saying things like “Bicycles have red spokes,” or something, just before that, and he heard you perfectly well. But you have mentioned the word “mother” and a phrase in connection with it and his analyzer went out and went on again, wham! wham! It isn’t a case of the ear going on and off. Then there is selective deafness on certain words, for instance, “I can’t hear it” literally would have a slight damper on the word “it.” The quality of literalness here is appalling, and if you are having trouble with the case, the first thing you should consult is whether or not you aren’t being too rationalizing for the person.
I am talking about it from the standpoint of working the case. The fellow says, “I can’t return,” and you want to find out why he can’t return. Just those words. He is arguing with you. He said, “I can’t believe it.” Let’s ask him then.
He says, “I can’t believe in Dianetics. I can’t believe it would do any good.” Do a little check. Just don’t sit down and try to argue him into Dianetics. The hell with that. Just do a little check on the thing. Ask him what he thinks about medicine. “Do you think medicine does you any good?” And the fellow, if he says that, he will say, “Well, no. Most of them are fakes.” And you say, “Well now, how about psychology? Has that ever helped anybody?” “Well, no.” “Well, what about psychological tests? Do you believe in psychometry?” “No, that’s a lot of fakery to that stuff.” And you go across the board, and you get down to the point, “Well, do you believe you are standing here?” The fellow will think about it for a minute. What you are dealing with there is, of course, “I can’t believe it.” If you held up a tobacco can, and insisted to him that this is a tobacco can, he would probably inspect it pretty closely.
There’s the worst. So if you just happen to be working with Dianetics, you just happen to be. So you ask him to do something or something of the sort—in any other field, if he were asked to think of something, that field would draw a blank.
He would give to Dianetics his reaction that his reactive mind is getting from this engram. It’s a parallel: the closer that Dianetics approaches the working operation of the basic personality and the reactive mind, the more successful Dianetics is. There’s a parallel that goes like that. The mind, in order to hook up with memories, gets back with the file clerk. And so all that sort of thing takes attention units. The mind is trying to free up attention units. So are you. But you are trying to free up attention units because the mind is trying to free up attention units. And now I will call to your attention that we are not working with a system that has suddenly been put up over here independent of this. What we have done is take a look at the mind and try to find out what it’s trying to do. What are the mechanics of its operation? The mechanics of its operation happen to deal with returning attention units to areas, trying to get engrams off the man, trying to compute, working with bouncers, denyers, misdirectors and so forth. Those are all impeding the mechanics of the thing, and so each time we ask for something new that is impeding the mechanical processes of thought, we can then add something new to Dianetics as a parallel and deal with this new item. For instance, you take valences. We know about valences. We weren’t using them very hard. And finally, as we understood more about the minds shifting around on valences, we could adapt Dianetics to match that, and what is the process? All we are doing is just reversing processes over here on the mind paralleling the whole situation. It should be very clear to you, then, when the preclear says, “I don’t like to think about that.” And you will say, “Well, what about this rape?” And the preclear will say, “I don’t like to think about that.” That’s true. That’s a difficulty his mind is having. A very bad difficulty. As a matter of fact, those words are contained in the vicinity of that engram. An attention unit has gone back toward—remember this, you are dealing there with milliseconds of time, just flashes. It’s too quick for you to track or follow or notice there’s been much of a lag, that the attention units could be said analogically to go down, take a look at the situation, come out to its outer periphery and find the words, “I don’t like to think about that,” come back to a hooked-up connection, report “I don’t like to think about that.” The fellow says, “I don’t like to think about that.” The file clerk—we are asking for “Is this a holder?” “No.” “Is this a bouncer?” “No.” “Is this a pushover?” “No.” That’s the way you track them. Ask them questions to which they can’t answer “no” and still be rational. If you get a “no” then, you are bumping up against “no.” In the same way, where the persons mind is being made to shy away from something, on Straightwire you can make his mind come around and go in the back door.
Let’s take his attention units running over here. Now, the attention units have built up a little bank of awareness. We have asked him about, “Did your sister ever have any boyfriends?” Oh, he has been warned about this one. See, there is a little bank over here, the attention units go down, start to pick up this datum—why, warning: don’t enter, and every time back up again. And you insist then, you say, “Well, did your sister ever have any boyfriends? Can you remember something about these boyfriends?” “Certainly.” And the fellow now, he has got this thing as a line. Harder to get into. In other words, you have restimulated it and it’s going to be bucking attention units harder. And we ask again. One or two things are going to happen here. He is going through the cordon, all of a sudden you are going to restimulate this thing to a point where it will discharge. And you channel it right on through to a point where you get the running of an engram.
In other words, you restimulate this thing until you get a running of the engram, or you take his tension off the thing completely. The thing has built up a resistance. So let’s start asking him about that time that he had this scooter. “Who gave you this scooter? What color was it? Who took it away from you? When did you get run over with the scooter?” and so and so on. “What did your sister’s boyfriend say?” And an attention unit is likely to snap down there so quick it will bring up data. Misdirection.
Now actually, people use these principles all the time. You speak of repeater technique. Somebody asked me to say something about repeater technique, how to use it. I can tell you how you don’t use repeater technique. You don’t start him in present time and have him repeat nothing but holders. The first thing you know, attention units are down in the holders all through the bank, and the attention units are locked. He is in bad shape. So you don’t do that to him.
The way you do use repeater technique is to follow down chains. The proper use of the thing is to find out if there is a denyer in this engram. “Yes.” “The denyer will flash into your mind.” (snap!) And you get, “I can’t tell.” So you use repeater technique there. “I can’t tell, I can’t tell, I can’t tell.” But “I can’t tell” doesn’t lift. So you say, “Let’s go to an earlier ‘I can’t tell.’” All right, we go to an earlier “I can’t tell.” We come walking down the bank with repeater technique. You’d think perhaps that repeater technique is something—that we invented techniques. We didn’t. We have been using it for an awful long time. If you ever say to a fellow, “You know Miller, don’t you?” And the guy says, “Miller, Miller, Miller, Miller, Miller . . . yes, I know Miller.” There are parallels practically in every one of these mechanisms in the everyday life of people.
Here we have taken and unloaded the useless facts and organized the useful facts. And we have discovered a few new fundamentals, and out of this whole thing, we have a science. That’s the way that sciences get built. It doesn’t mean that you have to have a man from Mars to have a science. I mean, it doesn’t have to be something that’s just moved in willy-nilly.
As a matter of fact, pieces of Dianetics, as far as I know, have been known for the last million and a half years, something like that. I think a witch doctor of a hundred thousand years ago was probably quite smart on the subject. A lot of little factors in Dianetics were used. Certainly, a lot of the principles of the human mind were known and used. An Egyptian priest working on the thing was a pretty smart character.
In medieval times, there was a cult of the magician. The magician had a lot of strange principles. He believed in cause. He believed that one could cause an effect, and the cause of the effect was important. That doesn’t sound like much today with all of our knowledge of science, but believe me, that contains in essence what made it possible for Francis Bacon and the rest of the boys to really get in there and slug.
Cause is what’s important, not effect. I mean, you study effect alone, then you become part of the effect and becoming part of the effect, you are therefore acted on by the cause. So you don’t want this cause disappeared out here mysteriously. What you want to do is get back here with the cause, and then, you can overcome or create as many effects as you want.
Now, that was the principle of the old-time magician. He operated in the field of alchemy and so on, and this is boiled down to—there is a lot more to it, but it gives you an idea here what we are doing.
We are dealing with causes—fairly primal causes. I don’t know quite what lies behind what we have in Dianetics. But there is something just behind it. There’s something just behind affinity, communication and reality. Everybody agrees with reality, and as long as we agree there is a reality, we are in communication with our perceptics and we are at affinity with the universe at large, because we have agreed that there is affinity and reality and communication with each other.
Now, there’s something—a step back of this because there you have tried what supposedly ought to be, at least along one course, parallel things. In other words, it might even be that reality only exists because of our communication with each other, which exists because of some order of affinity. In other words, the whole thing might be just an idea.
It’s very dangerous, I know, to explode good ideas. You get a terrific reaction from people if you explode a good idea. A writer’s talking away, and he has got a good idea, and you say he is no good. And he sort of curls up. I think just someday somebody might say the right set of words, and we’d all just disappear.
Now you have to recognize then the fact that in all of this, we are fighting for cause. As the science advances, it will be because we have more closely paralleled the action, the mechanical action of the mind, and it will be advanced in a direct ratio to the nearness it approaches cause back here.
If we get the cause, why, the mind does all this and when it acts like this, then we will have a lower common denominator in the field of application. There are lots of lower common denominators right now. Low common denominators. But there is maybe a low common denominator in the field of application, so that we suddenly say, “Well, now . . .” and all of a sudden, we have a new more basic cause. The second we have that basic cause, I imagine there’s—you see, I think about a cat and there’s a cat.
I could have pulled that off better by saying you can create any kind of an idea. For instance, I could tell you that there is a cat underneath that table and you’d look, and you’d see the cat, and you’d get quite a shock.
Now, I don’t know how many of you have had an opportunity of practicing with straight line memory. But know this, that up to the present time you have a lot of tools—you are probably in the same situation as a carpenter there who has his—well, he is not incompetent but when we give this boy a big toolbox, and the tools are nice, bright and shiny, and he takes a look at them and he says, “I know that I can build a house with this.” Five days later he has only managed to hurt his thumb and split a board.
Now, it’s not quite that bad, you understand. But here you have these tools and you have got to learn how to use them in coordination. For instance, we don’t take just one tool and use it. As ones faculties increase, he learns to use several tools instinctively—which one belongs next.
We are talking about this flash answer of “no.” Right now, we are talking about “no, no, no.” What is the tool that you are using there? All of a sudden, you want to use some repeater technique on some word “no” and find out where this thing comes from. So you go from holder, bouncer, denyer. You suddenly shift over, and you are onto repeater technique. Actually, anytime you get a holder, bouncer or denyer, you shift over to repeater technique.
Now, our talk of Educational Dianetics, there’s an axiom in there of, a datum is just as valid as it is related to other data. So we get an isolated datum. This is a datum. Now, what is it? Actually, it is just as valuable as it exists in relationship to something else.
Somebody comes in, wheels in a womafchugger and everybody looks and says, “What is it?” And the fellow says, “It’s a womafchugger.” And it’s a datum. “What do you do with it?” And the fellows says, “Well, it runs along and collects splinters out of the floor.” And you say, “Oh, yes. Well, isn’t that interesting!” There’s a problem then. The second that one can take this datum and relate it to his own reality, associate it with his own reality, then it becomes a valid datum. Well, the second we found the womafchugger related to splinters, okay. It doesn’t have to relate to splinters. It can relate to splinters very poorly. It doesn’t have to work at all, but this is at least an intention. Furthermore, you take an imaginary object—and we can start describing imaginary objects of various kinds—and until you call them “imaginary,” that’s fine. But nobody yet ever hung an imaginary idea here and not anything there, unless it was related to the world of reality. In other words, even imagination depends on the reality of—oh, maybe the world of reality depends on imagination. But here’s an imaginary thing. Try to think of something that doesn’t have any relationship to the world of reality. Try to think up something that can’t be sensed, measured or experienced. A womafchugger, yes. But he thinks that up in a direct relationship that can’t be sensed, measured and experienced, because it is a postulate. You see, we have to relate things on this basis. This is something that can’t be measured, experienced or sensed. So it’s in reverse, and it’s still a related thing. It’s a horrible thing but the thing is coming around to the same thing.
Now, you have these tools and you want to get the relationship— how important these tools are. Right now, at the present time, there are some people here who think that when a person gets into a hot area of an engram, or he gets into something with some tension on it, he will wriggle his toes. That’s an important datum, because when he bounces he stops wriggling his toes. And then you have him repeat the bouncer and he repeats it a few times. When his toes start wriggling again he’s in the engram. So we don’t have to depend upon his saying so. We just look at his toes. Now, we are trying to get into the vicinity of a grief discharge and “Are you in the vicinity of your grandmother’s lamentable demise?” And he says, “Oh, yes, sure.” And we look at him carefully and we find no slightest sign of it, because a sign of it would be big sighs. “I was perfectly happy about her death. I didn’t like her anyway.” Sighing. It’s grief trying to get loose.
I guess the mechanics of the body get mixed up, try to oxygenate when actually they should be crying or something. There’s a definite mix-up. So you have got a heaving chest, there is a grief discharge loose in the vicinity of it. The wiggling toes—there’s a somatic. Even if he has a somatic shut-off, he will wiggle his toes. If you get a person who is way too far out of valence, something like that, sometimes he won’t wiggle his toes but each time you will know something is wrong. There’s agitation—in other words, about engrams, you have to get into the center of agitation. Furthermore, the person who lies on his back all the way through the prenatal area, you know probably that this person is in a valence. If he rolls on his side and curls up a little bit, you know he is in his own valence. That’s right. Sometimes he can’t keep his knees pulled down. They sort of come up and the next thing you know, they’re heavy so he topples them over on his side. Now, maybe you think that happens because his spine’s tired. You see, that’s a datum. It’s related to knowing whether or not the person is in a prenatal area. Now, a person can be out of his own valence and running in the prenatal engram and still get some charge out of the case.
Now, the firm target is to get out the engram, and sometimes you have to run these things out of valence. You have to run quite a bit of the bank out of valence in order to bring it into a view where a person can run the somatics that belong to those engrams. So you see, right here, we have two of them. When do you use straight line memory? What happens when you start to tune up perceptics and find they’re in good shape? Now, do you go to the basic area immediately? No, going to the basic area is terribly important, but it is not as important at the beginning of the case like getting a grief discharge, so you are getting, now, relative importances.
I have seen chaps board a ship and after ninety days of hard, arduous study being taught to—they come aboard and say, “Well, there’s the logbooks, engine room telegraph, wheel and the compass and the mats on the floor Oh, yes. Look at these mats on the floor. Let me see. Let’s find out what’s important around this bridge now. These mats are very important. Let’s see, what kind of mats are they? Where have they been made? I remember, though, they told us about mats in school. Yes, they said mats were to keep from getting flat-footed while standing on the bridge. They were also there to absorb bob shock on the vessel.” I would hate to go down and read up on mats and then take over my duties as navigator. Now, the person had data. All uncoordinated, just messed up royally.
We have tried to keep that from happening, but knowing and evaluating a single datum in its relationship on the importance of a function or an operation—what would you say is the most important thing on a battleship, for instance? That’s right. It’s the guns. And yet guys will go aboard and look over these things and so forth, and look at the Spanish lace on the captain’s bar. Now, that’s about the score. A battleship is a floating mobile gun platform. That happens to be its definition. The only thing important about this battleship is whether or not it can fire those guns, for it’s supposedly to fire from. So we get a sort of coordinated unit, but we get relative importance. Therefore, guns are important. Mobility is important. Now, the hold’s important, but the soda fountain is important? Well, down about the importance of, order of, about one hundred eighty-five, because it has some slight morale factor. To the British it has no morale factor; they tore out soda fountains.
There is judgment in this sort of thing. Right now at this stage of the course—what this dissertation is all about—you will probably see an awful lot of things and many of them may seem of monotone importance. This is just as important as that. I have tried to stress up and punch up those things which are terrifically important, to give you some yardstick to measure them.
I have punched the idea of reducing every engram you contact; that’s important. And if you don’t do it, you are inviting the precipitation of a psychotic break. You are inviting the precipitation of a chronic somatic or a psychosomatic illness. You, in short, can do several things there that are quite harmful.
Therefore, these things I have punched up. Reduce everything. Don’t invalidate the data of your preclear. Above all else, those few things stand up.
Next thing, it is better to enter a case than leave it unentered. That would seem odd, that that one would come in there but it is possible for a person—through the failure of that to cost a persons life or something of that sort. The guy’s come down to see you, he has heard all about Dianetics, he’s going to possibly kill himself. Worried about Dianetics. He comes in and sees you as an auditor. And you say, “Well, this case is too hot to handle. Well, I will tell you what to do. Go home, change your environment, change your life a little bit.” You don’t want to touch this case. This is too hot. So he goes home and kills himself. So you as an auditor have just killed that man. I am not kidding about that. That’s a brutal one. So an auditor must be courageous. He must ride the dictate. He should safeguard by being closely in alliance with a doctor or psychiatrist if the case looks like it might blow. But he can cause more harm by backing off from this case or pat-a-caking with his case or treating it lightly than he can by charging into the case and opening it wide open.
Male voice: Even with the shock case we are supposed to stay away from?
Electric shock cases are better entered than left unentered. No matter how. This applies to any case. This applies to the suicide. This applies to the paranoiac. This applies to any of them. If you can enter this case, for God’s sake, do so and if you do so, for God’s sake, carry on through with it.
You see, if you enter a case with a severe reservation about this case, “This case is dangerous, it might blow up in my hands, it might precipitate a psychosis with this fellow, it might do that.” You go into the case with a mild approach when you ought to go home whoom! He will stay now, he will stay stable. Pick up those grief charges. Running the engrams, he will stay stable but don’t go into that. Don’t say, “Those charges look awfully hot. Look, he’s starting to cry. I will bring him up to present time. This case is too hot.” I have seen an auditor do this when the preclear about four hours later was found walking down the railroad track waiting for a train to hit him. So its important, isn’t it?
Male voice: What do you do when people don’t want to be audited?
That’s fine. The guy, he says he doesn’t want to be audited. It all depends on who wants him to be audited, I wouldn’t on my own determinism go out and get somebody by the collar and say, “You are going to be audited now.” Male voice: Oh, I am thinking of a person who is so aberrated in my own family that . . .
Well, they can read, so they are not in very bad shape. They can read and apparently they understand sentences, understand that the words are English, Male voice: Oh, yes, as a matter of fact, really intelligent.
A person has been mishandled in some degree with regard to Dianetics, Some person tried to sell him Dianetics, If such a case, the best thing to do is drop into their vicinity people who are working in Dianetics and benefiting from it. And then don’t invite them anymore. Say, “You are not interested in this anymore.” There is a state which assists in this regard. They call it in hypnosis a hypnagogic state. What you do is to take a subject who doesn’t want to be hypnotized and you hypnotize the subject in front of him. And this renders the observing subject hypnagogic. In other words, you have set up a memory pattern for him and that’s all it means. This one works on the same way as a little boy on a bicycle. You want the little boy to ride the bicycle and you insist he ride the bicycle, “No, no, no,” The next step is to get Tommy Jones who lives next door. You say, “Would you like to ride the bicycle?” He says, “Sure,” So the little boy says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah! I want to ride the bicycle,” That’s a problem, by the way, in accessibility, Marks the boy.
We were talking about the person in his own valence in a prenatal area, generally, can curl up.
Male voice: Is that true of the conception area?
Conception? No, conception’s out straight. Conception’s like this. You will actually see a person sometimes sprawl on the couch going to conception, starting to wiggling his feet like this. You occasionally notice his feet twitch sideways. Of course, he has bones and joints in the wrong places so he can’t bend sideways. But he will try. (Recording ends abruptly)