To Auditors About Diagnosis (500621)
Date: 21 June 1950
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
TO AUDITORS ABOUT DIAGNOSIS Let’s take up what you’ve been up to just now. Let me ask you a question. Do you really care whether he gives you an answer or not, or an incident or not? 1st Co-auditor: Well, I felt pretty lousy today.
Yeah, but did you really care whether he gave you any material or not? 1st Co-auditor: I guess you re right You see what I mean? 1st Co-auditor: Mm-hm, that’s the way it felt.
All right. One of the first things an auditor has to do is to try to connect up—and this applies in both cases here—trying to establish an interested affinity with the preclear. He must feel—actually feel and demonstrate an interest in the person. Now, if he demonstrates an interest in the person, you’re going to get a type of reaction and a type of attack which is entirely different. Now, the preclear feels then that somebody is interested in him. He feels somebody is really interested in him.
Now, I am not finding fault here. 1st Co-auditor: Oh, I mean that’s a valid criticism.
Yeah, I’m not giving you criticism. I never criticize anybody. I’m trying to give you a hand. It’s a lot different. 1st Co-auditor: I mean constructive. That’s what I had in mind.
Well, I never do any criticism, just instruction.
Now, here’s the point. The establishment of a personal interest with the preclear throws the analyzer of the auditor into full automatic. I don’t know how full, but at least into automatic computation. He’s going to try. [to 2nd Co-auditor] Now, your approach there demonstrates a lack of practice more than anything else. You still have not digested the material to a point where it does rise automatically Is this not true, you have to think, “What do I do now,” and “I wonder what would be best to do next”? 2nd Co-auditor: In this instance tonight, yes, but in other instances, no.
In other words, you were doing a different kind of auditing tonight? 2nd Co-auditor: Yes.
Well, I sensed the fact that you were nervous, and also that you were a bit to the side of following the book.
Now, one can’t audit by rote. Don’t think there will ever be a machine built which will be the automatic auditor. Your approach to the case simply did this: it lacked a plan of attack.
Completely lacked a plan of attack, rather than having looked it over. It might be disastrous to go into a case—which was why I threw you the phrase, “I can’t see a thing without my glasses”—might be disastrous to go into a case. This violates, number one, don’t go after a specific aberration or a specific psychosomatic. If a person in Dianetic therapy is manifesting a bad somatic chronically, you go after it. Not because you want to make him more comfortable but because it probably contains the resolution of the case, 2nd Co-auditor: I see your point. So what you’re trying to do is bring about an erasure of all the engrams in the case when you’re going for Clear, and certainly a release of affect in all the moments of painful emotion in the case, if you’re trying to produce a release. So when you go in for a specific thing on repeater technique you can create a bad situation whereby the auditor is feeding random phrases. Now, you don’t know but what that phrase doesn’t occur at birth. So he’ll repeat it all right, and the next thing you know the fellow may be in the middle of birth; only birth isn’t ready to be lifted.
Anything can happen in birth. Now, I just point this out. It’s actually dangerous to use random repeater technique on a spotted aberration, I wondered if you’d fall for it, I’m sorry I baited a trap for you, 2nd Co-auditor: You know, Ron, I had half a mind not to use that phrase.
All right, 2nd Co-auditor: I was going to go after something entirely different.
You permitted yourself to be overpersuaded by authority, 2nd Co-auditor: Oh yes, Ron, that’s exactly the truth.
That’s right, you’re looking at me as an authority on the matter.
All right, I showed you a phrase, 2nd Co-auditor: Good.
Now, I hope that demonstrates something quite adequately to you, that when a person is attacking a case, only he knows what his evaluation of the case is. 2nd Co-auditor: Exactly. That I just learned.
All right. [gap] 2nd Co-auditor: I did it last night, Ron. Last night, auditing my wife, we started off on something and she blew right up in my face. By “blew up” I mean she quit and quit cold.
Why? 2nd Co-auditor: I knew why, there was an engram there. She didn’t want to go there, she was blocking me. She was blocking herself, that is. And yet you got an emotional charge off of her. 2nd Co-auditor: I did. I just did this. I just sat back and I let her chew her head off a while, for about ten, fifteen minutes.
Mm-hm. 2nd Co-auditor: Okay. Then I said, “Now, look hon, now, look,” I didn’t use the word “hon” because wed established a pact not to use “hon” when were auditing. I said, “Now, look,” and I went in and I told her, “I’m going to quit. Get somebody else.” In a nice way, just the way I’m talking now. And she was sitting on the sofa. All of a sudden—we went a little more and so on—there was a block there. And after we got through that, in a nice way I said, “Now, I’m going to quit. Get another auditor. You re just going to bounce up and come up to present time without me, just like that.” And so she smiled, she put her head right back on the pillow and she went back to work.
Uh-huh. And you got an emotional charge off. 2nd Co-auditor: Damn right.
Okay. 2nd Co-auditor: I followed my plan. I had my plan prepared—what to do.
That’s correct. You have to play any case more or less by ear, which is to say, you have to watch it as it comes. But one should have some sort of an idea of what he’s doing all the time, and he should keep planning ahead continually as he runs it.
Now, in an effort to get an engram, painful emotion or otherwise, an auditor will have some idea of what he’s going after before he goes after it. He has to do some diagnosis of the patient. So I point that out to you. You were doing it but let me assure you, don’t be overpersuaded by anyone, me or a preclear or some other auditor. When you have an idea of how you will want to attack the case, well, go ahead and do it.
Now, feeding of repeater technique, as I said, can be dangerous. And obviously the case doesn’t have any decent recall at the moment that you had him there. He was not recalling well Therefore the first thing you could have attacked in it was recall He’s stuck on the track someplace. Now, you were using two or three mechanisms; you didn’t seem to be used to them yet.
Now, for instance, take the technique of “hospital, doctor’s office” and so forth. You wanted a yes or no and yet you let him give you an associative word. Now, at that moment he went out of hand. Because you were letting him do something that you didn’t want him to do. Do you follow me? You said, “Now, I want a yes or no answer, flash answer on each of the following.” You start in and you say “hospital” and he says something else and you say “doctor’s office” and he says something like “sickness” or something. And no, you wanted a yes or no answer. Do you follow me? 2nd Co-auditor: Yeah. Yeah.
Now, Ed’s stuck someplace on the track. We know that. 2nd Co-auditor: Mm-hm.
Now, in your case, when you were developing Ed—when you were developing his recall you were using a couple of words which are fatally restimulative. “You can hear him, you’re right there,” you said. Now, you returned him back to the moment of stimulus, which was what you were working on. High stimuli in that moment. All right, that’s fine, but you asked him, “What are you hearing now?” You weren’t persuading him to hear something. “Now, what is he saying?” Now he’s returned to a moment—he’s not being questioned or examined—you’ve returned him to a moment that he found evidently stimulating. Okay, it’s up to you to pitch your interest in the scene with his.
In other words, this is just some more of this simpatico arrangement. You aren’t interested in examining him or turning on his recalls at this moment, because that is the computation which is standing in the road of his recalling. What you’re trying to do is to turn them on. Well, the best way to do that is to ask whether or not the phrase is so-and-so or something of the sort. Not bluntly and disinterestedly, “What’s he’s saying?” It would be more or less on the order of, “Well, come on now, let’s see what it is” or something of the sort. By the way, it’s bad technique to use “come on now.” But what I’m getting at is, “All right, now there you are, sitting there. Now we know who’s on your right . . .” and you keep reassuring him he’s right about this sort of thing.
And, “Okay, now it’s going on so-and-so.” And, “All right, let’s pick up the point there where there’s a lot of laughter.” In other words, you’re coaxing a person into it; you’re not examining him for recall. The first thing you know, he will become so absorbed in what’s happening that he will forget for the moment that he is trying to turn on his recalls. And that’s what you want. You have cut down at that moment his awareness. Do you follow me? 2nd Co-auditor: Mm-hm. Yeah.
You’ve cut down his awareness of the general situation, because he wasn’t aware at that time. So when you add awareness into a situation at that time, you’re not going to get perfect recall. Now, he’s still very much aware of the fact that he is in reverie and is in therapy. And that is not part of the computation as he was sitting there. So from there—you got a good, solid return on that. Now, you weren’t observing his physical manifestation. You knew he was returned because there was a slight agitation of the toes. He was returned to that incident but nevertheless there was a slight agitation. All right, that’s fine. Now, if you had persuaded him into some other little incident there, if you’d taken him back a few more days, if you’d kept on persuading him, the next thing he would have actually had recall and sonic. [gap] In short, the amount of trouble which you care to put in on a case is very definitely an index of how much result you’re going to get. Now, we are dealing here with a quantity which is an unknown quantity. The quantity of affinity. It’s unknown. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be used because we can observe some of its manifestations. One of those manifestations is this incredible fact that one human being can sit down and be interested enough in another human being who is lying down, and because the first human being is there and asking the second human being to do things, they are then done, you see? [gap] In Dianetics we use practically every possible method of approach. We have the mechanical facts pretty well down. We can use them. Dianetics is workable. You can keep at it long enough, even rather disinterestedly, you’ll still produce results of some character. But it is the extra ingredient which very often resolves the case more rapidly. That extra ingredient can be interest An enforcement of affinity, [gap] Well, altitude is a word which is used quite a bit in Dianetics. It means, precisely, the relative dynamic. The relative dynamics of one person and another person. The personal force, let us say. Now, a person can actually build up altitude on a computational basis by knowing more about his subject than another person. You go into a doctor’s office, for instance, and you get in there and the doctor is the one who is supposed to know all about it. So at that moment, as far as your physique is concerned, he is the one who has altitude.
Now, when it comes to husband and wife auditing each other and the husband, saying that his wife doesn’t have enough altitude to audit him, he is probably working on a reactive computation, I’ve got to wear the pants in my family” and so forth. He’s got to be the boss.
Altitude would have little to do actually in such a case because that is reactive level. Now, it would require on her part a very definite effort to produce altitude in Dianetics. She could demonstrate her competence to him, and the first thing you know, would wind up with enough altitude even to overcome this “she has no altitude” engram of his. 2nd Co-auditor: He won’t let her. He won’t permit her to audit him. And yet I could do it tonight. I could do it tonight by a transfer of altitude. As far as he is concerned . . . Or you could do it. You could go around—a big buzz around here about what a terrific auditor she is, and how good she was working on so-and-so, and so on. And you keep building up the idea in his mind that she’s a terrifically good auditor. And although he might fight it or think that was a terrible thing, then he would still have to accept her auditing. Do you follow me? 2nd Co-auditor: Yes.
Now, for some reason or other, although telepathy itself may exist or may not exist, at least there is enough manifestation from one auditor to another, there’s enough manifestation passes between auditor and pre-clear to make it necessary for the auditor to express interest and to withhold incredulity—the manifestation of incredulity toward the preclear. 2nd Co-auditor: Manifest—of what?
Well, he’s sort of, without saying so, he’s trying to label the pre-clear’s data as garbage. He’s incredulous. He doesn’t believe this incident happened and so on. And in such a way it withdraws the affinity.
The whole equation here is simply that the auditor with one analytical mind on and the preclear with one analytical mind slightly attenuated whenever it strikes the engrams, add up to more than enough force to overcome the power of the engram.
Now, the second the auditor reduces in any way his assist by being incredulous, by being unsympathetic . . . I don’t mean to say that one has to do a lot of hand patting on it or be careful not to let the preclear get in trouble. But he is interested in the case, he’s interested in the man’s engrams, he’s interested then in attacking them himself. Cases resolve much faster. By being utterly disinterested you could interrupt the whole case.
Here we have an example of it on two sides tonight. One, you were jarred out of the calmness of your ways by having had a curve thrown at you. Well, don’t ever let that happen, 2nd Co-auditor: All right, sir I won’t.
Now, in your case you feel restimulated—something of the sort. And also because of my presence you let the thing go off into a line. 1st Co-auditor: I was just working automatically I didn’t know—I had complete analyzer shutdown. I just wasn’t thinking All right. Have I ever jumped on you? [gap] You have trouble when you’re observed when you’re talking? 1st Co-auditor: When I’m observed . . . [gap] When you have to do something and talk, what happens? 1st Co-auditor: I seem to just go to pieces, I mean, you know, all the somatics turn on—headache.
All the somatics turn on, headache, when you have to talk or be observed. 1st Co-auditor: I mean here. No, it’s not talking Observed doing what? What would your mother have been worried about? 1st Co-auditor: Well, she’d die if she had to get up and be observed or talk to a group or do anything of that nature.
In other words, she would have been very self-conscious about it. 1st Co-auditor: Extremely so.
All right, what would she say about it? 1st Co-auditor: Well, she d just say, “I can’t do it.” Can’t do it. Can’t do what? 1st Co-auditor: “I can’t . . .” she couldn’t address a group or do anything of that kind.
What would she say, “I can’t do” what? (pause) Something is just about to break, what is it? What is the something that’s just about to break? You know what the something is that’s just about to break, now go on, tell me. Tell me; you can remember this. Mother says, “I can’t do” what? (pause) Go on, she says, “I can’t do” what? Well, tell me. You can remember what your mother can’t do. 1st Co-auditor: Can’t talk in public or can’t. . .
Now, you know exactly what it is your mother can’t do. 1st Co-auditor: She can’t face things.
Can’t face who? 1st Co-auditor: Her mother Oh, come on, what can’t your mother face? (pause) You know what it is. Remember; just remember. Remember what your mother can’t face. You’ve heard her yak about it often enough. 1st Co-auditor: The word “hit” comes. Face . . .
What can’t your mother do? Has nothing to do with “face,” probably. Your mother can’t do what? (pause) What can’t your mother do? [gap] In both of your cases we have had, evidently, insufficient diagnosis. Completely insufficient diagnosis as far as we’re concerned. Yes. And the portion of the diagnosis which you gentlemen are missing has to do with validating your own abilities to remember. Now, there’s a method of doing this. Just start a person remembering and you will start to pick up recollection on the standard bank circuits. And then a person will find out after a while that there was a yesterday. He can remember a yesterday.
Now you keep validating this, and his case is he doubts everything. All right, he’s doubting his own existence to some degree. Well, there have been a couple of deaths of people rather close to you, people who are intimately associated with you but this isn’t quite good enough to—even that, as serious as that is—isn’t good enough to invalidate it. Now, who used to tell you you were wrong? Which of your parents used to do this? Which of your parents used to . . . ? 3rd Co-auditor: (mutter) Parents had lots of fights, all right. Now, what is the justification that you generally employ? What do you generally say?
Supposing I said to you suddenly, “You’re wrong.” What would you say? 3rd Co-auditor: “Well, here, let’s look at it” I always want to have time to go over the whole operation. I don’t want to have people jump to conclusions. “Let’s view it from all angles.” Go on. Is that what you’d say? 3rd Co-auditor: No, I guess not. [to 4th Co-auditor] What would he say? 3rd Co-auditor: “It was somebody else’s fault” or . . . 4th Co-auditor: We’d tell him something is different from what he says, right away, “I bet you.” 3rd Co-auditor: “I bet you money” has been a phrase which I think has only been coming out lately but it’s been thrown up at me several times. “I’ll bet you I’m right,” “I’ll bet you money.” All right, which parent insisted on being right? 3rd Co-auditor: Mama.
She wanted to be right. 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah. Everything it seemed Papa ever did was wrong.
Yeah, but who doubted her? 3rd Co-auditor: She must have doubted herself.
Yeah, but wait a minute, you just said something else here, you said everything Papa did was wrong. How did she go about doubting him? 3rd Co-auditor: Well, it all stemmed from one sort of silly thing, I think, and that was his drinking. Simply because he drank, he was no good.
Yeah, but do you recall an incident of him saying that he is wrong about what he remembers or what he thinks or about the situation that has occurred? Did they do a lot of argumentation like that? 3rd Co-auditor: They had lots of arguments. Lots. By the thousands. “What I-yes, “What I should have done Yeah? 3rd Co-auditor: Yes. A lot of that sort of argument. Many of these arguments woke me right out of bed, in fact. My brother and myself, wed get up out of bed and stop them.
From doing what? 3rd Co-auditor: From fighting, arguing.
Who was wrong? 3rd Co-auditor: I tend to blame Mom a lot now.
You remembering this? 3rd Co-auditor: No, I sided with her up until I was an adult. I always used to think she was right. But only in recent years have I begun to feel that . . .
All right, who told you personally that you were wrong? Who used to tell you you were wrong? 3rd Co-auditor: Mama.
You were wrong about what? 3rd Co-auditor: I don’t recall “wrong’ so much as I recall, “Were not good enough—you re not good enough.” All right but how about this computation, “It’s just your imagination; it’s all in your mind; that was not what happened”? How about that type of computation, “That was not what happened”? 3rd Co-auditor: About this wrong business? Who was wrong?
No, I mean an argument. Presuppose an argument. 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah, yeah. And somebody starts justifying and the other one says what? 3rd Co-auditor: “That didn’t happen,” or “It was this way.” The reversal of circumstance, a definite opinion as to what circumstances existed around the happening Oh, uh-huh. So? 3rd Co-auditor: So. So how does that hook into your case? 3rd Co-auditor: I change the circumstances.
Yes. 3rd Co-auditor: Justify all my actions.
What does this do to your recalls? 4th Co-auditor: Can’t believe them anymore. You can’t believe them, because that isn’t the way you want them to be.
Well, that’s up to him, what it does to his recalls. Don’t evaluate it. It either did or it didn’t.
Do you see a point there? 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah.
How do you feel about it? 3rd Co-auditor: Well, damn it, I still can’t release that. If it was looked at from my point of view, I was right.
Well, wait a minute. 3rd Co-auditor: But the circumstances aren’t according to my point of view. Is that what you re driving at?
No, what I’m driving at is that somebody there was telling somebody else the circumstances were different. “That was not what happened, something else happened.” 3rd Co-auditor: Uh-huh.
All right, now . . . 3rd Co-auditor: In an argument or . . . ?
Yeah, in an argument. 3rd Co-auditor: It seems lucid.
Yeah, all right, and you get awakened and what happens? Somebody is telling somebody else that was not what happened. What does this do to the—invalidating somebody’s recalls? 3rd Co-auditor: Well, it would invalidate mine, I’m sure. If it were an engram, you mean.
Yeah. 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah, make them kind of shaky—make the recall shaky.
All right, how about you? How about you then? How do you feel at the present moment, now, concerning that? Do you remember the tirade being turned on you? 3rd Co-auditor: No, I don’t. No, always between Mom and Pop.
Always between Mom and Pop. 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah.
Was it ever turned on you? 3rd Co-auditor: Probably was.
Can you remember it? 3rd Co-auditor: No. And why wouldn’t you be able to hook up with it? 3rd Co-auditor: Because I don’t want to for some reason.
No. “That wasn’t the way it happened.” What are we looking for? 3rd Co-auditor: The engram that says . . .
No, we’re just looking for a conscious memory recall right now and we’re looking for a recall of somebody saying to you, “That wasn’t the way it happened/’ 3rd Co-auditor: In recall?
Do you follow me? “That wasn’t the way it happened.” 3rd Co-auditor: No, as a matter of fact I haven t finished the book yet. I’m still struggling through it Well now, I’m not talking about the book, this isn’t in the book. This isn’t in the book 3rd Co-auditor: I got lost in a little quirk there somewhere.
All right now, I’m just trying to demonstrate to you and I’m not trying to return you back down the track right now and look for an engram. All I want you to do is just consciously recall, just remember, just plain remember. We’ve already gone over ground of somebody fighting with somebody and saying, “That wasn’t the way it happened” and “That wasn’t the way it was and . . .” Do you remember such fights? 3rd Co-auditor: I can immediately strike into my mind an Italian phrase, “Lieta arnica, lieta arnica, like I said—like I said, it wasn’t like this, it was like this.” My mother saying it sitting at the table with her hands folded right there . . .
All right.
That’s in conscious recall. Okay. Now we’ve discovered an incident. What would this do to a guy’s ability to attach reality to yesterday? You must have faith in your own recalls, you know. 3rd Co-auditor: That I know, and that’s my principal hurdle I know about.
Well, all right, but who put the hurdle there? 3rd Co-auditor: I know it’s me but you’ve got to trick me out of it somehow.
Was it you? That’s what I’m trying to drive home. Did you put the hurdle there? 3rd Co-auditor: No. It wasn’t me. No.
Well, who did? 3rd Co-auditor: My mother or father.
What did your mother say at the table? 3rd Co-auditor: “It wasn’t like this, it was like this.” Okay, Did your father ever argue that way? 3rd Co-auditor: I have no recollection of my father arguing much. As usual he took the back seat in these affairs.
All right. But tell me this now: Where would you get it—a doubting whether or not it was like this or like that? 3rd Co-auditor: I’d get it in an engram from them.
From who? 3rd Co-auditor: From Mom, I think.
Do you know? 3rd Co-auditor: No, I don’t.
Why don’t you know? 3rd Co-auditor: I can’t remember. And what can’t you remember? (pause) That it wasn’t like this, it was like that? 3rd Co-auditor: Mm-hm. I remember. Yeah, I remember that expression . . .
All right, you remember the expression. 3rd Co-auditor: . . . coming up a multitude of times.
Well, you’re taking a refuge here in an engram which you suppose to exist but you aren’t contacting. But you’ve contacted the whole chain of engrams just by remembering Mama. 3rd Co-auditor: Mm-hm.
There’s the top lock. 3rd Co-auditor: That’s a lock. But you’ve remembered the lock, haven’t you? 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah, mm-hm.
Had you recalled this before? 3rd Co-auditor: No.
All right, you’ve scared the lock into view. Now therefore the chain’s in view. 3rd Co-auditor: Mm-hm. And just by the recognition of that lock how does that make you feel about your own recalls? 3rd Co-auditor: Well, if it’s as you say it is . . .
I’m not trying to evaluate anything for you. 3rd Co-auditor: No, that’s it—I’m waiting to see.
Waiting to see? 3rd Co-auditor: I personally feel that that’s a link there, yes, somewhere on the chain.
Who else used to invalidate your recalls? Did your brother ever turn this stuff on you? 3rd Co-auditor: No, not as far as arguing was concerned.
Any sisters? 3rd Co-auditor: No, just my brother and myself.
Just your brother and yourself. What relative did? (pause) Your mother’s parents? 3rd Co-auditor: I immediately think of a first cousin. I mean this stuff is just—I don’t know, you know, it’s popping into my mind but . . .
All right, the first cousin, what about the first cousin? 3rd Co-auditor: He used to come to our home summers and I always had a self-inferiority feeling around him.
What did he used to tell you? 3rd Co-auditor: Well, he was a leader. When he wanted to play something we played his way, “Let’s do this, let’s do that.” What if you’d said, “No, let’s not do this, or do that”? 3rd Co-auditor: I rarely did because I must have tried it out a few times and it didn’t go my way.
All right, remember the times you were trying it out. 3rd Co-auditor: I recall immediately a counter incident where we did do something that I tried out. And I got the worst of it. Boxing I wanted to try some boxing.
Mm-hm. And so he beat you up. 3rd Co-auditor: He beat me up, yeah.
What did he say when he beat you up? 3rd Co-auditor: He was very nice about it.
He was nice about it. 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah. He said that he had been taught a little bit about it by his dad.
Would he ever say you were wrong? 3rd Co-auditor: In this one incident he swings off into the other—into another individual Yeah, but in another incident would he ever say you were wrong? 3rd Co-auditor: Now I wonder. I don’t know.
All right. Who never knew in your family? 3rd Co-auditor: Oh, Mom. That’s Mom, this “I don’t know.” She didn’t what? 3rd Co-auditor: “I don’t know.” How would she say it? 3rd Co-auditor: “Non so, amica.” [gap] 3rd Co-auditor: . . . weren’t good enough for certain situations, or. . .
Well, your mom would say, “I don’t know.” 3rd Co-auditor: “I don’t know.” What’s Italian for that again? 3rd Co-auditor: Non so, amica.
How did she look when she used to say it? 3rd Co-auditor: Sad and depressed.
Depressed. 3rd Co-auditor: Everything in a negative sense. It was all negative. Negation of all I’ve done. And I’ve been fighting that in recent years. I wanted to try a business venture and attempted it and well, her attitude . . .
You’ve been fighting her; who else has fought her? 3rd Co-auditor: Her attitude. Pop fought her a hell of a lot of course, must have. I don’t know if he fought that, but he fought her. He must have fought that.
Well, you say you’d fight it? 3rd Co-auditor: Recently, yes.
Why do you have to have it? 3rd Co-auditor: Why do I have to have it?
Uh-huh. 3rd Co-auditor: I have to have my own way, I want my own way. I’m a man and I don’t want to be toddling along with Mama.
All right. Do you know what happened to you? 3rd Co-auditor: No.
You say that you don’t want to be traveling along with Mama. 3rd Co-auditor: No, but it’s been recently—ever since I went away in the—during the war and came back into that prewar situation, either assent or the other four of the five ways of meeting something. I attempted to attack and there’s been constant eruptions between the two of us ever since; the last three or four years.
What valence did you go into after the war? 3rd Co-auditor: Pop’s. I know I side with him in all her—whenever she’s blown up since the war I’ve always—conversely to what I had done previously What happened to you that made you shift valence? (pause) Yeah, something happened to you in the war. What? 3rd Co-auditor: Well, we went through action of course, and . . .
What happened to you in action? 3rd Co-auditor: Nothing serious, I don’t think.
You ever get shot up? 3rd Co-auditor: Not shot up, but on a ship that was sunk and another one that was mined and I was down below in the engine room, scared to hell.
You picked these up? 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah. I’ve been through this before. 4th Co-auditor: With no emotion.
Only with no emotion. You’ve picked these up about the same way that a magnet would draw a block of wood. 4th Co-auditor: We went right through them.
Like a shot, no doubt. 3rd Co-auditor: I described them in complete detail as I recall and went through them very matter-of-fact. 4th Co-auditor: There was a point in one incident where he tended to become emotional but the more we ran it, the less emotional he became. 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah, that’s right.
Who had to do things alone? 3rd Co-auditor: Frank. As far as school was concerned, Mom used to say, “Poor Frank.” He would always have to—for instance, she was always—when we were learning to read, well, Frank had to do it alone. Whereas I, being younger, had his knowledge to lean on and she’d comment that I was lucky because he could already read and he could teach me to read. Whereas he had to do it alone, without anybody. He had to do it alone.
How much younger are you? 3rd Co-auditor: Two years. Than my brother?
Mm-hm. 3rd Co-auditor: Two years.
He was killed in the war? 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah.
Where was he killed? 3rd Co-auditor: Oh, off Miami there. Between Miami and Cuba.
Oh yeah? On a what? 3rd Co-auditor: Regular Cuban transport I believe. Manzanilla was the name of the ship. He was going to a shore station for the first time in his life. He had been running the coastal patrol—the Coast Guard, after subs there at the end of the war. And this was his first break, theoretically. It was supposed to have been. He was getting a shore station in Cuba and he was being transported to that shore station when the ship was torpedoed; he was a passenger on that.
When did you get the news? 3rd Co-auditor: Well, shortly after. August 13th, I think it was. I think it happened on August 13th. We got the news on August 14th or 15th, of 42. Torpedoes.
You been through that? 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah.
How many hours you been in therapy? 3rd Co-auditor: Four or five, five or six I guess, total of six, seven, eight. And you tell me that you have synchronized the track and been through all these incidents? 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah.
How many times you been through each incident? 4th Co-auditor: Well, that particular incident I guess we’ve been through two dozen times. 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah, and it gets more mechanical all the time, I mean just repetition—doesn’t jibe. 4th Co-auditor: I mean, he can tell the whole story up until one point when—the rest of the trip home in the car, after he was told, is a blank; and I’ve tried to hammer at that point, and nothing.
All right, but Joe was dead though, wasn’t he? 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah, but he was—“but”—no buts in this. He was born three or four years before me and died. Of course he died a few days after birth.
What would your mother say about, or what would your father say about not crying about him? 3rd Co-auditor: Oh, now you mean this brother, I thought you meant . . .
No. Either one. 3rd Co-auditor: The first one? Named after him. Cried about him, couldn’t have said much because he died a few days after birth.
Not considering it. Who would have consoled her if she’d ever gotten to feeling bad about it? 3rd Co-auditor: The other Joe? Me.
Would you have consoled her? (pause) No, what I mean by this . . . 3rd Co-auditor: My father supposedly would.
Think your father might have? 3rd Co-auditor: Well, he should have been the person to. [to 4th Co-auditor] Well, as far as auditing is concerned you’re working very late on the track with these things. You’re trying to get off painful emotion. If you make a very nice, long, solid effort to return complete recall on his case and if you pick up some of those fights between Mama and Papa very early and you generally ease him around on the track up to a point where he’s got wider and wider recall, make him remember everything that you pick up early by bringing it to present time and telling him to remember it. In other words, keep him validating his own data. The first thing you know you’ll have built back the conscious mind standard bank circuits where they belong. 4th Co-auditor: Will that help the valence situation?
Yes, very definitely. Now, what valence have you been doing this remembering in? 3rd Co-auditor: I couldn’t identify anyone. 4th Co-auditor: No, right now. 3rd Co-auditor: Right now, hm?
All right, shift your valence now. Shift your valence to your mother’s valence. 3rd Co-auditor: Mm-hm.
Shift valence to your mother’s valence. Now remember something about your early youth. 3rd Co-auditor: Something I haven’t mentioned already—I mean I think immediately of an incident that we’ve gone through of stretching a tire, and—two fellows stretching it, I’m in the middle and one of them lets go and the valve comes and pierces my temple. Bleeding all over Mom was there.
How do you feel about that incident? 3rd Co-auditor: Pretty good. Nothing comes to mind though. Nothing much is there, that’s all, after the catastrophe. [to 4th Co-auditor] Did he observe himself during the accident? 3rd Co-auditor: I was in, I think that may fit in with—yes, I saw myself there. 4th Co-auditor: That you were remembering. We weren’t in therapy. Remember that? 3rd Co-auditor: Oh, I wasn’t?
Okay. Now shift to your own valence and remember it. Just be yourself and remember it. 3rd Co-auditor: I can be myself in one part of it and that’s when I was crying after it and looking out the window with this bandage around my head. I see that clearly. I’m in myself there.
Do you see yourself looking out the window? Or do you see the window? 3rd Co-auditor: I kind of fluctuate. That’s been bothering me. In it only for a moment and then I’ll look, see myself again.
Uh-huh. 3rd Co-auditor: In and out, in and out. [to 4th Co-auditor] Well look, you’ve got a good history on this case, but you haven’t done enough on validating recall; you should work on it. He has demonstrated considerable doubtfulness about the past. You picked up two phrases there just a moment ago which you definitely should have down in his book, because those are standard dramatizations. If an aberree does something once they’ll do it again; and if you find them doing something once late you can be certain that they did it early. So Mama did this and those fights occurred all the way through the prenatal bank. And all you want to do is get into one of those fights and start traveling south. You’re going to wind up in prenatals on that fight chain. And you run that fight chain all the way down to a nub, clear down, and you’ll find it clear down in the basic area. Okay? 4th Co-auditor: Sure thing 3rd Co-auditor: Ron, there’s one thing that we’ve . . .
I haven’t said anything about your auditing yet if you want me to. 3rd Co-auditor: No, I—bad shape, I don’t know.
No. You have something which is very good in an auditor. You are sympathetic, you want to get material. 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah. 4th Co-auditor: I don’t feel he makes me go back over things sometimes. I want him to ask me to go over it again; I wait for him to do that and then sometimes I just voluntarily go over it again.
In other words, you’re letting him do auto. 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah, I like to let him run his own course.
Why? 3rd Co-auditor: Because I’m not yet firm in my auditing for one thing.
You’d better get firm, because that’s the first thing that an auditor has to be. He has to develop, just on a necessity level, confidence. He must radiate confidence. He must instill confidence in the preclear. If the preclear is shaky about what he’s doing, the auditor must help him out just by being confident that he knows what he’s doing. And even though you might not feel confident about your own auditing, that is no reason why you should feel unconfident of somebody else in therapy, right? There is no reason why you should not be self-confident as an auditor. 3rd Co-auditor: Well, but it’s all very new to us, Ron, that’s the point, we can’t instill confidence if there’s no confidence.
That’s why I’m sitting here telling you the answers. 3rd Co-auditor: Yeah, I have to see it done, you know? I have to believe it. And possibly a somatic in myself or something would be a factor . . .
Oh, you mean you’re having trouble believing therapy? 3rd Co-auditor: Well, that’s pretty bad, yeah, but I’d say yes. But here we have an equivalent—here’s identification. 3rd Co-auditor: As far as reading it is concerned and analyzing it with the analytical mind I—no, I go along with it wholeheartedly. But you were talking about your inability . . . 3rd Co-auditor: To—yes, accept And now all of a sudden we’re talking about your ability to transmit on the same line? Now we’re talking about your reaction to Dianetics, we’re getting the same computation each time. 3rd Co-auditor: Uh-huh. Yeah. Where does that lead us?
Well, that leads a man as an auditor to radiate self-confidence. You should finish reading the book. It’s quite adventurous . . . 3rd Co-auditor: That I’ll have to do, yes.
Quite adventurous, to . . . 3rd Co-auditor: It’s too important to just breeze through. 4th Co-auditor: Well, it takes a lot longer to read this book than an ordinary book. 3rd Co-auditor: I’m a plodder. No, I’m a plodder even in ordinary novels, Ron. I want to get it thoroughly, I want it but good and I don’t want to make mistakes.
Sure. 3rd Co-auditor: So it may take a long while.
The best way you could make mistakes though, the very best way to make mistakes is to be doubtful. 3rd Co-auditor: Mm-hm. And if one doubts himself and doubts the preclear and doubts what he’s doing enough, he is almost certain to bring a case down in a heap. 4th Co-auditor: [to 3rd Co-auditor] If you do that to me I’ll never forgive you. (laugh) I don’t think you will. Not particularly when I show you what a vital part that self-confidence and validation applies to therapy. Having trouble, little bit of trouble in therapy, not believing in yourself—well, if you don’t believe in the other guy you get the same reaction in him. So you have transplanted a contagion of aberration. Therefore your necessity level should be picked up along the line and by God, you can run it on the “credo ut intellegens” in this case. The good old maxim: “faith before intelligence.” Savvy? And you’ll get out of it. 3rd Co-auditor: It’ll have to be.
Okay? 3rd Co-auditor: Righto. [gap] [to 5th Co-auditor] It so happens that most patients will try to run an auditor if the auditor lets him. And a lot of auditors will sit around and play pat-a-cake with a patient without achieving anything, because the patient rather looks as though the patient is going to get very angry if the patient’s told anything or forced into anything. And if the patient’s sort of daring him to do something about it.
All right, want to get down to your—just auditing. This is not criticism, this is—I just want to bring it up. You’re the best I’ve checked through; you’re the fifth tonight. 5th Co-auditor: It’s called constructive criticism.
It isn’t constructive criticism because it’s not criticism at all. I want to brush you up on it a little bit.
In some cases an auditor has to use a lot of judgment, and in some cases you get, repetition will achieve something. In some cases, such as his, the repetition of bouncers . . . Now, the repetition of bouncers, denyers and holders: those things are indicated. The repetition of other phrases, which are not bouncers, denyers and holders, or misdirectors—the repetition of those, of other phrases than these is not indicated except at the beginning of the engram where you are trying to get the first phrase and get the somatic strip to contact it solidly. Then the repeating of the phrase will pull the patient back into the engram. Further repetition is relatively unnecessary.
Now, you were auditing there with a little more conversation than was absolutely necessary, but you were getting the goods. See what I mean? All auditors, when they are learning their trade here, have a tendency to talk too much. All of them. Except those few who can’t think of anything to say and who just sit there numbly. It is better to talk too much than to say nothing. But you can actually, by talking to a patient, smother his recall. Now, you appear anxious that he touches the incident which gives it some question in his mind that he is. He’s running you.
Here’s one thing. You have yet to get this. When you tell his somatic strip to go to the beginning of the incident and start on through the thing, you can be darn well sure it will. And if you tell him to go to the beginning of the incident and then tell him, “Now, a phrase is going to pop into your mind when I count from one to five: one-two-three-four-five, snap,” and he gives you a phrase, he will generally give you the right phrase, somewhere up near the front of the incident. 5th Co-auditor: Yeah.
Now you count up, he gives you the phrase, you make him repeat that phrase to more or less stabilize him in the incident. Now you start running it along. You can tell at the moment he contacts the actual incident, because there’s a momentary agitation. If that agitation starts and then stops, he has hit a bouncer. If he assumes a certain angle or a certain posture and doesn’t alter much from that posture, you know that he’s hit something along there which is holding him.
Now, you know, you realize all these things. I’m not trying to brush you up on that particularly. But I am showing you that if you could start his recall at the beginning of the incident, then just tell him once and the somatic strip will be there. Then as he starts recounting the thing you can sense the moment he leaves it by watching him.
All right. Now, he said that he couldn’t get it in, couldn’t get it in deep enough to do any good or whatever this thing was. That’s the non-coitus chain. There’s a “leave me alone,” there’s a whole bunch of stuff in there.
Now, if you could have clipped just those phrases, you’d have gotten your work done faster. You’re doing good work. It’s actually—compared to what I’ve seen this evening—very good. Excellent. But if you want to get optimum speed results you clip those phrases, let him roll them, don’t interfere with his rolling them because he’ll go right straight into them. And just say, “Repeat it once again.” Now, you want to wait for him to repeat it before you tell him something more. In other words, make it more of a cooperative effort. You tell him to do something, wait for him to do it before you say something else.
Now, as you roll through from the beginning, as you roll through, then as soon as you get these denyers, so forth deintensified, get that strip back to the beginning, “The somatic strip will go to the beginning of the incident. Now let’s contact the somatic on this thing; now let’s roll it.” Now he starts on through the incident consecutively.
I also noticed this: you were asking him for more information than there was in the engram—more information than there was in the engram. He can’t tell you any more than was in the engram. He can imagine more but he wouldn’t know this. But he would know who was saying these things. But he wouldn’t know, necessarily, what was happening until he’d run the whole engram. And then he probably wouldn’t have been able to tell what was happening clearly and convincingly to himself until he felt the undulating somatic of the coitus through that. 5th Co-auditor: In a case like this, when we first contacted this thing and the going got rough and then I picked up the first bouncer, and I had him repeat this bouncer—then I found that he picked it up and began to run through the engram. He began to pick up phrase after phrase. Now, at that moment I just let him roll without any help at all. Then he got into a situation where he began going over one phrase which was a very unimportant phrase. I remember I was thinking to myself at that particular time something about, “It hurts me, it’s warm. It hurts me, it’s warm.” “Well, all right,” I said, “now, what is the next phrase, please?” And then for about ten minutes by the clock he wouldn’t go anywhere except, “It hurts me, it’s warm.” I asked him for the denyer, see. First I said, “Flash answer, yes or no, denyer?” “N-n-n-no.” And I said, “All right, let’s pick up the denyer. Let’s find it. Let’s find it.” “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, well, I can’t get deep enough into this thing.” And I started all over from the beginning with “I can’t get deep enough into this thing,” figuring that one would lead to the other.
Now, at that moment if you had guessed “I can’t get deep enough into this thing,” that’s the non-coitus chain or it’s an AA chain; it’s one or the other but the other content would demonstrate to you that it was probably non-coitus. “I can’t get deep enough into this thing,” make it reasonable, a reasonable statement to yourself, “can’t get deep enough into this thing to do any good.” 5th Co-auditor: Mm-hm. But which I asked him right here, I said, “Flash answer, yes or no. Sex?” “Yes.” “Flash answer, yes or no. Abortion?” “Yes,” you see. Then I was at a crossroads here. Now where are we, somatic, or . . .
Well, you may be at a crossroads . . . 6th Co-auditor: I got a flash on “hot” there once. 5th Co-auditor: The somatic indicates that it could be a douche.
Now, if there’s a non-coitus chain running back down the line on this, those phrases probably appear earlier although he got a false four on two of those phrases. 5th Co-auditor: A false what?
A false four—he laughed. 5 th Co -auditor: Oh yes, uh-huh.
All right, there was relief there. 6th Co-auditor: Yeah, I got an awful hot stomach there once, on “hot,” something hot. Oh, I started warming all over, my stomach got hot and I felt very uncomfortable.
All right, well . . . 6th Co-auditor: On the word “hot” What I’m trying to bring through here is just this one salient point, that if you keep it on—your self-confidence in this thing is wonderful, that’s 4.0. With anything I’m saying here take that in, because you’re doing swell.
The only thing you can do that would improve your auditing—your computational ability is fine—is make it an interchange between you and the patient. Let him do something before you ask him again. Let him listen. Don’t repeat so much for him to help him, because he’s in there. 6th Co-auditor: I know several times there I was getting to places and I started repeating and I kind of—I felt as though I was reaching for something Well, on asking him to repeat . . . 6th Co-auditor: I was reaching for something All right. What I’m talking about is the echo repeat. 5th Co-auditor: Mm-hm. Yes, of course, yeah.
You could delete that out of your technique and it would cut your volume of conversation about back where it belongs. There’s one principle—you aren’t doing this, but I will remark this in passing—never ask the patient to do two things at once, or ask him to do something else before he has completed the command before that. In other words, let him do one thing at a time. You ask his somatic strip to go somewhere, give it an instant, then you be sure it’s there, you know it’s there. Don’t monkey with trying to insist that it go there once you’ve sent it there. 5th Co-auditor: Yeah. Then ask him for the next thing, ask him for a flash or whatever you want to, to get that first phrase or an actual audio contact and then go on your way. Each time letting the patient carry out everything you’ve told him to do before you give him something new to do. Otherwise he will become confused. If you delete out just that, repeating the phrase you want him to repeat—it isn’t necessary in this case—that device is used on a person like a catatonic. 5th Co-auditor: Yeah.
You can’t get him to repeat it. 5th Co-auditor: Yes. And by your repeating it, you will commonly turn on enough pain for the fellow so that he’s got to do something about it so he repeats it. That’s its actual mechanic. So you just delete that from your technique and your auditing would come about as close to being excellent as I could wish for at this stage of training. Very easily the best auditing I have seen tonight. 5th Co-auditor: One more question, Ron. What do you do in an instance where a patient will pick up, let us say, a series of thoughts or phrases and then refuse to go anywhere when there is in the immediate area no denyer or holder indicated?
You mean he won’t do anything about it? 5th Co-auditor: No, he’ll pick up a phrase and it will get so that it seems he likes this phrase, you know, and he’s going to go over this phrase and go over this phrase. And then you finally let him run along for a while and then you take the role of the auditor and attempt a directional change, you see.
Well, you should never relax the role of the auditor. 5th Co-auditor: Well no, I say, you are looking to see what is happening here when you see it’s not giving out with results, then you go ahead and . . .
Well, there’s one thing that’s wrong. You mean the phrase is not reducing or anything? 5th Co-auditor: The phrase is not reducing the phrase is not taking him anywhere, the . . .
Get the phrase earlier in the bank. 5th Co-auditor: Yeah.
That’s the answer. 5th Co-auditor: So, you say, “Well now . . .” “Now the somatic strip will go to an earlier . . .” 5th Co-auditor: “Let’s go earlier.” That’s right.
The earlier time this phrase appears; repeat it. Go to the earlier time, if it doesn’t release there go earlier; repeat it, go earlier and you’ll finally get it down to the bottom of the bank if you work on it hard. But the phrases that you should follow down to the bottom of the bank are bouncers. And you discover—make it your business to discover a bouncer, a type of bouncer. “Get up, get up, get off of me; you’re too heavy.” All right, this is the standard non-coitus phrase that Mama uses, let’s say. Let’s repeat that. Now, it doesn’t give up here—that one is the one which is keeping you out of the basic area.
Well, the important thing is to get into the basic area. So, selection of bouncers, whenever a bouncer is found in the prenatal area, rub your hands together and start early with it. 5th Co-auditor: Well now, he, on flash questioning, insisted there was no bouncer. And I, from observation . . .
He wouldn’t know. [gap] A good process when you’re looking for a bouncer is to say, “The somatic strip is going to go to the bouncer. The somatic strip is going to go to the bouncer. Now, when I count from one to five, you’re going to give me the first word that will flash into your mind. One-two-three-four-five.” (snap) You’ll quite ordinarily get the bouncer.
Your procedure there of asking him to think of a bouncer, remember a bouncer out of the book, to do any of these things was excellent. There’s nothing wrong with that procedure. What you want is the bouncer. The one thing you didn’t do with this bouncer is ride it south. The somatic strip goes to the earlier time when this occurs in the bank—earlier time. Get him to repeat that. And if you can get on a bouncer on any chain that seems to be a dramatization—and that is a dramatization—if you can get on any part of that chain a bouncer in it . . . That has another one in it, “Leave me alone.” So if you could just get that non-coitus chain down to the bottom, you might be in the basic-basic area. 5th Co-auditor: Well, you see earlier, basic-basic was coming in on flash questions. Because I told him to go—one flash answer indicated that the answer to the problem was to be found in basic-basic. And I said, “All right, let’s go right to basic-basic, let’s go to the earliest moment of pain that you’ve experienced.” Well, this may be basic-basic. Although it didn’t appear to be reacting as fast as basic-basic should. You should give a patient—let me just make this one remark—you should give the patient time to comply with. Now, time moves slowly in the prenatal area and it’s nothing for a basic-basic to run off, “I . . . am . . .so . . . lonely.” Everything goes slowly there. You will find that the older a person gets, evidently the faster the time is. So you get back into that bank, you must allow time then in the prenatal area, a little more time in the prenatal area than you would allow if the person were awake, even on a flash answer.
If you take it a little easier on him, a little slower, you’re going to get better results. Now, you’re getting results, you’re getting excellent results and the only thing I’m trying to say is that you should merely cut down the volume of your conversation. Never feel that the patient is out of your hands, because the patient is not out of your hands. 5th Co-auditor: Surprisingly enough I don’t. Very surprisingly enough. It seems that whenever I work with a patient I have a terrific self-confidence about it.
You have, you exude a good self-confidence and that’s fine. All I’m trying to do is just help you make it better. You’re doing good. 5th Co-auditor: Well, you are helping me very much.
You’re doing good. Okay.