Valences (500620)
Date: 20 June 1950
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
Now, there’s two or three subjects I’d like to take up today. One of them is quite fundamental, quite basic. I want to make sure that everyone here has a good understanding of the theory of valences. This theory was of relatively small importance last year. It so happened, however, that some of the results we were getting were spotty in that we would occasionally go back into the basic area and there we would find sonic. And then coming forward up the line we would be able to achieve an erasure rather rapidly. And sometimes we would go into the basic area and we would not find sonic, but would start to run off the case without sonic, merely with impressions and with no sense of reality about the validity of the information in some patients. The result was that a non-sonic or a dub-in case took an enormously long period of time. Much, much longer than a sonic case. It was a goal then to set up some sort of a system or technique which would reestablish sonic recall. There’s been quite a bit of work on this just recently. One auditor made an observation that when he took people back over pleasurable moments, when that was done, he would have sonic recall on a large number of his patients.
I at that time thought of the early days of Dianetic research when it was of vast interest to ascertain just how much each standard memory bank contained. And every patient who was processed in therapy was given a complete review over his standard memory bank before therapy began. And it always ensued some sort of an argument—I say in a large number of cases there was an argument over the fact the patient was not moving on the track and so forth. The constant persuasion to recall resulted always in an ability to recall. But that was a separate line of research. That was to find out how much he had in his standard memory bank. That procedure was dropped once we had established that a standard memory bank contains everything a person has perceived when he is awake or asleep (but not unconscious); once we had established that, that technique was no longer used. Immediately nonsonic and dub-in cases put in their debut.
There was such a gradual transition that it was not noted that any transition was really taking place. It appeared that one had suddenly encountered a new series of cases which were more difficult than the old. The observation that by returning a person to pleasurable moments resulted in a very hard effort to discover why, to find out if a person could recall in some instances, couldn’t recall in others.
Well, according to the basic axioms of Dianetics, the function of the mind is to obtain pleasure and to avoid pain. Well, once it was demonstrated that the mind could obtain pleasure, then it would go on trying to obtain pleasure. And this seemed to apply equally to yesterday. So that in returning on recall basis—returning to yesterday and finding pleasure in the yesterdays—the mind was then willing to face yesterday.
Well, that was highly theoretical. We still didn’t have the reason why, until an earlier theory of valences came through and Mr. Rogers gave the matter a great deal of thought and suddenly came up with the theory that the reason you achieve sonic shut-off, dub-in and upset recalls in general was because the person was in somebody else’s valence. A check back over data through the past, accumulated, confirmed this, certainly.
Now, we have used valence shift in order to deintensify engrams. We could find the person could run it out with Father and could run it out as Mother and then could run it out as himself. Well, this did not take account of the fact that a person might be Mother continually, or might be Father continually, or might be Grandfather. And that he was trying to run out his own engrams in another valence, which evidently, according to this theory as now developed, is the cause of sonic shut-off and dub-in, and emotional shut-off and other perceptic shut-offs.
It’s as though the person has moved sideways and is being guided by an additional monitor, which monitor does not have available to him all the perceptics. The old adage of being oneself—what we’re trying to do in Dianetics now is to make one himself.
The technique as applied takes cognizance of the fact that in other valences the person feels command somatics, that he is more violently affected by all command phrases in the engrams. If he is in Mother’s valence and somebody says, “Get out,” he gets out, because it was said to Mother, let us say, and he’s in Mother’s valence. See? So that he does get out then. He bounces out of the engram. But as himself at that point, it’s found that merely the words “get out” are being said by somebody else to somebody else. And it’s the recognition of the fact that these words are being said by somebody else to somebody else which is most efficacious in therapy. In other words, he has additionally the recognition that these words were not addressed to himself and they do not apply to him. Therefore they need not be aberrative.
Now, another point on this which is interesting is the fact that no therapy which does not achieve as one of its ends a heightened sense of reality will achieve any great results. Reality is terribly important. By simply destroying a person’s concept of reality—just that and nothing more—simply by making it so that the person believes himself to be continually wrong—just by doing that, not by installing engrams, he can be made fairly wobbly in his wits.
This is of great interest to me the way this is working out. It means that if you took a man and convinced him at every turn that he was wrong, that he had done something wrong, you would be destroying his ability to think. That’s awfully important.
Now, we have in this society a social aberration to the effect that people are imagining; that everything that one imagines is delusion. It’s a prime argument that a person with a migraine headache is just imagining it, that it’s just in his mind. That person is terribly ill. In fact I’ve known migraine headaches that were very vicious affairs—prostrate the person. And then somebody’s telling the person, “Well, it’s all in your mind.” In other words, the implication is that if it’s in your mind it isn’t real. All right. That is working around to “It’s in your imagination.” “It’s all in your imagination.” “You’re just imagining it.” “You’re just making it up” and so on. This sort of chatter on a social level, conscious level, is responsible for a large measure of the inabilities of people in this society.
Now, if we take a person back down the track and in this more or less defenseless position begin to tell him he’s imagining things, implying that he has dub-in, implying this and that, criticizing his recall, telling him this engram doesn’t fit there, telling him that he may have believed that he is in the basic area when actually the somatic he’s getting puts him at five months; all these things are destructive to his sense of reality. Because it moves in upon us now that the rehabilitation of his concept of reality is enormously necessary—vitally necessary—in administering therapy to a patient.
Now, if you turn a patient loose into an environment where he is received with nothing but doubt, no matter what he does, who has for years been received with nothing but doubt—“Oh well, you know Jones is no good and so on, he doesn’t know what he’s doing and, oh yeah, well, what he says is of no use”—we turn him back into this environment, we’re going to discover that we’re working uphill As we talked over in the lecture yesterday, there is what people around him are doing. They’re destroying his sense of reality, his confidence in yesterday Now, in an aberree that’s a rather tenuous thing. It is hard for him to maintain. And when we put him into therapy and start slapping him around about his imagining things and so on, or it didn’t fit there, we can practically destroy him. Therefore the primary breach of the Auditor’s Code would be to destroy the sense of reality of the patient, even though we may know he is doing it all wrong. But if he’s doing it wrong, if he has dub-in or sonic shut-offs, and he’s still all at sea about what he’s doing, it is the fault of the auditor now.
Now it isn’t lying loosely in the lap of the gods, as it was. See, it is now the fault of the auditor. Because the auditor can, very definitely can swing that person into his own valence. He could get him into the basic area and he can persuade him into his own valence in the basic area at which time he’s going to get sonic. He can take him into painful emotion periods and he can make sure that he gets into his own valence and there he will get full perception.
If you take him into minor moments of pain when he’s a little child, make sure he’s in his own valence and run it out with all the perceptics as a child. And we just keep insisting, wherever he is on the track, not by pounding it against him that he must do this, but by persuading him into his own valence and persuading him to sense these various things, we then are achieving a double-barreled sort of a therapy. We’re reestablishing his sense of reality on the one hand and we’re really getting up the whole engram with all perceptics on the other. [gap] I have only run five cases more or less on this, and I’ve had results with those cases. Mind you, it is complicated sometimes working with this and trying to get him back into it. The only thing I’m trying to say is that the primary push in auditing should be directed toward getting him into his own valence and rehabilitating his sense of reality about his own experiences.
Male voice: Well, when you suspect somebody isn’t in their own valence or evidence to indicate it and you ask him whether he’s in his own valence and he specifically says “yes,” particularly in later emotion, it’s puzzled me how to get him in there because he must be sitting on something earlier to keep him out of it And you’ve got to reach into that one and probe around and figure out the computation.
That’s right. But you’re keeping your eye all the time on the fact that your first target is his own valence. He is to be in his own valence.
Male voice: Well then, in attacking that incident again, if he’s going through something later and you cant get him into his own valence—there s only one way you can get him in and that’s give him something it’s sitting on earlier in the same chain. Is that right?
There’s complications to this. The first complication is the fact that a person who is in any valence but his own is most certainly stuck on the track somewhere. Because engrams can slide up and down the track. They can become detached and he can slide with one up and down the track.
Male voice: Now, is this true, then, that he could be in his own—in his mother’s valence, say, the last ten years; the previous ten years be in Papa’s valence and then in another period be in some valence, and inalterably at all times even before you start to work on him?
Mm-hm.
Male voice: In other words it’s—different periods of his life he’s in different valences and he’s stuck there . . .
Mm-hm.
Male voice: . . . a certain percent of his total monitor units.
Mm-hm. That’s right.
Second male voice: I’d like to ask three questions and see if my answers are correct If a guy is stuck in an incident, the first thing to do is to get him out before you can work him further Absolutely correct.
Male voice: Yeah. If he is chronically stuck in the incident and has developed a training pattern or habit pattern to give his correct age, he will not answer easily the time flash as he will—the time flash gives the correct age rather than the incident even though he’s in there.
I’ve got one now beyond time flash. So we’ll take that up in a moment. Next one?
Second male voice: How much—supposing you have someone who is more or less in an incident—is coming in pretty clearly, but they’re not— they’re afraid to feel the reality of it. Isn’t it a good idea to coax them to feel the reality of it so that they . . . ?
Yes. But there are various ways of doing it. The best way is not to ask them to feel the reality.
Second male voice: No?
The best way is to insinuate upon them each perceptic in turn.
Second male voice: In other words, they’re in a room with a painful emotion, get them to describe the room, what the person next to them looks like and just sneak up on them, more or less. Gradually tying in perceptics on where he is. I think that’s a method you have, per reports.
That’s right. That’s very good, but make sure that you have turned on all perceptics of that incident. [gap] Well now, in diarrhea and vomiting generally those things are hanging on the prenatal area. And the child in neither case vomited, nor had diarrhea. But somebody else did. So if he has a tremendous urge to do these things, he is out of his valence.
Male voice: Actually all he should feel is the pressure or the motions there.
That’s correct. He should feel his own somatics. Not his command somatics. These two would be command somatics. Of course you take it to postbirth period, as a child you’ll have a preclear in a position where he’s feeling his own somatics and they are the somatics of diarrhea. But the reason he’s feeling those there at the present time is generally because he was out of valence.
Male voice: Is there any danger of a recurrence of that diarrhea actually later in life, I mean, while you re in that incident?
You mean while this is . . .
Male voice: There s a patient lying on the bed. I mean, we were discussing that earlier, in case somebody hadn’t—like I remember . . .
Well, I’ve had two patients vomit.
Male voice: Haven t had anybody dirty their pants, have you?
No. No.
Male voice: I have a question about your somatics. What does it seem to indicate when a valence somatic is rather slow to develop, builds up to an intensity and stays more or less at that intensity for a long period of time, I mean over fifteen, twenty minutes or a half-hour undoubtedly, more or less regardless of what is being run. And you get them into the scene where theoretically they . . .
You’re talking about a chronic somatic?
Male voice: Eventually it builds up to a point, while you re running this thing, you re running this thing and it doesn’t vary during this thing a great deal . . .
You mean it does this in every scene, in every engram?
Male voice: Maybe different somatics in different scenes, but any somatic that you happen to get builds up slowly and drops off slowly.
Now, that is just one manifestation of the same thing here. What you’re talking about is a chronic somatic. A person starts running an engram and he gets a somatic in his mouth. Only this engram has to do with having cut his foot. And while he’s running the thing his mouth somatic cuts in. Or you may have a patient who does nothing but run incidents with pain in his legs. Every time he runs an incident, he has pain in his legs. There you have one very severely held, not only stuck somewhere on the track but also in another valence. And it will mean that this particular incident has picked up all the way along the line all kinds of engrams. This is peculiar, for instance, to nitrous oxide, and there are some others that will do this.
The best thing to do is by one method or another establish what the chronic somatic is. Because that’s the key somatic of the case. And the second you’ve tapped that one you’re going to get the rest of the case resolved. But if you keep on running engrams just endlessly without tapping that one, you’re still running everything—more and more engrams, into that chronic somatic.
All right. Let me take up now another method which is in advance of age flash on establishing the somatic wherein a person may be caught—an engram. We start him out and we ask him about this. Let’s say we have a patient who is running nothing but a pain in the back. So, running this pain in the back we start asking him about the pain in the back. We send the somatic strip to the moment of highest intensity of the back pain. Just tell it to go to the moment of highest intensity of this back pain, the moment when it was received. Now, ordinarily this thing is chronic and we can’t obtain it because it is masked with denyers and so on. So it’s pretty well off the track. You tell him to do this and whether he achieves a heightened somatic or not, we don’t care.
What we are interested in is whether or not we can now get more information on it. So who here doesn’t have sonic? (pause) You don’t have sonic at the present time? Okay.
LRH: Now, go to the—do you have a chronic somatic?
PC: Oh, yes.
LRH: Which is it?
PC: It’s feeling my sinus, all down the back of my neck. That’s in constant restimulation, more or less.
LRH: All right. Now, let’s go to the highest point. Shut your eyes. Now let’s go to the highest point of that somatic. The moment of greatest intensity of that somatic. The moment that it occurred. Your somatic strip can go there, (pause) Now give me—I want a yes or no flash answer. A yes or no on each one of the following questions: Hospital?
PC: Uh.
LRH: Hm?
PC: No.
LRH: Doctor’s office?
PC: Yes.
LRH: All right. Automobile accident?
PC: No.
LRH: Surgery?
PC: No.
LRH: Childhood?
PC: Yes.
LRH: Mother present?
PC: No.
LRH: Father present?
PC: No.
LRH: Doctor present?
PC: No.
LRH: Nurse present?
PC: No.
LRH: Who is present? (pause) Give me a flash answer.
PC: I don’t get anything.
LRH: All right. Let’s go over it again. Answer yes or no to the following questions. Somatic strip to the highest point of intensity of that somatic. Now, school?
PC: No.
LRH: Doctor’s office?
PC: No.
LRH: Hospital?
PC: Yes.
LRH: All right. Age?
PC: Thirty-eight.
LRH: This somatic which you received in childhood?
PC: No.
LRH: Hm?
PC: No.
LRH: When was it received?
PC: Earlier.
LRH: Prenatal. Okay. Mother’s in the doctor’s office?
PC: Yes. These are just guesses—I mean they . . .
LRH: Okay. All right. Now let’s go to the moment when this occurs. Somatic strip now at the first moment, going to the first moment of the engram. All right. When I count from one to five the first phrase will flash into your mind. One-two-three-four-five. (snap) PC: Didn’t get anything.
LRH: All right. Now, you can tell me what this is. You can tell me what this is. What do you feel like saying right at the present moment to somebody?
PC: I got a “It hurts’ popped into my head.
LRH: Mm-hm.
PC: Quite occluded, a lot of other things happening at the same time.
LRH: Mm-hm. All right. “All at the same time.” Go over that.
PC: “All at the same time.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “All at the same time.” LRH: Contact it. Go over it again.
PC: “All at the same time.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “All at the same time.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “All at the same time.” LRH: Give me the full phrase. Go over it again.
PC: “All at the same time.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “All at the same time.” LRH: How’s the somatic feel?
PC: About the same.
LRH: All right. Go over it again.
PC: “All at the same time.” LRH: Now, what’s the phrase immediately before this? Your somatic strip can find the phrase immediately before this, (pause) When I count from one to five that phrase will come forward. One-two-three-four –five. (snap) PC: “It’s there—it’s there all at the same time.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “It’s there, all at the same time.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “It’s there, all at the same time.” LRH: Your somatic strip will now go to the holder in this incident. The somatic strip’s going to the holder; now when I count from one to five, give me the holder. One-two-three-four-five, (snap) PC: I can’t.
LRH: Can’t what?
PC: Uh. . .
LRH: Go over it again. “I can’t.” PC: “I can’t. I can’t.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I can’t.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I can’t.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I can’t.” LRH: Next line, (pause) I can’t what? I can’t what?
PC: “Feel it.” LRH: Go on over that again.
PC: “I can’t feel it.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I can’t feel it.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I can’t feel it.” LRH: How’s the somatic?
PC: I hit the word . . . it turned off.
LRH: It’s actually turned off? [gap] Your somatic strip can go straight to the first moment of the engram. Straight to the first moment of it. Now let’s roll it.
PC: Seems like my mind is blank on it.
LRH: All right. “I can’t tell.” PC: “I can’t tell” LRH: “It’s too early to tell.” PC: “It’s too early to tell. It’s too early to tell” LRH: How’s the somatic?
PC: It’s come up a little bit.
LRH: All right. Go over it again.
PC: “It’s too early to tell.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “It’s too early to tell. It’s too early to tell. It’s too early to tell” LRH: “I don’t know.” PC: “I don’t know.” LRH: “Please tell me.” PC: “Please tell me. I don’t remember, either. I don’t know.” LRH: “I don’t remember.” PC: “I don’t remember.” LRH: “I don’t remember.” PC: “I don’t remember.” LRH: “When my last period was.” PC: “When my last period was.” LRH: Go on over it again.
PC: “I don’t remember when my last period was.” LRH: All right. What’s the proper phrase, “I don’t remember . . .” PC: “I don’t remember when . . .” LRH: Go over it again. “I don’t remember when.” PC: “I don’t remember when.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t remember when.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t remember when.” LRH: When what?
PC: I seem to hear it. “I don’t remember when.” LRH: Well, just tell me something here, (pause) “I don’t know if you’re pregnant or not.” PC: “I don’t know if you’re pregnant or not.” LRH: “It’s too early to tell.” PC: “It’s too early to tell.” LRH: “I can’t tell.” PC: “I cant tell” LRH: “Too early to tell.” PC: “It’s too early to tell” LRH: How’s the somatic?
PC: A little deintensified.
LRH: All right. Go over it again. “It’s too early to tell.” PC: “It’s too early to tell It’s too early to tell” LRH: “I don’t remember.” PC: “I don’t remember.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t remember.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t remember.” LRH: Go over it again.
PC: “I don’t remember.” LRH: “It’s too early to tell.” PC: “It’s too early to tell” LRH: I don’t remember what?
PC: “I don’t remember (pause) how.” LRH: How?
PC: It just flashed in my mind.
LRH: Okay. “I don’t remember how . . .” PC: “She did it.” LRH: Okay. Go over that again.
PC: “I don’t remember how she did it” Doesn’t seem to fit.
LRH: All right, (pause) All right, switch over into your own valence now Switch over into your own valence on that somatic. (pause) What do you contact there now?
PC: Nothing happens.
LRH: Nothing happens? Would you like to get rid of it?
PC: Damn right I would.
LRH: All right. Does it worry you?
PC: No. Just annoying as hell.
LRH: Just annoying.
PC: It turns on most when I’m emotionally disturbed.
LRH: Mm-hm, (pause) What is this incident?
PC: It’s a mother computation, for sure.
LRH: Yeah, But what is the incident? (pause) You know what it is. Just give me a conceptual on it.
PC: Seems to be tied in with my mother somehow.
LRH: Mm-hm, PC: She had the same thing only in reverse. Hers was a condition of dehydration, mine is a condition of an abnormal mass of mucus present.
LRH: Mm-hm, PC: She was constantly complaining about it all her life and had it all her life.
LRH: Mm-hm, PC: Probably she was complaining about it when she was carrying me.
LRH: Okay, Come up to present time, (pause) How old are you?
PC: Thirty-eight.
LRH: Yeah, [to audience] Now, here’s a statement of proper age.
Now, here is a computation. One knows a little bit more about this now, for instance I never heard this before. [to pc] You told anybody about this before?
PC: No.
LRH: No. [to audience] See? We got more information to go on. Now, the proper procedure in his case, we go back to some time when Mama is complaining about this, or might—maybe when he went to the doctor’s office with Mama. And get Mama’s yak-yak—her standard statement regarding this condition. And then take phrases of that dramatization which we picked up off Mama and run it back into the prenatal area.
PC: Something came up while you were talking there, I didn’t think it was important LRH: What?
PC: I remember being in a doctor’s office when I was about four years old.
LRH: Uh-huh.
PC: A terrific sinus discharge going on with mucus—terrible. I remember being terrified sitting in the doctor’s chair. This old goat, you know, with a beard. I remember terror of him swabbing at my—as he would clean my sinuses. That’s what came to my mind. I didn’t think it was important at the time to mention it.
LRH: You didn’t think it was important to mention it?
PC: (laughs) LRH: You’ll find this is very interesting. [to audience] May I make one observation? That you will very, very often find that when you have returned somebody back down the track and you have run through an incident with them of just a flock of guesses, just a diagnostic run, something of the sort, and then you bring them back up to present time again, ostensibly all through with it and so on, he will suddenly gush forth the vital information that you were looking for all the time. But he won’t do that, evidently, until it’s quite certain that he’s not going to have to contact it at that moment.
One particular case was resolved because time after time one would look for a mouth somatic on this case, with no results, until one day—taking him back to find nothing but the mouth somatic, looked and looked and looked, oh no, he couldn’t find anything. Brought him back up to present time, woke him up, said that we were all through, the session was over and that was all we were going to do as far as his case was concerned, at which moment we got the remarkable information that he had had a total exodontistry two years before.
Male voice: In a case like that or in a case like this would the procedure be then to return him to reverie and go to the incident in reverie?
Mm-hm.
Second male voice: Right then and there?
Right then and there.
Second male voice: Won’t he distrust you thereafter?
No. No, you say, “Well, let’s go find this thing.” He’ll go, “All right.” Male voice: I have a peculiar reaction either to auditing or to getting therapy myself. I just feel, “Oh, hell, I don’t feel like doing that” “I don’t feel like doing this.” Male voice: Yes.
Second male voice: I’m kind of new here, but some of these, what might be called “suggestions” you were giving here . . . ?
Yes, that is something that is in the book for a very, very good reason. A positive suggestion is a technical thing. It is technical in the field of hypnotism. It is a suggestion of the operator’s to a hypnotized subject with the sole end of creating a changed mental condition in the subject by the implantation of the suggestion alone. That is technically a positive suggestion. It is a transplantation of something in the auditor’s mind into the patient’s mind. The patient is then to believe it and take it as part of himself.
That’s positive suggestion. We’re not working that way here. Most of the misunderstanding comes about because I didn’t define positive suggestion in the book. I assumed that people knew its technical character. Now, these are not positive suggestions. They are simply outright commands, even no matter how persuasively put. “The somatic strip will go to . . . It is there.” Now, that is not a suggestion, it is there. We know it’s there. Even though he doesn’t know it’s there, the auditor knows it’s there because the somatic strip is most remarkably cooperative. The somatic strip will work with the auditor on Dianetics with neither the knowledge nor the consent of the individual if it’s for therapy. Whereas the somatic strip will not work for a hypnotic operator.
Second male voice: One phrase was “I don’t know when I missed my last menstrual period.” What might you call it? A stimulator rather than any . . .
No. It’s just an effort to get him tripping and stumbling around over this thing. This could have been many things. It could have been a doctor’s examination. The good old doctor’s examination at the age of three or four weeks. The doctor inevitably seems to say, “Well now, I can’t tell yet, it’s too early to tell. When did you . . . ?” Male voice: Yes, by God, the doctor said that in this office scene or something very similar to it, he said, “He’s too young now. I can’t tell anything yet. It’ll clear up by itself” Mm-hm.
Male voice: That’s when you re four years old, here.
Sure. Well now, there you have a case of a lock on top of some prenatal. But by feeding a person these various suggestions as he’s trying to run an engram—they’re not suggestions. He can take them or leave them. And believe me, if they’re not right he will leave them.
Male voice: So then we should have no hesitation in stimulating if necessary.
No. No hesitation whatsoever. Okay.
Second male voice: Was this thing that Don has been interested in—something pops into a kind of a previewer in the mind. You run the incident along and it comes into view. Just before it comes into your conscious view, there’s a previewer that sees it. Now, this is the previewer that activates the bouncer and denyer. In other words, it’s— somewhere in the realm of the mind, it seems this phrase comes along, you run a phrase and it never pops up. But it doesn’t come into conscious view. It’s in the scan here and there’s a time shift of a couple of milliseconds or so between the time it’s running normally, it should scan in . . . [gap] . . . comes up and says something to the auditor. You’ll often pick out one of those phrases—it’s coming through his preview scanner, and each —thrown out in speech. He’s not aware of it in the thing he’s tracking. But it is there in the mind and one of the scanners is focused on it.
Yes. That’s interesting. Of course, that very mechanism, what’s running into that thing of course is the thing which is working in the reactive mind anyway. You’re getting the reactive mind-analytical mind crossover circuit, as it were.
Second male voice: Yes. The reactive mind . . .
Once it comes into the analytical mind just that much, one scan, and the engram will never be the same again, even though we don’t relieve it that time. Now, covering the general field of valences, it is very important in diagnosis here, in this particular case, Ed’s case, to find that he is experiencing something which he says his mother had. In whose valence is he? The question answers itself immediately. It must be the mother’s valence.
Male voice: It’s the opposite.
Well, he says it’s just the opposite, perhaps.
Male voice: Well, that’s splitting hairs, I mean hers is dehydration, mine is supersaturation. I mean, that—just how the reactive mind would interpret the command, it might as well be dehydrated as the . . .
This could be Father. This could also be Father saying it ought to . . . What?
Male voice: Just thought of something else.
What?
Male voice: My father had it so bad that he had a submucosa resection by a butcher2 and he nearly bled to death. I remember going to the hospital with a candle and the nuns sang over him and it was—gad, at the time, he had it even more violently than my mother did before that operation. So it may have come from two sources.
Now, this is superreinforced. Then the first adjudication here, that—if you’re in your mother’s valence is questionable. Might be in your father’s valence. In other words—we do know this however. Here we have a prenatal bank which is crammed with sinusitis, and which was reinforced on you probably at birth. And is reinforced every time one gets a cold and so forth, it restimulates this. Then there’s probably actual injury back along the line somewhere, probably prenatal. And this ties in on the others and so on. There’s probably a grouper in that, by the way, that “We’re all the same” or—so on.
Male voice: That would be technically a chain—a sinus chain.
Yeah. Technically a sinus chain. All right, he’s in the sinus chain. He’s manifesting the somatic of the sinus chain. And if you tackle this case without paying attention to this chronic somatic, you see, we’d be running off coitus chains and all the other chains through the curtain of the sinus chain.
Second male voice: Probably have to go back and run him again on it.
Yes. Yes. Could be a very cluttered and tangled picture by the time you get through. And some of these cases that are sonic shut-offs and so forth have become rather cluttered and tangled before they finally untangle. They do finally untangle.
Male voice: I can just hear my mother saying, “I’m so clogged up right now I can’t see or hear anything” Well, here we have the theory of valences at work. And any observations that you gentlemen make on the subject, why, be sure to take cognizance of them. It is evidently quite difficult to discover painful emotion, for instance, while a person is in somebody else’s valence. There are all manner of difficulties which can be encountered. And on much further testing and so on, this theory might be and may very well be supplanted by another, better theory. But at the present time this one is working. That’s the trouble with Dianetics, it works pretty well all along the line. But there are times when it works better.
Male voice: It seems to me, Ron, that from where I sit, I don’t know if my observation is correct or not, but diagnosis in the beginning a real digging in, is terrifically important.
Yes.
Male voice: The more data you get, the quicker . . .
Yes, very definitely, diagnosis was slighted in the handbook. Very definitely. There was limited space in there, tried to simplify it too much, simplified it just too much.
Male voice: Have you gone through diagnosis yet?
Yes, to some degree, but you’ll see a lot of it around here. You just saw diagnosis. That’s diagnosis: Find the chronic somatic, find the chronic valence.
Male voice: Actually, diagnosis is a continuing process, not something you do just once and . . .
You’re absolutely right. Thank you. That’s quite correct. I diagnose continually on trying to find what the new material is that is in view, or what is currently interrupting the case or something of the sort. I pay very close attention to that. Of course there’s a lot of stuff which I do automatically, which somebody ought to catch me up on and make me clarify. But when you’ve been auditing as long as I have you start playing a lot of this by ear.
Male voice: Some of the people are following you in the . . .
Sure, this is perfectly obvious what I’m doing here. Like the business of trying to track back pseudoallies. This little dissertation we had here the other day of the fifteen-minute cure—(quote) cure (unquote)—just alleviates the headache or something of the sort—depends mainly upon pseudoallies. So that we know the person is confronted by either the real ally or the pseudoally. And we’re trying to trace back the last moment when something was triggered in. And then just by remembering, find the person who matched the person. You get the idea. “I’m talking to my partner Jones, and this conversation upsets me very much.” Well, the guy is merely talking to somebody, and the conversation should not upset him emotionally a great deal unless it’s big news of a great deal of loss. And even then it shouldn’t upset him out of the proportion that it did. So we find out who is Jones? Is Jones Papa? Is Jones Mama? Is Jones Uncle Oscar? And in finding this out we discover all of a sudden that Papa had these identical business worries and Papa reacted exactly the same way. At which moment we can suppose that in the prenatal area there is an identical incident. And on carrying that on through it was all of a sudden demonstrated to be a fact that there was an identical incident.
I don’t know who saw me working on Mr. Streek over there the other day. Well, the last end of it was the fact that Papa had been robbed by a ruthless partner and the lawyer’s advice and Mama’s advice and everybody’s advice to Papa, it was just, “Say what you’re told to say and no more.” Male voice: Hm. “Don’t say anything because the more you say, the worse it will be.” So I had him back there and I’d feed him repeater technique, and I could feed him “chickens,” “cows,” almost anything and he would repeat exactly what I said. And was perfectly happy to go on repeating it. But none of it had anything to do with the content.
By the way, I was running a diagnosis on Betty last night. And here we have a circumstance of a cross-questioning proposition. Now, just how that appears in the prenatal bank I wouldn’t be prepared to say. But somebody definitely must not answer questions about something, but must just keep passing them off and put it aside and be agreeable as possible, but no questions.
Male voice: Her mother s even worse than that. Her mother will go into a dramatization even more violent than Betty’s when you ask her a question.
Here’s another thing about Betty—I just want to get this thought across here quickly—she says she absolutely cannot and will not return. But I think she can be tricked into therapy, “All right, do not return, just try to remember.” She’ll go back on the word “remember.” Cannot and will not return to whom?
Male voice: I don’t know. I mean, you get her back down the track by saying “remember” to her.
She’s stuck in an incident. She’s stuck in some kind of an argumentation incident, chronically.
Well, that’s about all I have to say about valences. You can see them working. If you run somebody who is having a bad case of morning sickness—it is impossible for a fetus to have morning sickness. And the second that you break him out of his valence at the earliest part of the track, as soon as you can get him down there, get him out of his mother’s valence and—or father’s valence or grandma’s valence, something like that, and into his own valence and running these things with full perceptics and so on, the rest of the case will practically blow up in your face. (Recording ends abruptly)