View source for DMSH 1950 Book 2 Chapter 1

← [[Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950)]]

== The Analytical Mind and the Standard Memory Banks ==
This chapter begins the search for human error and tells where it is not.

The human mind can be considered to have three major divisions. First, there is the analytical mind, second, there is the reactive mind, and third, there is the somatic mind.

Consider the analytical mind as a computing machine. This is analogy, because the analytical mind, while it behaves like a computing machine, is yet more fantastically capable than any computing machine ever constructed and infinitely more elaborate. It could be called the “computational mind” or the “egsusheyftef.” But for our purposes, the analytical mind, as a descriptive name, will do. This mind may live in the pre-frontal lobes — there is some hint of that — but this is a problem of structure, and nobody really knows about structure. So we shall call this computational part of the mind the “analytical mind” because it analyzes data.

The monitor can be considered part of the analytical mind. The monitor could be called the center of awareness of the person. It, inexactly speaking, is the person. It has been approximated by various names for thousands of years, each one reducing down to “I.” The monitor is in control of the analytical mind. It is not in control because it has been told to be but only because it is, inherently. It is not a demon who lives in the skull nor a little man who vocalizes one’s thoughts. It is “I.” No matter how many aberrations a person may have, “I” is always “I.” No matter how “clear” a person becomes, “I,” is still “I.” “I” may be submerged now and then in an aberree, but it is always present.

The analytical mind shows various evidences of being an organ, but as we know in this age so little of structure, the full structural knowledge of the analytical mind must come after we know what it does. And in dianetics we know precisely that for the first time. It is known and can be proven with ease that the analytical mind, be it one organ of the body or several, behaves as you would expect any good computing machine to behave.

What would you want in a computing machine? The action of the analytical mind — or analyzer — is everything anyone could want from the best computer available. It can and does do all the tricks of a computer. And over and above that, it directs the building of computers. And it is as thoroughly right as any computer ever was. The analytical mind is not just a good computer, it is a perfect computer. It never makes a mistake. It cannot err in any way so long as a human being is reasonably intact (unless something has carried away a piece of his mental equipment).

The analytical mind is incapable of error, and it is so certain that it is incapable of error that it works out everything on the basis that it cannot make an error. If a person says, “I cannot add,” he either means that he has never been taught to add or that he has an aberration about adding. It does not mean that there is anything wrong with the analytical mind.

While the whole being is, in an aberrated state, grossly capable of error, still the analytical mind is not. For a computer is just as good as the data on which it operates and no better. Aberration, then, arises from the nature of the data offered to the analytical mind as a problem to be computed.

The analytical mind has its standard memory banks. Just where these are located structurally is again no concern of ours at this time. To operate, the analytical mind has to have percepts (data), memory (data), and imagination (data).

There are another data storage bank and another part of the human mind which contain aberrations and are the source of insanities. These will be fully covered later and should not be confused with either the analytical mind or the standard memory banks.

Whether or not the data contained in the standard memory banks is evaluated correctly or not, it is all there. The various senses receive information and this information files straight into the standard memory banks. It does not go through the analyzer first. It is filed and the analyzer then has it from the standard banks.

There are several of these standard banks and they may be duplicated in themselves so that there are several of each kind of bank. Nature seems generous in such things. There is a bank, or set of banks, for each perception. These can be considered racks of data filed in a cross-index system which would make an intelligence officer purple with envy. Any single percept is filed as a concept. The sight of a moving car, for instance, is filed in the visio-bank in color and motion, at the time seen, cross-indexed to the area in which seen, cross-indexed to all data about cars, cross-indexed to thoughts about cars, and so forth and so forth with the additional filing of conclusions (thought stream) of the moment and thought streams of the past with all their conclusions. The sound of that car is similarly filed from the ears, straight into the audio-bank, and cross-indexed multitudinously as before. The other sensations of that moment are also filed, in their own banks.

Now it may be that the whole filing is done in one bank. It would be simpler that way. But this is not a matter of structure but mental performance. Eventually somebody will discover just how they are filed. Right now the function of filing is all that interests us.

Every percept — sight, sound, smell, feeling, taste, organic sensation, pain, rhythm, kinesthesia (weight and muscular motion) and emotion — is each properly and neatly filed in the standard banks in full. It does not matter how many aberrations a physically intact person has or whether he thinks he can or cannot contain this data or recall it, the file is there and is complete.

This file begins at a very early period, of which more later. It then runs consecutively, whether the individual is asleep or awake, except in moments of “unconsciousness,”* for an entire lifetime. It apparently has an infinite capacity.

The numbers of these concepts (concept means that which is retained after something has been perceived) would stagger an astronomer’s computer. The existence and profusion of memories retained were discovered and studied in a large number of cases, and they can be examined in anyone by certain processes.

Everything in this bank is correct in so far as the single action of perception is concerned. There may be organic errors in the organs of perception, such as blindness or deafness (when physical, not aberrational), which would leave blanks in the banks; and there may be organic impairment such as partial organic deafness which would leave partial blanks. But these things are not error in the standard memory banks; they are simply absence of data. Like the computer, the standard memory banks are perfect, recording faithfully and reliably.

Now part of the standard banks is audio-semantic, which is to say, the recordings of words heard. And part of the banks is visio-semantic, which is to say, the recordings of words read. These are special parts of the sound and sight files. A blind man who has to read with his fingers develops a tactile-semantic file. The content of the speech files is exactly as heard without alteration.

Another interesting part of the standard memory banks is that they apparently file the original and hand forward exact copies to the analyzer. They will hand out as many exact copies as are demanded without diminishing the actual file original. And they hand out these copies each in kind with color-motion sight, tone-audio, etc.

The amount of material which is retained in the average standard memory banks would fill several libraries. But the method of retention is invariable. And the potentiality of recall is perfect.

The primary source of error in “rational” computation comes under the headings of insufficient data and erroneous data. The individual, daily facing new situations, is not always in possession of all the material he requires to make a decision. And he may have been told something on Good Authority which was not true and yet which did not find counter-evidence in the banks.

Between the standard banks, which are perfect and reliable, and the computer, the analytical mind, which is perfect and reliable, there is no irrational concourse. The answer is always as right as it can be made to be in the light of data at hand, and that is all anyone can ask of a computing device or a recording device.

The analytical mind goes even further in its efforts to be right than one would suppose. It constantly checks and weighs new experience in the light of old experience, forms new conclusions in the light of old conclusions, changes old conclusions and generally is very busy being right.

The analytical mind might be considered to have been given a sacred post of trust by the cells to safeguard the colony, and it does everything within its power to carry out that Mission. It has correct data, as correct as possible, and it does correct computations on them, as correct as they can be made. When one considers the enormous number of factors which one handles, for instance, in the action of driving a car ten blocks, he can appreciate how very, very busy on how very many levels that analytical mind can be.

Now before we introduce the villain of this piece, the reactive mind, it is necessary to understand something about the relation of the analytical mind to the organism itself.

The analytical mind, charged with full responsibility, is far from without authority to carry out its actions and desires. Through the mechanisms of the life function regulator (which handles all the mechanical functions of living), the analytical mind can effect any function of the body it desires to effect.

In excellent working order — which is to say, when the organism is not aberrated — the analytical mind can influence the heartbeat, the endocrines (such things as calcium and sugar in the blood, adrenalin, etc.), selective blood flow (stopping it in the limbs or starting it at will), urine, excreta, etc. All glandular, rhythm and fluid functions of the body can be at the command of the analytical mind. This is not to say that in a cleared person they always are. That would be very uncomfortable and bothersome. But it does say that the analytical mind can effect changes at desire when it skills itself to do so. This is a marter of laboratory proof, very easy to do.

People have long been intuitive about the “full power of the mind.” Well, the full power of the mind would be the analytical mind working with the standard memory banks, the life function regulator and one other thing.

The last and most important thing is, of course, the organism. It is in the charge of the analytical mind. And the analytical mind controls it in other ways than life function. All muscles and the remainder of the organism can be under the full command of the analytical mind.

In order to keep it and its circuits free of bric-a-brac and minor activities, the analytical mind is provided with a learned training pattern regulator. Into this, by education, it can place the stimulus-response patterns necessary for the performance of tasks like talking, walking, piano playing, etc. These learned patterns are not unchangeable. Because they are selected by the analytical mind after thought and effort, there is seldom any need to change them; if new situations arise, a new pattern is trained into the muscles. None of these are “conditionings”; they are simply training patterns which the organism can use without attention of any magnitude from the analyzer. An uncountable number of such patterns can be laid into the organism by this method. And they are not the source of any trouble since they file by time and situation, and a very little thought will serve to annul old ones in favor of new ones.

All muscles, voluntary and “involuntary,” can be at the command of the analytical mind.

Here, then, is the composite of a sentient being. There is no chance for error beyond the error incident to insufficient data and erroneous but accepted data (and the last will be used by the analyzer just once if that once proves the data to be wrong), Here is the realm of pleasure, emotion, creation and construction, and even destruction if the computation on the optimum solution says something has to be destroyed.

The dynamics underlie the activities of the analytical mind. The urge toward survival explains all its actions. That we can understand the fundamental simplicity of the functional mechanism does not, however, mean that a man operating this way alone is cold or calculating or intent on “tooth and claw.” The nearer Man approaches this optimum, in an individual or in a whole society, the quicker and warmer is that society, the more honest may be its moods and actions.

Sanity depends upon rationality. Here is optimum rationality and therefore optimum sanity. And here also are all the things Man likes to think Man should be like or, for that matter, what he has represented his better gods to be like. This is the clear.

This is sanity. This is happiness. This is survival.

Where is the error?