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Time
July 24, 1950
Of Two Minds
A new cult is moldering through the U.S. underbrush. Its name:
dianetics.
Last week, its bible, "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental
Health," was
steadily climbing the U.S. bestseller lists. Demand was especially
heavy on
the West Coast. Bookstores in Los Angeles were selling "Dianetics" on
an
under-the-counter basis. Armed with the manual, which they called
simply
"The Book," fanatical converts overflowed Saturday night meetings in
Hollywood, held dianetics parties, formed clubs, and "audited"
(treated)
each other.
In many ways, dianetics ("the science of mind") is the poor man's
psychoanalysis: it has the touch of Couéism and a mild resemblance to
Buchmanite confession. It purports to cleanse the mind of previous
harmful
influences, thus vastly increasing its powers and efficiency, by
making the
individual relive former painful experiences to "discharge" their evil
power. According to dianetics' discoverer L. (for Lafayette) Ron (for
Ronald) Hubbard: "The hidden source of all psychosomatic ills and
human
aberrations has been discovered and skills have been developed for
their
invariable cure." Sample ills: arthritis, allergies, asthma, some
coronary
difficulties, eye trouble, ulcers, migraine headaches, sex deviations.
Ron Hubbard, 39, a swashbuckling, red-haired six-footer, originally
unveiled
dianetics in the magazine "Astounding Science Fiction." As a result,
its
earliest devotees were science fiction fans. When "Dianetics" was
first
published (Hermitage House: $4), doctors and psychologists paid it
little
heed. But last week some were getting in on what seemed like a good
thing.
The Los Angeles Times carried an ad: "Those interested in receiving
dianetic
auditing please telephone DU 2-3260." At the end of the line was Dr.
Vernon
Bronson Twitchell, psychologist; he said he got about a dozen calls a
day.
Reason & Records
According to Hubbard's "science," the mind consists of two parts: 1)
the
analytical, (corresponding roughly to Freud's "conscious" mind), which
perceives, remembers and reasons; and 2) , the reactive (something
like
Freud's "unconscious"), which neither remembers nor reasons but simply
records. Normally, the analytical mind is dominant. But it can be
"switched
off" by unconsciousness from injury or anesthesia, more often by acute
emotional shock or physical pain.
Then says Hubbard, the reactive mind is switched on. It does not store
memories, but "engrams" -- impressions on protoplasm itself. An engram
is,
he declares, "a complete recording, down to the last accurate detail
of
every perception present in a moment of . . . 'unconsciousness.'"
Modern man's analytical mind, says Hubbard, is a perfect computing
machine,
incapable of error except when it is supplied with wrong data. An
example,
typical of Hubbard's cases: a woman is struck by a man, and while she
is
unconscious he kicks and reviles her. A chair is overturned and a
faucet has
been left running. she does not "remember" these things because she is
unconscious, but according to dianetics her reactive mind records them
all
in an engram. Later, the crash of an overturned chair and the sound of
running water might make the engram "key-in" to her analytical mind,
vaguely
bring back the pain of the kicks or actually make her ill.
Count to Seven
To exorcise such a demon engram, the dianetics patient lolls on a
couch or
easy chair in a dimly lit room. The auditor says: "When I count from
one to
seven your eyes will close." He keeps counting to seven until the
patient's
eyes close. (The patient, says Hubbard, is still awake but in
"reverie.") In
a typical procedure, the auditor may next command: "Let us return to
your
fifth birthday." The patient's mind is then supposed to slip back
along its
"time-track" to that birthday. Having "returned," he "relives" the
experience.
By skipping from one point on the time track to another, the patient
eventually relives a variety of painful experiences. In so doing, he
may
reel from the relived pain of a blow on the head, double up with
stomach
cramps, sweat or shiver in terror. Once these painful engrams have
been run
through the waking analytical mind, says Hubbard, they lose their
"charge"
-- their power of evil. The analytical mind puts them in a dead file
like so
many closed accounts. The final goal of dianetics -- in its own
jargon -- is
to make a patient a "clear," a person whose every engram has been
resolved.
Hubbard's most striking departure from older psychoanalytical schools
is his
insistence that protoplasm begins to record engrams immediately after
conception. He sees the period of gestation as one of dire discomforts
and
great perils. The most important of all engrams, which he dubs
"basic-basic," is the one received after conception -- perhaps during
the
mother's examination by her doctor, or in some mishap before her
pregnancy
is known.
Forceps Pains
Frank Dessler, an office manager at 20th Century-Fox, had dabbled in
dianetics and was persuaded to audit an actor's wife who had suffered
from
migraine. Says Dessler: "She was suffering a severe headache, but it
wasn't
like migraine. It seemed to be sharp and on either side of the head.
Finally, she actually experience birth. She crouched on the couch in
foetal
position with her head between her knees." She attributed the pain she
felt
tot he pull of the forceps on her head. Having relived her birth, her
migraine disappeared.
A couple in their 30s, Arthur and Elena Tracy, were auditing each
other.
Says Elena: "I'd had a great deal of illness all my life -- every
psychosomatic illness you can think of. I was in bed all through my
last
pregnancy and for three months after it. Now I believe I'll have no
more
trouble. I believe it with all my heart. My husband took me back to
what I
believe was the prenatal period of my life. I began to feel as if I
were
drowning. I brought up phlegm . . . and my eyes were running. I almost
choked and began gasping for breath. Apparently my head was twisted to
one
side in my mother's womb. The pain was intense."
Some professional psychologists have taken up dianetics. Says Dr. Jean
Bordeaux, psychotherapist (Ph.D., no M.D.): "I'm using dianetics every
day
and using it on dozens of patients. It works. Hubbard made a
contribution --
make no mistake about that."
However, Hubbard insists that the
treatment,
even at the hands of an untrained layman, can do no harm. "On this,"
says
Dr. Bordeaux, "we part company."
More specific is the concern of Dr. Pauline K. Pumphrey (as osteopath
with
an M.D.), in whose ultramodern Santa Monica home two-score dianetics
fans
met last week to pool their resources (some hoped to audit each
other --
somewhat in the fashion of a Buchmanite meeting). There is danger, Dr.
Pumphrey holds, if Hubbard's cellular theory is right, that an inept
auditor
"contacting" the engram recorded at the time of a severe hemorrhage,
for
example, might cause the hemorrhage to be repeated.
But most dianetics fans are laymen and some accept every Hubbard word
as
revealed truth. Said one: "I have trouble only when I have any doubts.
The
main thing is for the auditor to subject himself to a thorough
indoctrination which amounts to a sublime faith."
Hubbard's own opinion of his contribution: "The creation of
dianetics is a
milestone for man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to
his
inventions of the wheel and the arch."
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