Dianetics: Book 2, Chapter 5 - Psychosomatic Illness

About 70% of illnesses are psychosomatic; perhaps more will be discovered to be so once Dianetics has been in use for a while.

That all illnesses are psychosomatic is absurd because germs have their survival dynamic too.

The germ (bacteria and viruses) theory of disease (from Louis Pasteur) (exogenetic) plus the non-germ theory of disease from Dianetics (autogenetic) plus biochemistry cover all of pathology.

Three stages of pathology: predisposition, precipitation, perpetuation.

Treatment of genetic malformations and damage from injuries are outside the scope of Dianetics (but note that Clears rarely have accidents).

The common cold is psychosomatic. It is usually generated by one engram suggesting it and another confirming/reinforcing it be creation of actual mucus.

Engrams, inherited disabilities, accidents and germs are the four causes that reduce the organism physically from its optimum state.

• Some "inherited" disabilities turn out to be engramic.
• Engrams predispose people to accidents.
• Engrams predispose people to and perpetuate infection.

Theoretically, cancer and diabetes are engramic in cause, particularly malignant cancer. This theory has not yet been tested; arthritis, dermatitis, allergies, asthma, some coronary difficulties, eye trouble, bursitis, ulcers and sinusitis are all psychosomatic.

Verbal suggestion in drugged subjects can turn the senses up or down in volume. E.g. to make a person see "almost as well as a cat" or (by turning sight down) able to read through the glare of almost blinding light with apparent comfort.

Hypnosis transfers analytic power from the "I" to the operator through the law of affinity (man must be in affinity with man to survive). This effect would have survival value in animals which run in packs.

The heart can be speeded up or slowed down by positive suggestion alone. Blood flow can be restricted in a nominated part of the body, so that e.g. a cut hand can be made to bleed little or not at all.

I.e. words spoken into the deep strata of the mind can cause physical effects in the body, including the endocrine system (as evidenced by watching it rebalance after the removal of engrams) and the autonomic nervous system.

I.e. the mind controls the glands, not vice-versa.

E.g. the following engram content would inhibit testosterone production in a man: "Sex is horrible, really nasty; I hate it."

(Note the semantic analysis needed; what we consider "higher" mental activities, i.e. words and concepts, have a very deep connection within the organism.)

There is a dwindling spiral here: engrams reduce physical tone through malfunction in the life function regulator. Reduced body tone makes mental tone go down. Reduced mental tone makes body tone go down. "A man starts to get sick and, having engrams, he gets sicker."

Psychosomatic illness is very superficial and is the first thing to lift in auditing. It can be alleviated without clearing.

Hormone injections have more effect when inhibitory engrams have been removed. Drugs don't have consistent effects because the engrams put the "survival" illness back into place.

ACTH and perhaps others in its category shift the individual on the time track, moving from one chronic engram to another.

Violent treatments (e.g. electric shock and surgical treatment of psychosomatic illness) appear to work when they do because they give an additional shock which changes the effect of the engram bank on the body. This aside, treatment of psychosomatic illness by removal of tissue, whether in the brain or some other body part, is not effective in any way. (It is sometimes requested by a patient in response to a "get rid of it" engram.)

There are five classes of psychosomatic illness (all of which cross-class in one way or another):

1a	Inhibition of fluid flow (e.g. constipation, arthritis)
1b	Magnification of fluid flow (e.g. high blood pressure, diarrhoea, sinusitis, priapism)
2a	Inhibition of physical growth
2b	Magnification of physical growth (possibly includes cancer, as over-healing)
3	Predisposition to disease caused by chronic psychosomatic pain (e.g. some tuberculosis, liver and kidney troubles, rashes, common cold)
4	Perpetuation of actual disease caused by chronic psychosomatic pain (e.g. some tuberculosis, conjunctivitis, running sores, any non-healing condition, bizarre pains with no pathology)
5	Verbal engram command (any of a vast array of possible conditions, e.g. "I have bad feet")

In class 4, an actual injury or condition can accidentally fix on a previously-injured area and keep an associated engram keyed in, making the condition chronic.

There can be psychosomatic "pain" (due to the injury in the engram incident) which is not felt due to an anaesthetic command such as "he won't feel a thing".

Engrams can allow precipitation of germ-based disease by command (e.g. "I feel sick") or by general lowering of physical tone and therefore resistance.

Given the action of engrams, especially in children, in the predisposition, precipitation and perpetuation of disease, and the worsening of effects due to restimulation, one wonders what the effects of disease would be without all this.

Evolution theory misses change due to survival necessity when talking only of random mutation.

A Clear is not easily made ill, virus or no; in an aberree, illness closely follows depression of the mental tone level.

Psychosomatic illness includes actual pathology, not just hypochondriacal tendencies (which is a special case of class 5).

Psychosomatic illness has little to do with sanity level, as it requires only one or two engrams of a specific nature to become manifest.

A aberration is a mental derangement; a somatic is a physical derangement. Both are present in an engram.

An individual will not manifest somatics if he is in the winning valence, but he will harm others (the winning valence delivered the engram). If this is repressed (by self, others or society) he will switch to own valence and will manifest the somatics as well as the aberration.

Sexual perversion (including homosexuality) is classified as a psychosomatic illness based on vicious engrams. A pervert is always ill in some way or another.

Due to engramic nature, a pervert is so extremely dangerous to society that tolerance is as bad for the society as punishment.

Manichaeism preached that all mental illness came from sex, which is evil (I though LRH was describing Freudism!)

Prevention of blasphemy has value because, entered into engrams, blasphemy makes the insane zealot and the murderous atheist.

Only pro-survival engrams become chronic. Therefore chronic psychosomatic illnesses have a sympathy (pro-survival) engram or engrams behind them. This is because:

• In them, one usually adopts one's own valence (it is the survival valence, as nice things are said to self).
• The reactive mind (in which the law of affinity also operates) puts forward the somatic to attract affinity (the illness is a "precious possession").

It is not possible to "spoil" a child with love and affection; they need all that they can get. An unattended sick child gets sicker.

The second the analyzer identifies an engram as such, it loses 20% of its power to aberrate and usually 100% of its value to cause psychosomatic illness.

Lifting of locks can alleviate a condition, until the reactive mind digs up another engram.

Drugs can temporarily alleviate a condition until the body, at the command of the reactive mind, finds a way round them.

Psycho-surgery and ECT can "cure" a psychosomatic illness, along with the personality, the intellect, and often life itself.

Pleasurable (or even neutral) memories are permanent; pain is perishable. Locks disappear like chaff when the underlying engram is gone.

Pro-survival engrams are much harder to remove than contra-survival engrams, though they are at least easier to find: they're right there in the surface as psychosomatic illnesses.

(Contra-survival: "here's a valence I can use to survive"; pro-survival: this engram guarantees own valence survival.)

All psychosomatic illnesses can be cured with Dianetics.

Dianetics: Book 2, Chapter 4 - The "Demons"

A couple of dozen philosophical principles were needed to develop Dianetics out of the super-complexity of human behaviour. E.g. introduction of an arbitrary, law of affinity. Particular use was made early on of the "Knowable and Unknowable" work of Herbert Spencer.

"Absolutism is a fine road to stagnation."

Mysticism and metaphysics, while not necessarily invalid, were not necessary in the construction of Dianetics and so were ignored (although previously studied).

Socrates was said to have a demon (inner voice) which predicted good or bad fortune and warned him if he was about to make a mistake.

Demons turned up in Dianetics research and could be created at will in drugged subjects.

A demon is a "parasitic circuit", an action in the mind which approximates another entity than self, and is derived entirely from words contained in engrams. It presents data to the analyzer as if spoken, i.e. a voice inside the head.

It is a safe assumption that almost every aberree has at least one demon circuit.

Demon circuits are "parasitic" because they "compartment off" some part of the analyzer (i.e. are able to do analytical computation outside the awareness of "I").

It is possible to set up a demon circuit using the entire analyzer, leaving "I" on a tiny and forlorn shelf, entirely dependent on the demon for his thinking.

A demon circuit is an engram, there includes the normal mechanisms such as pain, reduction of intellect and eventual illness of one sort or another.

The most dangerous demon circuits are those which contain a seemingly all-powerful exterior entity, which would solve all problems and answer every want.

Fully keyed in this makes a spineless puppet of "I" and, in the presence of other engrams, results in serious insanity.

Other engram command types (occlusions, compulsions, etc.) can also be embodied in demons, although "proper" demons are those that seem to speak to the person.

(The lock, seen as "mental anguish", has been blamed as the cause of aberration in other studies.)

There is a power of choice exercised in the reactive mind about which engrams will be used: "the happy little moron who runs the engram bank".

Where possible, it ties up analytical mind circuits in service to engrams (thus creating "demons").

This is the other source of attrition (in addition to analytical shutdown covered earlier) of the individual's analytical power, totalling to perhaps 98% loss.

Dianetics: Book 2, Chapter 3 - The Cell and the Organism

The engram has remained hidden as the single source of aberration probably because of the infinitely complex manifestations that can arise from a simple engram.

We theorize that the nerves and the brain developed to bleed off electrical energy from injured cells, to reduce damage to neighbouring cells.

Also that a cell has a survival dynamic and cells cooperated in colonies then organisms then developed the analytical mind in order to increase survival potential (a better structural theory than there has been because it predicts function).

However, such structural theories could be proven wholly wrong without affecting the workability of Dianetics.

Function always precedes structure. E.g. electricity was understood and harnessed long before the structure of the atom was understood.

Progress in the field of the human mind has been baulked because it has been addressed by medicine, an art rather than a science. A basic philosophy of live is required in order to progress.

To date, the cell has been poorly studied, and then mostly in death. Observations in Dianetics can be explained only by (a) a human soul entering at conception or (b) some sort of sentience in cells (preferred).

Cells evidently retain engrams. Pain temporarily reverses the higher sentience evolved into the brain "as though the cells were sorry they had placed so much power in the hands of a central commander".

The reactive mind may be the combined cellular intelligence (a handy structural theory).

Pain causes the analyzer to shut down either to protect it or because the organism believes an engram is best in an emergency.

Shutdowns of various durations and degrees are caused by injury, anaesthetic (poison), suffocation (including drowning), reduction of blood to the analyzer (wherever that is) due to shock, physical loss of blood, anaemia or restriction of flow through the throat.

Also natural sleep causes a degree of shutdown, though not very deep or serious.

There is a very important correspondence between tone level and analytical power, and more to be concluded from this than you would think.

The one common denominator in all engrams is some degree of analyzer shutdown. Therefore restimulation shuts down the analyzer to some degree, even though there is no present-time pain. This is a very mechanical ("push-button") operation.

Analyzer shutdown can also be caused by engramic command, e.g. "you are stupid".

Engrams can be held in chronic restimulation.

Removal of the two causes of shutdown gives rise to a fantastic increase of intelligence in a Clear.

The number of engrams recorded (probably in the hundreds) does not affect tone level, only the number keyed in and in restimulation.

A person can educate himself over and above his engrams to some slight degree.

Engrams in restimulation can cause chronic or temporary (e.g. a rage or depression) insanity.

Legal test for insanity (to judge culpability for a crime) is itself insane. Of course the person was insane at the time of the offence. The test is (however inaccurately) looking for chronic insanity,which is beside the point.

A Clear is not predictable due to a wide power of choice, but an aberree is wildly unpredictable due to (a) the unknown content of his engrams, (b) what situation will contain what restimulators is a matter of chance and (c) his power of choice, given the factors in restimulation, cannot be established.

Engram "thinking" is that to replay the recording is to again survive the situation. But there may be many contradictory command in the engrams in restimulation (those on the same "engram lock chain"). This leads to headaches, conflict, anxiety and nervous breakdown.

Because consciousness was bypassed during the engram recording, it cannot recall the content from the standard memory banks.

Removal of an engram does not depend on the analyzer contacting it.

"The reactive mind could be the very lowest level of analytical power, of course, but this does not alter the scientific fact that the engram acts as if it were a soldered-in connection to the life-function regulator and the organic coordination and the basic level of the analytical mind itself."

Keying in is the hooking up of the engram as part of the operating machinery of the body.

There are three kinds of thought:

• Analytical: rational as modified by education and viewpoint.
• Reactive: A=A=A of engram computation.
• Justified: analyzer attempting to explain reactive behaviour in an effort to be right.

Dramatization is the person acting out the content of an engram. At full force, this can be a replay of the recording, possibly amended by the little analytical power left available.

This behaviour can be suppressed by later overriding engrams (e.g. society's punishment).

A valence is the personality of one of the actors in an engram. A person will dramatize a winning valence (which is never the themselves: receipt of the engram is a failure).

A person will accumulate "half a hundred valences before he is ten". Forget about split (dual) personalities!

If dramatization is suppressed ("breaking of the dramatization"), the person will slide into own valence (at least he survived the incident, says the reactive mind), and will experience the pain and commands in the engram and will become ill.

There is no point cataloguing types of irrational or insane behaviour; they are all just symptoms of the action of language in engrams.

There are only a few more fundamentals to be covered:

• Parasite circuits.
• Emotional impaction.
• Psychosomatic ills.

The reactive mind was an evolutionary blunder. Mankind can now take an artificial evolutionary step (clearing). "The bridge has been built across the canyon."

Dianetics: Book 2, Chapter 2 - The Reactive Mind

The cell, colonies of cells (organs?) aggregations of colonies of cells (organisms, e.g. Man) are all seeking to survive.

Dianetics does not deny the soul or divine or creative imagination but limits itself to the finite universe, which is all that is needed to resolve the problem of aberration.

Dianetics was developed from 273 case studies.

There are gaps in the standard memory banks during moments of "unconsciousness", which are caused by  anaesthesia, drugs, injury, shock or illness (delirium).

It may well have been that the brain is an absorber for overcharges of energy generated by injured cells (just a theory; not part of Dianetics).

During a moment of intense pain, the analytical mind behaves like an organ to which a vital supply was cut off; its action is suspended.

The reactive mind is a (poor, but perhaps it's a difficult problem biologically) solution to keeping the organism operating during these times.

The mind records, on some level, continuously until death.

Aberration is similar to the action of post-hypnotic suggestion, which was studied to help identify the cause of aberration, and which is actually a pro-survival (sympathy) engram, laid in by sympathy with the operator.

Commands in post-hypnotic suggestions can cause repressions, compulsions, neuroses, psychoses, schizophrenia, paranoid schizophrenia, manic behaviour, depressive behaviour and hypochondria; i.e. a semblance of any insanity (but not as deeply implanted).

Hypnotism is too dangerous for a parlor trick because of its wild variability (can key in latent engrams).

Actual insanity does not need to emerge into the consciousness to be released.

Hypnotism demonstrates the working parts of aberration:

• Reduced awareness/self-determinism.
• The command.
• Occlusion of the command.
• Carrying out the suggestion (dramatizing).
• Justification.
• Fault-finding.
• Release.

The reactive mind can take over from the analytical mind fully or partially (e.g., loosely speaking, reactive mind 2/3 on = analytical mind 2/3 off).

The reactive mind is a sub-moron level of intelligence, but is extremely rugged and can be useful in extreme circumstances, e.g. to drag a burned man out of the fire.

An engram is defined as a "definite and permanent trace left by a stimulus on the protoplasm of a tissue." It can be permanently fused into any and all body circuits and behave like an entity.

It is not exhausted by being restimulated; in fact it becomes more able to exert its power the more often it is activated.

The engram banks record pain and painful emotion; the standard banks do not.

Emotion comes from engrams, endocrine response and the enhancement or reduction of the dynamic.

Proof is in workability: when engrams are erased, the person behaves rationally on the survival conduct pattern.

Animals all have a reactive mind too. In Man, it no longer has survival value.

There are 3 types of engram:

• Contra-survival.
• Pro-survival (more aberrative, because the law of affinity is stronger than the threat of pain).
• Painful emotion.

The reactive mind "thinks" in identities: one thing is identical to another; A=A=A=A=A. Any datum is just the same as any other datum in the same experience.

Engrams have to be keyed in to be effective (this proves to the reactive mind that something like the event in the engram can happen again).

The more the perceptions in the engram are restimulated, the more it becomes activated.

If the organism doesn't do what the engram says, the physical pain turns on.

A person doesn't immediately react to an engram by fleeing because other (rational) factors are considered, including the dynamics, e.g. the person's affinity for another who is restimulative. So pains from the engram can become a predisposition to illness, or a chronic illness. This may be counteracted to some degree by a general high tone. However, neurotic suggestions will still be somewhat effective.

A lock is a standard memory which gains too much power because an engram has "moved up" under the standard bank. The key-in is the first lock on an engram.

The lock has similar perceptic content to the engram, but may be on a different subject entirely.

The language content of engrams, especially homonymic content and generalized personal pronouns, cause them to be far more aberrative than they would otherwise be.

Dianetics: Book 2, Chapter 1 - The Analytical Mind and the Standard Memory Banks

The analytical mind is a perfect computer, based on the data available.

Aberration arises from the nature of the data offered to the analytical mind as a problem to be computed. Data may also be false or lacking (due to education, or physical impairment, e.g. blindness).

The "I", or monitor, can be considered to be part of, and inherently in control of, the analytical mind.

Percepts are filed first, then presented to the analyzer.

Percepts are filed along with thought stream/conclusions, present and past.

Any single percept is filed as a concept. Everything is superbly cross-indexed.

There are several standard banks, and there may be duplication for redundancy. There is one or more banks for each perception.

Everything is filed correctly in a physically intact person, regardless of aberration.

The standard banks include recordings of words (heard, read or, as in Braille, felt); i.e. the semantic interpretation of raw percepts.

The analytical mind constantly checks and weighs new experience and conclusions against old, and "generally is very busy being right."

Through the mechanisms of the life function regulator, the analytical mind can control any function of the body, when it skills itself to do so.

It can install (and later change) training patterns into the organism.

This is not "tooth and claw" behaviour, but warm, honest sanity, in the individual and in society.

Dianetics: Book 2, Chapter 1 - The Analytical Mind and the Standard Memory Banks

The analytical mind is a perfect computer, based on the data available.

Aberration arises from the nature of the data offered to the analytical mind as a problem to be computed. Data may also be false or lacking (due to education, or physical impairment, e.g. blindness).

The "I", or monitor, can be considered to be part of, and inherently in control of, the analytical mind.

Percepts are filed first, then presented to the analyzer.

Percepts are filed along with thought stream/conclusions, present and past.

Everything is filed correctly in a physically intact person, regardless of aberration.

The standard banks include recordings of words (heard, read or, as in Braille, felt); i.e. the semantic interpretation of raw percepts.

The analytical mind constantly checks and weighs new experience and conclusions against old, and "generally is very busy being right."

Through the mechanisms of the life function regulator, the analytical mind can control any function of the body, when it skills itself to do so.

It can install (and later change) training patterns into the organism.

This is not "tooth and claw" behaviour, but warm, honest sanity, in the individual and in society.

Dianetics: Book 1, Chapter 5 - Summary

Aberrated conduct is still conduct/activity across the dynamics intended to increase survival. However, as it is based on irrational data, the outcome is likely to be destructive (and certainly non-optimum).

Interesting note: descriptions of dynamics 3 and 4 include "(urge of)  the group for (survival of) the group", "Mankind for Mankind" and "the group for Mankind", as if these entities have their own dynamics, independent from the individual.

First dynamic includes "self as spirit".

The analytical mind: perceives and retains data, composes and computes conclusions, poses and resolves problems across the dynamics, with the purpose of directing self and others toward survival. (Hesitancy in putting solutions into action comes from self-deprecation?) It thinks in differences and similarities.

Intelligence is the relative ability to do the above.

Dynamic is the energy available to do the above.

Both of these are necessary to optimal survival, and both vary from individual to individual.

Potential Value = I · D^x. Only realized in unaberrated individuals (aberration can cause potential value to be misdirected.)

Engrams inhibit intelligence with false or incorrectly evaluated data.

Engrams disperse life force, i.e. the dynamic energy.

Happiness lies in overcoming obstacles in the pursuit of goals, and (transiently) in the indulgence and contemplation of pleasurable experience.

The reactive mind records physical and emotional pain, and all perceptions during moments of full or partial unconsciousness. These recordings (engrams) are unavailable to the analytical mind (partial/foggy recall of perceptions if not fully unconscious?) Engrams cause all aberration and psychosomatic ills.

The somatic mind, directed by the analytical and reactive minds, puts solutions into effect on the physical level.

Training patters are placed in the somatic mind by the analytical mind to handle repetitive actions, and can be removed or adjusted by the analytical mind; habits are placed in the somatic mind by the reactive mind, and can only be removed by that which can affect engrams (i.e. auditing).

Emotion is:

• engramic response
• endocrine response
• inhibition or furtherance of life force.