by thoughtographer » Tue Apr 11, 2006 6:31 pm
I read this years ago in Martin Gardner's "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science". It should be quite clear why I'm posting it here. I'm not a huge fan of Gardner or his camp, but when something's right, I don't chuck it. <br><br>Here's a relevant portion, FWIW:<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>What, precisely, is dianetics?<br><br>Briefly, it is the view that all mental aberrations (neuroses, psychoses, and psychosomatic ills) are caused by "engrams." To make this clear, however, we must first make a journey through the jungle of Hubbard's elaborate terminology.<br><br>The conscious mind is called by Hubbard the "analytical mind." It operates like a gigantic computing machine. The working is flawless. It may, however, direct the body in an aberrated manner if it is fed false data by the unconscious mind.<br><br>The unconscious mind is termed the "reactive mind." Actually, it is always conscious -- even when a person is sleeping, or "unconscious" from some other cause. The reactive mind is incapable of "thinking" or "remembering." It is a moron. But when the analytical mind becomes unconscious or semi-conscious, in a manner associated with bodily pain or painful emotion, the reactive mind starts to make "recordings." These recordings are called "engrams." They are like phonograph records except that they record, in addition to sounds, all the perceptions received by the reactive mind while the analytical mind is "turned off."<br><br>Hubbard illustrates this with the following example: "A woman is knocked down by a blow. She is rendered 'unconscious.' She is kicked and told she is a faker, that she is no good, that she is always changing her mind. A chair is overturned in the process. A faucet is running in the kitchen. A car is passing in the street outside. The engram contains a running record of all these perceptions: sight, sound, tactile, taste, smell, organic sensation, kinetic sense, joint position, thirst record, etc. The engram would consist of the whole statement made to her when she was 'unconscious': the voice tones and emotion in the voice, the sound and feel of the original and later blows, the tactile of the floor, the feel and sound of the chair overturning, the organic sensation of the blow, perhaps the taste of blood in her mouth or any other taste present there, the smell of the person attacking her and the smells in the room, the sound of the passing car's motor and tires, etc."<br><br>Engrams, then, are perceptual recordings made when the analytical mind is turned off in a manner associated with pain or painful emotion. Unconsciousness because of injury, anesthetics, illness, drugs -- even an alcoholic stupor -- are sufficiently "painful" to produce engrams. Since the reactive mind is an idiot, incapable of evaluating, everything it experiences goes into the engrams. These engrams are filed away in the "reactive bank." Hubbard has classified and labeled them in various ways -- such as bouncers, denyers, groupers, holders, and misdirectors -- but we need not go into these distinctions. Nor will we have space to discuss his "demon circuits" -- commanding demons, critical demons, listen-to-me demons, tell-you-what-to-say demons, and so on. A glossary of the major Hubbardian terms will be found at the back of Dianetics.<br><br>All neuroses, psychoses, and psychosomatic ailments (including the common cold and possibly diabetes and cancer) are caused by engrams. In most cases, the trouble-making engrams are recorded before one is born. This introduces us to Hubbard's most revolutionary concept -- the prenatal engram.<br><br>In Dianetics, you learn that the embryo is capable of recording engrams immediately after conception. How these records are made, since the embryo does not develop sense organs until late in its history, remains a profound mystery. They take place on a cellular level, involving some unknown type of change within the protoplasm. According to Hubbard, life in the womb is far from Paradise. "Mama sneezes, baby gets knocked 'unconscious.' Mama runs lightly and blithely into a table and baby gets its head stoved in. Mama has constipation and baby, in the anxious effort, gets squashed. Papa becomes passionate and baby has the sensation of being put into a running washing machine. Mama gets hysterical, baby gets an engram. Papa hits Mama, baby gets an engram. Junior bounces on Mama's lap, baby gets an engram. And so it goes."<br><br>It is also very noisy in the uterus. "Intestinal squeaks and groans, flowing water, belches, flatulation and other body activities of the mother produce a continual sound.... When mother takes quinine a high ringing noise may come into being in the foetal ears as well as her own -- a ringing which will carry through a person's whole life." Moreover, the uterus is very tight in later prenatal life. If Mama has high blood pressure, "it is extremely horrible in the womb."<br><br>In addition to being knocked out by blows, coughs, sneezes, vomiting, and so on, the poor embryo can also be rendered unconscious by the violent pressures of the sex act, and -- understandably -- by attempted abortions. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Throughout his book, Hubbard reveals a deep-seated hatred of women, but this hatred is most clearly indicated by his obsession with what dianeticians call "AA" -- attempted abortion. When Hubbard's Mamas are not getting kicked in the stomach by their husbands or having affairs with lovers, they are preoccupied with AA -- usually by means of knitting needles. "Twenty or thirty abortion attempts are not uncommon in the aberee," Hubbard writes, "and in every attempt the child could have been pierced through the body or brain."</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> These experiences naturally produce the worst engrams because they are usually accompanied by verbal expressions charged with emotion. Since all these remarks are recorded literally by the embryo, they create engrams capable of causing great damage in later life when they are fed as data to the conscious mind.<br><br>To cite an example from Hubbard: Papa beats Mama on the stomach, knocking baby unconscious. At the same time Papa yells, "Take that! Take it, I tell you. You've got to take it!" Later in life, these sentences are interpreted literally, and the person becomes a kleptomaniac or thief. "Oh, this language of ours," Hubbard exclaims sadly, "which says everything it doesn't mean! Put into the hands of the moronic reactive mind, what havoc it wreaks! Literal interpretation of everything!"<br><br>Before a prenatal engram can cause damage, however, it must be "keyed in." This occurs when the person has a painful experience which closely resembles, in some respect, the dormant engram. Hubbard illustrates this by citing another mother, struck in the abdomen by her husband. The husband shouts, "God damn you, you filthy whore: you're no good!" This engram contains a headache, a falling body, the grating of teeth, and the mother's intestinal sounds. Several years later, the child is slapped by the father who says, "God damn you: you're no good." The child cries, and that night has a headache. The engram has been "keyed in." "Now the sound of a falling body or grating teeth or any trace of anger of any kind in the father's voice will make the child nervous. His physical health will suffer. He will begin to have headaches."<br><br>Here are a few additional samples from Hubbard of how prenatal engrams cause later difficulties. A pregnant mother is straining for a bowel movement. This compresses the baby into painful unconsciousness. The mother talks to herself and says, "Oh, this is hell. I am all jammed up inside. I feel so stuffy I can't think. This is too terrible to be borne." Later in life the child has frequent colds ("I feel so stuffy..."). An inferiority complex develops because he feels he is "too terrible to be born." (Puns of this sort turn up frequently in dianetic therapy. An auditor reported recently that a psychosomatic rash on the backside of a lady patient was caused by prenatal recordings of her mother's frequent requests for aspirin. The literal reactive mind had been feeding this to her analytical mind in the form of "ass burn.")<br><br>Another of Hubbard's patients was a morose young man whose attitude toward life was expressed by Hamlet's famous line, "To be or not to be, that is the question." Hubbard's therapy revealed that the man's mother, when pregnant, had been beaten by an actor husband who then proceeded to recite from Hamlet. And so, Hubbard writes, the young man "would sit for hours in a morose apathy wondering about life." <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>From: <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/gardner/">Martin Gardner Evaluates Dianetics</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>"A crooked stick will cast a crooked shadow."</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--></p><i></i>