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of the mind, similar in function to the subconscious mind of
psychoanalysis.
The reactive mind thinks in identities. It is a stimulus-response
mind. Its actions are exteriorly determined. It has no power of choice.
It puts physical pain data forward in an effort to save the organism. So
long as its mandates and commands are obeyed it withholds the physical
pain. As soon as the organism starts to go against its commands, it
inflicts the pain. (5)
The contents of the reactive mind are "engrams," and other memories
which function as reminders of the engrams, called "locks."
An engram is an energy picture. It is made during a period of
physical pain when the analyzer is out of circuit and the organism
experiences something it conceives to be or which is contrary to
survival. An engram is received only in the absence of the analytical
power. (6)
The engram contains the memory of actual physical pain and
unconsciousness, known in Dianetics as "anaten."
For example, suppose Johnny is playing with his sister Susie in the
kitchen while Mommy is doing the laundry. It is raining outside. There
is the sound of running water and the smell of bleach in the air.
Susie hits Johnny on the right side of his head with a toy, hard
enough to cut his skin and knock him unconscious momentarily. The
elements of an engram are present: pain and unconsciousness. The memory
of this experience would be filed in Johnny's reactive mind as an
engram.
Years later, the adult Johnny finds that every time it rains, he
tends to get a headache, and it is always on the right side of his head.
His mysterious headaches also occur whenever his wife does the laundry
and he hears water running or smells the odor of bleach. Experiences
which are similar in content to an original engram produce the same body
responses as in the engram being "restimulated."
But through Dianetic auditing, Hubbard promises, Johnny can be taken
back in time through earlier and earlier memories of headaches (the
locks) to the original engram which holds the chain of memories in place
in the mind. Once Johnny is able to recall the original memory of the
time when he was hit in the head by Susie, then the engram is discharged
and can no longer produce reactive effects in the present.
In this way, Hubbard promises that freedom from all psychosomatic
problems can be achieved with Dianetic auditing. The person who, through
auditing, discharges all the engrams from his reactive mind will achieve
the state of "clear," in which he no longer has a reactive mind. Its
contents have been refiled in the analytical mind and are available for
conscious recall by the "clear."
Refile the reactive memories and the whole conscious lifetime of the
individual springs into view, brilliant and clear, unmodified by the
by-pass circuits which are madness. Reduce the reactive mind and the
optimum mind for the individual comes into view. (7)
If Dianetics had sprung full-blown from the mind of Hubbard, and if
Dianetics in practice yielded the stellar results promised for it, then
Hubbard might have achieved legitimate fame.
The fact is that in Dianetics, Hubbard's genius was more for
synthesis than for thesis. While in the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in
1945, Hubbard spent many hours in the medical library, doing research
which would find its fruition in the publication of Dianetics
five years later.
One man who has researched Hubbard's researches, Jeff Jacobsen, says
that in creating Dianetics, Hubbard may have drawn from the works of at
least seven well known researchers in the field of the mind, some of
whose writings were published just prior to Hubbard's stay in Oak Knoll.
This writer states that Hubbard drew from the work of two men, Drs.
Sadger and Pailthorpe, who published in the Psychoanalytic Review
in 1941, and who stressed the importance of prenatal memories in mental
pathology. (8)
Other sources for Dianetics cited by Jacobsen include Freud's
abreaction therapy, in which early memories are relived, thereby
discharging their power in later life; Korzybski's General Semantics, in
which a concept very similar to the reactive mind is explored; the book
The Mneme by Simon, where the word "engram" was originally
coined; and the science of Cybernetics, which was very popular at the
time Hubbard was writing Dianetics.
Hubbard always claimed that a great deal of research and testing had
gone into Dianetics:
The discoveries and developments which made the formulation of
Dianetics possible occupied many years of exact research and careful
testing. (9)
Discovered, computed, and organized by L. Ron Hubbard, mathematician
and theoretical philosopher, DIANETICS has been under study for
twenty-five years and in active formulation for the past eleven. (10)
By early 1950 over two hundred patients had been tested; of those
two hundred people, two hundred cures had been obtained. Dianetics is a
science because by following readily prescribed techniques, which can be
specifically stated, based on definitely stated basic postulates, a