[Plaintext version 1.1, May 23, 1998]
                        CHILD DIANETICS
                Dianetic Processing for Children

Compiled from the research and lecture materials of L. Ron Hubbard
by the staff of the Hubbard Research Foundation THE PUBLICATIONS
ORGANIZATION WORLD WIDE PUBLISHED BY THE PUBLICATIONS ORGANIZATION
WORLD WIDE

(A branch of the Church of Scientology of California, a non-profit
corporation in the U.S.A., Registered in England)

  17 North East Thistle Street Lane,
  Edinburgh 2, Scotland
  Copyright (c) 1951, 1967, 1968

                               by
                         L. RON HUBBARD
                      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

              First Edition - 1951
              Second Edition -1962
              Third Edition - 1965
              Fourth Edition - 1967
              Fifth Edition - 1968

              MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
              THE GARDEN CITY PRESS LIMITED
              LETCHWORTH, HERTFORDSHIRE

 To our next generation, the
 best reason we have for
 Dianetics

                        IMPORTANT NOTE

In studying Scientology be very, very certain you never go
past a word you do not fully understand.

  The only reason a person gives up a study or becomes
confused or unable to learn is that he or she has gone past a
word that was not understood.

  If the material becomes confusing or you can't seem to grasp
it, there will be a word just earlier that you have not under-
stood. Don't go any further, but go back to BEFORE you got
into trouble, find the misunderstood word and get it defined.

  For unfamiliar words in this book there is a glossary
beginning on page 165 to assist you.

                           CONTENTS

Introduction by L. Ron Hubbard                             9
Chapter One         Basic Dianetic Principles             17
Chapter Two         Our Greatest Problem                  23
Chapter Three       Toward a Saner World                  35
Chapter Four        Standard Dianetic Technique           50
Chapter Five        Dianetic Processing for Children      59
Chapter Six         Dianetics in Child Care               74
Chapter Seven       An Auditor's Report                   88
Chapter Eight       Special Technique for Children        92
Chapter Nine        Sessions With Children               102
Chapter Ten         Some Cases in Point                  124
Chapter Eleven      A Look Ahead                         142
Chapter Twelve      Child Guidance Centers               152
Chapter Thirteen    Summary                              160
Appendix            The Auditor's Code                   163
Glossary                                                 165
The History of Dianetics                                 176
Dianetics and Language                                   181
Assists To Remembering                                   187

INTRODUCTION
By L. RON HUBBARD

CHILD DIANETICS is being published to fill a need.

  It is staff collected and staff written except for this
introduction and that, necessarily, takes quite a while.
Dianetics meanwhile has advanced considerably. The "theta-MEST"
theory, validation processing, MEST processing and other
developments can spot considerable additional light on Child
Dianetics. This book is published because of demand, not
because it is up to date.

  The main problem with children is not so much how to process
them into sanity as it is to live with them. The adult is
the problem in child raising, not the child. For the adult we
have SCIENCE OF SURVIVAL and SELF ANALYSIS.

  An adult has certain rights around children which the children
and modern adults rather tend to ignore. A good, stable adult
with love and tolerance in his heart is about the best therapy
a child can have.

  The main consideration in raising children is the problem of
training them without breaking them. The Jesuits had a system
which is reported to have been workable but the system
perished with the Jesuits. In contradistinction, the American
Medical Association lately came out with a pamphlet which
was called HOW TO CONTROL YOUR CHILD. That's just what you don't
want to do. You want to raise your child in such a way that you
don't have to control him, so that he will be in full possession
of himself at all times. Upon that depends his good behavior,
his health, his sanity.

  Children are not dogs. They can't be trained as dogs are
trained. They are not controllable items. They are, and let's

10                      CHILD DIANETICS

not overlook the point, men and women. A child is not a
special species of animal distinct from Man. A child is a man
or a woman who has not attained full growth.

  Any law which applies to the behavior of men and women
applies to children.

  How would you like to be pulled and hauled and ordered
about and restrained from doing whatever you wanted to do?
You'd resent it. The only reason a child "doesn't" resent it is
because he's small. You'd half murder somebody who treated
you, an adult, with the orders, contradiction and disrespect
given to the average child. The child doesn't strike back
because he isn't big enough. He gets your floor muddy, interrupts
your nap, destroys the peace of the home instead. If he had
equality with you in the matter of rights, he'd not ask this
"revenge." This "revenge" is standard child behavior.

  A child has a right to his self-determinism. You say that if
he is not restrained from pulling things down on himself, running
into the road, etc., etc., he'll be hurt. What are you as an
adult doing to make that child live in rooms or an environment
where he can be hurt? The fault is yours, not his, if he breaks
things.

  The sweetness and love of a child is preserved only so long
as he can exert his own self determinism. You interrupt that
and to a degree you interrupt his life.

  There are only two reasons why a child's right to decide for
himself has to be interrupted - the fragility and danger of his
environment and you. For you work out on him the things
that were done to you, regardless of what you think.

  There are two courses you can take. Give the child leeway
in an environment he can't hurt, which can't badly hurt him
and which doesn't greatly restrict his space and time. And you
can clean up your own aberrations to a point where your
tolerance equals or surpasses his lack of education in how to
please you.

  When you give a child something, it's his. It's not still yours.
Clothes, toys, quarters, what he has been given, MUST

                          INTRODUCTION                    11

REMAIN UNDER HIS EXCLUSIVE CONTROL. So he tears up his
shirt, wrecks his bed, breaks his fire engine. It's NONE
OF YOUR BUSINESS. How would you like to have somebody give
you a Christmas present and then tell you, day after day
thereafter, what you are to do with it and even punish you
if you failed to care for it the way the donor thinks.
You'd wreck that donor and ruin that present. You know you
would. The child wrecks your nerves when you do it to him.
That's revenge. He cries. He pesters you. He breaks your
things. He "accidentally" spills his milk. And he wrecks on
purpose the possession about which he is so often cautioned.
Why? Because he is fighting for his own self determinism, his
own right to own and make his weight felt on his environment.
This "possession" is another channel by which he can be
controlled. So he has to fight the possession and the controller.

  If you want to control your child, simply break him into
complete apathy and he'll be as obedient as any hypnotized
half-wit. If you want to know how to control him, get a book
on dog training, name the child Rex and teach him first to
"fetch" and then to "sit up" and then to bark for his food.
You can train a child that way. Sure you can. But it's your
hard luck if he turns out to be a blood-letter. Only don't be
half-hearted about it. Simply TRAIN him. "Speak, Roger!"
"Lie down!" "Roll over!"

  Of course, you'll have a hard time of it. This - a slight
oversight - is a human being. You'd better charge right in
and do what you can to break him into apathy quickly. A
club is best. Tying him in a closet without food for a few days
is fairly successful. The best recommended tactic, however, is
simply to use a straight jacket and muffs on him until he is
docile and imbecilic. I'm warning you that it's going to be
tough; it will be tough because Man became king of the beasts
only because he couldn't as a species be licked. He doesn't
easily go into an obedient apathy like dogs do. Men own dogs
because men are self-determined and dogs aren't.

12                      CHILD DIANETICS

  The truth lies in this direction:
  Man is basically good.
  Only by severe aberration can man be made evil.
  Severe training drives him into non-sociability.
  Man must retain his personal ability to adapt his environment
to him to remain sane.
  A man is as sane and safe as he is self-determined.

  In raising your child, you must avoid "training" him into a
social animal. Your child begins by being more sociable, more
dignified than you are. In a relatively short time the treatment
he gets so checks him that he revolts. This revolt can be
intensified until he is a terror to have around. He will be noisy,
thoughtless, careless of possessions, unclean - anything, in
short, which will annoy you. Train him, control him and you'll
lose his love. You've lost the child forever that you seek to
control and own.

  Permit a child to sit on your lap. He'll sit there, contented.
Now put your arms around him and constrain him to sit there.
Do this even though he wasn't even trying to leave. Instantly,
he'll squirm. He'll fight to get away from, you. He'll get angry.
He'll cry. Recall now, he was happy before you started to hold
him. (You should actually make this experiment.)

  Your efforts to mould, train, control this child in general
react on him exactly like trying to hold him on your lap.

  Of course you will have difficulty if this child of yours has
already been trained, controlled, ordered about, denied his
own possessions. In mid-flight, you change your tactics. You
try to give him his freedom. He's so suspicious of you he will
have a terrible time trying to adjust. The transition period will
be difficult. But at the end of it you'll have a well-ordered,
well-trained, sociable child, thoughtful of you and, very important
to you, a child who loves you.

  The child who is under constraint, shepherded, handled,
controlled, has a very bad anxiety postulated. His parents are
survival entities. They mean food, clothing, shelter, affection.

                          INTRODUCTION                    13

This means he wants to be near them. He wants to love them
naturally, being their child.

  But on the other hand his parents are non-survival entities.
His whole being and life depend upon his rights to use his own
decision about his movements and his possessions and his
body. Parents seek to interrupt this out of the mistaken idea
that a child is an idiot who won't learn unless "controlled."
So he has to fight shy, to fight against, to annoy and harass
an enemy.

  Here is anxiety. "I love them dearly. I also need them. But
they mean an interruption of my ability, my mind, my potential
life. What am I going to do about my parents? I can't live
with them. I can't live without them. Oh, dear, oh, dear!"
There he sits in his rompers running this problem through his
head. That problem, that anxiety, will be with him for
eighteen years, more or less. And it will half wreck his life.

  Freedom for the child means freedom, for you.

  Abandoning the possessions of the child to their fate means
eventual safety for the child's possessions.

  What terrible will power is demanded of a parent not to
give constant streams of directions to a child! What agony to
watch his possessions going to ruin! What upset to refuse to
order his time and space!

  But it has to be done if you want a well, a happy, a careful,
a beautiful, an intelligent child!

  Another thing is the matter of contribution. You have no
right to deny your child the right to contribute.

  A human being feels able and competent only so long as he
is permitted to contribute as) much as or more than he has
contributed to him.

  A man can over-contribute and feel secure in an environment.
He feels insecure the moment he under-contributes, which is
to say, gives less than he receives. If you don't believe

14                      CHILD DIANETICS

this, recall a time when everyone else brought something to the
party but you didn't. How did you feel?

  A human being will revolt against and distrust any source
which contributes to him more than he contributes to it.

  Parents, naturally, contribute more to a child than the child
contributes in return. As soon as the child sees this he becomes
unhappy. He seeks to raise his contribution level, failing, he
gets angry at the contributing source. He begins to detest his
parents. They try to override this revolt by contributing more.
The child revolts more. It is a bad dwindling spiral because
the end of it is that the child will go into apathy.

  You MUST let the child contribute to you. You can't order
him to contribute. You can't command him to mow the grass
and then think that that's contribution. He has to figure out
what his contribution is and then give it. If he hasn't selected
it, it isn't his, but only more control.

  A baby contributes by trying to make you smile. The baby
will show off. A little later he will dance for you, bring you
sticks, try to repeat your work motions to help you. If you
don't accept those smiles, those dances, those sticks, those work
motions in the spirit they are given, you have begun to interrupt
the child's contribution. Now he will start to get anxious.
He will do unthinking and strange things to your possessions
in an effort to make them "better" for you. You scold him.
That finishes him.

  Something else enters in here. And that is DATA. How can
a child possibly know what to contribute to you or his family
or home if he hasn't any idea of the working principles on
which it runs?

  A family is a group with the common goal of group survival
and advancement. The child not allowed to contribute or
failing to understand the goals and working principles of family
life is cast adrift from the family. He is shown he is not part of
the family because he can't contribute. So he becomes anti-family
 - the first step on the road to being anti-social. He spills
milk, annoys your guests and yells outside your window in

                          INTRODUCTION                    15

"play". He'll even get sick just to make you work. He is shown
to be nothing by being shown that he isn't powerful enough to
contribute.

  You can do nothing more than accept the smiles, the dances,
the sticks of the very young. But as soon as a child can understand
he should be given the whole story of the family operation.

  What is the source of his allowance? Clothes? A clean
house? A car?

  Daddy works. He expends hours and brains and brawn and
for this he gets money. The money, handed over at a store,
buys food. A car is cared for because of money scarcity. A
calm house and care of Daddy means Daddy works better and
that means food and clothes and cars.

  Education is necessary because one earns better after he has
learned.

  Play is necessary in order to give a reason for hard work.

  Give him the whole picture. If he's been revolting, he may
keep right on revolting. But he'll eventually come around. If
he can't get the point in a calm talk about it, you'll simply
have to get an auditor to process him a little because you went
a long way too far.

  First of all a child needs security. Part of that security is
understanding. Part of it is a code of conduct which is invariable.
What is against law today can't be ignored tomorrow.

  You can actually punish a child physically to defend your
rights, so long as he owns what he owns and can contribute to
you and work for you.

  Adults have rights. He ought to know this. A child has
growing up as his goal. If an adult doesn't have more rights,
why grow up?

  The child has a duty toward you. He has to be able to take
care of you; not an illusion that he is, but actually. And you
have to have patience to allow yourself to be cared for sloppily
until by sheer experience itself - not by your directions - he
learns how to do it well. Care for the child? - nonsense! He's

16                      CHILD DIANETICS

probably got a better grasp of immediate situations than you
have. Only when he's almost psychotic with aberration will a
child be an accident prone.

  You're well and enjoy life because you aren't owned. Your
American forefathers fought slavery twice - 1776 and 1861.
You couldn't enjoy life if you were shepherded and owned.
You'd revolt. And if your revolt was quenched, you turn into
a subversive. That's what you make out of your child when
you own, manage and control him.

  Potentially, parent, he's saner than you are and the world is
a lot brighter to him. His sense of values and reality are
sharper. Don't dull them, and your child will be a fine,
successful human being. Own, control, manage and reject and
you'll get the treatment you deserve - subversive revolt.

  That's all I can tell you right now. SELF ANALYSIS is
your best pattern of processing to use on a child. Only you ask
him the questions.

  Now, are we going to have a happy house around here or
aren't we?
                                              L. Ron Hubbard
                                              Wichita, 1951.

                           CHAPTER 1

                   BASIC DIANETIC PRINCIPLES

For centuries many scientists and philosophers have been
studying the convolutions of human thinking. The longer the
study, the greater their reassurance that we are the possessors
of a most complex and challenging instrument called the Mind.
What they refer to is, since the advent of Dianetics,
distinguished as the analytical mind.

  But describing its behavior did not make the ways of the
Mind any less baffling. Our knowledge of the actual functioning
which takes place when we think continued to be only
approximate at best. There were still many unexplained
aspects, unknown stimuli and unaccountable factors - until
the theory of Dianetics was applied.

  The stumbling block, Dianetics proved after twelve years of
experimentation, is the fact that we are also the possessors of
another mind, the reactive mind, which has far greater force
and compulsion upon us than the so-called analytical mind. In
fact when brought into play, the reactive mind badgers and
bedevils us throughout our entire life span.

  Like the analytical mind, the reactive mind is also a mental
function. It is a kind of primitive function in that it is a vicious
and violent survival mechanism in living organisms.

  But the reactive mind does not analyze - it thinks only in
terms of identities and similarities, not in both similarities and
differences as does the analytical mind. It is strictly a literal
mind that responds defensively every time something reminds
it of a similar painful incident.

  The animal mentality, being largely reactive, is a good
illustration. Suppose a quietly browsing doe, confident at the

18                      CHILD DIANETICS

moment that no danger lurked nearby, ranged beneath a tree.
Suddenly a huge snake dropped down upon her back and
terrified her (threatened her survival). The terror would cause
her meager analytical faculties to become attenuated or partly
unconscious, whereupon her indomitable reactive mind would
take over, directing the organism towards survival in a manner
deriving from past successful survivals in time of great danger.
The impressions received at the time of extreme danger and
terror are recorded and filed away for future survival use.
Thereafter, that tree and all others resembling it will be
associated with the snake threat in the doe's mind. Every time the
doe sees such a tree, the recording of the fearful incident with
cause it to shy away on pain of death, for to the reactive mind
pain means death and pleasure means survival.

  To civilized human beings, however, the reactive mind has
become a leech upon rational behavior. It is the hypothetical
cyst which occludes the proper functioning of the analytical
mind; it is the root of all our psychosomatic ills, and the
barrier which prevents us from attaining the optimum of our
thinking abilities and aspirations.

  It is remarkable what powerful pressures the reactive mind
can exert upon the individual in order to make him obey
commands. Even though it is presumably a pro-survival
monitor, it cannot analyze and know the difference between
things.

  Thus, if a brindle cow kicked you and inflicted pain while
you were making an amateurish attempt to milk her, thence-forward
all brindle cows would become hateful creatures to you
and all sunny pastures would restimulate the unconsciousness.
You would even re-experience the pain of that kick each
time you were re-stimulated.

  Of course, it doesn't make sense, but that's the way the
reactive mind works; it can't think things out. And yet, by
means of Dianetics, we have discovered that hundreds of other
psychosomatic ills are imposed upon the human body in
exactly that crazy way.

                   BASIC DIANETIC PRINCIPLES              19

  What does the reactive mind consist of? It is a kind of
storage bank of memory, mostly of unpleasant things done to
us from the very first moment of life, but only of those events
which happened while we were unconscious or in pain. As such
it differs from our previous understanding of the meaning and
uses of memory.

  Here it is necessary to define memory as a process of
recalling, at will or in response to appropriate stimuli,
impressions previously made on the senses and recorded in the
mind. The process of recall is essentially one of perceiving these
impressions and understanding them; it is an analytical process.

  What was not before understood by the mental sciences, but
can now be demonstrated conclusively by Dianetics, is that
yet another file of impressions exists. This other file is one
in which impressions are recorded, in a manner and under
circumstances that do not permit of voluntary recall. These are
the impressions recorded by the reactive mind and held there
until such times as only that function has occasion to call them
into play.

  In other words, the reactive mind reacts to certain stimuli,
but in a manner so incapable of rational explanation, so
random and erratic, that it frequently does incalculable harm
to the human body and many of its functions.

  As previously indicated, the reactive mind records all
impressions experienced during moments of unconsciousness or of
pain sufficient to lower the perceptive abilities of the analytical
mind to a point less than full consciousness. Therefore, before
any of these data can affect the individual adversely, it is a
condition that it must be activated or "keyed in" by an
occurrence in the life of the individual similar to the one
originally recorded. From then on the occurrence is capable
of being reactivated by every such occurrence as a restimulator.

  We have said that the reactive mind records with the implication
that the data are filed as obtained, without regard for
system or original context. Similar results would be obtained
were a tape recorder to be placed in operation upon a busy

20                      CHILD DIANETICS

street corner. Auto horns, crashes, whistles, and snatches of
conversation would all be found on the tape in re-play. No
selective mechanism could be devised which would do more
than play off that which was recorded.

  This is the activity of the reactive mind: recording and
re-play in response to restimulation. Therefore, when any
recording in the reactive mind is caused to re-play, the individual
responds with a literal interpretation of the content of that
particular recording, and literal interpretation can be very,
very far removed from implied meaning.

  It will be appreciated, then, what startling, ludicrous and
even disastrous results may be observed when this non-analytical,
strictly literal mind is restimulated. For example, a pregnant
woman trips, falls heavily to the floor; her unborn child
is momentarily stunned (unconsciousness). In her terror
and concern she cries out, "My baby! I have harmed him,
given him a terrible setback! He will never be like other
children!" Even though the child is born without any mishaps
or disfigurements, yet when during its childhood someone
remarks in a manner intended to be complimentary, "He is not
like other children," the prenatal incident `'keys in" and
there-after he unconsciously seeks to be different, sulking
in corners, refusing to join with other children in their play
or various other normal activities.

  This does happen, as can be and has been demonstrated!

  Now, a true science not only recognizes the problems in its
field, but also offers a method for their solution. As a true
science, Dianetics has evolved a method for recognizing and
solving these human problems. The method is known as
Dianetic Processing. The solution is the erasure of those
recordings which, when restimulated, cause reactive behavior
in the human being.

  The individual whose reactive mind bank no longer contains
any aberrative incidents is known in dianetic terminology as a
"clear." But a person who is still undergoing dianetic processing
- either for a relief of psychosomatic pain or discomfort

                   BASIC DIANETIC PRINCIPLES              21

or with the goal in mind of becoming clear - is called a
"preclear."

  Dianetic processing is an astonishingly simple technique.
The pre-clear is asked to make himself comfortable and close
his eyes. He is then asked to return to a past moment of
pleasure. The moment of pleasure is recounted, and by adroit
questioning his auditor endeavors to elicit all possible details
contained in the incident. This has the effect of acquainting
the person with the practicability and process of "going back"
or "returning." It also sharpens his powers of recall, and at
the same time allays any doubts he may experience.

  He is next asked to go back or return to the first moment of
pain or unconsciousness available at the time. What he contacts
is called an "engram," which is the scientific name for an
impression upon the organism. Again, adroit questioning aids
him to recall details. Several recountings of the incident serve
to remove what may be called the `'charge" on this incident,
thus restoring to the analytical mind that vital energy heretofore
required to endure or live with the disruptive content of
the engram.

  From here the pre-clear is led by the auditor into further,
more deeply imbedded incidents, the ultimate aim of which is
to contact, and erase, the hidden memories of all such aberrative
events that may be present in the "bank." These data in
the reactive mind are actually contacted with the aid of the
auditor, whose assistance is required to direct the pre-clear
into the most likely lines of attack.

  It may be surprising, but the data are all recorded there in
the reactive mind, waiting to be contacted, erased and placed
by the auditing process into standard or non-aberrative

  The process thus releases vital energy needed for the
better functioning of the analytical mind. It is obvious then
that with every such release the analytical mind recovers more
and more of its original, endowed potential for clear and
rational thinking.

  Children, of course, are to a large degree subject to the

22                      CHILD DIANETICS

vagaries of the reactive mind. Many children are morose and
sullen much of the time, reluctant to mingle with the more
active children of the neighborhood.

  Others are "problem" children who scream, kick, bite, and
scratch at the slightest provocation. And others find their way
into public institutions such as juvenile homes and the dreaded
reform schools, all because they are obeying hidden commands
contained in the reactive mind bank.

  Because of their age and limited maturity, children must be
regarded as a special branch of Dianetics. In recognition of the
special considerations involved, a research program designed
to find the best dianetic approach to the problems of their
processing has been conducted during the year following publication
of DIANETICS: The Modern Science of Mental Health. The resultant
discoveries cannot be ignored by parents or persons who share the
responsibility of rearing children and genuinely have the welfare
of their youngsters at heart.

                           CHAPTER 2

                     OUR GREATEST PROBLEM

What do you consider the greatest problem in each individual's
life? Think it over for a moment. Is it war, famine, disease? Is
it love, hate, money, or social position? Or might it be that
process which we all go through, the process of finding out
what it means to find ourselves? Does the latter seem, if not the
greatest problem to you, at least one of the greatest problems
which every person faces? Dianetics has found it to be the root
problem.

  The aim of dianetic processes is the clear. One of the
characteristics which is attributed to the clear is that of
self-determinism. But to be self-determined one must have a
realization of what one wishes to accomplish, and what one can do
best. The individual arrives at the answers to these problems
partly through experience and partly through what we in Dianetics
call B.P. or "basic personality." B.P. seems to be a form of
basic temperament, an inclination toward a general mode of
life and the use of certain abilities.

  In Dianetics, however, we recognize that conditioning which
comes from engrams can cause an individual to be forced away
from living in accordance with his basic personality. This can
result from engram commands to behave in certain ways, from
valence shifts, or from ally computations. Therefore, by no
means is the basic personality always realized.

  But what causes these deviations? How do they come about?
Engrams are the main causation, and the most important engrams
are "laid in" during the pre-natal period. The second most
basic personality is early childhood. It is then that the
prenatal engrams are keyed in and begin to exert their

24                      CHILD DIANETICS

negative influence. It is also during this time that sympathy
computations are formed and ally computations are ordered
into effect. Childhood illnesses and, operations occur during
this time and are of considerable importance. It is very often
found that a somatic shut-off occurs during a tonsillectomy; or
at least it is at this time that the initial key-in is made.
Grief shut-offs are found in this area also, with mother saying,
"Don't cry, everything will be all right." This phrase is
obviously rather vicious if it feeds into the reactive mind, for
it says that if one doesn't ever cry, everything will necessarily
be all right. It is doubtful that an "everything all right"
condition ever has been or ever can be any person's undeviating
experience. But that is what that engram promises and demands,
and if it doesn't come to pass, as it frequently can't,
heaven help the poor child, mother or anybody else within his
environment.

  Let us depart from the specific for a moment and generalize.
What is it that happens during childhood? It is not enough to
accept that it is the period during which the child grows up.
In our society it is that most crucial period during which the
individual learns what may be termed basic behavior patterns.
These are difficult to change in later life and their origins,
because of the initial basis on which they are founded, may
very well be completely forgotten. We might say that this is the
period during which the child learns, from what he is taught
and from experimentation, the means with which he is to
express himself. The means he is compelled to use may range
from the grossly inadequate to those of greatest assistance to
him. In short, we might say that childhood is the period
during which the basic methods of self-expression are formed.

  Next in importance is the period of late childhood, roughly
from six to twelve years. In our society this period is given over
greatly to the acquisition of information. It is also devoted,
from a slightly different viewpoint, to the compelled learning
of data. Dianetics is inclined to question the advisability of this
latter occupation. It appears that it might be more advan-

                      OUR GREATEST PROBLEM                25

tageous, both from the standpoint of mental health and from
the standpoint of the correctness of information which the
child assimilates, to teach the child how to think before
teaching him what to think. Child instruction today is largely a
matter of wrong emphasis. Dianetically, it would seem that the
emphasis should be placed on the how rather than the what of
learning and thinking.

  Perhaps we should review some of the reasons for the
position we take. In the first place, let's examine what we mean
by the "reactive" and the "analytical" minds. The reactive
mind, as such, does not appear to be a "mind" in the thinking
sense of the word. The reactive mind is primarily a stockpile
of painful, unconscious experiences. The material of these
experiences appears to be impinged upon a low level of analytical
ability. From the functional standpoint, what we refer to as
the "thinking" of the reactive mind appears to be a low level
computation on the part of an almost completely shut-down
analyzer. It would seem that something of the primary man's
tendency to think and speak in terms of identities is carried
over by recapitulation into the development of the child's
inquisitive sense of being and reality. He first tends to think in
terms of identities. This seems to be an initial step toward his
realization of differences. Things similar are the same, things
different are absolutely different. Because of this tendency on
the part of the child, it seems to us that the more rapidly we
can influence the child into a multi-valued mode of thinking,
the more rapidly he will relinquish identity-thinking, and the
less effect "reactive" thinking will have upon his mental and
physiological functioning.

  There is another factor which is important in the child's
thinking processes. The child appears to be "closer" to his
engrams. By "closer" we mean that he has not had the advantages
of time and analytical experience necessary to remove
himself from the effect of his engrams. As a very general
observation on this feature of the child's thinking, it might be
said that the child's sense of reality and affinity with reality

26                      CHILD DIANETICS

have not been built upon extensive experience, and it is
therefore difficult for him to separate what is happening to him
as a result of his own past experience from what is happening
to him as a result of the present situation in which he finds
himself.

  It would seem that analytical experience acts as a sort of
elevator in which the "I" organization rises as the analytical
mind collects experience. The "I" organizes this experience in
terms of greater and greater complexity as the individual
matures, and this complexity acts as a buffer to engram
commands. However, there also appears to be a great disadvantage
in this. As the analyzer gets more and more complex, there is a
corresponding increase in the force of the individual's engrams,
which consistently cause a misevaluation of experience. And as
the misevaluation of experience becomes more extensive, there
is a greater breakdown in the areas of reality, communication
and affinity.

  Perhaps the most striking feature of the child's attempt to
realize his own personality is his shifting of valences. Using
even a fairly small amount of observation, it seems possible to
put forth as a tentative statement that a rapid shift of valences
is a natural process in the child. He "tries on" pieces of
valences as if they were clothes, retaining pieces here and there,
discarding others which do not fit him. He constructs and
synthesizes a personality out of these pieces of valences in
conjunction with his own basic personality.

  It seems necessary to digress for a moment and comment
that the use of the word "valence" is extremely general here.
We mean by the word not only the information about persons
which is in engrams, but also the limited analytical data which
the child acquires from cowboy movies, from reading about
and seeing policemen, firemen, etc. This does not include the
concept of valence shift induced by a command, or a reactive
computation for making the shift; the child may be forced by
his reactive thinking to shift valences. However, the type of
valance shift or trying on parts of other personalities, which is

                     OUR GREATEST PROBLEM                 27

discussed above, is spontaneous, not compulsive. He imitates,
but not deliberately.

  For the child, the whole problem of "self" is obscure and
difficult, but of tremendous importance. Various writers on
psychology are constantly delving into the complexities of the
subject because it is so basic to the study of the formative
mind.

  In the field of fiction, Lewis Carroll, creator of the immortal
"Alice in Wonderland," shows in a humorous way how Alice
is confronted with this difficulty. In the beginning of the
chapter entitled "Advice from a Caterpillar," there is some
discussion between Alice and the Caterpillar about this whole
question. While it would seem that they do not find their own
discussion particularly illuminating we, being more prepared,
can view it more pertinently so:

  The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some
time in silence. At last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of
its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

  "Who are YOU," said the Caterpillar.

  This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.
Alice replied, rather shyly,"I - I hardly know, sir, just at
present - at least I know who I was when I got up this
morning, but I think must have been changed several times
since then."

  "What do you mean by that," said the Caterpillar sternly.
  "Explain yourself."
  "I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir," said Alice,
"because I'm not myself, you see."
  "I don't see," said the Caterpillar.
  "I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly," Alice replied
very politely, "for I can't understand it myself to begin with;
and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing."
  "It isn't," said the Caterpillar.
  "Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet," said Alice.
"But when you have to turn into a chrysalis - you will some

28                      CHILD DIANETICS

day you know - and then into a butterfly, I should think
you'll feel it a little queer, won't you?"
  "Not a bit," said the Caterpillar.
  "Well, perhaps your feelings may be different," said
Alice; "all I know is, it would feel very queer to ME."
  "You!" said the Caterpillar contemptuously. "Who are
YOU?"

  Which brought them back again to the beginning of the
conversation.

  If we wanted to see what Alice's engrams were, we might
indulge in some dianetic literary criticism; however, it will
probably be much more valuable if we accept Carroll - and
Alice - on their own terms. In this we get an amusing but
nevertheless telling portrayal of the child's wonderment (and
befuddlement) as to what a "self" is. The fact that children
are confused by this problem is not surprising; it has also
stumped the great philosophers. They have struck boldly at the
idea, attempting to enter into the core of the thought, but
apparently have never been completely successful, judging
from the lack of general acceptance of any one philosopher's
opinions on the subject.

  However deeply we care to look at this problem, we still
find that a great deal of the child's difficulty is much more
immediate. We do not have to be very philosophical with the child.
A large part of his difficulties lies in things which can be
fairly easily resolved. For example, children are not very good
semanticists; they have rather narrow vocabularies and are
mistaken about the meaning of many things. Reality is a fairly
small thing to them. Children go through stages of divorcing
themselves from whatever surrounds them. When a child is
first born, he has no concept of the point where he stops and
other things begin. He learns this gradually, but finds the next
difficulty one of determining where his wishes stop and other
forces begin. The child does not have, completely, the proper
sense of reality for the kind of dianetic processing done with

                      OUR GREATEST PROBLEM                29

adults and adolescents; the experiences in children's standard
banks are not quite adequate to the problems at hand. But it is
possible to have affinity with children - lots of it - so there is
a possibility of one element compensating for a lack in the
other two. If the child really feels that you are trying to help
him, you can do a great deal with him.

  This brings us to the problem of how to deal with children.
There is no exact procedure to give you that will apply infallibly
to very child, but a series of games is under development,
for one thing, which will give all children a better orientation
in the use of language. For instance: "How many meanings
can you find for the word that sounds like `road'?" Block
games, etc., which will have orientation in semantics as their
aim, are being developed.

  Now let us take up the question of how children "return."
Children seem to look on returning to painful incidents merely
as more unpleasant experience, and are unable to see far
enough in the future to make returning worth while. To the
very young, the concepts of reduction and restimulation are
too advanced; the only exception so far is the case of chronic
physically painful restimulation. When the child suffers
constantly from stomach-aches, dizzy spells, or other complaints
that annoy him repeatedly, he will be eager to try anything
that promises him relief. Even in this case, however, the child
must be constantly reminded that he is being helped when he
tells the auditor about the first stomach-ache, the first dizzy
spell, and so on. He can and will feel the somatics only if he is
not frightened by them.

  Here we come to another big obstacle to returning in
children, one that can be overcome only by a friendly attitude
and reliability on the part of the auditor. That obstacle is fear.

  Children do not understand time well; to them the past is
jumbled up with the present, and is still as real as today. They
fear that yesterday with its pain and terror could happen all
over again tomorrow; they fear that returning to a time of pain
will bring the experience back in reality. These seem to be

30                      CHILD DIANETICS

natural fears, born of the child's lack of analytical experience
with the world. The only apparent solution is education of the
children in the dianetic process.

  Each child should understand as fully as he can where he
came from and what it was like before he was born. He should
know what to expect from somatics, and what to expect when
he runs the somatics over and over. In short, he must have a
fairly good concept of what he and his auditor are doing.

  The mere concept of Dianetics, however, is not enough.
Children appeal strongly to their authorities. They must have
adults they can believe in and trust, whose world they can rely
on. If the auditor should make a slip, like telling the child that
birth won't hurt him much when he returns to it, the child will
be expecting perhaps a mild squeeze or nothing at all. Pain to
him is not relative to other pain, but to how he perceives it
while it is going on. If he is depressed and tired, he will be
less liable to "take" somatics, and the auditor should be aware
of this. The auditor must give the child some idea of what his
forthcoming experience is going to be like, but he must try not
to underestimate this, because of the risk of losing affinity for
a time. This prediction is not easy, and affinity is often lost
because of mistakes in guessing the child's ability to perceive
pain. Loss of affinity must be run immediately as a lock,
and processing must be stopped until the affinity has been
re-established. Running a child who has lost his faith in the
auditor's omniscience is inviting dub-in. An auditor hasn't known
frustration until he has run a child half-way through a painful
experience only to be find that a happy ending has been tacked
on to it.

  Children seem to be able to take the valence of people they
are with. Auditors can observe children in the auditor's valence
even when the child and the auditor are playing together. This
effect seems to occur most often in cases containing much
terror, but has been observed even in normal children. The less
affinity the child has with adults at home, the more easily he
can take the valence of one with whom he does have affinity.

                     OUR GREATEST PROBLEM                 31

  Another thing which is important is to track down dramatizations
and get them out as much as possible. In connection with this
it is necessary to counsel the parents on how to avoid
restimulation of their children.

  If a child is multivalent, it is difficult to determine who
he is from one minute to the next. Work on such a child is
done almost completely through affinity. He has at least four
different valences which he goes into, one after another. He has
little reality sense and a circuit which says that only he is the
one talking. Greater progress is made with this child as affinity
between he and his auditor increases.

  It is quite possible that use can be made of the natural
tendency of the child (if it is that) to play in other valences,
by giving him valences which are more to his benefit, and
certainly more to the benefit of society, than gangsters, tough
cops, two-valued cowboys, etc. There have been continuous
arguments about the effects of movies on children, the viciousness
of some of the comic books, and now the concern revolves
around television. With Dianetics we begin to get some insight
into why we have felt that there were certain bad effects
from these forms of amusement. The valences they get into is a
matter of grave concern. It is not a problem for children alone;
there are some mighty young adolescents who wear whiskers.

  It is hoped that dianetically sound programs may be instituted
to supply useful, educational valences from which children
can pick, a concern based on some of the aberrations already
found in children, most illustrative of which are the "Junior
cases." They are still Junior cases when they are fifty, but to
be so they must have been Junior cases earlier. The progress
of such cases depends somewhat upon the rate at which the
engrams were keyed in. A good example of how a Junior case
is created is the following: after her divorce, the mother says
to her child, a Junior, "Now you are the little man of the
house." It is not surprising that children seem to be similar to
psychotics and schizophrenics. The child may play that he is a
butterfly, a horse, a box - almost anything. His imagination

32                      CHILD DIANETICS

runs rampant and as a result he looks, in the creation of some
of his fantasies, much like a psychotic. The difference is that
the child may be doing this as an exercise, whereas the psychotic
does it because he must. However, if the child can't stop
being a butterfly, then we have a child with aberration. He is
stuck in the butterfly's valence.

  When the child is swapping valences and wants to be a
butterfly, a flower, or a cowboy, there is probably nothing
wrong. When he gets hung up in one of these valences, we have
a problem on our hands. It is the same thing when he gets
stuck in one of the family valences or when he has the command,
"You're just like all the rest of the family," or "You're
just like your father."

  A child stuck in a valence very early in his life does not have
such a difficult problem, although he may have the psychosomatic
illnesses of the person he is being. Probably he would only
dramatize a great deal and would have his analyzer turned
off roost of the time. But the person who is stuck in one valence
and suddenly becomes stuck in another at the same time has a
greater problem. If he is able to make a synthesis of these
valences, perhaps he can make an adjustment; but when this
happens to an older person it presents a great deal of conflict.
The following is a partly hypothetical example:

  A Junior case detested his father and so went into his
mother's valence. He had commands, however, to be like his
father. He found it very difficult to deal with reality, and
was diagnosed by a psychologist as a split personality. He
was also diagnosed as a manic-depressive, but there is little
credence to this diagnosis. He was depressed because he
couldn't make up his mind.

  Children, too, have these problems, particularly in a violently
emotional family where it is necessary to their security to have
a strong ally. The way to have a strong ally is to get into the
loser's valence (feel how he feels) and for protection seek to
gain the winner of the argument as an ally. You play the neces-

                     OUR GREATEST PROBLEM                 33

sary part or you build valences with those things which the
ally likes best, and then you become them so you have the ally.
Example:

  Cousin Mary comes to visit the child, Betty, and her
family. Mary is a little older and is always very helpful to
Betty's mother. Betty is not quite ready to take up such
things, but as soon as Mary goes away mother starts talking
about how wonderful it was to have Cousin Mary around
because she always helped with the work. The child, if the
family situation is an insecure one, is apt to feel that she
must go into Cousin Mary's valence in order to retain
mother as an ally.

  It must not be forgotten that an ally and a friend may very
easily be confused in a child's mind. A child has to have the
help of others in order to survive. The loss of an ally is a major
catastrophe for the child. The slightest emotional rejection of
a child by an ally is an acute threat to the child's survival,
particularly if the child is already insecure.

  Another thing which is encountered in working with children
is the fact that the child must obey his parents. When an
auditor first fired: "Do you have to do what your mother told
you now?" at a child, in an attempt to break an aberrative
command on a flash-answer basis, he was dumbfounded as to
what to do with the immediate `'Yes!" answer. In short, the
problem can be formulated in this way: For the child to
disobey his parents is an actual survival risk of no small
proportion.

  The only way to get around that is to have secure children
who understand that they are valued for being themselves.
Dianetics does not propound this with the idea that children
must be allowed to run rampant; they must received some
training. But parents should remember that much of the child's
misbehavior is simply a matter of his engrams (which his
parents gave him to a large extent) talking back. Pain - intense
pain to the child - is driving much of this misbehavior.

34                       CHILD DIANETICS

  A letter was received recently by the Foundation: "We have
a little girl who has an older brother, and we know that the
little girl has an engram in which her mother says, `I hope it's
a boy; I like boys much better than I like girls.' The girl shows
marked tomboy tendencies and tries in every way possible to
be like her brother."

  The parents wanted to know what they could do. The child
is not old enough to run this as an engram. The only possible
reply was, "Make it as valuable as possible for the child to be
a girl, and be careful not to restimulate her by showing any
preference for boys."

  Another thing that can be done is to try to blow locks in
children. It is very simple, and the child need have no idea
what you are doing. The procedure might go: "What were
you doing when you bumped your head?" Answer "I was riding
my tricycle." Ask more questions about it, play the incident
out, and then go back and play it out again. It is quite
effective. Try as consistently as possible to run out locks.
If the engrams are not allowed to remain keyed-in, they are
ineffective.

  There is one other thing to say about valences. If the child
happens to be in someone else's valence he has small chance
of ever realizing his own personality, because implicit in the
valence is an approach to life, a consistent behavior pattern,
etc. The human being is of a tough character and occasionally
does manage to break through with some of its own characteristics.
But engrams and valences are more often tougher. The point is
that being in someone else's valence is obviously not a good
thing. The way to help a child is to help him be himself!

                           CHAPTER 3

                      TOWARD A SANER WORLD

Contagion of aberration has progressed along the second
dynamic to a remarkable degree in our present society. Our
first settlers brought the seed of future aberration. As there
were certain diseases for which there was no cure, a moral
restraint was substituted for this lack.

  Such taboos are based upon the premise that something
society has done in the past was more painful than beneficial.
Prejudice then carries the taboos forward long beyond their
time.

  Once created, taboos must be enforced. Force is applied
against reason. What is aberration but force being applied
against reason?

  Aberration seems to multiply by geometric progression. It
is a spreading, broadening thing rather than a narrow line.
Mother's aberrations appear in two of her children, and four
of her grandchildren. Father's "idiosyncrasies" follow the same
pattern. Within a few generations an entire society is affected.

  Only the colonizing of new lands has interrupted this contagion.
When a race is facing a new continent and conquering the old
inhabitants, it has to raise its necessity level to a very
high plateau. It is a tremendous goal to wrest the land from
those who already own it, and so long as the impetus carries
forth the race is successful, and the contagion within it is cut
down considerably.

  After a while the goal is accomplished and nearly everything
is nicely smoothed out for those who follow. The means of
transport and food are available with minimum effort. The
government is settled into a rut and suddenly there is a

36                      CHILD DIANETICS

"civilized" nation with no higher goal. At this moment begins
the dwindling spiral. Even though the Golden Age may come
for the race at that period, the dwindling spiral of aberration,
already begun, goes down and down. The individual's necessity
level becomes low and aberrations begin to manifest themselves.
The process of contagion sets in.

  The customs of society today make it quite fashionable for
individuals to have a blocked second dynamic. When an investigator
of the stature of Freud studies a social order and decides
that just one thing is wrong, it is at least indicative that
there is a lot wrong with just that one thing. He was forced to
the conclusion that sex is primarily responsible for aberration,
and upon examination it is evident that for the past two
centuries sex to a greater and greater extent has become taboo.

  Few, until Dianetics, had actually looked bluntly as they
should at this problem and recognized to what extent the child
is the product of sex. The fact that there is a definite
correlation between children and sex may appear to be a
super-obvious statement. But how many people think babies are
just too, too beautiful who, at the same time, feel that sex
is just too, too nasty? The second dynamic must include not
only sex and the sex act, but also children.

  Perhaps the trend is to block the second dynamic so
thoroughly that future generations will become completely
insane. If this dwindling spiral of sexual aberration is not
interrupted, there will be in the year 2000 or 2050, not
1,900,000 inmates in sanitariums and institutions, but a few
sane people running for their lives from a country which is
almost 100% insane.

  A blocked second dynamic is accompanied by dislike of
children, abuse of them, and general impatience with them. It
doesn't necessarily follow, however, that a blocked second
dynamic is blocked both as to sex and children. It might be
selectively blocked: open on sex and very thoroughly blocked
on children, or wide open on children and thoroughly blocked

                      TOWARD A SANER WORLD                37

on sex. When th is latter condition is in evidence, the children
resulting from such a union are very neurotic.

  It is evident, then, that the dwindling spiral winds up in the
laps of the little kids. Children must bear the brunt of the
results brought about by taboos which are the mores of society.
In order to halt this spiral the most effective attack is the use
of Preventive Dianetics, as it applies to children and family
life.

  If a child can be prevented from acquiring engrams in the
first place, the dwindling spiral is suddenly interrupted; and if
those engrams latent in the reactive banks of children already
born are prevented from keying-in, a seven-league step is taken
towards halting society's aberrational contagion.

  To accomplish the first, society must shoulder some of the
responsibility of taking adequate care of the mother. This is
meant dianetically rather than economically. Everyone must
learn to say nothing within the expectant mother's hearing
while she is hurt or ill, or during labor and delivery.
Particularly during birth must absolute silence be maintained,
and the more gentle the delivery, the better.

  The finest birth, at first thought, would seem to be a
Caesarean section, since the child is believed to undergo none
of the rigors of a normal birth. However, this is not the case.
Caesarean births are harder on the child than ordinary birth
because the obstetrician usually waits until the child is very
firmly wedged and indicates that it is not going to be born
normally. The child is then left that way for about twelve or
fourteen hours with his skull caved in.

  In one x-ray of a birth process the foetus' frontal bones were
overlapped, the skull folded completely over on itself, because
the mother's pelvic region was too small. The child remained
in this position for fourteen hours while people stood around
having long conversations. The difference between the I.Q. of
this boy and his brother, only a year older, is enormous. The
younger child is show and clumsy, while his brother is sharp
and alert. The older child was prematurely born and had a

38                       CHILD DIANETICS

painless birth, so unexpected that the doctor didn't arrive in
time. These children have almost identical prenatal engram
banks. The big difference is birth.

  Another case in point was a little girl who seemed to be only
half awake when she was brought in for processing. She was
very fat, and her normal physical development was badly
retarded. Upon being asked what sort of delivery she had had,
the mother said she guessed it was all right because she
couldn't remember a thing about it. She had been unconscious
for about twelve hours with chloroform. Of course the child
was anesthetized, too, through the umbilical cord. Doctors
and nurses worked around the unconscious mother, talking,
joking and laughing, charging both the mother's and the
child's engram banks. Then the child was born. As far as the
reactive mind time track is concerned, she remains right there
at birth, sound asleep, in a continual dope-off.

  Ordinarily a child's engrams do not start to key in until
considerable time has elapsed. The necessity level is high, and
he is in good shape generally. He could have a very heavily
loaded engram bank, but it would take an extraordinary threat
in environment to key in this material.

  It is relatively difficult to tire children. They may appear
to be tired but their level of "I'll quit and go to sleep"
comes much later than in an adult. Only when a child is really
pushed along and very badly tired out by some extraordinary
circumstance does he reach a point where engramic material
will key in.

  It will be the first key-in that brings on the first sickness of
the child. Although he is quite resilient and not easily injured,
a hard bump which annoys him more than it pains him could
cause a key-in for a few seconds afterwards. People normally
take precautions to prevent accidents and anaten (a degree of
attenuation of the analytical faculties) to children, so this does
not have to be stressed. What does have to be stressed is the
possibility of key-in at such times. There are engrams down in
the bank which are matched in voice tone to the parents which

                     TOWARD A SANER WORLD                 39

can be all too easily keyed in. Hence absolutely nothing should
be said around the child right after injury of any kind. No
matter how great the temptation to say, "Oh! You poor, dear
little baby," let the kid howl. It is far better and safer to
let minutes and minutes go by after an injury of any kind before
you talk to the injured child, rather than risk key-in and
restimulation.

  Quarrels is around a sleeping child are highly restimulative.
The child is tired, goes to bed...and immediately the
parents start quarreling. One case of stuttering originated
in this manner. The child had been playing hours beyond his
bedtime, having been out to an amusement park where the
rides were so fascinating and everything so wonderful that he
was too excited to sleep. He was even too tired to eat supper.
He had been asleep only a half hour when his father came
home intoxicated and a quarrel ensued. Some of the words
used were, "You can't talk to me like that!" and "Who do you
think you're talking to?" The next morning when the child
awakened he talked with a stutter - and he stuttered for the
next twenty-two years.

  Don't talk around a sick child. If the doctor decides to
hold a long drawn-out conversation around the sick-bed, your
natural feeling of courtesy or awe might restrain you from
doing something about it. But your natural feeling of courtesy
or awe may help severely aberrate the child for the rest of his
life. A good swift kick in the shin of anybody talking around a
sick child, or almost any physical violence would be justifiable
under the circumstances. It sounds very strong, we know,
but you can't help feeling punitive when you've been an
auditor long enough to find all the aberrative talking that goes
on around children. Even persons with the best of intentions
can thoroughly ruin a child's life that way.

  If punishment of a child becomes necessary, don't nag and
hit the child and then nag some more. Tell the child the reason
for the punishment in simple, direct language, and then apply
the punishment in absolute silence. The punishment causes

40                      CHILD DIANETICS

anaten; if talking goes on during and afterwards, the content
of the lecture is grasped only on a reactive basis and becomes
unavailable to the analytical mind. The child therefore cannot
rationalize himself into good behavior. He analyzes only the
fact that these people are horribly mean to him.

  A child must always "honor his father and mother" - that's
all there is to that! But nobody ever bothered to tell the child
what parents have to do to be honored.

  If a child is having a run of "accidentally" breaking things,
interspersed with odds and ends of disobedience, it is almost
a certainty that the child is being badly badgered from some
quarter or other. The processing is not needed so much by the
child as by the family, even though a family that has a very
bad boy or a very sick boy or girl may esteem and comport
themselves as veritable saints of loving and understand
they may never quarrel in the presence of the child. They
may never unduly punish the child. The child may always
have had the best of food and the best of care. But search the
late life bank of this child and see how many of these so-called
"usual" childhood illnesses have been preceded by a very high
emotional upset in the vicinity of that child!

  In one family which was almost a model of propriety, the
little child had been very ill from a combination of chicken
pox and pneumonia. A heavy quarrel had obviously taken
place where the child slept, because the steel legs of the crib
were bent from the weight of adult bodies falling against it.
The beaverboard wall was dented in the outline of adult
knuckles or objects hurled in fury - yet this family supposedly
lived a model life - they never quarreled around their child!

  A four-year-old "bad" boy was taken to an auditor. According
to the parents, if he had been six feet tall he would have
given Genghis Khan a good run for his money. He would go
upstairs and pull mama's clothes off the hangers and practice
mutilation on them with scissors. He would go into another
room, preferably one which was very neat and tidy, and slash
the wallpaper with a knife. Someone in the family about to

                     TOWARD A SANER WORLD                 41

eat breakfast would find his cereal liberally sprinkled with
shredded cigarettes. He was artfully clumsy; he seemed able
to break selectively every valuable piece of bric-a-brac in the
house.

  What he obviously needed, they said, was more discipline.
Inquiry into how much discipline he had experienced brought
out chastisement averaging four spankings and a clout on the
head a day. The only thing that could be said for the punishment
was that it was consistent: no matter what happened, he was
punished. Furthermore, there was unanimity in the family.
Father agreed and punished him. Mother agreed and punished
him. And the one grandparent who was always around also
agreed and punished him. Here was a red-hot rebel, a veritable
insurgent in the community, leading a successful revolt.

  The matter was solved very simply. The auditor, taking note
of the fact that the adults who brought the boy were not very
tall, made the announcement that the next person who laid a
hand on the child would be personally accountable to him.
They agreed that this was a new reality, and within twenty-four
hours there was a change in the young pre-clear. He picked
up his own clothes. He began to do the dishes! Suddenly he
was no longer a hellion.

  It is absolutely wonderful to watch children who have not
been "disciplined." They are not any the worse for it. If you
want to see a really, thoroughly wicked kid, find one that's had
a big dose of discipline. He knows exactly what he's supposed
to do, and so long as he's got breath in his body he's doggoned
if he'll do it! He is confronted by a society that is shot through
with a blocked second dynamic as a fashionable thing. He is
confronted with people who don't like children and who apply
to him all manner of barbarism on the excuse that this promotes
loyalty and discipline.

  There are two particularly insidious lines in society with
regard to children. One is the belief that parenthood is a
biological fact but that the child has no natural affection for
the parents and could be raised just as well by anybody else. The

42                       CHILD DIANETICS

other is one which teaches the child not to grow up because
(1) it pays a high bonus to be a child, and (2) grownups don't
have any fun, so why be a grownup?

  There is an obvious natural affection of the child for his
own particular parents and despite theories to the contrary, a
child gets along much better with his own parents. Actually
the parents' voices are frequently restimulative, making all
manner of things wrong with the relationship on a reactive
level, but the child usually has enough affinity and affection
for his own parents to overcome the bulk of this.

  An auditor received a phone call one day from a gentleman
who said. `'I don't know what could possible be wrong with my
daughter. She has run away from home three times." Questioning
revealed that he had always been very careful never to
demonstrate any affection for her, for fear of setting up some
complex or other, he said, and that she had often complained
of having "no family life worth sticking around for." This man
had been careful all his life not to be affectionate; he thought
children could be spoiled by loving them. The way to spoil
children is by not loving them.

  No child was ever spoiled by affection, by sympathy, by
kindness, by understanding, or even by indulgence. The old
superstition that love and affection so thoroughly upset a child
that they drive him crazy is incredible. A child can have better
toys than anybody on the block and it won't make a snob out of
him. If he is permitted to grow in the society of children, he
will make an adequate analysis concerning his possessions, and
instinctively share them. He will find out for himself how to
make the best out of life.

  Even while the manuscript was being prepared for publication,
there appeared, as though by providential design, a rash of
newspaper accounts to bear out this thesis on the extremes to
which unloved children will resort in order to rebel against
their unhappy environments. In Oakland, California, for
instance, a twelve-year-old lad, for no reason "apparent to the
authorities," shot his parents with a rifle as they sat watching

                     TOWARD A SANER WORLD                 43

a television program. In Palm Beach, Florida, a 'teenager
confessed shooting his father, grandmother and a policeman
because "they were trying to disinherit me of $600,000."
Compounding this tragedy is the fact that the youth had been
given a "psychiatric examination" just three days before the
incident and had been declared just a "mild mental case." In
the middle west a 'teen-age girl set fire to a number of homes
in revenge for "people making fun of my red hair." In New
York gangs of children rioted and committed serious acts of
vandalism in protest against arbitrary decisions on the part of
the authorities of a juvenile play center. Finally, there was
the telling headline, "Nobody Loved Ugly Duckling; So Boy
Killed 3 Like a Robot." The story was permeated with such
phrases as, "Killed without hate, but from lack of affection.
...Authorities are convinced that young _____ didn't murder
with his heart. His heart was empty...." One official put
it this way: "The kid was hungry for affection. If he had
got it, everything might have been different." The Police Chief,
who had shown fatherly kindliness toward the boy, observed,
"I'm no psychiatrist, but I know kids. The boy was a black
sheep. He needed someone to pat him on the back and call him
Son. He needed guidance and love."

  The reverse of this is that most of the children in our society
today are denied any responsibility or position of any kind.
From his first breath the child begins to be denied the
independence which every organism seeks. He is fitted into a sort
of mold which is supposedly desirable or "best for him," cutting
off his freedom of action and expression in all directions.
Fortunately for him, he has at least one goal - to grow up. He
might have other necessary goals, but they are minor compared
to this one saving grace; he can salvage himself on that alone
- that is, unless he is carefully taught not to grow up.

  If he decides that growing up is something that will result
in a bad state of affairs for him, that the desirable thing is
to remain a child, he has been robbed of the one goal which,
despite antagonistic influences, would carry him forward.

44                       CHILD DIANETICS

Children who have received too large a bonus for being
children are those who progress the least satisfactorily.

  A modern school of thought, one of the very many, gives to
children a position in the home which far exceeds their actual
state. The youngster is assigned an importance of being a child
that is vastly out of proportion to the importance of being an
adult. If little Willie suddenly runs into a room, knocks over
the lamp and spills some sticky pineapple juice on a guest's
suit, that's all right. Pat little Willie on the head and give
him some more pineapple juice. Tell the guest that "He's only a
little child and doesn't know any better." This kind of training
for children places a very high priority on remaining a child.
Actually, who would want to be an adult in such a family?

  How does the child determine whether growing-up is desirable?
He has enormous energy and good repair and healing qualities.
He is naturally very energetic and active. He has, as a
general rule, a pretty good mind, so he looks around one day
and says to himself, "Now let's see. I'm growing up. What will
I be when I grow up? I will be an adult, of course." Then he
begins to observe very closely the adults in his immediate
neighborhood, beginning with the family.

  Here's mama, whose full concentration is on being a waiting
maid to children. He doesn't want to be mama - she doesn't
have any fun. There's papa. He drags home from work, manages
a smile, and maybe gets a chance to look at the paper
before he tiredly eats dinner and goes to bed. And then he
complains about the kids making too much noise. The child
perforce concludes, "He isn't very elegant, either," After a
brief scan of the lesser relatives, he begins to scratch his
head and wonders "What the heck is this grownup business? I
want to stay a kid, 'cause look - we get waited on, get food,
clothing, 'n everything."

  If you can detach yourself from your present attitude on
"reality" and take a truly objective look at it, you will see
it from a viewpoint very much like that of a child. The child
knows that he likes to run and play, and has an idea that

                     TOWARD A SANER WORLD                 45

other people ought to like to run and play, too. A large section
of adult society believes that running and playing is very
wicked indeed. It's just not done. At least, most grownups
don't do it. They never have much fun.

  The child, fortunately, has a very high sense of reality, but
has been completely surrounded by adult delusions. He isn't
running on the kind of reality on which everyone is agreed,
but the one which he sees and interprets according to his data.
It is no delusion to him.

  He agrees perfectly that he is Hopalong Cassidy between
the hours of four to six, and that somebody else is Little Beaver
during the same hours. There is no lack of agreement and no
lack of reality; his is the greater reality simply because he
can face it on the whole periphery as well as narrow it down to
selective reality. The mechanism in him which sets up his sense
of reality is far more vivid and unrestricted than that of an
adult, who after all must submit to the kind of reality which
clamps him to a desk or work-bench.

  Work, economic servitude, whether he likes it or not, is
the adult's reality - but what a poor substitute! It is the
super-artificiality on which he has to agree figuratively at the
point of a gun. Society has said, "If you don't consider your
job the greatest reality in your life, the only one, we're going
to starve you, Bud." So he grudgingly agrees. Reality? No! It's
an agreed-upon stratum of society, an agreed-upon code of action.

  The child is also very sensitive to unreality. If someone,
talking from the point of view of his own narrow sense of
reality, tries to tell him the reason why such and such takes
place, the child is likely to stare rather blankly, unable to figure
it all out. He will have to be told many times over. He has to
be told in grade school, high school, college, and then when he
gets married and is told by the boss, he finally gets the idea.
Suddenly he agrees that the thing he's been told all his life is
indeed a reality. At that moment he begins to fold up.

  One of the best ways to put children on a happy road is by
offering them a little education. Interest them in the real world,

46                      CHILD DIANETICS

and try to interest them in a hobby in which they can learn to
use their bodies. Let them choose the hobby, and let them show
how proficient they can become. Teach them walking tight
ropes, or how to fry eggs. The world isn't a bunch of selected
subjects that somebody writes down in a book. This is the
business of living, and if something is especially interesting
to the child, that's the thing to teach. If a precision control
of the child's body can be built up it will aid his sanity,
raise his tone, and make processing easier.

  Just plain learning a skill isn't good enough, because the
farther that skill departs from practical application in the
future, the less efficacy it will have in straightening out his
mental and physical health. The child must see that what he is
learning leads toward an actual need in his life. Give the child
a feeling of pride in himself, and a feeling of independence
about some certain thing. It is absolutely necessary that Johnny
have reserved to him alone at least one sphere of action in
which he is completely independent.

  A little boy walking downtown with his parents saw an
accordion in a window and suddenly decided that he wanted
to learn to play the accordion. After a session of whining
and screaming he acquired a small accordion and, despite the
cartoons, finally learned to play something. "I always thought
it was a good idea to start him on the accordion," they gloated,
one after the other. They fought among themselves for the
distinction of being the first to recognize genius. Then they
lowered the boom.

  "You must practice an hour and seventeen minutes every
day, like it says in the book. You're not going to go out and
play with that gang of rowdies." It was no longer the child's
accordion and no longer his music. One day the accordion
just "happened" to get smashed. The parents made their
excuses - "You know how children are, they're flighty and
changeable. They don't know what they want next."

  The child had selected something he wanted to do. When

                     TOWARD A SANER WORLD                 47

he found it was not an independent sphere of action, he abandoned
it.

  A child can be robbed of independence of action in
numerous ways. Preventing him from making his own decisions
by inflicting punishment upon him when his own decisions
head him into trouble is one way. Another is to try
continually to impress him with how nice everybody is to him,
and how the world is all run for him, and how ungrateful he is.
Another way, a particularly despicable and demoralizing way,
is to work on his sympathy by getting sick, or tired, or
discouraged when he does anything wrong.

  Have you ever seen a mother who handled a child with a
tyranny presumably subtler but actually far more destructive
than that of a Roman emperor, simply by bringing home to
the child that all of poor "mama's" travail and all of "mama's"
sickness and weariness is because "mama" gives her all for the
child? It is too, too patent that the child is expected to do a
little something in return; at least, if the `child" is a grownup
girl, to be a little bit obedient and - not marry John. The
pitiful aspect of the situation is that if the young girl does
cut loose from her moorings and marries John, something usually
does happen to "mama," who goes ahead and finishes the
dramatization.

  The child who is chronically afraid is usually in a widely
scattered state of mind. His standard banks do not have
enough data to permit him to select what is wrong and identify
it. It is a wide, unknown world to him because parts and
portions of it are not identified; hence the extreme terror. The
world of the child is one of giants and dragons, not because all
childhood is delusion, but simply because children do not have
enough data.

  One particular poem is responsible for more upsets in
children than any other piece of work. Something to the
effect that "Daddy heard him holler and mama heard him shout,
but when they went upstairs there was nothing left but a pile
of clothes. The goblins had gotten him! "What's a goblin,

48                       CHILD DIANETICS

mama?" "That's someone that eats little children." Childhood
delusion? Grownup delusion is more to the point!

  It is absolutely unnecessary to communicate with a child on this
level. A child is perfectly logical. There is no sense in telling
him that goblins exist and that there is a place called hell
where he will burn forever, and that the soul inside him is
going to be taken by the Lord, who doesn't exist as far as his
own data and reality are concerned. Sir James Jeans and many
others have been trying for a long time to identify just what the
soul is and have not succeeded even to their own satisfaction;
and yet this little child, two or three or four years old, is
expected to say devoutly, "The Lord...going to come when
I'm asleep..." He will parrot it, yes, but it will threaten
and frighten him more than it will be logical to him.

  Perhaps the most insidious thing that can happen to the
child is the exterior ally. Until you have processed a number
of people you may not realize how deadly is the ally in the
sympathy engram. Grandparents should not be permitted into
the home of their grandchildren until they have learned to
behave themselves dianetically. One can have all the mawkish
sentimentality in the world and think, `'My dear, dear
grand-parents" - but wait until you get back there in the
reactive bank and find out what they did. They were very nice,
true, but all too often they bought the child off and broke
the affinity line between the parents and the child.

  A grandmother stepping in and undermining the situation
until she is receiving the affection from the child which belongs
to the parents, has actually had to do just that. She demonstrates
to the child that the parents are cruel, by reviling mama
each time mama corrects the child, thus setting herself up
during moments of pain and anguish as an ally. Any family
that permits to exist within it people who split up this natural
affinity between children and parents is asking for future trouble
with the child's mental condition.

  An ally blurting out to a feverish child, "My dear, I'm going
to stay here until you are well," becomes a leech upon that

                     TOWARD A SANER WORLD                 49

child's mind. Consider what happens when a child gets very
ill and grandma rants, "Do you think he will die? Oh, my
dear, darling little baby, you are going to die. I know you are
going to die. Please don't leave me!"

  Later on in life the child slides into grandma's valence, and
a period of illness which originally ran about five days is keyed
in and keeps the child sick for months!

  Working with children will be at once a fascinating and
arduous adventure. The auditor who applies insight and
patience along with his skill will be rewarded by seeing
children progress from little rebels and urchins, from sickly
unawareness and misery, to co-operative, healthy members of
society. He will find it necessary to face the inconsistency
of parents as well as children. The task will seem impossible
and heartbreaking at times, but in the end there will be an
unequaled sense of accomplishment, of having done something
really worth while for the advancement of future generations.

                           CHAPTER 4

                  STANDARD DIANETIC TECHNIQUE

In discussing Dianetics as applied to the special problems
of children, frequent reference is made to a compilation of
techniques known as Standard Procedure. With the knowledge of
the existence of an engram in mind, it was necessary to devise
a method for contacting and reducing or erasing that engram.
The method had to give uniform results, and had to work in
all cases. This method, when formulated and codified, became
known as Standard Procedure.

  Since, in the best interests of a child, it is often necessary
to process one or more adults within the immediate environment,
a brief outlining of the steps involved in Standard
Procedure may be helpful. The outgrowth of this technique as
applicable to children will be found in later chapters.

  How seldom in this busy modern life we find anyone who is
genuinely interested in our problems, our fears and our dislikes.
Time and time again we hopefully begin a conversation with
the deep-down purpose of getting something off our chest, but
as often does our listener interject with problems of his
own; "Oh, that reminds me of the time...." And suddenly our
little troubles are as nothing compared to his soul-shattering
and earth-trembling disappointments. Instead of getting something
off our chests we have become the listener, the auditor. We
sigh, bury our disappointment in a wan smile, and listen.
It is a strange truth that the best listener is often he who
most needs a sympathetic listener.

  Thus is affinity established. When you begin to audit a
member of your family, a friend or a relative, ask him many
questions about things in present time - how he feels about

                    STANDARD DIANETIC TECHNIQUE           51

current questions of the day, how he agrees or disagrees with
people around him. Sound him out on his methods of communication
to others, and as to how he receives communication, but do
not in any way disagree with him! People have disagreed with
him all his life. It is not for a dianetic auditor to add
himself to an already over-subscribed list.

  Affinity between the auditor and pre-clear is of utmost
importance. The pre-clear must have confidence in the auditor,
both as to his integrity as a person, and as to his ability
as an auditor to handle anything which may come up during a
session. Communication between auditor and pre-clear must
be of such nature as to preclude reservation. The reality of any
auditing session will greatly depend upon observance of these
two factors.

  Having established some basis for present-time enjoyment,
beliefs and hopes in your pre-clear, direct his attention to those
items or individuals within his environ having a high reality
value for him. The person he knows is his friend, the stone
stairs leading to the front door that he is absolutely certain
are real, and the children which he sired and feels are truly his
children - all of these and many more make for an increase in
the present-time affinity with life of the pre-clear. It is up to
you, the auditor, to question the pre-clear in such a way that he
contacts moments in which these things are real.

  The items so far delineated are your means of evaluating
your pre-clear. Your are finding out by questions, by discussion
and by listening to what he has to say roughly where your pre-clear
lies on an arbitrary scale from the highest possible sanity
to the lowest depths of insanity and death. The methods you
use to process the pre-clear from this point on will depend upon
your evaluation. Obviously, for those lying very low on the
scale, (termed in Dianetics the Tone Scale) very light methods
must be used. It is definitely not recommended that the
inexperienced auditor attempt to process someone who is
violently insane, or even apathetically insane. But above the
lower levels of the tone scale a pre-clear may be accepted with

52                      CHILD DIANETICS

confidence that you can, by using dianetic techniques, increase
the happiness and well-being of a child's father or mother, and
thereby reduce the difficulties of the child in familial relations.

  A record of each session should be kept. There is no need for
it to be a verbatim account of every word, motion or flick of
an eyelid of the pre-clear, but pertinent facts should be noted.
Write down the age, the number of brothers and sisters of the
pre-clear, and whether any of his immediate family has died.
Record his "pet" phrases for future check against primary or
secondary engram content.

  After you have made a preliminary scouting of the case, begin
to use straightwire (straight-line memory) to any recollections
of any kind in the pre-clear's life. Ask him about childhood
moments of happiness, when he graduated from school, and
when he had a teacher he especially liked. Orient your
pre-clear's past for him in this manner until actual existence
of a past is established in your pre-clear's reality. It may
be surprising to find many people whose pasts are a jumble of
complete unreality, in which they are uncertain that anything
actually happened to them. Straightwire will assist the preclear
to increase the reality of his past, which is, in effect,
straightening out a portion of his time track.

  To gain this much in your pre-clear's case you may have
Spent two hours, or even three weeks or more of daily sessions.
When the pre-clear has established a few definite "guide
posts" in his past - moments when his affinity and reality were
very high - it is then time to seek out a highly analytical lock
chain by questioning. (A "chain" of locks is a series of similar
incidents in the pre-clear's past which are filed, sometimes by
subject matter, sometimes by other perceptics, although not
necessarily in chronological order. "Analytical locks" are
moments when the pre-clear received praise for an action, or
when he felt he was right about something). Note the incidents
on paper as they are found, and then when the chain seems to
be complete, to have no additional incidents of a similar nature

                    STANDARD DIANETIC TECHNIQUE           53

to contact, question the pre-clear again on the same incidents,
one by one in the same order as they appeared the first time.

  Then do the same thing again, using only those incidents
contacted, unless the pre-clear insists upon adding new ones of
a similar nature. Continue asking questions selectively about
these specific incidents in their proper order until the pre-clear
has obviously raised in tone. This technique is known to
Hubbard Dianetic Auditors as "Repetitive Straightwire."

  During such running of analytical moments, the pre-clear
will almost surely attempt to contact moments of anger, grief,
fear or anaten. Keep him on the original subject by addressing
your questions only to the analytical moments on the chain.
And do not be surprised if the pre-clear "dopes-off." This is
a condition wherein the pre-clear apparently goes sound
asleep, sometimes snoring loudly, sometimes mumbling, and other
times merely lying quietly saying nothing. During these periods,
which may extend any length of time from one minute, to
eight hours or longer, do not disturb your pre-clear by
questions. Sit alertly by, and wait for him to come up out of
the dope-off.

  This condition is caused by unconsciousness in the pre-clear's
past. Dope-off seems to be the present-time discharge of past
unconsciousness. It is particularly noticeable and heavy on a
case which was the recipient of a number of attempted
abortions performed while he was in the womb. After a short
or extended period of dope-off the pre-clear will have a
noticeable rise of tone in present time. He will be more alert,
more interested in the world around him. This may well be the
first major sign of improvement in your pre-clear.

  You may have a pre-clear whose perceptics, i.e., his perception
of sound, time and motion, visio etc., are all on full. If
not, continue processing as you have been until his tone rises
and his perceptions turn on and he has a high sense of reality
about both the past and present time.

  When he fits the latter description you may then begin to
work with his "file clerk." The file clerk is his "basic per-

54                      CHILD DIANETICS

sonality." Just as its name implies, the file clerk answers a
question directed to the pre-clear, by giving dates, time, ages,
yes or no answers and, in fact, any desired datum concerning
the file of memory data in the pre-clear's mind. To initiate the
action of the file clerk, instruct the pre-clear to give the
first word or phrase which flashes into his mind as you ask
him a certain question. For instance:

  "Answer yes or no - is there a chain of locks available
now?"
  "Yes!"
  "What is the name of this chain?"
  "Whipping."

  In this way an auditor prepares his ground for the work of
a particular session.

  In another section of this book there is mentioned an "age
flash." This is simply a file clerk answer to the question, "How
old are you?" or "What is your age?" or just the single word
(after the file clerk has become very reliable) "Age?" It will
surprise you, if you are a beginning auditor, how many people
will answer seemingly ridiculous numbers when asked for an
age flash. It is interesting to try on various friends. Merely
instruct them to give the first number which occurs to them
after you ask the question, "What is your age?"

  But the numbers are seldom ridiculous. Suppose a pre-clear
whom you know to be 36 years old gives an age flash of 13.
She is flustered and cannot understand why she gave such a
silly number - but then question her about an incident at the
age of 13. Better still, use the file clerk for a few moments
longer to establish the geography of the incident:

  "Please answer yes or no: Hospital?"
  "Yes."
  "Doctor?"
  "No!"
  "Nurse?"
  "Yes."

  In this manner the nature and locale of the incident which

          STANDARD DIANETIC TECHNIQUE                     55

has caused the pre-clear to be stuck on the time track is
determined. Occasionally the number given by the pre-clear is not
a measure of years, but of days or months postnatal. The time
of reference can be established easily by asking the file clerk.
(After an answer of 8, for instance):

  "Days?"
  "No."
  "Weeks?"
  "Yes!"

  The mechanism of the file clerk is such that, when validated
by accepting of its answers, it gives correct information
concerning events, time and directions for proceeding with the
case. A file clerk, when asked for the incident next needed to
resolve the case, will give an answer which will be either a clue
or a direct delineation of what should come next.

  Invalidation of the file clerk is tantamount to stalling the
case. A file clerk can be invalidated by inferred or direct
disbelief in the correctness of the answers given.

  When you have worked with the file clerk for a time and
have established to your own satisfaction that it is giving valid
answers to your questions (sometimes a file clerk's answers are
filtered through a heavy "circuit" and are not valid, but even
so, the auditor must not allow the basic personality of his
pre-clear to suspect that he does not believe the answers) ask
for the earliest moment of pain or unconsciousness necessary to
resolve the case. This is a suggested routine:

  "The file clerk will give the earliest moment of pain or
unconsciousness necessary to resolve the case. The `somatic
strip' will go to this incident."

  The somatic strip is another mechanism, but one which is
commanded in no uncertain terms. Where the file clerk is
asked for an incident, the somatic strip is commanded. The
somatic strip might be likened to the pickup on a phonograph,
except that it would have many needles representing the
various perceptics instead of only one. The phonograph pickup
may be placed at any point on a recording and the sound

56                      CHILD DIANETICS

track will play off whatever is recorded, from that point. The
somatic strip is commanded to go to the various points on the
pre-clear's time track, and it goes there. It will obey the
command to go forward through the incident which the file clerk
has handed out. Part of the "I" of the pre-clear will then
perceive in recall those things which happened at any time in
his life, from a few hours before conception to present time.
When you command a pre-clear to "come up to present time,"
you have commanded the somatic strip to leave an incident
(which some never do until that incident - if aberrative - is
reduced or erased by many repetitions).

  Suppose you have ordered the somatic strip of your pre-clear
to contact an incident, and conversation appears to the
pre-clear. Have him repeat the phrases which he hears, but in
addition, coax him to feel the other perceptics as well. Chances
are, if it is a painful incident he has contacted, he will be
feeling the somatics (pain) of the incident without your invitation.
For the beginning auditor, this is the moment when he needs
courage and confidence in his tools. When the pre-clear is
apparently in the most intense pain, his eyes burning perhaps,
you must calmly continue to run the incident, asking for any
phrases connected with the incident, and picking up all sounds,
sense of touch, and kinesthesia as they appear. The somatic
strip will play back whatever was recorded. And then, when
the incident seems to be over, and the pain has subsided, command
the somatic strip to go to the beginning of the incident and
roll it again! Do this several times, until the pre-clear goes
through the cycle of apathy, anger, boredom and, after
perhaps the eighth time through the incident, is cheerful and
perhaps even heartily laughing about the whole thing. Pay no
attention to any efforts he may make to avoid going through
a second or third time. If the incident is erased you may be
sure that the pre-clear will not mind running it again, and that
he will do so cheerfully. If you accede to his demand to change
the subject, or to go on to something else, you will bog down

                    STANDARD DIANETIC TECHNIQUE           57

the case and give the pre-clear some very very uncomfortable
present-time somatics.

  If you have run an engram, and feel that you have spent
sufficient time in session for the day, direct your pre-clear
to pick up a moment of pleasure which occurred sometime during
his life, and run that through exactly as though it were an
engram, three or four times. Then command the pre-clear to
"come up to present time."

  If, when you first commanded the somatic strip to contact
the engram handed out by the file clerk, your pre-clear did not
contact the incident, it may be necessary to run some secondaries
which are sitting on top of the engram. A secondary is a
late-life incident containing painful emotion which activated
the engram. It may be the loss of a pet, the death of a member
of the family, or the loss of an ally. Carefully question the
pre-clear to find whatever might be available and then run the
incident from the moment of awareness of loss to the point
where the analyzer has resumed operation. Then the pre-clear
is returned to the beginning of the incident and it is run
again, exactly as though it were a basic engram. With successive
passes through the incident the pre-clear will rise through grief,
anger, boredom and, finally, cheerfulness. It seems strange,
perhaps, that anyone could be cheerful about the death of
his mother, but when the grief secondary - one of the most
aberrative occurrences in an individual's life - has been
run to erasure, cheerfulness will be in evidence.

  After running a secondary you will notice a distinct rise in
the general tone of the pre-clear in his everyday pursuits. It
will be gratifying to find that he no longer slaps the children
for every breach of what he might term "discipline." He has
been raised on the tone scale, and an aberrative portion of
his past life has been eliminated from his reactive mind.

  But there are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of secondaries in
everyone's life. As many of these as possible should be run.
When they no longer present themselves, when the pre-clear
can find no other incident containing painful emotion, return

58                     CHILD DIANETICS

the pre-clear to the prenatal area by asking the file clerk
for the earliest available incident needed to resolve the case
and command the somatic strip (or the pre-clear) to go to
the beginning of the incident. Run the engram presented, and
then, after no additional engrams are available, ask once again
for new secondaries which may, by this time, be available.

  During the final moments of each session with your pre-clear,
straightwire him on everything which occurred during the
session including anything you might have done to irritate
him. Ask him what happened when you began, what came up
first, what the engram (if any) was like. Ask him if he heard
any voices within the room or without. Make certain that he
has firmly in mind everything that occurred during the session,
because only then can you feel sure that whatever he has run is
fixed firmly in the analytical mind. End each session with a
brief pleasure moment. Let him pick the pleasure moment, and
run it through two or three times, and then bring him up to
present time.

  This is the basis of Standard Procedure. There are refinements,
of course. A professional auditor who has been trained by the
Foundation is familiar with many techniques which fit
special conditions. It is not expected that one become an
expert auditor from the techniques as outlined here, but, if a
pre-clear is chosen with care so as not to accept a person who
is extremely low on the tone scale, there is no reason why any
intelligent adult could not put the techniques into practice
and expect to obtain gratifying results.

  One last word of caution: These techniques, as outlined in
this chapter, are techniques for use on adults, or children in
their 'teens. For younger children there are variations on this
procedure.

                           CHAPTER 5

               DIANETIC PROCESSING FOR CHILDREN

It is possible to process a child at any age level beyond the point
when he learns to speak. However, no serious processing should
be undertaken until the child is at least five. Extensive dianetic
processing is not encouraged, except in very unusual circumstances,
until the child is at least eight years of age. Much good can
be accomplished before the age of eight by straight line
memory technique, and in the period from eight to twelve years
the child may be processed by any of the techniques outlined
here. But one should not force the child into the prenatal
area until he is at least twelve years old. If a return to the
basic area is made by the child, it is to be accepted and treated
as a matter of course and engrams reduced or erased, but the
auditor should not in any way force the child to do so.

  In all except severe cases, a child may be successfully
processed by a parent. In all cases, however, it is more difficult
for a parent than for an outside auditor, since the parent, by
virtue of being the causative agent, is a restimulator for the
child. The very tone of a parent's voice, even without similarity
of word content, will sometimes act as a restimulator. Nevertheless,
with some intelligence and objectivity on the part of the
parent, it can be done. It should be set up as a well-defined
program occurring in a form differing appreciably from any
other household happening or chore. It should be handled as a
new, exciting game in which the rules are slightly different from
those of other forms of play. Even if the processing is done by
an auditor from outside the household, the parents still from
an essential part of the child's environment and must be

60                     CHILD DIANETICS

educated into an acceptance of the vital facts and values of
Dianetics.

  There are three major steps in the processing of children:

  1. Prevent restimulation.
  2. Break locks.
  3. De-intensify painful emotion.

  The parent should try to avoid the language which is in
the child's reactive bank. The emotions accompanying this
language should also be avoided, as well as any known duplication
of situations which are likely to have been recorded by the
child's reactive mind. If the parent cannot recall the incidents
in which engrams might have been created, or if she cannot
remember the language used at that time, she can soon
determine by the child's reactions what sets of words and what
kinds of emotion are in the child's reactive bank. She should
then be very careful to avoid this language, especially when
situations exist which might be engramic. Any aberration in
a child is evidence that a key-in has occurred, and the
situations in which the aberrations are most apparent will
have perceptions similar to the perceptics which were present
when the engram was laid in.

  For example, one set of parents tried desperately to keep
their child from wetting the bed by continually telling him to
go to bed and not to drink any water before retiring. In spite of
this "education," the child continued to wet the bed. Dianetic
evaluation of the situation revealed immediately that something
in the child's environment was restimulating an engramic
command which caused the bed-wetting. In this case, as in
many others, the action taken in good faith by the dianetically
untrained parents was not preventing the aberration but,
rather, keeping it chronically keyed in. These parents found
that commands, which meant reactively that if you mention
the word "water" you must urinate in the bed, were contained
in the birth engram. The actual engram content was:

                DIANETIC PROCESSING FOR CHILDREN          61

  "The water is going to come."
  "It'll break and go in the bed."
  "Just lie there and let it go."

  The engram was deactivated when the restimulators were
removed. When the parents stopped mentioning the word
"water" before the child went to bed, the bed-wetting tapered
off and then stopped entirely.

  Locks can be contacted and blown through straight line
memory techniques; that is, without reverie. The parent can
be of great help in this part of the process because she knows
pretty well when she has created a lock, especially in an
emotional blow-up of any kind. By remembering the standard
pattern of her dramatizations during emotional crises, she can
help the child or the child's auditor to find the locks which
will best help the child to overcome his difficulties. Whenever
anaten is present in the child, and it is present when any
engram is being restimulated, a lock can be erected. The
resulting aberration will depend on the emotion and pain of
the lock as well as on the original engram. This fact, plus the
nature of the aberration, can be used to determine which locks
should be investigated first.

  In a child, returning is a simple and natural mechanism,
and the technique of blowing locks is to use a combination of
memory and recall. Ask the child, for instance, if his mother
ever bawled him out. If so, try to get him to remember a
specific incident. At this point many children will close
their eyes and return to the event. If the child can remember
the exact words his mother used, and the words of any other
persons in the incident, allow him to run through the incident
as often as it interests him. Most locks will blow with a single
recounting, and will cease to have any aberrative effect on the
child.

  Grief can be contacted in a child as easily as in an adult.
The chief point of difference is that the grief will be on
moments which seem not very important to an adult. A child

62                     CHILD DIANETICS

will have a definite sense of loss when, for example, his mother
did not allow him to sail his boat on a rainy day. The discharge
over this type of grief engram will be small when compared
to the grief occasioned by the leaving of a favorite nurse,
or the loss of a pet; but any moment of grief which can be
discharged will improve the health and well-being of the child.

  The auditor who wishes to deal successfully with children
must have, above all, the ability to establish affinity with the
child. This is a problem of interesting the child in the incidents
which have caused his difficulty. A child's attention is badly
scattered. He has not yet learned to focus his attention well,
and it is the function of the auditor to pick up his attention
and channel it back against the locks and grief engrams.

  A child has a great natural sense of dignity. Do not talk
down to him. Treat him with as much dignity as you can. You
will find that the child has weird misconceptions about many
everyday things around him. Trace these misconceptions to
their source and you will usually find an adult who has not
taken the trouble to give this child the right data. Never talk
over a child's head to his parents. It is better to talk over the
heads of the parents to the child, always working with him on
a partnership basis.

  Quite often the processing of a child inevitably involves
more than working with the child alone. Much of the
aberration found in him will have come from a lack of dianetic
knowledge on the part of the parents, and steps other than
putting the child on a couch and removing locks and running
grief engrams need to be taken in the interest of preventing
restimulation.

  There are three ways of treating a person dianetically, and
all of them are sometimes necessary in the processing of a
child:

  1. Standard processing procedures.
  2. Dianetic education.
  3. Shifting environment.

              DIANETIC PROCESSING FOR CHILDREN            63

  You can usually count on the parents being very anxious to
have their children better and healthier. You can also count on
the fact, unfortunately, that the parents are going to take your
advice only to a very limited degree. It may be up to you to
enforce in some manner those items which you advance as the
parents' duty toward the child.

  One little boy who wouldn't talk at all was brought to an
auditor. After many fruitless attempts to gain a case opening,
the auditor asked the boy which of his parents had told him
he would be punished if he said anything about their quarrels.
Tears! A rush of words. Case opening!

  How is an auditor to do something for a child if the parents
forbid him to tell anything about his home life? These parents
were certain that reading comic books was responsible for the
child's aberration, but during the entire course of their marital
"misnavigation off the middle of the hurricane section" they
quite customarily fought at every meal. Father would start
complaining about the food, and mother would complain how
hard she had to work. It was not unusual for them to pick up
the clockery and shy it at each other, and not extraordinary
for the boy to be hit. He could not be induced to eat and,
though the average weight for a boy of his age was 85 pounds,
he barely tipped the scales at 58.

  The prescription in this case was merely straight line
memory technique on the first time his parents quarreled at the
table in his presence. The next thing was to insist that the
child be permitted to eat in the kitchen behind closed doors.

  When they heard this, both parents looked daggers at the
child and said, "What have you been telling him?" The
auditor could see the child was probably in for a beating, so
he warmed the parents:"I know that if this boy is allowed to
eat by himself he will gain weight; if in the next couple of
weeks this child does not gain weight, I'll have to call the
Humane Society."

  The child gained weight.

  The auditor who deals with children needs to evaluate the

64                     CHILD DIANETICS

child's environment from a dianetic standpoint. In many
cases it will be the parents who need processing most, not the
child. In any case, it is important that the parents understand
what key-ins are, and how to avoid them. One of the important
points to remember in this connection is that the "usual"
childhood illnesses quite often occur three days after some
emotional upset in the home. In processing the child, make
sure to explore the area which preceded any illness he may
have had. The chances of finding the key-in which helped to
bring it on are excellent. The first sickness of the child will
help you locate the first key-in. If enough of these are found
in the child, the parents will be convinced of the necessity
of preventing further key-ins. If the child's processing does
not provide enough evidence to persuade the parents of the
importance of key-ins on the health of the child, it is the
duty of the auditor processing the child to demonstrate on one
of the parents that such key-ins do take place, and that key-ins
do affect an individual's health and happiness, young or old.

  A small amount of education for the parents in the principles
of Child Dianetics will sometimes accomplish more than the
same number of hours spent in processing the child. Perhaps
the most important single point in such education is to make
clear to the parents the urgent necessity of giving goals to
a child, and the most vital goal is that of growing up to be
an adult. A child should have responsibility and independence
commensurate with his status as a child. He should have things
which are wholly his, and about which he decides everything.
But under no circumstances should he be possessed automatically
of as much right as an adult in the sphere of the home. To
give him such privileges prematurely is to remove the main
goal of his life: growing up. The child cared for without
question and trained toward nothing loses his prime incentive
in life, especially when around him he sees adults who do not
enjoy themselves as adults, take no pleasure in their rights as
adults, and do not insist on their adult rights. When a child
is kept dependent and shielded and recompensed for being a

               DIANETIC PROCESSING FOR CHILDREN           65

child, his incentive for being otherwise is much reduced, with a
consequent deterioration of ability to acquire knowledge and a
serious reduction in the quantity he will acquire, since he does
not see any reason for acquiring it.

  Education of the parent includes, of course, the basic ideas
of Preventive Dianetics. Don't talk around a sick or injured
child. As soon as anaten begins to depart after a minor
accident, act to make the child comfortable, but for several
minutes thereafter do not talk. Don't leave the child in a
restimulative atmosphere. Don't take a child up from the
middle of a nice sleep and tell her repeatedly to "Sit there
in that chair and listen to what a terrible thing it is to be
married to a man," as one mother did. Try and keep the child
away from highly charged dramatizations of any kind. Care for
the child efficiently and quietly, but do not establish yourself
as an indispensable ally.

  If an auditor finds at the beginning of processing that the
child he is working with is in need of constructive things to do
(and this will be customary rather than unusual), it is sometimes
a good thing to set up a definite program for the child to
acquire some skills. These should be primarily body skills.
This program can be used as a means of shifting his environment
slightly away from most of the restimulation he is getting.
If possible, let the child pick his own program. Help him in
setting it up, but if it is specifically designed to be his
program, do not in any way influence its course or insist on
its being carried out if he should wish to abandon it. He
generally has his reasons, even though he may be unable or
reluctant to expose them.

  The child needs very little education in Dianetics. The
operations are natural for him. He will quickly come to look
on his processing as an interesting game if the auditor builds
the situation up in this way.

  In one respect the auditor can perform a very important
function in the education of the child. A child is almost always
confused about the world around him largely because of the

66                       CHILD DIANETICS

labels which have been placed on objects by adults who do not
understand the serious nature of incorrectly labeling an object
for a child. Consider the case of a child who has had no
previous data concerning death, and to whom is read the poem
about little tin soldiers and angels with golden hair. If this
is his first falsely symbolic understanding of the word "death,"
then it must be very puzzling to him indeed when he observes
how adults really react when a death occurs. The impression
made by this first misconception about the meaning of death
must somehow be obliterated before any accurate communication
on the subject can be made to the child. The divergence between
this first conception of death and all future conceptions
forms a troubled area in the filing system of the analyzer
that will tie up some of the child's available attention until
the tension is resolved. The technique for accomplishing this
is simply to treat the original, incorrect labeling as a lock
incident and to lift the tension from it by close present-time
contact.

  Sometimes a lack of semantic orientation will cause problems
in the child's mind which have such far-reaching implications
that resolving them semantically will produce seemingly miraculous
results. One little girl was failing in arithmetic. She was very
bright in other subjects, and no reason suggested itself for
her failure to do her work in this one subject. She was given a
few problems, but became hopelessly bogged down trying to work
them out.

AUDITOR: If an airplane is traveling 10,000 feet at 2 P.M.
  and at 5,000 feet at 3 P.M., how far would a man have to
  fall to reach the ground at 3 P.M.?
LITTLE GIRL: Gee! I dunno. Well, if it's ten thousand and
  then it's five thousand...Honest, I can't tell you. It's
  really a problem.
AUDITOR: Is it just that the problem bothers you?
LITTLE GIRL: I guess so.
AUDITOR: Does anyone around here ever talk about problems?

               DIANETIC PROCESSING FOR CHILDREN           67

LITTLE GIRL: Well, maybe Mommy might talk about having lots
  of problems.
AUDITOR: Has anyone ever called you a problem?
LITTLE GIRL: Well, maybe Mommy might talk about having
  lots of problem.
AUDITOR: Who might call you a problem?
LITTLE GIRL: Well, maybe Mommy. Oh! You mean that kind of
  a problem!

  The word had assumed its right meaning, and the little girl
soon started getting good marks in arithmetic.

  An auditor may discover information which will make
environmental changes necessary for the sake of the child's
health. Usually it is possible to obtain the cooperation of the
parents in making these changes. If it can be demonstrated to
the parent that his child's health will be adversely affected
if, for example, he visits his aunt and uncle every summer,
the parent will usually discontinue the visit.

  Most of the changes necessary in a child's environment will
be along the line of removing him from the restimulative effect
of allies. The insidious ways in which allies can completely
undermine the health and sanity of children without even being
aware of what they are doing is hard to imagine unless you
have examined the results for yourself.

  In one instance an auditor visited a girl in a hospital.
When he arrived he found that the grandmother had been there
previously, and that the girl had developed a fever. A little
questioning established the fact that grandmother and the
fever had materialized simultaneously. Straight-line memory
contacted an illness at 9 years of age, during which grand-mother
had re-established herself as an ally and insisted that she
would be around any time the little girl was sick. When
this lock was blown, the fever went down immediately and
vanished completely in a few hours.

  In this respect it is interesting to note that any person who
countermands the authority of a parent also undermines the

68               CHILD DIANETICS

independence of the child. The child's reality consists largely
of his relationship to his parents. Any factor which comes
between him and his parents is not good for the growth of
the child. Any relative or other person who interrupts the
communication between a child and his parents, no matter how
well-meaning his efforts, and especially if he attempts to set
himself up as another less stern parent, is harming the health
and sanity of the child. An auditor should use every possible
means to have such a person removed from the child's immediate
environment.

  Dianetics for children has its special problems, too. The
child is not capable of sustained concentration and should not
be forced in this regard. Even in working pleasure moments
the auditor should be careful not to attempt to keep the
child concentrated on one activity any longer than the child
can endure without tiring. When it is at all possible, it is
better to work every day with a child, since the working period
for children must necessarily be shorter. The length of time
a child is able to work at one sitting is usually from fifteen
minutes to a half hour. Properly prepared, and entering into
the spirit of their processing, some children can bear up under
it for much longer periods. If the child is unable to concentrate
his attention for longer than the average period, it will do no
good at all to attempt to keep him beyond that time. In this
respect it might be well to note that although working time
may have to be cut shorter, the amount of good that can be
accomplished even with brief sessions sometimes seems miraculous
to persons who have not tried using dianetic techniques with
children.

  A special problem with a child is that the child will sometimes
be unwilling to enter a lock incident which appears light to
an adult. One way of getting around this is to ask the child
to imagine a television or a movie screen and to picture an
incident similar to the lock on this screen. Quite often the
actual lock will appear on the screen. One word of warning
about this technique (which may also be used with adults on

               DIANETIC PROCESSING FOR CHILDREN           69

badly occluded locks): Never tell the child that any part of
any situation is imaginary or a delusion.

  Children, even more than adults, lose their grasp on reality
when their data are invalidated. If Junior's picture-screen
image of mama has green hair, do not point out to him that
mama's hair is really red. Simply run the lock through and
proceed with processing. Eventually the data will begin to
straighten out in Junior's mind and he will volunteer the
information that mama's hair is really not green but red, and
that he knew it all along.

  Nothing in Dianetics provides more thrill than to see a
child regain his grasp on reality. Once communication between
an auditor and a child has been definitely established, the
results of processing are immediately apparent. Children
grasp Dianetics easily, and it is not at all uncommon to see
them beginning to use the new memory games on mama and papa
and on playmates. Unless there is a very bad prenatal bank
which has already been keyed in, children's perceptic recalls
are usually in good shape. It is a pleasure to watch them
regain their own data and re-establish their validity.

  Children become particularly adept at running out minor
pain incidents immediately after they occur. Since the latest
bump or fall may be contacted and the pain lessened or
relieved completely by the child himself, several auditors
have taught their children the technique of taking such care
of minor bruises.

  Considering the high adaptability of children, it was not at
all surprising when one professional auditor found his little
girl out in the back yard, with a look of grim determination
on her face, running out the mild spanking her father had just
administered!

  The problem of processing children is of utmost importance
and will occupy a much greater portion of the auditor's attention
than working with adults. Accessibility, parental interference,
and a child's lack of the right kind of education, all combine
to present a real challenge to the auditor - one which

70                     CHILD DIANETICS

only his exercise of deep insight and sphinx-like patience
will enable him to meet. He must be firm and at the same time
diplomatic with the child's parents. He must meet the child on
a companionship level and literally become the child's private
tutor. And he must be able to fathom the root of a problem
not only from a jumble of information, but from a complete
lack of data as well.

  It is very interesting that the treatment of a child and
the treatment of a psychotic are parallel problems, primarily
because both of them present the problem of accessibility. A
child that has been rather badly used in his lifetime is
prone to resist attention from an adult. He is a problem in
self-control because he has not yet learned precision control
of his body.

  The problem facing the auditor is to direct the child's
attention into his own locks and engrams. As the false self-control
units or circuits go out, the "I" is more and more able to
control the organism. But before a child can be processed
his attention must be gathered and focused. When a concentration
of the mind on the handling of the body is built up to a
sufficient point, the mind can handle the engrams. To accomplish
this a certain amount of re-education must be undertaken. Start
by getting the child to define words, objects and their uses,
and you will find that he has the most confoundedly weird
misconceptions of the world in which he lives, handed to
him by the adults around him. You can straighten out a lot
with a child on an educational level alone.

  The child's prenatal engram bank is full of engrams that a
35-year-old pre-clear, with all of his understanding, would
hesitate to face. The time track is stoned with parental
quarrels, and sometimes sheer brutalities. It is too much to
ask that a child of 4, 5 or 6 years of age face this sort of
thing. He cannot do it. His analytical mind is not sufficiently
developed, nor does he have a full bank of data with which to
evaluate.

  Suppose you began processing by taking the child back to a
sleigh ride or the time he went swimming. He cooperates, going

               DIANETIC PROCESSING FOR CHILDREN           71

readily up and down the time track - until you say, "Let's go
back to the time when mama caught you stealing cookies and
punished you." Ha! That's one place this kid will not go. It
was only a mild licking, very mild - merely had to do with a
few slaps when the culprit was anaten from fright. If the child
can't go back and face something as mild as this, how can he
be expected to go back and face a real knock-down and drag-out
fight staged by his parents?

  Standard processing, then, is barred to a child until he
has been educated into the handling of his own body and has
enough data so that he can evaluate. This opens an entirely
new line of processing: the identification of objects on an
educational level. Simply give the child more data.

  Suppose a normal child who catches cold after cold, has asthma,
gets very ill, and whose parents say "We've done everything
in the world for this child," is finally brought in for
processing. The best thing to do is to take the child by himself,
away from the parents. Ask him to sit down, and talk to him on
a rather dignified level. You will find him talking to you on
the same dignified level. At that moment you have entered the
case.

  The most you can do for the child is to build up his confidence
and affinity to a point where he will go back and pick up
grief. Somebody took his tricycle - a big moment of grief.
Once grief is off the case, the chances are that the chronic
somatics will disappear, easing up enough tension so the child
will become pretty well balanced. Then proof the child against
future key-in by telling the parent about restimulation, and the
results of emotional upsets which occur in his hearing. Aim for
de-intensification, not clearing. Your goal is to bring the
child up so that he can get along better with his environment.

  You will find cases where children are ordered and threatened
not to cry, thus sealing in grief. You'll have a difficult
time with these children, but you can get back even to this
grief area with straight-line memory and knock it out.

  Once grief has been run and the child has become a little

72                     CHILD DIANETICS

more proficient in playing his memory games, take him back
to the last time he was slightly hurt and run it out. Teach
him to pick up late life locks, minor engrams, etc. But don't
suppose, because you have gone this far successfully, that you
can immediately get back to basic-basic.

  If the child is sickly, see if the parents are really concerned.
Select the most restimulative factors in his environment and get
the parents' cooperation in eliminating them. Considerable
tact and diplomacy will be required when dealing with parents.
One little boy who was very allergic to his mother was being
taken to all kinds of health resorts because he was so sickly.
Every place he went he carried along the source of his illness.
But you couldn't tell mother in so many words that she was
restimulative to her own child, and that he would go right on
being sick as long as they were together. Diplomatically try to
educate the mother or give her some processing. If the father
is the one who is especially interested in the case, sell him
on the idea of letting you process the mother first.

  You are going to audit a child, but you may wind up by
processing one or more adults in the child's vicinity. People
will often be so interested in the health of a child that they
will permit themselves to be processed for the child's sake when
ordinarily they would not bother with processing for their own
benefit. And think how much better it would have been for the
child if the parents could have been processed before their
offspring was conceived.

  Don't lecture a child about self-discipline, because this is
something that is a native and natural mechanism, not something
that is installed with a club. When he begins to get restless
and his attention wanders, follow the wandering and let him
wander right on out. Don't make processing onerous by
demanding that it go longer than the natural span of the
child's attention. If you're getting in only as little as five
minutes a day, be content. Let him go home if he wants to.
Next time you see him he'll be perfectly willing to work with
you. If you try to tell him he has to have processing, that he

               DIANETIC PROCESSING FOR CHILDREN           73

has to listen to this or that, or has to be an obedient boy - you
are only contributing to an already handicapped young life.

  While you are talking to Billy, don't pay any attention to
Billy's parents. Above all, don't talk to a parent over the
child's head; in fact, it might be advantageous at times to talk
to Billy over the head of the parent. Talk only to the child or
you will lose all the affinity that must be built up. If the child
can talk to you on a different level than he can to others, he
will be a different human being, and a much better one after
each session.

  In Child Dianetics you can expect to need a lot more
patience and a lot more endurance than you would in adult
processing. You've got to be persistent and be able to adapt
your attitude to that of the child. If you can do these things
intelligently, dianetically, you are going to get results.

                    DIANETICS IN CHILD CARE

Dianetic theory generates simple and definite techniques for
the handling of children, not only in emergencies, but in
ordinary day-by-day care. They can be learned quickly and
easily. Working with children is a joy, because they return so
easily and naturally and because the results are so visible.

  One should try, of course, to keep engrams from forming in
the first place. The pregnant woman generally sees to it that
nothing happens which might injure the child, and she is
usually accorded better care during pregnancy. But she also
has a right to ask that people around her not only protect
her physically, but see to it that she is not involved in any
emotional storms.

  Anyone likely to be in contact with a pregnant woman
should also be instructed to remain absolutely silent if she
happens to suffer some accident or injury. Silence is the first
rule, and nothing at all should be said if it can be avoided.
She can be helped or ministered to without comment.

  A woman who wants her child to have the best possible
chance will find a doctor who will agree to keep quiet while
examining her and especially during the delivery, and who
will insist upon silence being maintained in the hospital
delivery room as far as it is humanly possible. She will also
want a natural childbirth, and will find a doctor who will
cooperate in seeing to it that she has one. A childbirth wherein
the mother's pain is not occluded by anesthesia or narco-anesthesia
will not be nearly so engramic to the child. Many auditors
have found that the first real grief charge lies immediately
after birth, due to separation from the mother. If,

                    DIANETICS IN CHILD CARE               75

with the mother under anesthetic, a child is delivered, hurriedly
cleaned, and taken off to a ward, the break in affinity is
severe. Furthermore, it is completely unnecessary.

  A doctor who practices natural childbirth will lay the child
on the mother's abdomen even before the cord is cut, and as
soon as the cord is cut and tied, the mother will give the
caressing and nursing. Undoubtedly this procedure will do
much to reduce the effect of the suddenly affinity break of
birth, and probably will eliminate it completely. It is impossible,
from a dianetic point of view, to urge natural childbirth too
strongly.

  In postnatal life, of course, whether the child is injured or
sick, the rule of absolute silence should be kept. The parents
should insist that everyone in the child's environment beware
of the ally-forming phrases. Anything which might be construed
to mean, "You would die without me," or "Everything will be
all right so long as I am here," is dynamite, as any auditor
knows. Parents who know Dianetics will as sedulously protect
their children from people who say such things as they would
from wild animals. They will also protect them from all the
believe-me-and-everything-will-be-all-right, and you've-got-to
do as I say phrases.

  Of course, silence around a sick or injured child does not
preclude genuine, intelligent affection and physical caresses.
The child needs these more than ever when sick, and no amount
of loving will form an ally computation if no words are
spoken. But caresses are best of gentle and calm. No violent
clutching to the breast or mauling should be allowed. Holding
a child's hand quietly and firmly rather than agitatedly will
give him the assurance of support that he needs when he is
sick.

  In cases of minor physical injury, anyone around the child
may run to assist. But in young children, often just letting
them cry it out seems to be enough. When a child is hurt,
most people find themselves speaking comforting and consoling
words almost before they know it. And what they say is usually

76                     CHILD DIANETICS

what they have said a hundred times before when the child
was hurt. This restimulates the whole chain of injuries.

  Parents can help a child most by saying nothing. It may take
a short while to train themselves not to speak when the child
is hurt, but it is not difficult to form the habit of remaining
silent. Silence need not inhibit affection. One may hold the
child, if he wants to be held, or put an arm around him. Often,
if nothing is said, a young child will cry hard for a minute or
so, and then suddenly stop, smile, and run back to what he was
doing. Allowing him to cry seems to release the tension resulting
from the injury, and no assist is needed if this occurs. In
fact, it is often very difficult to make the child return to the
moment of injury if he has run it out himself this way. He will
avoid the pain of returning as he would the original pain, and
probably the incident is already run out and refiled, and
therefore no longer important enough to trouble about.

  But if the child does not spontaneously recover after a
moment or two of crying, then wait until he has recovered from
the short period of anaten that accompanies an injury. It is
usually not difficult to tell when a child is dazed and when he
is not. If he still cries after the dazed period, it is usually
because other previous injuries have been restimulated. In this
case, an assist is valuable. On older children (5 and up) an
assist is usually necessary.

  When the child is no longer dazed, ask him, "What happened?
How did you get hurt? Tell me about it."

  As he begins to tell about it, switch him to the present tense
if he doesn't tell the story in the present tense spontaneously.
Try it this way:

  "Well - I was standing on a big rock and I slipped and fell,
and..." (crying)
  "Does it hurt when you are standing on the rock?"
  "No."
  "What happens when you are standing on the rock?"
  "I slip..." (crying)
  "Then what happens?"

                    DIANETICS IN CHILD CARE               77

  "I fall on the ground."
  "Is there grass on the ground?"
  "No - it's all sandy."
  "Tell me about it again."

  You can take the child through it several times until he gets
bored or laughs. There is nothing difficult about it, and the
whole process may be so casual and easy that any one unfamiliar
with Dianetics will not realize that anything unusual is
being done. After a child has had a few assists run this
way, he will, upon being injured, run to the person who can
administer this painless help and reassurance, demanding to
"tell about it."

  The best way to keep a child from being restimulated is for
the parents to be good releases or clears. Unfortunately this
takes time. But in the meantime, parents should watch their
own dramatizations, especially noting their favorite phrases,
and avoid using these as much as possible in the child's
presence or to the child himself.

  Straight memory work on each other, aimed at getting rid
of recurrent dramatizations and phrases, should help parents
to keep highly restimulative scenes down to a minimum until
the underlying engrams have been completely run out. This
procedure should be applied to any others who are in the
child's environment.

  Many people habitually tell a child, "Don't do that or you'll
get sick," "My goodness, you're certainly getting a bad cold,"
"You'll get sick if you keep on with that," "I just know
Johnny's going to get polio if he goes to school," and countless
other such pessimistic suggestions. They also use thousands of
"Don'ts," "Can'ts," and "Control yourself" phrases. Parents
may watch themselves for these phrases, and avoid their use as
much as possible. With a little imagination and practice, it is
not difficult to find ways of keeping children safe without using
constant verbal restraints which will lock on to underlying
engrams. As much as possible, suggestions made to a child
should be positive; should appeal to his analytical mind. A

78                     CHILD DIANETICS

child has one, even at an early age. Graphically illustrating
what happens to a glass bottle when it drops will get the idea
across better than a thousand screams of "get away from
that!" or "Put that down!"

  Smooth, gentle motions and a quiet voice will go far toward
averting restimulation when children are being handled.
Anyone who wishes to work successfully with children will
cultivate these attributes. They are particularly valuable
in emergencies.

  If a child's attention must be obtained quickly because of
a potentially dangerous situation developing too far away to
enable the guardian to reach the child in a hurry, calling his
name loud enough to be heard will do the trick harmlessly. It
is much better than screamed injunctions to "Stop!" "Stay
there!" "Don't do that!" and so on. It is not nearly so likely
to re-stimulate him.

  The technique that will be used most often in dealing with
children is informal straight memory work. Although it is
straight memory, often the child will return spontaneously
when it is used. Children return so easily that keeping them on
memory alone is difficult. But there is no need to prevent them
from returning while working straight-line.

  Straight-line memory may be used in hundreds of situations
that arise from day to day: whenever the child is fretful,
unhappy and crying over something; when he is feeling slightly
sick; when he is obviously restimulated by something; when he
has overheard a dramatization, or someone has punished him
severely or uncorked a dramatization directed toward him;
when he feels rejected - in fact, every time a child is unhappy
or nervous for any reason, or when you know that he has
recently had a highly restimulative experience.

  The principle here, as in any straight-line work, is to get at
the specific phrases and situations causing the restimulations.
Of course this technique can be used only after the child has
learned to talk enough to give a coherent account of what he is
thinking and feeling.

                    DIANETICS IN CHILD CARE               79

  If the child is feeling upset (not seriously ill), you may
begin by asking him when he felt this way before. Usually a
child will remember. As you ask further questions about what
was happening, what he was doing at the time, who was talking,
what was said, how he felt, and the usual questions directed
toward uncovering the situation, he will describe the scene
graphically. When he does so, simply run him through it again
a few times. When you come to the end say, "Tell me about
it again. Where were you when daddy was talking?" "Tell it
again." Or, simply, "Let's see now, you were sitting on the
couch when daddy says - what did he say?" Any simple phrase
which will return the child to the beginning of the scene may
be used.

  In running children there is no need to use dianetic terms
or to make the thing complex. Children understand, "Tell it
again." They love to hear stories over and over again, themselves,
and they love to tell their stories to an interested audience.
But don't be overly sympathetic. Show affection and interest
- yes. But don't croon, or moan, "Poor baby, poor little
thing!" or similar phrases. They serve only to form sympathy
computations.

  The more you can enter a child's reality, the better you will
be able to help him run locks. Imitate his voice tones, his

  "Yeah!", "You did!", "And then what?" - adapt yourself to
his graphic mimicry, widened eyes, breathless interest, or
whatever his mood and tone may be - but not to the extent of
parotting, of course. If you cannot do it well, then just be
simple, natural and interested.

  Often, when he is restimulated, a child will use one or two
phrases over and over again. To anyone who knows Dianetics,
he is obviously right in the middle of an engram. In that case
you can start with, "Who says that?" or "Who's saying that to
you?" or "When did you hear that?"

  Sometimes he will insist, "I say it - shut up, you old fool!"
or whatever the phrase is. Then ask, "Who else says it?" or
"See if you can remember when you heard somebody else say

80                     CHILD DIANETICS

it," and he will usually start telling you about an incident.
Patient questioning will usually bring out the last lock on a
chain.

  One auditor, working with her daughter, was astounded
when the child said, "You said it, mummy, a long time ago."
"Where were you when I said it?" "Oh, I was only a little
thing - in your tummy." This probably won't happen often.
But as the child gets the idea of straight-memory work and of
returning, it may happen sooner or later. Whatever the incident,
engram or lock, just go on with questioning to build up the
incident. "What were you doing?...Where were you?...Where
was I?...What was daddy saying?...What did it look like?...What
did you feel like?" and so on. Run the child through the
incident a few times until he laughs. This will blow the
lock and release him from the restimulation.

  If the child is crying, a good way to begin is, "What are you
crying about?" After a child has told what he is crying about
a few times, each time being helped by questioning about the
incident, and when his crying has abated, you may ask, "What
else are you crying about?" Sometimes, in this way, you may
take a child down through a whole chain of locks and possibly
even get the key-in.

  If the father knows that the child has overheard a dramatization
or has been severely punished or scolded, he may run the lock
a few hours after the event by asking about it. "Do you
remember when I shouted at mother last night?" If the child
is not used to expressing his anger to his parents, or if he
has been severely repressed in the past, it may take some
coaxing to get him to tell about it. While doing so, try to
assure him by your manner that it is perfectly all right for him
to talk about it. If he simply cannot, you might try to get him
to play it out. If the child plays with dolls or toy animals you
may, in play with him, get him to make the dolls or toys act
out the dramatization. "This is the mama doll. And this is the
little boy doll. What does the mama doll say when she is mad?"

                    DIANETICS IN CHILD CARE               81

Very often this will take the child right into the scene, and
if you let him really open up and describe the scene without
condemnation, listening in a sympathetic, interested way,
and encouraging him with a well-placed, "Yes...and then
what?" he will soon drop the pretense and begin to tell you
directly what he overheard. Even if he does not do this, and,
as children often do, he runs over the scene a couple of times
with his dolls or toys, it will de-intensify to a large extent.

  Instead of dolls or toys, you may have the child draw
pictures. "Draw me a picture of a woman and a man...What are
they doing?...Draw me a picture of a woman crying," and so on.
The emphasis should always be on the adult who was dramatizing,
and not on the child who was naughty. Drawing pictures, playing
house with a child: "And then you say...And then I say...?", or
simply getting the child to make up a story about it will help
to get into the lock.

  With children who have not been inhibited in their expressions
of anger against parents, these subterfuges are not usually
necessary. They will tell freely and dramatize scenes they
overheard or scoldings they got, if you act as an interested
audience and encourage them to build up the scene. If you watch
children playing, you will often see them doing exactly that,
mimicking their parents and other adults in their dramatizations,
and blowing locks for themselves while they do so. Watching
children can be an education in Dianetics. Nothing demonstrates
dianetic technique more quickly and forcefully than a child's
play. Very often children seem to know how to blow locks for
themselves with straight memory or by returning over the scene,
and will do this by themselves. For severe locks, however, they
do need the help of an adult they trust.

  Sometimes just asking a child, "What happened to make you
feel bad?" or "What did I say to make you feel that way?" will
bring out the restimulative elements in the present situation
and will take the charge off it and bring him out of the lock.

82                     CHILD DIANETICS

  Occasionally, in exceptional cases, a child may actually
recall an engram on straight memory. If such a return occurs,
get as much of the engram as possible on straight memory by
using the past tense. Then run pleasure until his tone is high.
But do not encourage such a return to an engram until he is
prepared for it. It may frighten him and thus inhibit returning
later on.

  Usually there is no need for caution in this respect. Children
will usually bounce right up to present time the minute they
come close to a somatic.

  If you do not have time to use straight-line memory techniques,
or if for some other reason you do not wish to, you may bring
a child out of a lock by other means. It is easy to recognize
when a child is restimulated, and easy to locate him on the
tone scale. If he is down to a tone of expressed hostility, often
you can let him get himself out of it by encouraging him to
play out the dramatization.

  Everyone is familiar with the violent threats children can
think up when they are frustrated: "I'll tear him to pieces and
throw him in the river; I'll make them all go in a closet and
lock it up and throw away the key and then they'll be sorry,"
and so on. If you encourage them by "Yes? And then what
will you do?" or "Gee, that would be something!" they will
keep on for a while and then they often will suddenly pop
right out of the lock and go on with what they were doing.

  Or if a child is an anger tone, let him be angry, even if you
are the victim. Let him act out his anger, and usually it will
disappear quickly. But if you try to suppress it, it will grow
worse and last longer, and the whole incident will remain as a
lock. Letting a child react to a frustrating situation without
further suppression seems to release the energy of the frustration
without forming a lock, and will bring him out of it more
quickly than almost anything else. Be particularly careful
of the "control yourself" phrases at times like these.

  If he is in a fear tone, let him tell you about it, giving him
all the encouragement you can. This is particularly effective in

                    DIANETICS IN CHILD CARE               83

nightmares. Wake the child, hold him quietly until his crying
calms a little, and ask him about the nightmare, taking him
through it several times until he is no longer frightened. Then
ask him about a pleasure incident, and run that before leaving
him. If he doesn't want to sleep alone after that, do not make
him face his fear. Stay with him and encourage him to talk
about it until he is no longer afraid, even if this takes some
time. For chronic fear use straight-memory techniques again
and again, for a few minutes at a time, until you have located
and de-intensified the underlying locks. In asking about fears,
you can locate a series of restimulators by using the phrase
"the same as." If the child is afraid of the dark, ask him,
"What is the same as dark?" If he is afraid of animals a
question will cause him to analyze his fear, and thus you will
get at the rest of the content of the engram or lock. Perhaps
you will not always be successful on the first questioning, but
if you continue patiently you'll soon get an incident that you
can help the child run through.

  If the child is in a grief tone, "What are you crying about?"
will help him to tell you or to act out his grief completely, and
to get him out of the lock. Actually, just letting him cry until
he gets out of it will often be enough. This is especially true
if you are in close contact with him and he knows he can count
on you for support and assistance. Don't try to stop a child
from crying by simply telling him not to cry. Anyone who has
done any auditing knows what damage that does. Either run the
incident that caused the crying by asking what happened and
getting him to tell about it until he is laughing, or let him
cry it out while you caress or hold him. No words in this case;
just affection.

  If the child is simply fretful and "unmanageable," you can
often get him out of the lock by diverting his attention, by
introducing a new and fascinating story or picture book or a
toy or, in the case of a very young child, something which
glitters. This is an old technique, but it is dianetically valid.
If the child is fretful, the chances are that he is in the tone of

84                     CHILD DIANETICS

boredom, which means that the particular activity he was
interested in has been suppressed somehow. He is looking for
something new but is unable to find it. If you can give him
something to interest him, his tone will rise quickly. Do not,
however, make frantic efforts to attract his attention, plaguing
him with jerky movements and such attention diverters as, "See,
baby, see the pretty watch!", and if that fails of instantaneous
effect, jumping to some other object. This will often only
confuse him and act as a further suppressor. Move smoothly
and quietly, keep your voice soft and calm, and direct his
attention to one new thing. That should be enough.

  If none of these work, or if he seems to be solidly set in
an engram and dramatizing constantly, you can sometimes free
him by bringing him up to present time with intense physical
stimulation, like playful wrestling or some other vigorous
exercise.

  If you can get his attention long enough you can run a
pleasure incident by asking him to tell you about some nice
thing that happened. He may do it reluctantly at first, but as
you encourage it he will often return right into the pleasure
incident, and pretty soon his tone will be high again.

  Any child can be slowly and smoothly introduced to informal
processing by making a new game of remembering. This provides,
incidentally, a constructive and pleasant way to keep a child
occupied during such odd moments as travelling on street cars,
during long trips, waiting, periods of convalescence, and so on.

  After all, the immediate aim in clearing a person is to make
his past life accessible in every detail. In clearing an adult,
hours must sometimes be spent in tuning up preceptics. But
children naturally have good preceptic recalls and an immediate
ability to return. They love to talk about pleasure moments.
A good deal of a child's conversation is filled with the
wonderful things he has done or hopes to do, and he often
talk s spontaneously about incidents where he has been
frightened or unhappy.

                    DIANETICS IN CHILD CARE               85

  Making a game an accepted, normal, casual thing of remembering
and returning, will help immeasurably when the time comes to
do straight-wire work in blowing locks or running assists. When
the child has reached the age where he can be formally audited,
returning will be a natural and accustomed act, and his case
should proceed very swiftly because of this advantage.

  Teach a child to run pleasure moments by asking him what
happened when he went to the zoo or went swimming. When he begins
to tell you, switch him subtly to present tense, as suggested,
if he fails to do so himself. Tell him to feel the water,
feel himself moving, see what is going on, hear what people
are saying and the sounds around him. Build up the preceptics
as you would do with an adult. But don't insist on a full
preceptic account if the child is running swiftly and surely
through the incident, telling about it fluently, and has quite
obviously returned as realistically as he can. It doesn't take
much to get a child to return, and a few questions directed
toward building up somatics and sonic will usually be enough.

  But don't overlook inserting those few questions each time so
that the child gets into the habit of picking up everything.
You can introduce the game by saying, "Let's play remembering,"
or "Tell me about when you went to _____," or "Let's pretend
we're going to the zoo again," or any other such casual phrase.
Enter into the tale as much as you can, adopting the child's
tone and manner if you can do it easily, and always being
interested and eagerly awaiting the next detail.

  When you have practiced on pleasure moments for a few
weeks, you can begin blowing locks on a straight-memory
basis, hitting for locks you know are there. "Remember when
you were sick last Thanksgiving? Tell me what happened.
Who was there? What did so-and-so say?" Or, "Let's see if
you can remember when you were frightened by the big dog at
school," and so on. When working locks alone, don't let the
child return. Stick to past tense. Each time you work a lock
in this way, run a pleasure incident or two afterward.

86                     CHILD DIANETICS

  As you continue, you can start going down a chain of locks,
trying for the key-in. "Can you remember the first time you
were frightened?" "What happened the first time mother
scolded you?"

  After a month or so of practice, a child will usually be able
to return to early incidents and you will start getting vivid
memories of babyhood. Occasionally you may get a mild engram.
Run it just as easily and casually as you have the locks,
and don't ask the child to close his eyes.

  Of course, while you are running locks, you will let the child
discharge any grief or fear or anger he experiences without
stopping him, and will continue to run the lock until he reaches
a tone of boredom or of laughter. All the precautions which
apply to the formal auditing of adults are necessary with children:
keeping the auditor's code, adopting the tone of the incident,
and so on.

  If the child tends to revivify too vividly, it is a good idea to
remind him, "You're just remembering this, you know. It happened
a long time ago." With a child who returns too well, it is
better to stick to the past tense until he is old enough to
understand the whole process. This does not apply to pleasure
incidents, which must always be run in present tense.

  Whenever a child comes to tell you about an accident he had
or something that frightened him or made him unhappy, listen to
it and run over it several times. As children learn how to
"play remembering" and learn what it does for them, they will
begin to ask for runs when they want or need them.

  If a child, from the time he has been able to talk, has been
taught to remember and to return to pleasure incidents, it can
be predicted that he will be ready for formal auditing at an
early age. The criteria for starting formal auditing are that the
child understand the significance of prenatal life, know about
birth, and realize that repeated running of a painful experience
will dispose of it forever. When the child is willing to face
a mild pain in order to avoid later pain, formal auditing can
begin. In the case of seriously disturbed children, formal audit-

                    DIANETICS IN CHILD CASE               87

ing may of sheer necessity be started before the child understands
these things. In such cases there must be established a high
degree of affinity between auditor and child in order to
contact and reduce engrams successfully.

                            Summary

  The main points in dianetic child care are:

  1. Prevention of engrams in the unborn child through proper
care of the expectant mother, silence during any injury or
illness she may suffer, and avoidance of ally-forming phrases.

  2. Running assists on minor injuries to the young child, if
necessary, or letting the child cry it out if that seems to be
enough.

  3. Blowing locks via straight-line memory, by getting the
child to remember the last time it happened, or by getting him
to tell you in full what happened that made him unhappy.

  4. Teaching a child to remember and return by running
pleasure moments.

  5. Using pleasure moments or other techniques for bringing
the child out of locks up to present time.

  Such care will prepare the child for formal auditing, will
make formal auditing easy and rapid when it can be begun,
will clear out most of the lock material before formal running,
and will keep the child healthier and happier.

                           CHAPTER 7
                      AN AUDITOR'S REPORT

The pre-clear is a young boy, age 7. He was referred to the
auditor for the specific purpose of trying to discharge a chronic
somatic, asthma. The boy has had a total of approximately
three hours of processing over a period of five weeks.

  The following are data as gathered from the pre-clear:

  "When I get pretty tired at night I wake up and I'm wheezing.
I get cross and start hitting my brother. My mother says, `Now,
now, cut it out.'"

  When asked how he feels, in present time, he usually
answers, "O.K. Not bad. Pretty good."

  The pre-clear was returned to the first time he ever heard
the word "asthma." He found himself on the doctor's couch
and heard his mother say to the doctor, "What do you think
is the matter, doctor?" Doctor's answer was, "He has asthma.
He must be kept quiet." This was run over several times in
reverie and a few times in straight-line memory work.

  The pre-clear was then directed to an earlier incident in
which his mother might have told his doctor, or in which a
doctor might have told his mother anything about asthma or
any other illness. At the age of one he picked up his mother
saying, "You're a sick little boy. Stay here and be quiet and
you'll get better."

  Asked how he felt on the doctor's table he said, "Not so
very good."

  At this point the pre-clear was guided into present tense.
Mother says to the pre-clear, "I'll fix that."

  Pre-clear says to mother, "I don't want to drink that medicine."

                     AN AUDITOR'S REPORT                  89

  Mother says, "Ha, ha, it's not medicine. It's jelly juice. It
will make you feel better."

  The pre-clear contacts the feeling of drinking and says,
"That's good."

  This episode in the doctor's office was contacted several
times in three different sessions.

  From observation of the pre-clear the auditor believes that
the boy's general tone seems slightly improved - a tone of
3 - plus most of the time. His mother reports that he gets along
better with her, with his father and with other members of the
family. He has not had an attack of asthma for the last two
months, although the auditor was told that his attacks came
quite frequently before processing was begun. On the nights
that he awakens with somewhat of a "wheeze" in his breathing,
it is less intense than formerly, and it is gone by morning.

  Several locks have been sprung on the pre-clear, particularly
control phrases, or locks which contain control phrases such as
"Now take it easy and you will feel better," which was laid in
by the mother; "Now take it easy," laid in by the father when
the child was five months old; and "Now control your knobs,"
laid in by the mother - "knobs" meaning ears. The child does
have large ears, and is not a handsome child. At his birth the
mother made the statement, "It's a boy. My, but he's ugly!"

  Other locks with control phrases that have been blown
are, "Lower your volume," meaning "Control the tone of your
voice," and "Be a good boy," which was contacted at one
month postnatal. "Lower your volume" was contacted two
months postnatally. "Now control your knobs" was located at
eleven months postnatal. To date, this auditor has not gone
into the prenatal engram bank.

  Asked what asthma is, the pre-clear answers, "It is a sickness.
I don't like it. I don't want to have it." Asked if he needs
to have asthma, he says, "No." To the question, "Do you need
to wheeze?" he answered, "I think about how good it will feel
when I stop."

  The child's mother has been able to pick up in straight-line

90                     CHILD DIANETICS

memory the fact that she suffered from acute bronchitis during
the fourth month of the pre-clear's prenatal existence. She
received treatment from an osteopath friend. During these
treatments there was much talking, usually local gossip. She
remembers saying, "I cough so hard, I'm so afraid I'll have a
miscarriage. I don't see how it can stay put. I feel as though
I'll cough it out. I have such a tight feeling in my chest."

  During the last session with the pre-clear, he was asked
what happens when he gets an attack. The phrase that came out
was, "I get such a tight feeling in my chest." When asked to
describe this feeling he said, "It feels like there is something
on top of me." Asked if he could feel it now, he said, "No, but
I can remember how it feels." Asked to describe it again, he
began to feel this pressure on his chest. He was urged merely
to describe the pain. He said the pain was not very bad and
that it went away almost as soon as he told the auditor about
it. There was apparently a slight return, and a bouncer which
took him up toward present time. Rather than work the child
when he was comparatively tired, the bouncer was left in effect
and pleasure run to alleviate restimulation. When he left the
last session he felt considerably better.

  Seven weeks later the auditor had an opportunity to run a
short straight-line session with the child in which he stated
that he felt very well, and that he hadn't had asthma for
several weeks. He was not taking any more pills, except for
vitamins, and he said, "I like mommy and daddy and my
brother more than I ever did."

  Without consultation with the child's auditor, and without
seeing his report, the mother of this pre-clear reports
substantially as follows:

  "Since his processing my child has shown a definite rise in
spirits. He enjoyed the psychometric testing very much, had
excellent affinity with the psychometrist. The length, intensity
and duration of his daytime periods of rage or frustration have
decreased. His father has also noticed this.

  "It seems as though he has developed some understanding

                     AN AUDITOR'S REPORT                  91

of his own and my displays of rage, and will sometimes stand
patiently and wait for me to finish! This may be due to processing
or to his growing understanding of the discussions and comments
he hears constantly at home. The most dramatic change in the
past four weeks, however, from my standpoint, is his behavior
at night.

  "It has been customary for several years for him to be disturbed
around two or three o'clock in the morning by the need to
urinate and to clear his nose and throat. These periods began
with a baby's angry cry, and it took from five to thirty
minutes to wake him up enough to go to the bathroom. For
four weeks he has not had this difficulty. He calls me by the
squalling, but is awake when I get to his room, goes to the
bathroom chatting cheerfully, snorts and snuffles a few times,
and goes back to bed and to sleep. He has even slept straight
through the night, perhaps seven times so far.

  "Whether this is attributable to two or three fifteen-minute
sessions a week, I don't know. He had resisted auditing for a
while and had a mild asthma attack for two days, but no more
night trouble.

  "Of course, my own attitude is constantly improving; my
displays of anger are less frequent and less violent."

                           CHAPTER 8

                 SPECIAL TECHNIQUE FOR CHILDREN

A child's processing must necessarily take a somewhat different
form from that of the standard procedure available for older
children and adults. The child can no more realize the
importance of processing than he can understand the necessity
of remaining off the roof of a barn or avoiding a dead limb
when climbing the neighbor's cherry tree. His is a world of
limited data, of comic books and television, of seeking always
the most pleasurable experiences and avoiding those which
invariably bring him pain. It is a rare child, indeed, who
understands the implications of the smallpox vaccination, how
by the simple course of bearing up to a pin scratch now he
won't have a terrible sickness later. He sees only the pin, and
feels only the pain of now; tomorrow is a long way off and he
can't see and feel tomorrow.

  His span of attention is limited. A brand new toy jeep will
keep him interested for a few hours at most, and then he must
seek something else. A simple household task such as raking
leaves, even though done with the promise of a shining 25c
piece, is easily forgotten if something new comes along at
just the right moment. The future is yet to come, but this
new diversion is here now. Besides, father sometimes makes
him save the quarter - a laudable attribute for a child - but
what does he get for working so hard, for giving up his play
time with other youngsters whose parents are somewhat more
lenient? The promise that the quarter will be one cent greater
next year is a poor substitute for a whirl around the block in
somebody's Irish Mail.

                 SPECIAL TECHNIQUE FOR CHILDREN           93

  Communication between the child and the adults around
him has a considerable lack of reality. Time and time again a
parent will invalidate a child's statement, one which he knows
beyond all doubt is true, and browbeat the child into accepting
the adult version. "Now, Billy, you know that isn't right!
Mother knows best." He has been confronted with the datum
that mother knows just about all there is to know about the
world outside, and when something he believes to be true
beyond a shadow of doubt is declared absolutely false by
mother, he is more than confused. And when father does the
same thing, reality in the child's world takes a new low.

  His education is limited by his years. He has learned the
language or some of it and is only just learning to associate
words and phrases with the realities of the world about him.
One thing he has learned the hard way - to avoid pain. If, in
processing, he repeatedly runs up against a painful incident and
feels the somatics of a previously painful experience, it isn't
long before he avoids processing itself as a painful experience.

  With his limited span of attention, his difficulty of
communication in an adult sense, and his lack of education
taken into account, Standard Procedure must be adapted to his
years. Patience is perhaps the most important ingredient of all
when processing a child. It will require many hours to make
up for just one loss of temper, of just one outburst of rage
because Betty doesn't do things quite the way you think she
should.

  Consider, for example, a child of five. The child, from his
own viewpoint, has been badly badgered throughout his short
span of years and has been pushed around by the adults. You
should provide something which will, in effect, be educational
first of all. Therefore, set aside a time during the day when the
child can do anything he desires which doesn't hurt animals or
property. If he wants you around during this time, which you
can begin to call "Billy's time," fine. Spend the hour or two
with him and do whatever he asks you to do, within reason of

94                     CHILD DIANETICS

course. After the novelty wears off he will begin to use "his"
time to ask you questions about the world around him, questions
which you should answer very carefully and accurately, no
matter what the subject might be. It would be very unfair
to say, in answer to an innocent question about sex for
instance, "Now let's don't talk about nasty things like that."
Answer him simply and fully, and with an absolute minimum
of stammering and blushing on your part.

  Sometimes the child will want to spend "his" time being held
on your lap, and the special case might even want a bottle.
Don't tell him this is childish, and that he has outgrown
such pursuits. Give him the bottle and hold him on your lap
until he tires of this.

  Perhaps he will want to dramatize family difficulties, such
as a recent argument between his parents. Fine. Go over it
with him just as he desires. This will often release many
locks formed during the unpleasant experience, not only those
formed in the child but, if you are the parent involved, in
yourself as well. When the child becomes assured that there are
no strings attached to your offer of "his" time, he will take
full advantage of the opportunity to go over many details which
have hurt him, and once returned to in this fashion, they will
seldom bother him again.

  Then, after a few periods spent in this way, ask if there is
anything he wants to know, or anything he wants to talk about.
Allow his dignity and enormous self-determinism to assert
itself. Coax him to explain things to you, in his own language.
When he runs across something which troubles him for a
meaning, he will ask you, if you have gained his confidence.
Sometimes when the child asks you a question which you are
sure he should have known for some time, feed it back to him
as another question, asking him what he thinks about it. This
is often what the child really wants, and is only using the
question as a means of opening discussion on the subject.

  During "his" time, don't ask why a certain thing happened,

                 SPECIAL TECHNIQUE FOR CHILDREN           95

ask what happened. Explain why. If there is a need for giving
him information use multi-valued logic (right-maybe-wrong)
and explain its use. As for the decisions which are made about
any discussion, let him make his own decision, and do not tell
him he is wrong. If you feel he has made a decidedly false
assumption, save your comments for another period, and feed
the appropriate questions, explanations and data again.

  Single-valued explanations or definitions are actually positive
suggestion. To say a thing is unqualifiedly true is to attempt
to make a child accept your decision about a subject. Never
forget the qualifying data - "The dictionary says that white
is the combination of all colors." "Grandmother told me she
has never seen Pike's Peak." By so saying the child is allowed
to make his own evaluation as to whether or not the dictionary
is right, or as to whether or not grandmother ever actually
visited Pike's Peak. It might just be that grandmother told
you one thing, and gave someone else another version.

  The tone level of a child might be described as his "spirit,"
or attitude towards life in general. If he is in a high tone, he
will be happy, seldom crying, healthy and energetic. If he is
in a low tone he will give the appearance of being continually
sad about something, rarely giving himself over completely to
playing with other children, and if not sickly and ill, certainly
very nearly so. The tone level of either adult or child runs
from apathy, or total disinterest in anything, through anger
and over-aggressiveness, to partial good spirits and at the
top of the tone scale, bubbling enthusiasm. Thus it can be seen
that merely because a child is quiet there is no reason to assume
he is in better shape than when he is angry about something. He
might well be in the apathy range of the tone scale - and this
is a very dangerous level to be in, from the point of view of
the child's general health and well-being.

  From a short study of the tone scale which follows it will be
possible for you to place your child rather accurately as to his
attitude towards life:

96                     CHILD DIANETICS
               OVERALL PATTERN OF TONE SCALE IN
                      DESCENDING ORDER

Tone 4 - Eager pursuit of activity, with complete freedom of
    choice for other activities as desired.
      Interested pursuit of activity, some doubt as to
    complete freedom in other activities, some doubt
    as to ability to overcome suppressor on activity being
    pursued.

Tone 3 - Continued, dogged pursuit of activity, hope of
    overcoming suppressor only with effort.
      Indifference to activity - mild attempts to find other
    fields of action.
      Withdrawal from activity being suppressed, direction
    of other lines of activity remaining open.

Tone 2 - If other activity closed, the situation suddenly
    changes. The individual must find a way out of the suppressed
    activity before he again has any freedom of choice. The
    decision is made for him, as it were, by the inhibition
    laid on by the suppressor. At this point he attempts to
    destroy the suppressor with relatively mild efforts.
      If these efforts do not succeed, he makes violent
    efforts to destroy the suppressor.
      If the suppressor is still unconquered, his field of
    action is constricted even more, for now he cannot
    even act directly against the suppressor, and he enters
    the tone level where he tries to find ways of destroying
    the suppressor by delayed action. Fear begins here, since
    there is a strong doubt as whether the suppressor can ever
    be destroyed.

Tone 1 - As fear increases and the possibility of destroying
    the suppressor becomes more and more remote, the
    individual makes violent attempts to escape in any
    way possible.
      If he cannot escape, his last recourse is a frantic cry
    for help. Grief, sobbing, tears seem to be such a cry -
    especially evident in young children. In case of loss of
    an ally, grief seems to be a desperate attempt to bring
    the ally back, a call for help to the ally.
      If the call for help fail, and his cry in unanswered,
    there is nothing further the individual can do, and he
    enters the tone of apathy, submitting finally to the
    suppressor.

                 SPECIAL TECHNIQUE FOR CHILDREN           97

Tone 0 - If the suppressor continues, apathy increases, becoming
    paralysis, unconsciousness, and finally, death.

  The importance of placing your child's level on the tone
scale is many-fold. For one thing, it will suggest very quickly
a likely area of charge, or emotional distress. For another, as
processing continues, you have available a means for checking
the progress of your work and efforts. If for instance, your
child should become generally angry after a few sessions of
processing, you need not immediately feel that because of this
he is getting worse instead of better. Perhaps he was in apathy
level before you began. It will be quite the natural thing for
him to rise through anger, and thence to more eager pursuits
of activity.

  From a study of the tone scale a few methods of processing
may suggest themselves. Suppose a child is low in tone, perhaps
crying. Try diverting his attention to some other field of
activity instead of offering cooing words of sympathy. In many
cases it is surprising to see the sudden cessation of tears and
the interest in the new object of attention. Of course, this will
not work if too much attention is tied up in the lock or key-in
which is the basis of his crying. As soon as the diverting
influence is removed, or he tires of the new activity or interest,
his attention is once again pulled down into the causative
incident. When this method is used it corresponds very closely
to bringing an adult "up to present time."

  In the case of a heavy lock into which his diverted attention
is drawn time and again, establish communication with him
as soon as you can, and then ask what happened. Get him to
tell you three or four times exactly what happened, and the
tone will rise very quickly. This may be used often, in or out
of regular session times.

  There are children who, when they have been slightly hurt
in play with other youngsters or even with themselves and their
toys, will break into tears and cry far in excess of the seriousness
of the incident. Offer the child little sympathy at this time,
but, rather, ask her what happened. "How did you fall? Oh,

98                     CHILD DIANETICS

I see. Were you running at the time? And where did the pedal
scratch you? Now tell me about it again." It will require no
more than three or four recountings before the child becomes
so bored with the incident that she is anxious to resume her
play. A few instances like this and she soon gets the idea.
Either she won't bother to run in and cry about a trivial bump,
or she will determinedly go over it a few times by herself. A
"cry-baby" will in this way become a quiet, happy child in a
very short while.

  In order to keep the child's tone high while processing, a
series of memory games may be played. They will demonstrate
how pleasant it can be to keep in contact with the past, and
will be educational as well. Sometimes a series of cards about
the size of the ordinary bridge deck is used, each showing a
large capital letter on its face. The cards are shuffled, and
the child asked to close his eyes. A number of the cards are
then laid out side by side, face up, with the letters in full
view. The child is allowed a five or ten-second look, and then
the cards are turned over. In a surprisingly short time the
child can name up to a dozen letters in sequence, and will
enjoy the success immensely. If the child asks you to play the
game, too, don't back down because you are afraid you cannot do
as well. Do the best you can. Perhaps in at least one tiny field
the child will find something he can actually do better than an
adult. It will do wonders for his tone.

  There is one subject which has been mentioned from time to
time in this book, but which has not been dealt with extensively
- the existence of prenatal engrams. Sometimes when children
are asked to return to some incident in which a small amount
of pain or grief exists, they slip naturally back in memory to
pre-birth existence. They speak glibly of their life within
mother's "tummy," and describe sounds and other perceptions
with as vivid a recollection as talking about yesterday's
birthday party.

  Prenatal engrams do, definitely, exist. In fact, the earlier
ones form the basic painful experience upon which hundreds of

                 SPECIAL TECHNIQUE FOR CHILDREN           99

later engrams group together in chains, perhaps on the strength
of one word common to each, or on the strength of a similar
perceptic content. To send a child back to one of these basic
engrams, however, would be tantamount to asking him to walk
between a couple of fighting lumberjacks. Until he has
gained the age of 8 to 12 years, and has had considerable
experience in running minor engrams, it is definitely advisable
to restrict the processing to straight-line memory. If he contacts
one in memory and leaves it immediately of his own accord, do
not send him back to it. If he contacts it naturally and it
does not frighten him excessively, the chances are you can run
it although caution is advised. Far more analytical data than
is contained in the average child's mind is needed to give
reality to prenatal engrams.

  There are a number of things to guard against if you wish
the child to continue his processing. One of these is positive
suggestion. The fertile imagination of children makes them
vulnerable to a statement which says a thing is true or false,
black or white. Try always to maintain an attitude that a thing
may be true or false, that there are always qualifiers. One
example of positive suggestion which is rather pernicious,
and which unfortunately is used all too often is "Jimmy's a
Catholic. He isn't nice."

  You as the child's auditor must always be careful not to
display any signs that you are restimulated, or emotionally
affected, by any of the material from the child's reactive mind.
It is only natural that such be the case, particularly if you
are the parent, but a good "poker face" in an event like this
is worth its weight in gold. Sometimes a child will blow a
lock or, in finer language, destimulate a lock, by making
ugly noises

with his mouth. It became a lock in the first place because
papa objected. When this occurs, sit through it, giving no sign
that you are in the least affected.

  Be particularly careful that you always keep your end of a
bargain. Never tell a child you will be with him at "his time"
tomorrow, and then not show up, or try to put him off. It will

100                    CHILD DIANETICS

cause a break in affinity every time, and such breaks are very
difficult to mend. Make no bargain with a child which you are
not certain you can keep.

  Guard against a sugary attitude during processing, and then
a "hands off" attitude at any other time. Dianetic attitude
should continue throughout every day. Even though 1:30 in
the afternoon is not "his time," speak civilly to him anyway,
and answer his questions just as though he were in processing.
He will soon make an evaluation that "your time" is somehow
just a little bit different than "his time."

  And now for points of attack. If there are any strange, out
of the ordinary activities in which your child engages, search
for the reasons behind these actions. The chances are that they
are dramatizations of adult actions, perhaps your own. Viewed
dianetically, the actions of a child often surprise a parent,
in that they turn out to be the parent's own dramatizations. So
discovered, it is then expedient to have them "run out" of the
parent as soon as possible. Although it is helpful to the child
to run them as locks, unless the parent ceases the dramatization
the chances are good that a new lock will be installed in the
very near future.

  An informal quiz, either in writing or verbally given, often
helps locate areas of emotional stress in a child. Parental
punishment usually installs a childhood lock, and a quiz concerning
punishments nearly always is fertile ground for a processing
session. Ask him the reasons for the punishment, and what he
thinks about the justice of the incident. But do not try to
justify your idea of justice.

  A quiz as to times when his data was invalidated is usually
very productive of locks. Go back over, in your own mind,
times when you told him he was wrong about something, when
he came to you bubbling with enthusiasm and you threw a mantle
of despondency over him by telling him he was utterly wrong.
Ask in the quiz whether something he had wanted very much to
do was denied him by someone. Also any time in

                 SPECIAL TECHNIQUE FOR CHILDREN          101

which his dignity was profaned - such as a remonstrance for
nakedness in the company of others.

  All of these things, and many others, will lead you
unerringly to moments in the child's past in which locks have
been installed.

  Sometimes the question arises as to when to begin a dianetic
attitude around a child. Actually, it begins with Preventive
Dianetics - before conception. While the child is being carried,
the mother should consider the effects of grief, arguments,
fights, and other engram-forming activities. The father and
others in the mother's immediate surroundings should also be
cognizant of the effects of an engram, and how one of these
is formed. Grandmothers who engage in monologue during
mother's morning sickness should be gently headed for the
door. During birth an absolute minimum of noise and conversation
should be permitted, and then in the child's early postnatal
months care should be taken to remain silent during bumps,
sicknesses or other childhood ills.

  In short, the dianetic attitude should be practiced twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week.

                          CHAPTER 9

                   SESSIONS WITH CHILDREN

The following is a verbatim account of several dianetic
processing sessions, or portions of sessions with children.
Its purpose is to show how an auditor may work with children
who are old enough for processing in reverie.

  Nephew Jimmy, age 10 1/2, has been showing the auditor his
work bench and the model airplanes he is currently building.
Jimmy knows that his uncle is an HDA, but doesn't know what
Dianetics is. He has a great deal of affinity for his uncle.

AUDITOR: Very nice. Say, let's try some Dianetics.
JIMMY: Okay. What do I do?
AUDITOR: Make yourself comfortable on the bed. Take off your
  shoes. (Jimmy does this.) You want a pillow? Are you
  comfortable?
JIMMY: I don't need a pillow. I'm all right.
AUDITOR: You will remember all that happens. All right.
  You may close your eyes. If the light is too bright, you may
  put one arm over your eyes. (Jimmy does this.) Now, let's
  return to a very pleasant incident. (Pause). What are you
  doing?
JIMMY: I was playing with my dog in the back yard.
AUDITOR: What is your dog's name?
JIMMY: Spike.
AUDITOR: What do you hear?
JIMMY: My dog was barking.
AUDITOR: What else do you hear?
JIMMY: Cars going by in the street.
AUDITOR: Is anyone talking?

                   SESSIONS WITH CHILDREN                103

JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: Is anyone else there?
JIMMY: Yes, my mother was hanging up the wash.
  (Jimmy remains aware of the reality of the incident as
  something that happened to him in the past. Continues to use
  past tense and yet returns efficiently. Perceptics seem to be
  good.)
AUDITOR: What are you doing?
JIMMY: Playing with my dog.
AUDITOR: Is it fun?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: What sort of a day is it?
JIMMY: Warm.
AUDITOR: What happens next?
JIMMY: I go in the house.
AUDITOR: Let's return to the beginning of the incident and
  go through it again.
JIMMY: I was in the back yard. I was playing with my dog.
  After a while I go in the house.
AUDITOR: Return to the beginning and go through it again.
JIMMY: I was in the yard.
AUDITOR: What do you hear?
JIMMY: The cars going by and my dog barking.
AUDITOR: Are you saying anything?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: How old are you?
JIMMY: Three
AUDITOR: Continue.
JIMMY: I pet my dog and then I go in the house.
AUDITOR: How do you feel?
JIMMY: Fine.
AUDITOR: Let's go now to a pleasant incident when you
were a little older. (pause). What are you doing?
JIMMY: I was out on the front lawn. My picture was being taken.

104                    CHILD DIANETICS

AUDITOR: Who's taking the picture?
JIMMY: My father.
AUDITOR: What's he wearing?
JIMMY: Hue pants and a white shirt.
AUDITOR: Is anyone else there?
JIMMY: Yes. My mother and sister. They are in the picture.
AUDITOR: What is being said?
JIMMY: Father says, "Smile."
AUDITOR: Can you hear the camera click?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: What else?
JIMMY: Cars going by.
AUDITOR: What happens now?
JIMMY: We went to Sunday School.
AUDITOR: Who goes with you?
JIMMY: My mother and sister.
AUDITOR: How about your father?
JIMMY: He doesn't go.
AUDITOR: Go back to the beginning and run through it again.
JIMMY: I was out on the front lawn.
AUDITOR: How old are you here?
JIMMY: Five.
  (The auditor has Jimmy roll through the incident several
  times. Jimmy's sister Mary and another girl, Judy, both aged
  12, enter while the incident at age 5 is being re-run, making
  some noise.)
AUDITOR: Do you know what happened just now, Jimmy?
JIMMY: My sister and Judy came in.
AUDITOR: Did it disturb you?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: Is it all right to demonstrate for them?
JIMMY: Sure.
  (The auditor has Jimmy re-run the incident at five, includ-

                    SESSIONS WITH CHILDREN               105

  ing the disturbance caused by entrance of sister and girl
  friend.)
AUDITOR: All right, let's return to a pleasant incident, which
  happened when you were a little baby. What are you doing?
JIMMY: I was in the crib.
AUDITOR: Anyone else there?
JIMMY: No. I was supposed to sleep, but I didn't.
AUDITOR: What are you thinking?
JIMMY: Oh....about what to do.
AUDITOR: Is it pleasant?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: How is the room?
JIMMY: Warm. The shades are pulled down.
AUDITOR: What are you wearing?
JIMMY: Diapers.
AUDITOR: Let's return to the beginning of the incident when your
  mother puts you to bed. What are you doing?
JIMMY: I was in the front room on the floor.
AUDITOR: What happens?
JIMMY: Mother came in the room and picked me up.
AUDITOR: Can you feel her lift you?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Does she say anything?
JIMMY: "It's time for you to go to bed."
AUDITOR: How old are you?
JIMMY: Six months.
AUDITOR: Let's come up to present time. How old are you?
JIMMY: Ten.
AUDITOR: What's your age?
JIMMY: Ten.
AUDITOR: Give me a number.
JIMMY: Ten.
AUDITOR: All right. You may open your eyes. (Jimmy sits up.) How
  did you like it?

106                    CHILD DIANETICS

JIMMY: Fine! Say, Unc, what is this Dianetics?
AUDITOR: Why, it's a process whereby you return to incidents
  in your past life and visit them over again. Was it fun?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Mary, would you like to try?
MARY: No.
AUDITOR: Why not? It's fun.
JIMMY: Yeah, why don't you?
MARY: Well...I don't know. Oh, all right.
AUDITOR: Make yourself comfortable on the bed. (Mary does.)
  Close your eyes. You may put your arm over your eyes if the
  light is too bright. You will remember what happens. Let's
  return to an incident that happened when you were much
  smaller. (Pause.) What are you doing?
MARY: Nothing.
AUDITOR: What do you see?
MARY: Nothing.
AUDITOR: All right, let's return to a pleasant incident at about
  the age of 3, as Jimmy did. (Pause.) What are you doing?
MARY: Nothing. I can't do anything.
AUDITOR: Yes, you can. Try it and see. (Pause.) Now, what are
  you doing?
MARY: I was out at the side of the house. My picture is being
  taken.
AUDITOR: Who's taking your picture?
MARY: Mother.
AUDITOR: Is anyone else there?
MARY: No.
AUDITOR: What does your mother say?
MARY: "Smile."
AUDITOR: Can you hear the camera click?
MARY: Yes.
AUDITOR: What happens then?
MARY: A station wagon drives up and we get in it to go to
  Sunday School.

                    SESSIONS WITH CHILDREN               107

AUDITOR: What is your mother wearing?
MARY: A green and white dress.
  (The auditor has Mary run through the incident several
  times, then asks Mary to go to a pleasure moment at about
  the age of 1.)
MARY: I was on the floor in the dining room, resting in a
  play pen.
AUDITOR: What are you doing?
MARY: I'm gurgling.
AUDITOR: Can you hear anything else?
MARY: There's someone talking in the front room.
AUDITOR: Who is it?
MARY: I don't know.
AUDITOR: Is your mother there?
MARY: I don't know.
AUDITOR: Yes or no - is your mother there?
MARY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Who else?
MARY: I don't know.
AUDITOR: Is it another woman?
MARY: Yes.
AUDITOR: What are they talking about?
MARY: I don't know.
AUDITOR: What do you hear them saying?
MARY: I hear them talking, but I don't know what they're saying.
AUDITOR: Listen closely. What are they saying?
MARY: It sounds like French.
AUDITOR: Does your mother talk French?
MARY: No, but it sounds like French.
AUDITOR: All right. Let's return to the beginning of the
  incident and go through it again. (The auditor has Mary go
  through the incident several times and then brings her up to
  present time.)
AUDITOR: Come up to present time...How old are you?

108                    CHILD DIANETICS

MARY: Twelve.
AUDITOR: What is your age?
MARY: Twelve.
AUDITOR: Give me a number.
MARY: Twelve.
AUDITOR: You may open your eyes. How do you feel?
MARY: All right. (Chuckles.)
AUDITOR: Now, what about you, Judy; would you like to try?
  (Both of the other children urge her to try and she agrees.
  The auditor returns her to an incident at about the age of 3.)
AUDITOR: What are you doing?
JUDY: I am playing with my dolls.
AUDITOR: Where are you?
JUDY: I am on the blanket.
AUDITOR: Where are you?
JUDY: In this little park.
AUDITOR: Is anyone there with you?
JUDY: Yes. My mother.
AUDITOR: What is your mother doing?
JUDY: She's sleeping.
AUDITOR: And what are you doing?
JUDY: Playing with my dolls.
AUDITOR: What do you hear?
JUDY: Cars are going by. People are walking.
AUDITOR: What do you say to your dolls?
JUDY: Nothing.
AUDITOR: Let's go back to the beginning of this incident and go
  through it again. (Judy does this several times.)
AUDITOR: How do you feel?
JUDY: Fine.
AUDITOR: Let's go now to an incident at about the age of 7.
  What are you doing?
JUDY: I'm swimming in this pool with my girl friend.
AUDITOR: Where is this?

                    SESSIONS WITH CHILDREN               109

JUDY: In the mountains. We are having a vacation and I am
  swimming with my girl friend.
AUDITOR: What's her name?
JUDY: Barbara.
AUDITOR: How's the water?
JUDY: It's cold.
AUDITOR: Are you enjoying yourself?
JUDY: Yes. It's fun.
AUDITOR: How old are you?
JUDY: Seven.
AUDITOR: All right, let's come up to present time. How old
  are you?
JUDY: Nine.
AUDITOR: Let's come up to present time. What is you age?
JUDY: Twelve.
AUDITOR: Give me a number.
JUDY: Ten.
AUDITOR: Come all the way up to present time. Now what's your
  age?
JUDY: Twelve.
AUDITOR: How old are you?
JUDY: Twelve.
AUDITOR: Let me have a number.
JUDY: Twelve.
AUDITOR: Open your eyes. How do you feel?
JUDY: All right.
  (The children agree that returning was fun, and go in to
  supper. After supper, the auditor talks alone to Jimmy about
  Dianetics. Jimmy habitually wets the bed.)
AUDITOR: Do you still wet the bed?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: How old were you when it first started?
JIMMY: Oh, I guess I was about 7.
AUDITOR: Remember the first time you did it?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Anyone else in your family wet the bed?

110                    CHILD DIANETICS

JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: All right, let's find out more about it. Make
  yourself comfortable. Take off your shoes.
JIMMY: Okay.
AUDITOR: Let's return to the first time you wet the bed.
  What are you doing?
JIMMY: Ah...(Pauses)
AUDITOR: Are you asleep?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: What happens?
JIMMY: I was asleep. I was dreaming. Then I woke up. The bed
  was wet. I got up and went to the bathroom. Then I came back
  and put a blanket on the bed.
AUDITOR: Return to the beginning. You are dreaming?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: What are you dreaming about?
JIMMY: A b.-b. gun.
AUDITOR: Yes or no - is this the first time you wet the bed?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: Let's return to the first time you wet the bed.
  What happens?
JIMMY: I was asleep. I was dreaming.
AUDITOR: What are your dreaming about?
JIMMY: A b.-b. gun. I dreamed about b.-b. guns all that
  year. (This auditor immediately sees a likeness between
  "b.-b." and "baby.")
AUDITOR: How old are you?
JIMMY: Seven.
AUDITOR: How much earlier is this than the other time?
JIMMY: The week before.
AUDITOR: Who in your family told you you were a big baby?
JIMMY: My father.
AUDITOR: Let's return to the first time your father told you
  this. What are you doing?

                    SESSIONS WITH CHILDREN               111

JIMMY: I was fighting with Mary.
AUDITOR: What happens?
JIMMY: She slapped me and I started to cry.
AUDITOR: What does your father say?
JIMMY: "You're a big baby." (The child was a big baby at
  birth, over ten pounds.)
AUDITOR: What else?
JIMMY: "Go take a bath and go to bed."
AUDITOR: How old are you now, while this is happening?
JIMMY: Six.
AUDITOR: Answer yes or no - is this the first time your father
  says this to you?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: What happens later that night after you go to bed?
JIMMY: I'm dreaming and I wake up. The bed is wet.
AUDITOR: Yes or no - is this the first time you wet the bed?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Return to the scene with your sister. What do you hear?
JIMMY: My sister and I were fighting.
AUDITOR: Does she say anything to you?
JIMMY: "You're a big dope."
AUDITOR: What do you say?
JIMMY: I call her a big dope. Then she hits me in the face.
AUDITOR: Can you feel it?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: What do you do?
JIMMY: I start to cry.
AUDITOR: What does your father say?
JIMMY: "You're a big baby. Go take a bath and go to bed."
  The auditor runs this lock as an engram several times, runs
  a pleasure incident, brings Jimmy to present time, and then
  asks Jimmy what has happened during the session. Jimmy
  recites it and is pleased.

112                    CHILD DIANETICS

  Later, in a private conference with the father, the auditor
pointed out to him that "Go to bed" and "Take a bath," as
commanded in the father's dominating voice might key in the
"You're a big baby" circuit. Father supplied the information
that every night it is a job to get Jimmy to bed. He tries to
have him take a bath every other night. He finally has to force
Jimmy by shouting the "Take a bath" and "Go to bed" orders
as threats. Jimmy wets his bed almost every night. It was
suggested that other means be used to get him to take a bath
and go to bed, and that perhaps mother's voice is not keyed in
the circuit. It was also suggested that different words might do
the trick, or that it might be best to allow Jimmy to go to bed
when he likes. Father agreed to try.

  At the auditor's next visit, one week later, Jimmy agrees to
demonstrate for several people who are now interested. The
auditor returns him to about the age of 7, after cautioning the
spectators to be as quiet as possible.

AUDITOR: What are you doing?
JIMMY: Playing with my dog, Pinky.
AUDITOR: Where is this?
JIMMY: In the back yard at Purcell Street.
AUDITOR: What sort of day is it?
JIMMY: Hot.
AUDITOR: How old are you?
JIMMY: Five.
AUDITOR: What happens?
JIMMY: I am feeding my dog.
AUDITOR: And what is your age, please?
JIMMY: Five.
AUDITOR: What year is it?
JIMMY: 1947.
  (Five is the wrong age, but the year and circumstances check.
  This incident is run several times and Jimmy is asked to go to
  an incident at the age of 6.)
AUDITOR: What are you doing?

                    SESSIONS WITH CHILDREN               113

JIMMY: I'm learning to ride my new bike.
AUDITOR: Yes or no - do you have an accident?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Let's go to an earlier pleasure incident at about the
  age of 4. (Pause). How do you feel?
JIMMY: Fine.
AUDITOR: What are you doing? (The auditor runs Jimmy through two
  other incidents, several times, and then brings him up to present
  time.)
AUDITOR: Are you in present time?
JIMMY: Yes. (Eyes are still closed.)
AUDITOR: What do you see?
JIMMY: I see the baby eating animal crackers.

  This astounded the observers, as the animal cracker box
hadn't been given to the baby until after Jimmy was in reverie.
Jimmy was then sent from the room with the explanation that
information about this return in reverie would be given to him
later. The auditor added that he wanted to encourage Jimmy's
own views of the matter without having them influenced by
the questions the observers might ask. Jimmy agreed.

  The reason for not approaching the smash-up of the bicycle
at this time - that the pre-clear was not prepared to face it
- was given. Also given the observers was an explanation of
the present-time animal cracker scene - that the noises made
by the animal cracker box and the baby were a translation into
the visual perceptic by the boy's analytical mind. Further, even
had the auditor thought it fantasy, extra-sensory perception or
just a guess, he would not have communicated the fact to the
pre-clear, as this would have invalidated his sense of reality.

  After the demonstration with Jimmy, the observers were
interested in trying Dianetics immediately. Six other persons
were run through the experience of returning to incidents in
their childhood. Judy's mother mentioned that Judy couldn't
remember things that happened farther back than six months
before.

114                    CHILD DIANETICS

  Judy and her mother are separated from the father. Judy
seems obviously affected by early arguments between father
and mother. Later, when Judy came in and volunteered to
demonstrate, the auditor returned her to an incident at the
age of 4.

AUDITOR: Where are you?
JUDY: In the field next door.
AUDITOR: What's happening?
JUDY: I'm having my picture taken.
AUDITOR: How do you feel?
JUDY: I'm mad.
AUDITOR: What are you mad about?
JUDY: I don't know - I'm just mad.
AUDITOR: Who's taking your picture?
JUDY: The man next door.
AUDITOR: What does he say?
JUDY: "Come on, let's smile."
AUDITOR: Do you?
JUDY: No.
AUDITOR: What makes you mad?
JUDY: I don't know - I just am.
  (Auditor computes that finding out what made Judy mad may be
  re-stimulative to the mother, who is an observer. It may
  concern the father and mother, so the auditor does not try to
  find the origin of this feeling. After running this incident
  several times, Judy is sent to a more pleasant incident at the
  age of 5.)
JUDY: My girl friend is showing me her collection of dolls.
  She is rich.
AUDITOR: What is her name?
JUDY: Barbara.
AUDITOR: What happens now?
JUDY: Barbara goes out of the room. Her mother calls her.
AUDITOR: What do you do?
JUDY: Stand and look at all the dolls. She has every kind.

                    SESSIONS WITH CHILDREN               115

AUDITOR: Are you having fun?
JUDY: Yes.
AUDITOR: And how old are you at this time?
JUDY: Five.
AUDITOR: What next?
JUDY: Barbara comes back in.
AUDITOR: What does she say?
JUDY: "I've got to do the dishes now."
AUDITOR: What do you say?
JUDY: Do you have to do things when your parents say?
AUDITOR: Does she answer?
JUDY: Yes.
AUDITOR: What?
JUDY: "Yes."
AUDITOR: And you - ?
JUDY: I say, `Oh.'

  (This incident is related several times and then Judy is
brought to present time. Judy's mother is pleased by the
demonstration but risks invalidating data by talking about it
in front of the child. For some reason, her mother insists on
filling in, Judy was always mad at the man next door, would
never smile when he was around. Also, she says, Judy gets
names wrong: Barbara was another girl friend, and the one
with all the dolls was June. The auditor quickly changes the
conversation by asking for another pre-clear to demonstrate.)

  The next day the auditor resumed his sessions with Jimmy.

AUDITOR: Whom are you like in your family?
JIMMY: Oh, I don't know. (Shrugs)
AUDITOR: Are you like your father?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: Mother?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: Sister?
JIMMY: No - not like her at all.

116                    CHILD DIANETICS

AUDITOR: Did anyone ever say that you were just like your
  father, your mother, or anyone else?
JIMMY: No. (Shrugs). No one said anything like that.
AUDITOR: Who in your family wears glasses? (Jimmy wears glasses
  for school work.)
JIMMY: Father and mother and my sister. All of them. Except the
  baby.
AUDITOR: When did you first wear glasses?
JIMMY: Last year.
AUDITOR: When did you first notice you needed glasses?
JIMMY: I was reading my school lessons at school and when I
  finished I looked up and couldn't see very well.
AUDITOR: When was this?
JIMMY: Last year.
AUDITOR: All right, let's see about that. Make yourself
  comfortable on the bed. (Jimmy does). Now it may be necessary
  to return to a moment where you are uncomfortable, have a pain,
  or what is called a somatic. A somatic is a feeling of pain.
  By running through this somatic several times it will go away.
  In Dianetics it is necessary to return to this somatic and
  eliminate it, do away with it, so that we have greater
  pleasure in life. Are you willing to do this?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Remember, just be prepared to do what I ask and the
  somatic will go after we go over it several times. You will
  remember all that happens.
JIMMY: Okay.
AUDITOR: Return to the first time you thought you didn't see
  so well. (Pause). What are you doing?
JIMMY: I was in school.
AUDITOR: What do you see.
JIMMY: My teacher, Mr. Bidwell.
AUDITOR: What is he saying?
JIMMY: "Turn to the problems in your arithmetic book -  page 46."
AUDITOR: What happens?

                    SESSIONS WITH CHILDREN               117

JIMMY: I do the problems.
AUDITOR: Do you see the first problem?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Read it to me.
JIMMY: I can't.
AUDITOR: Maybe you can if you try. Read it to me. (Jimmy reads
  the problem from visio recall.)
AUDITOR: Do you have trouble with problems?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: Are you good at arithmetic?
JIMMY: Yes. That is, pretty good.
AUDITOR: How about your eyes?
JIMMY: When I finish the problems, I look up and don't see
  very good.
AUDITOR: Yes or no - is this the first time?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: Let's return to the very first time this happens.
  (Pause). What are you doing?
JIMMY: I am reading my science lesson at school. I look up and
  I don't see so very good.
AUDITOR: How old are you at this time?
JIMMY: Nine.
AUDITOR: Go through this incident again.
  (The auditor has Jimmy read the science lesson from visio
  recall, but the content of the lesson seems to have nothing to
  do with his eyes.)
AUDITOR: What happened three days before this science
  lesson?
JIMMY: Nothing.
AUDITOR: Let's return to three days before this time. (Pause).
  What are you doing?
JIMMY: Reading my science lesson.
AUDITOR: Same one?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: How are your eyes?
JIMMY: Okay.

118                    CHILD DIANETICS

AUDITOR: Anything happen that evening? Any quarrels?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: All right, let's return to that other time, when
  you look up from the lesson and can't see so well. What do
  you do afterward, when you get home?
JIMMY: Tell my mother.
AUDITOR: What does she say?
JIMMY: Maybe I'm reading too much. I ought to go to a doctor
  for a check-up.
AUDITOR: How do you feel?
JIMMY: Fine.
AUDITOR: Let's go now to the incident needed to resolve the
  case. When I speak the letters from A to E and snap my fingers,
  you will be at the beginning of the incident. A-B-C-D-E-(snap).
  What do you hear?
JIMMY: I am reading my science lesson in school.
AUDITOR: How old are you?
JIMMY: Nine.
AUDITOR: Let's return to the incident needed to resolve this
  case. When I recite the first five letters of the alphabet
  you will hear the first words of the incident. A-B-C-D-E-
  (snap). What happens?
JIMMY: I am in school, going over my science lesson.
  (Jimmy goes through this again and the auditor tries again
  with another approach, reasoning that perhaps Jimmy does
  not understand what he means. The auditor wants to find out
  just how much Jimmy does understand.)
AUDITOR: Let's return to the first moment of discomfort, the
  very first moment of discomfort. Return to the first, very
  earliest moment of discomfort. (Pause). What happens?
JIMMY: My mother was spanking me.
AUDITOR: How old are you?
JIMMY: About a year and half.
AUDITOR: Yes or no - is this the fist time you were ever
  spanked?
JIMMY: Yes.

                    SESSIONS WITH CHILDREN               119

AUDITOR: What does your mother say?
JIMMY: Nothing.
AUDITOR: Does anyone else say anything?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: Does a neighbor speak to your mother?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: Yes or no - are there any words in this incident?
JIMMY: No.
  (The auditor risks invalidating data here by continuing to
  ask for words and phrases. He realizes, of course, or should if
  he knows his Dianetics, that there are engrams without verbal
  content.)
AUDITOR: How does it feel?
JIMMY: Not so good.
AUDITOR: What does your mother say?
JIMMY: Nothing.
AUDITOR: What do you say?
JIMMY: I cry.
AUDITOR: What happens then?
JIMMY: Mother takes me in and puts me in the crib.
AUDITOR: What do you do?
JIMMY: I keep on crying for a little while.
AUDITOR: Let's return to the beginning of the incident.
JIMMY: My mother was spanking me.
AUDITOR: What happens before your mother spanks you?
JIMMY: I was reaching for something on the coffee table.
AUDITOR: What does mother say?
JIMMY: "Don't touch that. If you do, I'll have to spank you and
  put you to bed."
AUDITOR: Where are you?
JIMMY: In the front room.
AUDITOR: What are you reaching for?
JIMMY: (Pause.) A...an ash tray.
AUDITOR: What happens?
JIMMY: My mother picks me up and spanks me.

120                    CHILD DIANETICS

AUDITOR: What does she say?
JIMMY: Nothing.
AUDITOR: Can you feel the spanking?
JIMMY: Yes. (Jimmy's body position shows that he is feeling pain.)
AUDITOR: Is it too painful?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: What happens then?
JIMMY: My mother takes me in the bedroom and puts me in the crib.
  (By the fourth time through this incident the somatic is reduced.)
AUDITOR: How do you feel? Shall we go on?
JIMMY: Fine. Okay.
AUDITOR: Let's return now to the first moment of conception.
  Return to the first moment of conception.
JIMMY: (Pauses.)
AUDITOR: Return to the first moment of conception.
  (Jimmy starts through science lesson again. The problem
  here is what will Jimmy understand when the auditor is trying
  to enter an engram.)
AUDITOR: Now, let's return to way before you were born, to the
  first moment you were aware. Return to way before you were
  born. When I go from A to E and snap my fingers you will hear
  the first words. A-B-C-D-E-(snap). What do you hear?
JIMMY: Nothing.
AUDITOR: When I read from A to E you will hear the first words.
  A-B-C-D-E-(snap). What do you hear?
JIMMY: Nothing.
AUDITOR: What happens?
JIMMY: My mother was out walking. She walks a couple of blocks
  and turns around and comes home.
AUDITOR: Pick it up at the beginning and go through it again.
JIMMY: My mother was out walking.

                    SESSIONS WITH CHILDREN               121

AUDITOR: What do you hear?
JIMMY: Cars going by.
AUDITOR: What does your mother say?
JIMMY: Nothing.
AUDITOR: What do you see?
JIMMY: Nothing.
AUDITOR: How old are you?
JIMMY: Eight.
AUDITOR: Yes or no, is it eight days?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Continue.
JIMMY: Mother walks a couple of blocks, turns around and comes home.
AUDITOR: How do you feel? Is there any discomfort?
JIMMY: Yes, all over my body.
AUDITOR: Where are you?
JIMMY: In my mother's stomach.
AUDITOR: Start at the beginning.
JIMMY: My mother was out walking.
AUDITOR: What happens first? Let's go back ten minutes before
  this. What is happening?
JIMMY: I'm asleep. My mother walks down the steps and up the
  block.
AUDITOR: Just where do you wake up?
JIMMY: Just as she steps down the bottom step.
AUDITOR: Just as she steps down the bottom step?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Then?
JIMMY: She walks up the street.
AUDITOR: What do you hear?
JIMMY: Cars going by.
AUDITOR: Anything else?
JIMMY: My mother's footsteps.
AUDITOR: How do you feel?
JIMMY: Not too bad.
AUDITOR: What happens next?

122                    CHILD DIANETICS

JIMMY: Mother turns around and walks home.
AUDITOR: What happens when she gets home?
JIMMY: She walks up the steps into the house.
AUDITOR: How many steps?
JIMMY: (Pauses and counts steps.) One, two three four. Four.
AUDITOR: What do you see?
JIMMY: Nothing. (A confirmation: there is no visio in the prenatal
  period, though there are other perceptics.)
AUDITOR: Can you hear the door slam?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: What does your mother do then?
JIMMY: She sits down.
AUDITOR: What do you do?
JIMMY: I go to sleep.
  (On the fourth run through the complete incident the
  discomfort somatic reduces. At the twelfth run the sonic
  content remains, although perhaps not as intense as before.
  Jimmy seems relaxed, refreshed and pleased. A pleasure incident
  is run and then Jimmy is asked to come to present time.)
AUDITOR: What's your age now?
JIMMY: I'm 10 years old.
AUDITOR: You may open your eyes.
JIMMY: (Opens his eyes). They're not the same as before.
AUDITOR: What's not the same?
JIMMY: My eyes. I can see. The other times I had trouble seeing
  when I opened them.
AUDITOR: Good. How do you feel otherwise?
JIMMY: Good.
AUDITOR: How'd you like it?
JIMMY: Fine. I didn't understand those long words in the middle.
AUDITOR: Oh? Well, sometimes I use words in my language that
  mean things you don't know in your language. If I ever use a
  word you don't know, ask me and I'll explain

                    SESSIONS WITH CHILDREN               123

  it in your language. You probably already know what it
  means. What were the words? Do you mean "conception"?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Conception is the meeting of the father's cells
  with the mother's cells before they become a baby. You
  know it in those words, don't you?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: And somatic? Somatic means pain. Pain - somatic.
  Understand?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Any others?
JIMMY: No.
AUDITOR: Ask me if you think of any. Okay?
JIMMY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Do you remember what happened?
JIMMY: Yes. You worked with my eyes and my mother was out walking
  before I was a baby.
AUDITOR: Have you wet the bed lately?
JIMMY: Just once. It was last night. This session lasted one
  hour and twenty minutes, and it was now time for supper. Jimmy
  was pleased enough to tell his parents something about the
  session.

  As to the pre-clear's statement about his eyes feeling better,
we may assume that any improvement in this respect was due to
a general release of tension, since the engram contacted
apparently contained no material which could be constructed
to be directly affecting Jimmy's eyes.


                          CHAPTER 10

                      SOME CASES IN POINT

C-211:
CHILD'S NAME: Richard Jackson, ("Dickey").
AGE: 7
FATHER'S NAME: Charles
MOTHER'S NAME: Emma
GRANDMOTHER: "Bamma"
MOTHER'S COMPLAINT: "I can't make him mind."
ACCIDENTS: Auto accident age 5, several stitches taken in
  left arm, no anesthetic administered.
CHRONIC SOMATICS: Colds, sore throat.
DRAMATIZATIONS: Baby talk.

  When Dickey first came to the Foundation for processing,
he was obviously a serious behavior problem. He refused to
play with other children, would kick at them and try to scratch
their faces. He ran wildly around the playroom, opening doors
and trying to get out. Upon opening the door leading to the
outdoor play yard, he quickly closed it again. There were other
children out there.

  Physically he had a clean bill of health from the family
doctor, although colds and sore throat were chronic complaints.
He had a very limited vocabulary his speech was poor, and he
indulged almost exclusively in "baby talk." There was no
physical defect of vocal chords or tongue.

  According to his mother he was constantly hungry, but
would eat only meat and soup at home, and at school only

                      SOME CASES IN POINT                125

soup or milk. He constantly refused sandwiches, even though
they contained meat. In answer to the auditor's question as to
what foods he preferred, Dickey answered, "No!"

  Several phrases were highly recurrent. "No" seemed to be
his favorite and was said at any irrelevant moment during a
conversation. "I don't know!" vehemently expressed for no
apparent reason during conversations, and "goodbye" every
few sentences, were two others. Questioning (straight-line
memory) about these phrases brought an instant reaction of
fear, and even to the time of this writing no definite
information on actual incidents containing them has been gained.

  Progress was very slow for Dickey during the first fifteen
sessions. He refused to cooperate with the auditor in any way.
He did not cry. Rather, there was an outward expression of
defiance, as though he would accept any punishment rather
than show tears. He would at times be sullen and silent, and at
others scream and kick. When asked to string beads, play with
blocks or lie down and close his eyes, he would throw the
beads and blocks at the windows, and lie down and keep his
eyes very wide open.

  Finally, at the sixteenth session, the auditor noted a distinct
change. When asked to lie down and close his eyes, Dickey said,
"All right. For a little while." From that time through the
fiftieth hour of processing he became more and more cooperative
in every way.

  His perceptics seem to be good. He can describe rooms, the
people who were in them and what they did. He can often see
himself in the room, and does not like the little boy he sees.
He now cooperates in processing, and rather enjoys it as a game
between himself and the auditor, for whom he has developed
a deep affinity. When asked questions he gives limited answers,
but shows signs of developing initiative in elaboration.

  The noticeable progress which has taken place at this writing
is a definite improvement in behavior. His speech has improved
considerably, and the use of baby talk has diminished to almost
nil. He has taken a liking to certain other children, and gets

126                    CHILD DIANETICS

along famously with one little boy in particular. When asked
to do something he will carry it out happily and willingly.
Instead of throwing his blocks, he constructs imaginary houses,
walls and various objects inside them. He strings beads in color
Patterns, vying with the other children for neatness in so doing.

  In general, he now participates well in all the children's
activities.

  TOTAL HOURS OF PROCESSING TO DATE: 56 hours.

C-173:
CHILD'S NAME: Stanley Vinel, ("Stan").
AGE: 9
FATHER'S NAME: Warren
MOTHER'S NAME: Cora
GRANDMOTHER: "Granny"
SISTER: Sally
MEDICAL DATA: Three days old, lung collapsed; pneumonia. Seven
  weeks, hernia. 1 1/2 years convulsions, increasingly worse,
  continuing until 3 1/2 years of age. Phenobarbital prescribed
  by pediatrician; still using it. 3 1/2 years, hernia
  reappeared; operation on hernia. 5 years, virus infection.
  Major convulsion, hospitalized, oxygen and hypodermics.
  Violent attack of gastritis. 6 years, convulsion. 7 years,
  fell and cut head open, several stitches, no anesthetic. Hit
  by baseball bat same year, breaking glasses and raising welt
  under right eye. 8 years, convulsion. 9 years, hit by
  automobile, bruised and shaken.

  Stanley lives with his mother, father, sister, grandfather,
a monologist grandmother and an uncle. The father stutters
when excited, and thinks the mother is much too "soft" with
Stan. Grandfather often speaks in his native tongue to grandmother.

                      SOME CASES IN POINT                127

  Mother's punishment of Stan consists of a strapping with
father's belt, or a razor strop industriously and frequently
applied. Milder punishments take the form of forbidding him
to watch television, or tying him to a table leg for extended
periods. Father enforces his demands for obedience with an
occasional slap across Stan's mouth.

  All the adults in the family carry on frequent free-for-all
arguments, talking about the children as though they were not
present. The arguments have occasionally wound up with irate
neighbors demanding peace and quiet, and with the police at
the door.

  The mother is neurotically concerned about the physical
health of the entire family, and is constantly stating that
neither Sally nor Stan likes to be away from her.

  When Stan first appeared for processing, his speech was very
difficult to understand. He tried desperately to talk, but
stuttered badly. He had a fear bordering on terror when about
to be left alone, or in the company of only other children. He
had to have an adult around at all times. He showed extreme
aggression towards other children, fighting continually by
scratching, biting and kicking.

  The following list of phrases have been discovered both in
Stan's processing and from observation. Some of the valences
are known and are accordingly indicated, but many are not
clear even in Stan's own memory bank, being confused with
one another.

  "I want to eat breakfast." (Uncle)
  "I want to ask a question before we go any further."
  "Will you come here?" (Father, mother; prenatal callback)
  "Goodbye! I'm going to leave you."
  "I'm a prisoner." (Mother)
  "Will you get out of here, you wild fool?" (Mother)
  "Be a good boy." (All adults)
  "Be a good boy or I'll hit you across the neck." (Uncle).
  "I'll kick you in the teeth." (Father)
  "I'll knock all your teeth out." (Father)

128                    CHILD DIANETICS

  "Is that clear?"
  "Will you leave me alone?" (Mother)
  "I'll give you just one more chance." (Mother)
  "Just a minute now, just a minute." (Mother)
  "Stop a minute." (Mother)
  "I want to ask just one question."
  "Hold everything six months."
  "Christmas is coming up."
  "Period!"
  "Hold everything!"

  (The auditor's computation thus far was: Everything means the
same as nothing, which means zero. Nothing means no hat, no coat,
no shoes, no socks, no pants, no clothes, no food, no fish, no
horse, no office.)

  "Where do we go from here?"
  "Come here, you stupid fool." (Grandfather)
  "Nothing happened."
  "No good."

  During processing, Stan shows a fair ability to return to
specific incidents; however, as soon as he contacts a few
perceptics and begins to approach the period of physical or
emotional pain, he reverts to "make-believe." The prenatal
period is easily contacted, Stan apparently being able to get
both perceptics and somatics. These somatics can be run only
once or twice, then he begins to avoid them.

  He has many phrases in his banks that command him either
directly or indirectly to keep quiet or to keep his mouth shut.
Late-life incidents pertaining to his speech difficulty contain
phrases such as, "I'll knock your teeth out" and "I'll tear your
tongue out." Stan habitually hides his teeth behind his lips and
holds his tongue withdrawn, hindering his pronunciation of
L's and F's.

  Stan has continually evidenced a prenatal restimulation that
causes him to jump from valence to valence, always taking a
highly aggressive role. The phrases contacted in the prenatal
area (about six months according to flash) contain computa-

                      SOME CASES IN POINT                129

tions that nothing is everything, and that nothing is zero;
nothing implies no clothes, no food, no office, and just "no."
Nothing is also a person, the identity of whom is not yet known.

  Some special techniques have been used on Stan. One of the
most successful consists of telling him that he is about to
be left alone; that the auditor will be back right away. It is
explained to him that the purpose of this action is to help him
remember how he felt on the other occasions when he was left
alone. He understands, has always broken into tears upon such
restimulation, and has carried the tears back to instances when
his mother and his grandmother had left him.

  In processing Stan, several different chains were begun in
succession and a continual switch from chain to chain was
carried out. The reason for this procedure was that too much
emphasis on grief or pain seemed to antagonize him and make
him reluctant to continue processing. The same grief incident
was contacted at four different sessions, and the last time
contacted the restimulation from being left alone carried him
back into the original incident and some degree of reduction
was accomplished. The restimulation was then run out as a lock.

  If Stan is allowed to suggest the incident to which he wants
to return, he supplies the skeleton of its beginning, then will
make up a fanciful tale based on it in which everything turns
out all right. When the auditor directs him to a specific
incident or type of incident, he seems to give a fairly straight
report.

  At times processing is impeded by his dramatizations. One
session was constantly interrupted by a phrase from a violent
prenatal that was unavailable: "Before we go any further,
I'd like to ask you a question." When he was allowed to ask
the question (which turned out to be "Where do we go
next?"), processing continued.

  The noticeable progress has been a tremendous improvement
in speech, cooperation with the auditor, and in playing with
other children.

130                    CHILD DIANETICS

  TOTAL HOURS OF PROCESSING TO DATE: 25 hours; continuing.

C-103:
NAME: Robert Williams, ("Bobby")
AGE: 10
FATHER'S NAME: Perry
MOTHER'S NAME: Celia
GRANDMOTHER: Edith
AUNTS: "Dilly"; Esther
UNCLE: Fred

ILLNESSES: Digestive upsets, skin disease. Placed in heat
  crib in infancy. Acidosis, dehydrated, excessive urination
  and salivation.

CHRONIC SOMATICS: Colds, nose drainages.

DRAMATIZATIONS: Tantrums; crying spells.

OVERT BEHAVIOR: Fluttering of eyelids, closing of eyes, tensing
  of muscles, clenching of hands. Constant flipping of any object
  held in hands. Sits with books and turns pages for hours at a
  time. Excellent musical memory, rhythm and coordination. Manual
  dexterity good. Constant dramatization of incidents happening
  at home. Changes valences rapidly, and speaks of himself in
  third person.

OBSERVATIONS: Will not learn to read. Completely breaks down
  any attempt at formal education. Speech, excellent. Words used,
  very advanced for his age. Completely uncontrollable. Very
  little touch with reality. Computation that everything equals
  everything else.

PREVIOUS PROFESSIONAL DIAGNOSES: Numerous speculations have
  come from various sources in the past, i.e., mentally
  retarded, thyroid imbalance, encephalitis, and schizoid.

  In the words of the boy's dianetic auditor, "Bobby seems to
be multi-valent and in synthesis with an `I' that is very much

                      SOME CASES IN POINT                131

disliked by a swarm of anti-Bobby demons, which have the
analyzer in a very effective straight-jacket."

  Bobby has many overt symptoms of his maladjustments: visio
hallucinations, contortions, stiffening of muscles, crying
spells, laughing jags, etc. When starting sessions he usually
says, "Don't want to play remembering"; but once the session
has begun, he is very quiet and will close his eyes and
co-operate. However, in returning to phrases and incidents he
seems to be stuck at about the age of 5 in a residential school
he attended, to which he refers as "The Rhynes."

  Responses to questioning are rather irrational, with no
visible relationship between sentences. It always "happened at
The Rhynes" or "Nance said it." So far there is no indication
as to who "Nance" might be.

  Bobby does not dramatize in processing as he does in present
time. He does not run engrams because he cannot get more
than one phrase at a time. The succeeding phrases are always
related to something other than the beginning phrase. He has
various somatics, both in and out of processing, and readily
tells where it hurts by pointing to various parts of his body.

  Bobby's mother was about 35 at the time of pregnancy, and
was advised by her husband, friends and family to consider
abortion. She declares that she did not (?). During pregnancy
she went to a psychologist whose therapy consisted of shouting
"dirty" words at her "in order to get you over your
squeamishness."

  The father is evidently a "control" case, a man who is
dramatically "head of the house." He wants to know nothing
about Dianetics or, to use his words, "I'd probably stop the
damned thing if I knew what was going on." He appears in
Bobby's banks both as an ally and as an antagonist. Bobby
frequently dramatizes father's verbalizations.

  Bobby is hindered in processing by unusual restimulation at
home. Each session must be begun with running locks incurred
in association with his family during the interval since the
previous session. The parents have grudgingly attended several

132                    CHILD DIANETICS

special lectures given by the auditor, and the mother has read
DIANETICS: The Modern Science of Mental Health. In spite of this
attempt at educating the parents, the ideal solution in Bobby's
case while processing continues would be a residential school.

  The following is a record of a directed monologue by Bobby
Williams: (Ditto marks indicate repetition of a word or
phrase.)

BOBBY: Good means I'm good. Good means something good. It doesn't
  mean candy, it means blocks. It's something I do. I build
  trains. The train's something. Something to go woo-woo. I
  never been on one.
AUDITOR: Who was on the train, Bobby?
BOBBY: Someone was. I went. Well...it was off the train and I
  was at The Rhynes. I'm at The Rhynes now. It's a locomotive.
  It's the first car on the train. That's the car that pulls
  all the other cars. Locomotive. Locomotive goes...goes
  somewhere...goes to the somewhere. Somewhere is.
AUDITOR: Is it dark inside?
BOBBY: Yes, it feels good.
AUDITOR: Who says it?
BOBBY: Celia says it feels good, it hurts.
AUDITOR: Is there a difference between hurting and feeling good?
BOBBY: There is.
AUDITOR: Do you like to get hurt?
BOBBY: Don't wanna get hurt. It was wet. It wasn't wet, it
  was dry. It's good when it's wet. It's good and wet. It's dark.
  Eyes are closed. It's pushing here (Points to spot on abdomen).
AUDITOR: Where else is it pushing?
BOBBY: All over, it's pushing all over. It hurts. I'm asleep.
AUDITOR: What would happen if you wake up?
BOBBY: Something will happen.

                      SOME CASES IN POINT                133

AUDITOR: Is something good or bad?
BOBBY: It's good. Something would happen (begins to cry).
  Something good will happen (crys again). Something's the
  best thing that can happen."
AUDITOR: What's another word for something?
BOBBY: "Something." "Isn't that something?"
AUDITOR: Is that a good sentence?
BOBBY: Yes. Play's a good sentence. That's a good sentence.
  Feels...good. It feels good. I play. I worked.
AUDITOR: What comes right before that?
BOBBY: Something comes right after that. Something comes before
  that. It's blocks. It's not good for eating. Something's
  good for eating.
AUDITOR: What are blocks for?
BOBBY: Hocks are good blocks. Hocks are good for eating.
  Blocks are something. Blocks are made out of not wood.
AUDITOR: What are boys made of?
BOBBY: Boys are made of wood.
AUDITOR: What are boys' heads made of?
BOBBY: My head is made of wood. I believe it.
AUDITOR: What's wood?
BOBBY: Something's wood. Would you please make me out of wood?
  Wood."
AUDITOR: Next?
BOBBY: I played. Would you please play with those blocks?
  Would you, please? That makes him not work.
AUDITOR: Are you him?
BOBBY: I'm not him. I don't know what him is. He's him.
  Will you please play with those blocks? I told him not to
  please.
AUDITOR: Did you learn that at The Rhynes?
BOBBY: Yes. Wanna work. Please play. I worked. Will you
  please play with those blocks?"
AUDITOR: What did they give you if you played with blocks?
BOBBY: They'd say...(silence).

134                    CHILD DIANETICS

AUDITOR: What did they give you if you played with
  blocks?
BOBBY: They give him something.
AUDITOR: What's another word for something?
BOBBY: It's not candy. They say they'd give him candy. They
  gave him candy. It was at The Rhynes. The Rhynes are something.
  It's good.
AUDITOR: What's good?
BOBBY: Something's good. I'm not gonna have it, I'm not.
AUDITOR: What is something?
BOBBY: It's wood. It's not wood. I'm playing.
AUDITOR: Who's playing?
BOBBY: I'm playing with The Rhynes. I'm playing with something.
  It's a train.
AUDITOR: What is a train?
BOBBY: Something is a train.
AUDITOR: Is training like learning?
BOBBY: It's training. It goes choo-choo-choo.
AUDITOR: Did anyone ever train you to do something?
BOBBY: Someone did.

  The computations that are damaging in a pre-clear's banks
depend on the extent of seeming "similarity" between events
that actually are not similar. Thus, when one is trying to trace
down a computation, he might do well to ask for the "sameness"
in things, tracing down close and remote connections. The
closest identifications between any two events are in most
instances the strongest aberrative factors.

  Here follows a transcript of a session with Bobby Williams,
showing an application of this technique, the object of which
was to discover chains of phrases that are to him the same.

AUDITOR: What word is the same as dead?
BOBBY: Something is the same as dead. Something is dangerous.
AUDITOR: What is the same as dangerous?
BOBBY: Bobby went in hell.

                      SOME CASES IN POINT                135

AUDITOR: What's the same as Bobby went in hell?
BOBBY: Something is the same as go to hell. (Puts hand over
  mouth) I'll tell what the same is.
AUDITOR: What's the same as go to hell?
BOBBY: Go to hell is go to hell.
AUDITOR: What word is the same as dead?
BOBBY: Something's the same." " " Go to hell.
AUDITOR: What is the same thing as go to hell?
BOBBY: Have you done the same?
AUDITOR: Say more.
BOBBY: (Silence)
AUDITOR: What is the same thing as dangerous?
BOBBY: Something is go to hell.
AUDITOR: What is the same thing as go to hell?
BOBBY: Something is.
AUDITOR: What is go to hell?
BOBBY: Aaa-ha-ha!
AUDITOR: Is that crying?
BOBBY: (No response)
AUDITOR: What's the same as go to hell?
BOBBY: (No response)
AUDITOR: What person is go to hell?
BOBBY: Something is go to hell.
AUDITOR: What is hell?
BOBBY: Hell's go to hell: Wanta say cancelled. He will, he'll
  say it.
AUDITOR: What is the same as hell?
BOBBY: Something is the same as hell. It is. Go to hell.
AUDITOR: What is almost the same as hell?
BOBBY: (Smells hand)
AUDITOR: Is it smell?
BOBBY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Is smell the same as hell? Yes or no?
BOBBY: Yes.
AUDITOR: Is town the same as hell?

136                    CHILD DIANETICS

BOBBY: Yes. Have you done the same, then we'll say cancelled.

  Somewhat later, following the end of the session, this question
was asked: "Flash answer, Bobby. Yes or no?" (snap!) "Yes!"

  One can notice definite though restricted computations here.
The conclusion would seem to be that the most immediate threat
to Bobby's survival is something (Something!) connected with
an early chain in which mother had said something like "Go to
hell, it's too dangerous, I might die." Or perhaps the ideas of
danger and death are connected to the mother by an attempted
abortion chain with phrases about hell and damnation or just
plain "Oh, hell" in it. From talks with the mother, it seems
probable that an AA chain, or at least talk about abortion,
exists in Bobby's banks.

  The progress in this case has been fairly good, considering
the very high emotional state in which Bobby usually appears
for processing. As mentioned before, it would help matters
considerably if Bobby could be removed from his home
environment and its accompanying restimulation.

  His tantrums are almost completely gone, occurring only at
very extended intervals. Crying spells have decreased. He has
more awareness and interest in things around him, and enjoys
doing specified tasks. He seems to differentiate between things
more realistically.

  TOTAL HOURS OF PROCESSING TO DATE: 25 hours; continuing.

C-27:
CHILD'S NAME: Marie, ("Mame").
AGE: 13
FATHER'S NAME: Clarence
MOTHER'S NAME: Peggy.

                      SOME CASES IN POINT                137

GRANDMOTHER: Mater

BROTHER: Bobbie

ACCIDENTS: Fell from tree, age 5. Broke arm, set without
  anesthetic. Slipped on pavement, age 9, knocked out by
  blow on back of head.

MEDICAL-DENTAL RECORD: Tooth pulled, age 7, nitrous oxide gas.
  Tonsillectomy, age 9, ether anesthetic.

CHRONIC SOMATICS: Constant sore throat, colds. Headaches causing
  fainting spells

  Marie was brought in for processing, not because she was an
overt behavior problem, but because she seemed to be backward
in studies, and in her association with other children. There
was no apparent explanation for this, since previous consultations
with teachers and parents had established that she had a very
high intelligence for her age.

  She was very cooperative with the auditor from the first
session. Her perceptics were good, and she returned readily
and willingly to past incidents when requested to do so by the
auditor. She would follow a chain down to the prenatal basic,
run out the basic with little urging by the auditor, and then
come up to present time by herself, saying, "This was fun. I'll
come back again tomorrow and we'll do some more."

  One of the engrams which was contacted in later processing
was that of an exodontistry at the age of 7. The improvement
in her studies and association with children her own age
showed a remarkable improvement following the running of
the nitrous oxide engram.

  Following is a word-by-word account of a portion of the
processing session in which she contacted the dentist's office:

MARIE: Time tooth pulled...I can't get back...thought I was
  dying but couldn't get back. My teeth could drop out and I'd
  never have that again.
AUDITOR: Tell me about it.
MARIE: The nurse puts the thing over my nose..."Relax honey.
  That's the girl...All right, doctor, go

138                    CHILD DIANETICS

  ahead!" My eyes, presses on my eyes...Don't feel pain
  but it pulls and I can't tell him...Jerks my head...
  No fighting...Don't know where I am...But I've got to get
  back...Dr. Penn says, "That's really a big one." Then the
  nurse says, "It's out, it's all over. It's out. Put your
  head over here and spit."
AUDITOR: And then what happens?
MARIE: I had an awful struggle to get back...It was all
  red...Never black, always red and orange...That stuff's no good.
AUDITOR: Continue, please.
MARIE: (Silence)
AUDITOR: Is something holding you?
MARIE: Yes. He says, "Here, you can hold it." He gives me
  the tooth to take home. I go home with Bobbie.
AUDITOR: Let's return again to where you are sitting down
  in the chair. Were you frightened?
MARIE: Nervous about going in...The nurse had been
  - she puts the thing over my nose, and I breathe...Feel
  her lift my eyelids up...She says, "All right, doctor"
  ...My head starts to spin...I feel that red, it keeps
  pulling my head over to this side (indicates by inclining head
  to right). I can't get back...I don't get back...I can't
  get back...(excited, frantic)...It's all over...It sure was
  a big one...Gee, I'll never take that stuff anymore...Closest
  I ever came to dying...(Yawn, yawn).
AUDITOR: Let's start once more with the nurse adjusting the mask.
MARIE: I can hear her, and she lifts my eyes and says, "All
  right, doctor"...I think he can't do it yet, but I can't do
  anything about it...Hear a sound...Things rattle, pliers and
  things...Starts to pull my head...I didn't think I'd have to
  get back...I didn't think I'd get back...I can't get back...They
  say something..."You're all right, honey, just spit over in
  here." I look out the

                      SOME CASES IN POINT                139

  window and see our kitchen, then I know I'm back...
AUDITOR: Continue, Marie.
MARIE: I'll never do it again...Bobbie takes me home...After I
  pay my money...
AUDITOR: Let's repeat the entire incident once more. See if
  you can hear anything else this time, and if you can feel
  the chair you are sitting in, and the lights...
MARIE: Nurse puts it over my nose...Feels cold...Oh! I jump out
  and see myself sitting there instead of feeling anything.
AUDITOR: Does anyone speak at this point?
MARIE: The nurse. She says, "She's out now."
AUDITOR: May we continue now?
MARIE: I'm all mixed up...I get up out of the chair...She gives
  me a cup of water to rinse my mouth out with...Takes things
  off my neck...I ask her how much, she says four dollars...I
  pay and wait in the waiting room...Go downstairs with
  Bobbie...Across street...(Yawn, yawn, yawn).
AUDITOR: Let's begin from the beginning, Marie. Start from...
MARIE: (Expressing exasperation) She puts it over my nose
  ....My chest heaves, I see red...My hands on the arms of
  the chair...She lifts my eyelids...I wish she'd keep her
  damned hands out of my eyes...He pulls my head over and
  over...Spit in the thing...She takes the thing off my
  neck...Get purse and give her money...Down hall, down stairs...
AUDITOR: Let's run over it again...
MARIE: (Interrupts) I start to breathe deeply, head starts to
  feel funny, I close my eyes...She tries to open them, lifts
  up the lid..."All right, doctor..." I know it's not all
  right...I can still feel. Starts to pull my head, strong
  ...I fight to get back...Got to get back...(Face contorted,
  struggling muscularly). Just thinking about it's got my
  tooth to aching up here...(Points to molar).

140                    CHILD DIANETICS

AUDITOR: Please repeat from the beginning, Marie. Let's see if
  you can hear everything that goes on...
MARIE: (Boredom) Oh, my head hurts...Do I have to do it
  again? Must I do it again. The nurse puts the thing
  over my nose, pulls up my eyelids and says, "All right,
  doctor..." I feel funny...I can't do anything about
  it. I see redness...He jerks my head...I got to get
  back (Repeats phrase nine times, breathing very heavily).
  Finally I can open my eyes. She tells me to spit...I see
  the water running in the fountain (Yawn). I pay him...
  Get out...Go to wrong door. Nurse says, "You're all mixed
  up, honey." (Laughs heartily). So that's why I'm all
  mixed up! (More laughter). I pay her...Go out...Bobbie
  helps me down...Home...
AUDITOR: Let's go over it once more, Marie.
MARIE: Gee, it hard to do (Sigh) it...I just about know
  it by heart now...She puts it over my nose...Feel
  her press her fingers on eyes..."All right, doctor"...
  I know it's not all right...I'm glad when I see our house
  across the street...
AUDITOR: Once more, Marie, please.
MARIE: Oh, gosh! (Sigh) I wish I'd never even mentioned
  it! Oh, all right! She puts the thing over my nose...
  She's in back of me...Seems like a long time...Puts
  her fingers up and pokes my eyes...See red..."All
  right, doctor"...I'm not supposed to hear this, but I
  hear it (Sigh)...I hear a sound...An awful crack...
  Oh, Lord! Probably my tooth coming out...Breaks it and
  leaves a hunk in there...Pulls like the dickens...Says,
  "Sure is a tough one"...Gosh, this tooth right here
  hurts (Points to molar again)...Give him his darned
  four bucks and go home...Probably broke his arm...Rough
  ...Enough trouble without going to a dentist (Sigh, yawn).
AUDITOR: Repeat this incident once more, please.
MARIE: Oh! You got a grudge against me, or something?

                      SOME CASES IN POINT                141

  (Extreme exasperation) Of all the ways to get even with a
  person...Sending them to a dentist...All right...She
  puts it over and I breathe...Pokes her old finger in
  my eyeballs...He goes ahead...He pulls my head off...I
  think I'm dying and try to get back.
AUDITOR: (After a few minutes of silence) Once more, Marie.
MARIE: I'm going to bite you in a minute! (Anger) She puts
  the thing over my nose (Laughter). Lifts up the peepers
  (Hearty laughter, auditor joining in)..."All right, doctor"...I
  see red...I see it in both meanings! (Laughter again) I
  finally come out of it safe and sound...I never did like a
  dentist and you make me stay there so long....
AUDITOR: Where are you now?
MARIE: Here, in the room, with you. I'm 13 and its Tuesday.
  (Breaks into laughter). Beat you to it that time!

  At this point she seemed to be happier and more cheerful
than at any time the auditor had seen her. There was but one
more session following, and then her mother called to say that
they were so pleased with Marie that they didn't think she
needed any more processing right then.

  Eight months later she was among the top four in her classes,
and very active in dramatics and sports. Her mother reported
that to her knowledge Marie had not had a cold since she had
left off processing.

  AUDITOR'S COMPUTATION: The phrase of the nurse, "You're all
mixed up, honey," might well have caused her considerable
trouble in her school work. Chances are this phrase was keyed
in by someone who resembled the nurse, which thereafter made
her studies more difficult.

  TOTAL HOURS OF PROCESSING: 15 hours.

                          CHAPTER 11

                         A LOOK AHEAD

  In our hands lies the future of the world, for as we train our
children we shape in them the pattern of things to come. We,
who are filled with the aberrations inherited from our parents,
heretofore could only be resigned to pass on these aberrations
to our children in ever-increasing intensity. 'Round and 'round
it has gone, and where it might stop nobody has known.

  But now Dianetics has come to break the spiral. And for every
father or mother interested in Dianetics, the big question is,
"What can I do for my children?"

  Let us consider how to begin this business of Child Dianetics.
One of the most important tools we can use is observation.
What are your child's aberrations? What are his push-buttons?
From whom did the child acquire that peculiar behavior?
Why does she get so many colds? Why does he seem to get
edgy and start crying when we try to hurry him? Why won't
she drink milk or eat crackers? Why? Every item of the child's
conduct should be observed and correlation made of these
items with the parents' own cases. Look at yourselves! Be
aware of your own case, keep thorough notes on your own
processing. By doing so, you will soon have the key to the
child's problem.

  As an example, here is the experience the parents of one
child had. Their daughter, age 5, had a very bad night with
bronchial trouble; and the whole winter following suffered a
succession of colds. A curious fact that eventually led to
an explanation was that she would allow her parents to
put Mentholatum in her nose but was very much opposed to
Vaseline. One night the problem was solved. Mother, during

                         A LOOK AHEAD                    143

processing, ran her daughter's birth. Right from the heart of
the incident came the phrase, "I can't breathe. I'm all stopped
up." This phrase was repeated a number of times during the
birth. A phrase that regularly accompanied the first was,
"Can't I have some Mentholatum for my nose?" The nurse
replied, "Here's some Vaseline; it's all we have." The mother
answered, "I don't want Vaseline, I want Mentholatum!"

  Since this discovery the parents have exercised care not to
use the phrase, "I can't breathe; I'm all stopped up." Result?
Practically no colds and no repetition of the bronchial condition.
What about the Vaseline? That is now called Petroleum Jelly,
and the child uses it when necessary.

  The principles explained in this book may go a long way
toward making yours an optimum family. But these principles
must be mastered. This can be done only by constant practice,
observation and study.

  If you have a number of friends with children and an interest
in dianetics, or an interest in improving their family
relationships, you may organize a study group. For best results,
this group should include not more than ten couples. Discussion
must necessarily be more and more restricted as the group's
size increases. Where the group grows unwieldy, there is less
time for consideration of the individual problems of those
who compose it.

  Step One, the beginning of such a program, is simple. If you
have children you have problems. The first step is to use the
material in this book as a basis for discussion supervised by
a group discussion leader. The leader should be replaced from
time to time, to provide fresh points of view. From the discussion
a solid understanding of the basic principles of Dianetics and
Child Dianetics may be gained.

  Step Two, which should form a portion of every program from
the first one on, is a presentation by each member of some of
the specific personal problems with children. The group then
discusses each problem in an attempt to help the parent
discover the dianetic solution.

144                    CHILD DIANETICS

  Step Three is the testing of these solutions in the home by
every group member whose problem is similar.

  Step Four, at subsequent meetings, is a discussion of the
practical applications of the solutions suggested, and an
evaluation of the results with a view to striving for constant
improvement of the techniques.

  Step Five is a report to the Foundation of what has been
accomplished each time a definite workable technique is
evolved.

  Here are a few subjects you will find of real value in building
stronger families:

  Family Relations: What could be more important in family
relations than a complete understanding of the affinity, reality,
and communication triangle? This is perhaps the most important
point for your group study. What do the terms mean to each
individual? What are ARC breaks and what do they do? How can
you run them out of yourselves and your children? How do
these principles as symbolized by the triangle apply in all
interpersonal situations?

  Remember that the principles set forth in this book are
stepping stones toward larger discoveries. Dianetics is a
very new science. It will progress by the research of all who
consistently apply it. After each group discussion, set up a
test program for your homes. Keep notes on your trials and
errors. Bring the results to future meetings for further
evaluations. Keep a group record of the correlated material.

  Child Behavior Norms: Many noted psychologists have
presented their interpretations of what normal behavior is, at
the various age levels, and there are numerous reference books
on child behavior patterns available at any library. In them you
will find what is considered normal behavior for your children
at various ages. Your group will acquire much excellent
information by studying these behavior patterns - and then
testing the use of Dianetics for handling the rather touchy
areas in the child's development. It will be interesting to
observe what may be done to bring up the low parts of the

                         A LOOK AHEAD                    145

cyclic curve. It will also be interesting to discover to what
degree aberrated behavior is responsible for these troubled
periods. This subject deserves your detailed and careful study.

  Discipline: Here is a crucial subject, one that Dianetics tends
to highlight. It gives the parents who have over-disciplined
their children a definite feeling of guilt. "Is it I who has
laid in my child's aberrations? Here is my control circuit - I
have laid it into my child!" It is futile to castigate oneself
for not knowing about Dianetics before it was made available to
the public. Console yourself with the fact that everybody else
was guilty of the same pre-dianetic sins against posterity, and
that within our lifetime there is yet the opportunity to give the
future a new lease on sanity. Even so, it will require of us and
our children a special kind of discipline if we are to make up
even a scintilla of the time lost.

  About discipline there are as many theories as there are
feathers on a duck. Actually, however, they boil down to two
considerations: what does or what does not act as compulsion
against self-determinism? Do a little self-examination. When
do you do your best work: when you are compelled, or when
you are led into making your own decisions by understanding
reasons behind what needs to be done?

  The ARC triangle again plays a big part. You maintain
communication only when you have understanding. Understanding
builds reality. You feel affinity only for that which is
real for you. One will imposed on another is compulsion.
Compulsion immediately knocks out communication. How do you
feel when husband, wife or boss arbitrarily says, "You do it
my way or else?" Your child feels the same way. Compulsion is
an arbitrary. It may block communication, blunt affinity and
deny reality. If any one of these aspects of the triangle is
mitigated or vitiated, the other two aspects are automatically
affected adversely, too. On the other hand, don't you feel
good when someone says to you, "Your idea has a lot of merit;
how will it fit in here? How will it affect the situation? What
will happen if we use your idea?"

146                    CHILD DIANETICS

  Study the effects of compulsive discipline. Try to derive
methods which will not aberrate the child, but increase his data
and help him to form his own decisions. Here specific problems
for home testing will assist toward attaining full understanding.

  Apparently the factor we as parents find most difficult to
comprehend is "What is important?" If we can learn to ask
ourselves the question, "Is it important?", we will have solved
perhaps seventy-five per cent of our problems. This question
posed immediately will often prevent the unreeling of a
dramatization over something the child has done. An example
is the spilled glass of milk. Is it important? Was it done on
purpose? Which is more rational: dramatizing your restimulated
anger, which may key in or restimulate a lock in the child, or
cleaning up the mess with a smile while helping him to analyze
the need for carefulness?

  Control circuits have been mentioned. Control circuits are
quite often activated by compulsive discipline. Such phrases as
"Control yourself," "You do what you're told," "You're nothing
but a cry baby," "You must be a big man and not cry," only
contribute to a child's irrational behavior. Unless you want
to spend hours running out circuitry at a later date, you will
find it profitable to avoid installing it.

  You should seek to increase your child's self-determinism,
his reliance on his analyzer, and help him to be independent of
you and of his reactive mind.

  There is a difference between self-determinism and selfish
determination. A self-determined person is one who acts after
analytical computation, taking into consideration all data
available as to the effect of the proposed action on himself
and ON OTHER PEOPLE! Selfish determination is the aberrated
evaluation of data as they affect only one's self.

  Compulsion is much broader than just that phase of it which
applies to discipline. An individual may be as much compelled
from within as from without. Do not be afraid to air your
problems and your aberrations in your group. If you are afraid
of what the group will think of you, use the importance test.

                         A LOOK AHEAD                    147

Remember that fear is also aberration. It is more important to
solve these problems and build a happy family, or is it more
important to keep these other people from guessing that you
have aberrations? (As though they don't know!)

  Education: What do you know about your schools? Your
children spend a good portion of their lives there. The group
may devote part of its time profitably to discovering how and
what the children are taught. You will discover that in most
schools the work is designed for "normal" children. The
exceptionally bright or the especially slow are not usually
handled with any individuality.

  Consider degrees of alertness or intelligence. As your own
processing continues your computational ability will increase
and your energy level will rise. The improvement in your recalls
will astonish you. Does this tell you anything about the
difference in children? Is the child slow for reasons not
hitherto understood? His recalls may be occluded, making it
difficult for him to remember anything. Or he may have engrams
(and where did he get them?) that tell him he is no good, has
no initiative will never amount to anything, etc. Result: a
slow child.

  On the other hand, take the "bright" child. He may be
bright because he relies on memory, having no engrams to
prevent his recalls. In this case he can remember everything he
has perceived. The early years of school will be simple for him,
as most of the work is based on memory and his is unoccluded.
Later, however, when he gets into such abstract subjects as
higher mathematics and the sciences, he may being to slip if he
continues to rely on memory. Memory is fine, but the individual
who has learned to rely solely upon his memory may not have
developed the ability for abstract reasoning.

  The child with blocked perceptic recalls is slower because he
is obliged to use reasoning processes to compute the answers
to problems. Such children may flounder, especially in schools
geared to so-called "normal" recalls. There is no time for the
slow child.

148                    CHILD DIANETICS

  What can you do to help the slow child sharpen his perceptics,
keep them sharp, and develop recall? What can you do to help
the child with unusually sharp perceptics and good recall, to
develop his reasoning processes?

  In solving these problems, straight-line memory is an
invaluable technique. Games will also aid the development of
these processes. Discuss such things in your group.

  Education is an extremely broad field. In a democracy the
schools belong to you. Insist on sound methods of instruction,
and your children will receive them. But what is sound instruction?
Dianetics forces a complete re-evaluation here, as in every
other field of living. Groups of parents who discuss and
formulate these things will determine the future of education.

  Playground Workshop: Your child is an individual. He is
also part of society. He must learn to get along happily with
others. How does your youngster do in this respect?

  As a part of the group's activity there may be planned programs
of play, stories and handicraft. These could take place once
or twice each month on Saturdays when more children are free.
Parents might take turns in leading the activities for groups
of various ages while other parents observe. It would be best
if each parent present observed someone else's child at least
fifty per cent of the time. The results of these observations
could then be discussed and new teaching methods developed to
help correct errors in handling the children. A parent will
gain a better insight into her child's make-up when observing
him at play with other children.

                          Conclusion

  Quite a lot of questions here, aren't there?

  The answers are here in this book and there in your lives.

  In addition to straight processing, you will find dianetic
ideas extremely useful in the home. With a sound knowledge of
such things as the significance of the ARC triangle, you will
soon realize that when you invalidate anything, your child,
husband or wife says, you are reducing that person's sense of

                         A LOOK AHEAD                    149

reality, breaking affinity, and blocking communication. When
you doubt something another says, ask yourself, "Is it important?"
If it is important for the item to be corrected, use questions
to bring out the correct information. And remember, you may be
the one who is wrong.

  Another ARC break results from withholding information.
When you refrain from telling another something he wants to
know you will find affinity weakened.

  Even if families do not engage in active processing, the
observation of a few dianetic "do's can have amazing results
in raising the family tone. Check yourself and your family on
these:

  1. Do everything possible to maintain affinity, reality, and
communication.

  2. Use discipline based on understanding and computation
rather than on compulsion.

  3. Use the question, "Is it important?" before taking any
precipitate action.

  4. Realize that any invalidation of another's data adversely
affects the ARC triangle.

  5. Pass on information the other person should have instead
of concealing the facts in the hope of saving the other some
anguish, but do not burden the child with adult problems.

  6. Remember, the family is a team and an ARC break with
one member is a break with all.

  7. Watch for possible key-in and restimulating phrases and
actions, and avoid them until they can be erased.

  8. Watch for control circuit phrases and avoid them.

  This could well be considered a dianetic family code. As
your group works on the problems suggested, you will see the
wisdom of following the points listed above. In fact, you will
probably be able to add to and clarify the items as you go
along.

  Specific Suggestions: Since it is best, due to similarity of
reactive banks, for parents not to process their own children,

150                    CHILD DIANETICS

if it can be avoided, it is suggested that parents form teams,
when possible, with other parents to exchange auditing for their
children. Children in general are best audited by members of
their own sex. And quite frequently young auditors will do
better than other Dianeticists in auditing children, as younger
persons are still close to the problems, perplexities, and
disappointments of childhood. However, an older auditor with
a natural aptitude and a true understanding of children should
never be disqualified because of his age.

  Since dianetic processing takes time, children may resent it.
They may feel that their time is better spent in play, in enjoying
friendships, in accumulating all the enriching experience suitable
to their age. If a child is happy in his environment, well
adjusted to those around him, pursuing a successful child's life,
perhaps it is best to leave well enough alone and do no dianetic
processing beyond a little straight-line memory work occasionally
to blow locks, and the running of pleasure moments to relieve the
tedium of long train or auto trips. Children are jealous of their
time, and we as adults should recognize this and respect it.

  But when a child shows unhappiness, or suffers from chronic
somatics such as asthma, hay fever and other allergies, or has
any other indication of sub-optimum function, then there is a
place for dianetic processing. Pleasure moments and straight-line
memory can be used again and again. As you grow increasingly
skillful in the use of straight-line memory, you may key
out the chronic somatic, or the source of mental upset. Use
pleasure moments to bring up the child's sense of affinity,
reality, and communication. After he has been "run" a few
times in pleasure, the child will begin to look forward to
his processing and will not begrudge the time devoted to it.

  Care should be used never to allow dianetic processing to
usurp the place of "more important" affairs such as watching
the football game on television, or going to a party, or anything
else the child values. This would place Dianetics among the
non-survival factors in his life and make him resent it.

                         A LOOK AHEAD                    151

  When a parent has to process his own child, he should first
be audited himself, progressing as far along the road as time
allows before he undertakes the child's processing. Not only is the
child subject to restimulation by the parent, but the parent may
be restimulated by the child. Too often the child's dramatization
furnishes the "other side" of the parent's dramatization. And
of course, generally speaking, fully half the material in the
child's engram bank is derived from the parent and is likely
to be discovered in the parent's bank, also. Therefore the
parent should have his own engrams at least well de-intensified,
and his own temperament stabilized very thoroughly before
he attempts to process his child. Otherwise, he may lose his
impersonal approach and his temper, break the auditor's code,
establish new locks on the child's old locks, and by breaking
affinity as an auditor make affinity as a parent doubly difficult
to re-establish.

  For proper use of the material in this book it will be especially
helpful to read and use the material in two other publications:
DIANETICS: The Modern Science of Mental Health, by L. Ron Hubbard
and The Dianetic Auditor's Bulletin, Nos. 1-2, July-August, 1950,
both of which contain standard procedure. Dianetic processing must
be understood and preferably should have been practiced on at least
several adults before the auditor attempts to process a child.

                          CHAPTER 12

                    CHILD GUIDANCE CENTERS

The following material is intended to serve as an outline in
setting up Child Guidance Centers. None of the material is
presented as definitive. These are suggestions only, but they
are based on practical application and experience at a Child
Guidance Center in Southern California which had been
operating for several months when this material was compiled;
they have been found to be sound where used.

  Child Guidance Centers may be established by dianetic
groups, by professional auditors, or by parents in cooperation
with each other. Centers, whenever possible, should be run by
lay personnel who devote themselves to the smooth functioning
of the Center, attending to all necessary details. Centers
should employ one or more (preferably two) trained auditors
specializing in child guidance. Professional auditors so
employed should be free to devote all working time to the
children.

  Some of the preliminary material contained in this chapter
will concern only the lay personnel; the rest is the concern
of professional auditors who have chosen or will choose Child
Dianetics as their speciality.

  Physical surroundings, like those of any good nursery school,
should be cheerful and informal. There should be a room large
enough to play in, containing a table for finger-painting
activities close to a low sink for washing hands. There should
be a smaller room for parent interviews.

  The Center should own the following equipment:

  Small toys: at least three sets of mama and papa dolls, baby
dolls, small boy and girl dolls, larger boy and girl dolls; dolls

                    CHILD GUIDANCE CENTERS               153

of policemen, firemen, nurses, doctors; wild animal toys (lions,
tigers, wildcats, boars, snakes); peaceful animal toys (horses,
kittens, cats, dogs, elephants, bears); sticks, fences, shrubbery,
garages, houses, schools, hospitals.

  Play materials appropriate for the age group: clay, plasticine,
buttons, water paints, punching bags, telephones, rubber
suction darts, bridges, stoves and cooking utensils, motor toys,
crayons, blackboard and chalk, tools and leather, shell work,
wood-burning instruments, dominoes, story books.

  Toys should be simple and should stimulate the children's
fantasy. Do not bar ugly toys, nor try to keep the toys in
perfect condition. Children like old toys. Observe the use the
children make of the toys and what they say about them.

  Stock a supply of nursing bottles and nipples and simple
sterilizing equipment; also bathroom furniture, as frequently
the first key-ins occur during toilet training.

  For finger-painting: procure any starch free of foreign
particles; boil a quart of it very thick, add one teaspoon salt,
one-half cup of soap flakes while hot, two ounces of glycerine;
stir well. Finger-painting tempera: blue, red, yellow, white,
brown and black. Mix your own colors in plastic cereal dishes:
two teaspoons of tempera to about six ounces of starch. Mix
while warm, paint on the glazed side of finger-paint paper or
glossy shelf paper, after dipping in water. The paints will
work easily if the glazed side is slightly damp.

  Make a comprehensive inventory of each child. Child processing
also takes into consideration the home and general environment
of the child. When the parents come in to relate the child's
problems, a fairly verbatim account of what the mother says
should be taken down. Frequently the auditor is able to locate
the constant restimulation in this first interview with the mother.

  It is suggested that the following questions be asked, as well
as such other questions as further experience may indicate to
be valuable:

  Name and reasons for choosing the child's first name, age,

154                    CHILD DIANETICS

sex, religion. Does the child attend Sunday school? Mother's
occupations and hobbies. Father's occupation and hobbies. If
both parents work, who cares for the child?

  Ailments of mother. Ailments of father. (Frequently illnesses
of the parents will indicate sympathy engrams passed on from
parents to children by contagion of aberration, as chronic
bouncers: "Get away from daddy now. He doesn't feel good.")

  Conditions during the child's prenatal life. Did the mother
have morning sickness? Falls, accidents, other ailments? Were
there attempted abortions, or contraceptive douches after
becoming pregnant before the mother knew of the fact? Hours
in labor? Was birth easy or difficult? Was anesthesia used?
Was the cord around the neck? Was there any difficulty in
getting the child to breathe?

  What was the child's first illness? Did he ever fall off the
bed? Are there older children? Were any of the older children
ill or did they suffer any accidents before the child was born?
Any illnesses or accidents since? Have there been any operations
on the child? List them. Has the child been to a doctor lately?
Doctor's summary of present state of health. Was the sex of
the baby satisfactory to both parents? Were there other persons
living in the home before the baby was born? What were their
attitudes toward the mother having this baby?

  Check for indications of chronic somatics:

  Feeding and digestion (if disturbed, usually indicate a rejected
child): food rejections, vomiting, allergies.
  Breathing: Hay fever, asthma, bronchitis.
  Elimination: Bed wetting and soiling.
  Sex: Excessive masturbation, other sex acts, cruelties.
  Nervous habits: Thumb sucking, nail biting.
  Over-activity: Restlessness.
  Lethargy: Low physical activity.
  Hysterical spells: Dizziness, fainting, convulsions, temper
tantrums.

                    CHILD GUIDANCE CENTERS               155

  Chronic dramatizations.
  Emotions: Anxieties and fears, petulance, unhappiness.
  Social reactions: Shyness, aggressiveness, resentments,
disobedience, attention-getting devices, popularity, quarreling,
competing, jealousy.
  Speech: Retarded speech, faulty enunciation, baby talk,
lisping and stuttering.
  Mental functions: Thought blocking, memory lapses, fantasies,
day dreaming.
  Compensations: Symbolic actions, obsessions, exaggerated needs,
greeds.
  Play: Destructive, lack of energy, complete boredom.
  Work: Lack of concentration, lack of interest, laziness, difficulty
in learning problems.
  Moral values: Lack of responsibility, lack of self-criticism,
over self-criticism, hyper-consciousness, perfectionism, atoning,
wrong independence, lying, cheating, stealing.
  Whom does the child resemble? Is he "just like" someone
else in the home?
  Does the child seem attentive when spoken to or is he a
victim of "You never listen to a thing I say!"
  Does the child have visual difficulties (I can't see...",
etc.)?

  The auditor should develop a system of general procedure,
for which the following practices have been found workable.

  In the first interview with the parents, the auditor tries to
discover the child's chief engrams and the consistent dramatizations
of the parents which may have been keyed in for the child.

  The inventory and preliminary interview with the parents
establishes communication by a permissive attitude and sympathetic
listening. Affinity may be increased by a short explanation of
the contagion of aberration, from parent through children to the
children's children. Dianetics, now that the removal of aberration
is possible, overcomes any guilt for the

156                    CHILD DIANETICS

planting of aberrations, and allows parents to help their
children and themselves.

  After the first interview with the parents the child should be
brought and left for at least three sessions with the professional
auditor. Often it will be discovered that the child's real
problem is none of the things the parents have been so ready
to discuss, but something else that the parents have ignored or
have not observed.

  Does the mother seem over-protective? Look for sympathy
engrams in the child or possibly antagonism from the father (or
both.) The same is true in reverse.

  In the first session with the child, the primary objective is
to establish affinity through communication. Without being told
so, the child should be made to feel that there is no blame of
any kind for anything that may have been done or will be said.
Children need a sympathetic listener. Help them to know that
you can see from their viewpoint. Be completely permissive with
them. Never give negative instructions; use positive suggestions.

  Children may further communicate through color (finger-painting).
Children will often unknowingly put their emotions on paper. Let
them play in the paints. The paint in the plastic cereal bowls
will avoid the fear and trials of breakage. Have the painting
table close to the sink, and let the children dip into the water
when they wish to do so.

  Observe what colors are chosen and what the children talk
about as they use the colors. Observe the mass (where it is
placed), form, spaces, and emotional reaction to the colors
being used. Children paint what they feel.

  Deep sighs while using the color of brown frequently indicate
difficulties in connection with toilet training, grief, and a
possible holder: "You bad boy! Sit right there on the potty;
I'll teach you to mess your panties!" It frequently takes very
adroit questioning to lead the child into running these incidents.
Do not be discouraged if during the first three sessions the
child does not return to any specific incident.

                    CHILD GUIDANCE CENTER                157

  Establishing affinity and communication is the most important
objective. Work to raise the tone level of the child and to
get him up to present time. Strive to make the processing a
pleasure incident for the child, through your understanding of
his difficulties and the permissive atmosphere. You will frequently
find that this is the first time in his life that he has been
allowed to play or express himself without constant direction.
At first, if this is the case, you may have to help him a
little in his play. However, you will soon find that he has few
difficulties in your presence as soon as he recognizes that you
are not going to punish or scold.

  Have him make a toy set-up for you of school, home, grandma's,
and other places he frequents. Where does he place himself in
these surroundings? Does he seem to be alone, separate from the
rest? If so, ask, "Who says, `I'm all alone in the world?' or
`You're all on your own now'." Ask him to tell you about the
time he heard grandma (or whoever it was) say, "I'm all alone
in the world" or "Nobody loves me." Children usually like to
tell about the dramatic things that happen in their world, and
will usually give you a vivid picture of papa and mama dramatizing.

  Does the child choose only the wild animals to pay with?
One little girl had nightmares of a lion who was going to eat
her and her mother. In returning to the incident that was
causing the nightmares, father was found screaming at mother,
"You're a-lyin' to me!" In the child's lack of understanding,
"lyin" automatically became the lion seen in the zoo.

  One little girl who had a great deal of difficulty in school
was found to be living with a grandmother whose constant
phrase was, "Don't tell anybody anything about - (almost any
subject from mother to cookie cutters). It's none of their
business."

  The first three interviews should serve to determine the
child's troubles. Through selection of toys which the child
makes, the auditor can frequently determine just where the
child is stuck on the time track.

158                    CHILD DIANETICS

  Does an eight-year-old choose a nursing bottle and spend
most of her time filling it with water and "playing baby"?
Look for the key-in that took place during the time she was a
nursing baby, possibly mother saying, "Hold still, now."

  As soon as possible get the child to talk. He will usually
speak of the things that are bothering him. Play "remembering"
games with the children, and in this way have them run the
affinity, reality, communication locks. Possibly one of the
best times for this is while they are finger-painting.

  One of the most valuable aids for children is to educate
them by treating as locks any information they have picked up
which is confusing to them. Is there confusion in the child's
mind about death, birth, marriage, or any of the other common
subjects which adults discuss without bothering to explain to
the child? If anything is worrying him, he will usually either
tell about it directly or picture it in his play.

  After the first three sessions with the child, both parents
should come in for an interview, together, if possible, and have
a frank discussion of some of the child's difficulties. The child
must never be present on such occasions, lest he be restimulated
and the parents hampered in their discussion of personal or
intimate matters.

  In this interview much tact will have to be exercised. Neither
parent should be alienated, but there will be factors needing
correction in the home. Usually the parents will be willing to
cooperate in dropping the use of phrases that are too restimulative
to the child. Frequently they will be anxious for processing on
themselves in order to overcome their dramatizations. It should
be made clear to the parents at this time that it may take a
great deal of work, both on the auditor's part and theirs, to
give the child a release. In some cases it is possible to release
a child within a very few sessions; in many others it may take
months. Therefore, evaluation of time necessary to release the
child should not be made. This is especially important when
processing children whose parents have brought them in for
specific reasons.

                    CHILD GUIDANCE CENTERS               159

  In Child Dianetics it is necessary that the auditor have a
natural affinity for children, plus an ability to meet the
children on their own level. Auditors who become impatient with
children cannot expect to accomplish efficient processing.

  In addition to interviews and professional processing, it is
wise to organize group play activity for several children under
the supervision and observation of trained observers.

  Observers should record the activity and conversation of the
children playing in a group. Later the auditor will evaluate
the observations and make recommendations to the parents or
others who care for the children. Observation of this sort is not
as valuable nor as exact as that obtained during the dianetic
processing of a child, but it may be utilized very effectively
where there seems to be no extreme or pressing aberration.

  For the guidance center which attempts group activities,
larger toys will be needed, such as swings, merry-go-rounds,
Sand boxes, shovels, pails, and games which increase cooperation.
There will be more direction of the children in play, and a
definite effort to increase any special skills or talents which
the children may exhibit.

  From these groups it is often possible to select the child or
children most in need of processing. Any child who is a consistent
misfit in the group will be found to be suffering from restimulated
engrams, and should have private processing.

  In general, in any community where there is a desire among
its citizens, child guidance centers may be set up by volunteer
gifts of time and property. This limits current expenses to the
employment of auditors and specialists in the supervision of
children.

  Wherever possible, a larger budget will allow a more
efficient and businesslike maintenance of services to the
community and its children.

                          CHAPTER 13

                           SUMMARY

A. Preventive Dianetics

  1. Observe silence during and for several minutes after
moments of pain and anaten at all ages. Especially important
are:

  Prenatal Life:

  Be silent during and after the sex act.
  During pregnancy be silent at times of injury, during applications
of first aid, doctor's examinations, illness, and operations
involving the expectant mother.
  Be silent but helpful after electric shocks, bumps and jars to
the mother's body.
  Be silent after the mother coughs or sneezes.
  Arrange for silence when a general anesthesia is administered
to the mother. Where there is a choice, local anesthesia is
always preferable.
  If your aberrations, environment or social set compel you to
drink to excess, for posterity's sake learn to do it in complete
silence.

  Birth:
  Arrange for absolute silence during labor and birth.

  2. Observe silence during moments of emotional disturbances
involving the expectant mother or child. During moments of crying
or fear, rub the pre-clear's back firmly and gently, preferably
with skin contact, but be silent and make all physical movements
slow and understandable. Do not argue with, or within the hearing
of mother or child.

                            SUMMARY                      161

  3. Prevent restimulation at all ages by noting dramatizations
and their restimulators. Refrain from using restimulators;
restate them in other words, change a restimulative environment.
Prevent sympathy computations.

  4. At all times express affinity for the child, allow him his
own sense of reality, and permit him to communicate.

  5. Discipline the child in silence. Explain to him your reasons
for discipline, prior to or subsequent to pain and anaten.

B. Educational Dianetics

  1. Supply relatively correct data to the analyzer at all times.

  2. Supply information about Dianetics to all concerned. It
is especially important to educate doctor, nurses, and mothers
to the desperate need for silent and natural childbirth and the
need for silent care in handling the newborn baby.

  3. Establish goals for the child, especially that of adulthood.

  4. Establish a definite program of acquiring bodily skills,
using guidance without force.

C. Dianetic First Aid

  1. In addition to proper medical mare, run the child in
reverie if possible immediately after moments of pain and
anaten, as soon as the analyzer is functioning again. With
smaller children, in place of reverie, use straight-line memory
technique - "What happened?" - and go over it until the child
is bored or amused.

  2. In addition to medical first aid, teach the child to run out
minor cuts, burns and scratches immediately after receiving
them. (Close the eyes and return to the moment of injury, and
run it several times with as many perceptics as possible.)

  3. Keep records of engramic moments, emotional disturbances
during prenatal life and prior to the availability of the
child for processing; also records of members of the household
and their dramatizations. Be as exact as possible. These records
should be made available to the child's auditor when the child
is ready for processing.

162                    CHILD DIANETICS

D. Dianetic Processing

  1. From the time the child begins to speak, use straight-line
memory technique on locks, controls, and valence shifts.

  2. Do no invalidate the child's sense of reality; honor the
Auditor's Code.

  3. Re-orient the child semantically, by treating reception of
original faulty information as a lock.

  4. From the age of 8, run the child in reverie: pleasure,
grief and locks.

  5. From the age of 12, process the child, using standard
procedure as outlined in SCIENCE OF SURVIVAL: Simplified, Faster
Dianetic Techniques.

  6. Restate any dianetic term if it contains a charge for the
child, or treat the receipt of the charge as a lock.

E. Things to Remember

  1. Recognize that the authority on identifying as well as
treating organic ills, germ-borne diseases, is your physician. If
possible, choose one who is a Dianeticist or knows his Dianetics.

  2. Be familiar with methods of medical first aid.

  3. Observe the precepts of preventive medicine and efficient
nutrition.

                           APPENDIX

                     The Auditor's Code*

The auditor conducts himself in such a way as to maintain
optimum affinity, communication and agreement with the pre-clear.

  The auditor is trustworthy. He understands that the pre-clear
has given into the auditor's trust his hope for higher sanity
and happiness, and that the trust is sacred and never to be
betrayed.

  The auditor is courteous. He respects the pre-clear as a
human being. He respects the self-determinism of the pre-clear.
He respects his own position as an auditor. He expresses this
respect in courteous conduct.

  The auditor is courageous. He never falls back from his duty
to a case. He never falls to use optimum procedure regardless
of any alarming conduct on the part of the pre-clear.

  The auditor never evaluates the case for the pre-clear. He
abstains from this, knowing that to compute for the pre-clear
is to inhibit the pre-clear's own computation. He knows that
to refresh the pre-clear's mind as to what went before is to
cause the pre-clear to depend heavily upon the auditor and so
to undermine the self-determinism of the pre-clear.

  The auditor never invalidates any of the data or the personality
of the pre-clear. He knows that in doing so he would seriously
enturbulate the pre-clear. He refrains from criticism and
invalidation no matter how much the auditor's own sense

* From SCIENCE OF SURVIVAL by L. Ron Hubbard.

164                    CHILD DIANETICS

of reality is twisted or shaken by the pre-clear's incidents or
utterances.

  The auditor uses only techniques designed to restore the
self-determinism of the pre-clear. He refrains from all
authoritarian or dominating conduct, leading always rather than
driving. He refrains from the use of hypnotism or sedatives
on the pre-clear no matter how much the pre-clear may demand
them out of aberration. He never abandons the pre-clear out of
faintheartedness about the ability of techniques to resolve the
case, but persists and continues to restore the pre-clear's
self-determinism. The auditor keeps himself informed of any
new skills in the science.

  The auditor cares for himself as an auditor. By working with
others he maintains his own processing at regular intervals in
order to maintain or raise his own position on the tone scale
despite restimulation of himself through the process of auditing
others. He knows that failure to give heed to his own processing,
until he himself is a release or a clear in the severest meaning
of the terms, is to cost his pre-clear the benefit of the auditor's
best performance.

                           GLOSSARY

ABERRATION:
  Any deviation from rationality.

AFFINITY:
  Cohesion between individuals, or between an individual and
  the universe; a force of attraction operating to draw them
  into closer living relationships.

ALLY:
  The person from whom sympathy came when the pre-clear
  was ill or injured. Since the ally's purpose is aligned with the
  individual's survival, the reactive mind computes that everything
  the ally does or says is right, especially whatever the ally
  said in the engram.

ANALYTICAL MIND - ANALYZER:
  That function of the mind which perceives and retains data
  in order to propound and resolve problems and direct the
  organism along the dynamics. It thinks in differences and
  similarities.

ANATEN (neologism for ANALYTICAL ATTENUATION):
  Partial or complete attenuation of the functions of the
  analytical mind; shutdown of the analyzer.

A-R-C:
  The interrelation of affinity, reality, and communication.
  The dianetic triangle.

166               CHILD DIANETICS

A-R-C- BREAK:
  An enforcing or inhibiting of affinity, reality, or communication.

ASSIST:
  The reduction of current pain by dianetic methods.

ATTENTION UNIT:
  A useful postulate designating individual sections of awareness.
  The postulate is not intended to imply that attention is
  necessarily divisible into distinct units. Attention units may
  be directed in greater or lesser quantity to any present-time
  perceptic or any point on the time track. They may be held
  in pain engrams or emotion engrams by holders, call-backs,
  and similar action phrases.

AUDITING:
  Listening, computing, and guiding with the intention of
  helping the pre-clear to resolve his case.

AUDITOR:
  An individual who conducts dianetic processing.

AUDITOR'S CODE:
  A code employed by the auditor in his relationship with the
  pre-clear to ensure ease in running the case. (See SCIENCE
  OF SURVIVAL: Simplified, Faster Dianetic Techniques, L. Ron
  Hubbard, 1951.)

BASIC AREA:
  That section of the time track which extends from the first
  moment of perceptual awareness to approximately two weeks after
  conception.

BASIC-BASIC:
  That engram which is the basic engram of the basic chain.
  A basic chain is that chain originating earliest in the engram
  bank. Basic-basic is therefore the earliest engram in the bank.

                           GLOSSARY                      167

BASIC PERSONALITY:
  The genetic personality pattern of the individual and that
  part of the mind which forms its base. Basic personality is
  masked to a greater or lesser degree by aberrations.

BLOCK:
  A denial of expression by engram commands or circuits.

BLOW LOCKS, TO:
  A removal of anaten and emotion from locks by penetrating
  them and causing the spontaneous re-analysis of the content
  by the analyzer. (See LOCK)

CHARGE:
  The aberrative force of an engram. This force is increased
  by locks and secondary engrams on the same chain.

CHILD DIANETICS:
  That branch of Dianetics which is concerned with promoting
  optimum survival of the immature human organism until such
  time as standard procedure for adults may be employed to erase
  engrams, usually around the age of twelve.

CHRONIC SOMATIC:
  A reproduction, constant or periodic, of the original physical
  pain suffered in an engramic situation.

CIRCUIT - CIRCUITRY:
  Short terms for demon circuit and demon circuitry. An engram
  command in constant restimulation which uses a part of the
  analytical mind to draw upon and compute upon information
  stored in the standard memory bank. The command phrase contains
  or implies the word you: "You've got to stop and think," "Don't
  do it;" or it may be an indirect command such as "Seeing is
  believing."

CLEAR:
  Without engrams, secondaries or locks.

168                    CHILD DIANETICS

CLEARING:
  The process of erasing all engrams, secondaries and locks from
  an individual's reactive bank by dianetic techniques.

COMMUNICATION:
  The transmission of data from individual to individual,
  from a part of the universe to the individual or from the
  memory recordings to the "I" of the individual.

COMPUTATION:
  Evaluation of data, posing and resolving of problems.

CONTAGION OF ABERRATION:
  The transmission under stress of dramatized engrams to one
  who is anaten. Thus engrams travel from one individual to
  another, wander through an entire society. (See SCIENCE
  OF SURVIVAL: Simplified, Faster Dianetic Techniques,
  L. Ron Hubbard, 1951.)

CONTROL CIRCUIT:
  A demon circuit establishing control over the individual by
  engram command, such as "You must control yourself," "You've
  got to get a grip on yourself," "You've got to get hold of
  yourself," etc.

DE-INTENSIFICATION:
  The partial reduction of a part or the whole of an engram.

DIANETICS:
  The science and techniques as discovered and organized by
  L. Ron Hubbard; the science of optimum existence and survival.

DRAMATIZATION:
  The acting out (doing or saying) of one or more valences
  from a restimulated engram.

DUB-IN:
  Material which is colored by imagination, presented by a

                           GLOSSARY                      169

  pre-clear during processing. This material is usually associated
  with and derived from the actual perceptic content of an
  engram and serves to give the engram an imaginative coloring.
  Prenatal visio is an example of dub-in.

DYNAMIC:
  The basic motivation of an organism - survival. May be
  subdivided: 1. Individual, 2. Sex and children, 3. Group
  and society, 4. Mankind. A recording containing all the
  perceptics in an incident of pain and/or unconsciousness,
  probably made on the cells of the body.

ENGRAM:
  A mental image picture of an experience containing pain,
  unconsciousness, and a real or fancied threat to survival;
  it a recording in the Reactive Mind of something which
  happened to an individual in the past and which contained pain
  and unconsciousness, both of which are recorded in the mental
  image picture called an engram.

ENGRAM COMMAND:
  Verbal material in an engram. It has compulsive force which
  causes the organism to obey the command. If not obeyed,
  the individual suffers the pain contained in the engram.

ERASE:
  To remove completely the pain and unconsciousness of an
  engram, and to remove or re-file in standard memory the
  other perceptic content of the engram.

GRIEF:
  Painful emotion resulting from loss of affinity. During
  processing grief releases in tears.

HUBBARD DIANETIC FOUNDATION, INC:
  The Foundation has been chartered as a scientific research
  corporation. Its main object and purpose as set forth in the

170                    CHILD DIANETICS

  charter, is "to conduct research in the field of the human
  mind and of human thought and action."

"I":
  That part of the analyzer which we call the monitor and
  which constitutes the center of awareness of self a the
  center of consciousness as it is classically defined.

INVALIDATION:
  A denial of the truth or wisdom of a person's word's,
  thoughts, actions, perceptions or perceptic recalls.

JUNIOR CASE:
  A pre-clear who reactively confuses himself with a relative
  or friend after whom he has been named and whose name is
  in his engram bank.

KEY-IN:
  The first lock on an engram. It activates the engram.

KEY-OUT:
  The de-intensification of the aberrative or somatic effect of
  an engram by recalling or remembering the first lock, or key-in.

LAID IN:
  The process of being recorded as engramic content.

LATE LIFE BANK:
  The reactive recordings of an individual from birth to present
  time. The majority of physical pain engrams occur before birth.

LOCK:
  An incident which, because of similar perceptic content,
  activates or restimulates an engram.

LOSS:
  Any reduction of the survival potential, including especially
  the blunting or breaking of affinity.

                           GLOSSARY                      171

MULTIVALENCE:
  The assumption of the characteristics of two or more
  valences.

NECESSITY LEVEL:
  Ability to rise above engrams when there is immediate and
  dire threat to survival.

PERCEPTIC:
  A neologism for any sense message, such as a sight, sound,
  smell, etc.

PLEASURE - PLEASURE MOMENT:
  An incident containing pleasure for the pre-clear, re-experienced
  during processing.

PRE-CLEAR:
  One who is undergoing dianetic processing.

PRENATAL AREA:
  That section of the time track which extends from the first
  moment of perceptual awareness to birth.

PRENATAL ENGRAM BANK:
  Total engram content of the prenatal area.

PREVENTIVE DIANETICS:
  That branch of Dianetics which has to do with preventing
  the occurrence, restimulation, and charging-up of engrams.

PROCESSING - TO PROCESS:
  The application of dianetic methods by an auditor with a
  view to releasing or clearing a pre-clear.

PUSH-BUTTON:
  Any simple restimulator which causes an individual to enact
  a specific, obvious dramatization.

REACTIVE BANK:
  Engram content from the beginning of life to present time.

172                    CHILD DIANETICS

REACTIVE MIND:
  That function of the mind which files and retains physical
  pain and painful emotion and seeks to direct the organism
  solely on a stimulus-response basis. It thinks only in
  identities.

REALITY:
  In an individual, that which agrees with his perceptions and
  computations and education. Between two people, that upon
  which they can agree. An individual with whom everyone
  disagreed would lose all sense of reality.

RECALL:
  Re-experience of past perceptics.

REDUCTION:
  The removal of the recorded pain in an engram. The pre-clear,
  under favorable conditions, should rise to tone 4. (See TONE).

RESTIMULATION:
  The effect of a pattern of current preceptics which brings
  the aberrative power of one or more engrams to bear on
  present behavior.

RESTIMULATOR:
  Any word, phrase, or perceptic, similar to or associated with
  the content of an engram, which has the effect of placing the
  engram in restimulation.

RETURN - RETURNING:
  The process of focussing one's attention on an incident in the
  past to such a degree that the incident is re-experienced with
  its original sights, sounds, and other perceptics.

REVERIE:
  In Dianetics, the state achieved by withdrawing the attention
  from present time and turning it into the recalling of past
  experiences, facilitated by closing one's eyes. A single period
  or session of processing.

                           GLOSSARY                      173

SECONDARIES:
  Mental image pictures containing misemotion (encysted grief,
  anger, apathy, etc.) and a real or imagined loss. They
  contain no physical pain; they are moments of shock and
  stress depending for their force on earlier engrams which
  have been restimulated by the circumstances of the secondary.

SECOND DYNAMIC:
  The urge of the individual toward survival through procreation.
  It includes both the sex act and the nurture of children.

SHUT-OFF:
  An engramic command which blocks the experiencing of one or
  more perceptics or emotions.

SOMATIC:
  A reproduction of physical pain which has been experienced
  in the past.

SONIC RECALL:
  Recall by hearing a past sound with the "mind's ear."

STANDARD BANK:
  That portion of the mind which stores all non-engramic data.

STANDARD PROCEDURE:
  The approved routine for auditing adults, as explained in
  SCIENCE OF SURVIVAL: Simplified, Faster Dianetic Techniques,
  and in the DIANETIC AUDITOR'S BULLETIN.

STRAIGHT-LINE MEMORY TECHNIQUE OR "STRAIGHT-WIRE":
  The process of questioning by which a pre-clear, while remaining
  in present time, is enabled to recover and compute past data.

174                    CHILD DIANETICS

STUCK:
  The state of having an appreciable number of attention units
  held in an engramic incident.

SYMPATHY COMPUTATION:
  A reactive conclusion that the way to obtain sympathy, and
  consequently survival, is to suffer the pain involved in the
  engram, or to obey its commands.

TERROR:
  Extreme fear. During processing terror may release partially
  as prolonged laughter.

TIME TRACK:
  The chronological order of events occurring in an individual's
  life span. The entire record of experience from the first
  moment of perceptual awareness to present time.

TONE:
  A state of mind deduced from observation of behavior,
  arbitrarily graded from 0.1 (near death), through 0.5 (apathy),
  1.5 (anger), 2.5 (boredom), 3.0 general wellbeing) to tone 4.0
  (optimum happiness).

TRIANGLE:
  A symbol used to suggest the interaction of affinity, reality
  and communication. A decrease of one aspect of the triangle
  results in decreases of the other two. Success in increasing
  one of these aspects will soon result in similar improvement
  in the other two. Also used sometimes as a shorthand symbol
  for Dianetics, since the Greek letter, Delta, is a triangle.

UNCONSCIOUSNESS:
  See Anaten.

VALENCE:
  The personality and/or characteristics of a person or an
  object. Winning valence is the dominant or most successful
  role.

                           GLOSSARY                      175

VALENCE SHIFTER:
  An engramic command which forces the pre-clear to shift
  into a valence other than his own.

VISIO RECALL:
  Recall by seeing a past sight with the "mind's eye."

                   THE HISTORY OF DIANETICS

L. Ron Hubbard, the originator and founder of Dianetics, is
a product of the atomic age. In the early 1930's, at George
Washington University, one of the first classes in "atomic and
molecular phenomena" (now called nuclear physics) was inaugurated.

  Hubbard, as a member of that class thus became one of the
first students of "nuclear physics" in America.

  It was the dream of his classmates to unlock the energy of
the atom with their knowledge of basic energy. It was the
dream of L. Ron Hubbard to utilize this knowledge to discover
the basic equations of life force, simply, to him, another kind
of energy. Both were incredible dreams. One would give Man
a conquest of time and space. The other would give him a
conquest of aberration, illness, even death itself - for death
could be conceived as a departure of energy from a damaged
container, the body.

  In a world as full of hate as it has been in the last two
decades, the release of such gigantic energy stores as might
be accomplished through the cracking of the atom could not, to
a human being with as much foresight as Hubbard, mean anything
but chaos unless the riddle of life energy - and with that,
hate itself - could also be resolved. Both must rise in the
world together.

  To Hubbard, grounded in nuclear physics and mathematics,
the world, Man and Life itself seemed the best laboratory
one could wish. The answers to the riddle of Life lay in an
examination of the living, not with test tubes or books. He

                   THE HISTORY OF DIANETICS              177

commanded three expeditions, became a member of the
Explorer's Club, studied twelve different cultures including
those of Asia and asked his questions of forgotten temples,
buried cities and ageless snows. And he studied still as a naval
officer in the caldron of World War II. His studies and his
search were rewarded with answers to his questions.

  In August of 1945 Hubbard's classmates launched upon
Hiroshima an atomic bomb - and the concussion wave jarred
further than Japan. For with that weapon a world was
in peril.

  At that very moment, in Hubbard's notebooks were written
down the fruit of all his years of patient investigation. A
telephone call to Washington would have placed another weapon
in political hands.

  All new things, in the hands of unthinking men, are first
used for destruction. Gunpowder was utilized to blast down the
security of walled towns long before it was first used to help
man, as in mining. It seemed to Hubbard that this was what
had happened to atomic fission. Here was the knowledge
necessary to send Man to the very stars, a source of enormous
energy which would help the race to conquer a physical
universe. And politicians had used the hard won knowledge
of fission to rend apart a sleeping city and destroy all Man
therein.

  Dianetics, in 1945, had come to the level where it could
destroy - to a point where the formulae of life energy could
snuff out sanity like a blown candle, just as atomic fission can
flatten a nation. Hubbard judged that that was not far enough.
Just beyond this point would lie the additional technology
necessary to use his energy formulae to restore the waning
lives of men, to secure their sanity.

  The difference was, it was in Hubbard's power to choose.
Through school and during all the years following he had
supported his own researches with a dextrous pen. Where he
could have had funds for his work he refused them and turned

178                    CHILD DIANETICS

to his typewriter instead. He wrote, he explored, he did whatever
he could to pay his own way.

  A casualty himself in World War II, he yet worked through the
last year of the conflict in a hospital, studying hard to raise
Dianetics up from the gunpowder and war category to a level of
construction.

  In 1946 he had the glimmerings of a constructive use. In
1947 he had found how this unruly energy could be smoothed
out and rearranged in a mind so that thought would be sane,
not insane. He had found how this energy governed the body
functions. And he could make a man better than that man had
ever been before, both physically and mentally. Still he did
not charge out into print with Dianetics.

  In 1949 Hubbard's work had attracted such widespread
interest amongst scientists that one of the largest psychiatric
textbook houses offered to publish a popular text if Hubbard
could make it popular enough. His dream of a calm,
three-years-to-write textbook went glimmering. The editor
demanded an immediate manuscript or none at all. Hubbard threw
in the sponge. The editor got the manuscript - 180,000 words in
three weeks.

  The book appeared in May of 1950. It instantly climbed to
the top of the best seller lists across the country.

  Hubbard's troubles had just begun. The world smashed a
highway through to his door. People began to get well who had
been "hopeless case" to medicine and psychiatry.

  Service units, which were called Foundations, were organized
in major cities. Hubbard tried to find management adequate to
take care of the task of training people and treating them
but no management could have withstood such a crush. But the
solid and real core of Dianetics began to manifest itself.
Hubbard advanced its techniques to a point where their practice
would be successful in less competent hands and a period of
steady growth was commenced.

  Occasionally he promises himself an expedition to the far

                   THE HISTORY OF DIANETICS              179

places of the world, to the Alaskan tundra or the Mountains of
the Moon and each time gives it up.

  His area of exploration is the frontier of Man. He has
already blazed a path wide enough to some day stop war and
to utterly change our social order.

                         EDITORS, 1951.

                    DIANETICS AND LANGUAGE

One can consider that the missions of the energy of Life, or at
least one of them, is the creation, conservation, maintenance,
acquisition, destruction, change, occupation, grouping and
dispersal of matter, energy, space and time, which are the
component factors of the material universe.

  So long as an individual maintains his own belief in his
ability to handle the physical universe and organisms about
him and to control them if necessary or to work in harmony
with them, and to make himself competent over and among the
physical universe of his environment, he remains healthy,
stable and balanced and cheerful. It is only after he discovers
his inabilities in handling organisms, matter, energy, space
and time, and when these things have been sharply painful to
him, that he begins to decline physically, become less competent
mentally, and to fail in life. These questions are aimed
toward the rehabilitation of his ability to handle organisms
and the physical universe.

  It was a pre-dianetic error that an individual was healthy
so long as he was adjusted to his environment. Nothing could
be less workable than this "adaptive" postulate and had anyone
cared to compare it with actuality he would have discovered
that the success of man depends upon his ability to master
and change his environment. Man succeeds because he adjusts
his environment to him, not by adjusting himself to the
environment. The "adjusted" postulate is indeed a viciously
dangerous one, since it seeks to indoctrinate the individual
into the belief that he must be a slave to his environment. The
philosophy is dangerous because the people so indoctrinated

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can be enslaved in that last of all graveyards, a welfare state.
However, this postulate is very handy in case one wishes to
subjugate or nullify human beings for his own ends. The effort
in the direction of adjusting men to their environment by
giving them "social training," by punishing them if they are
bad, and by otherwise attempting to subdue and break them, has
filled the society's prisons and insane asylums to the bursting
point. Had anyone cared to look at the real universe he would
have found this to be true: No living organism can be broken
by force into an adjusted state and still remain able and
amiable. Any horse trainer, for instance, knows that the horse
must not be pushed or broken into submission if one wishes to
retain his abilities, but, as they used to say in the army, mules
were far more expensive than men, and perhaps it was not in
the interest of pre-dianetic thought to preserve men in a happy
state. However, one should not be too harsh on these previous
schools of thought, since they had no knowledge of the natural
laws of thought and in the absence of these, criminals can only
be punished and not cured and the insane can only be driven
down into the last dregs of tractability. The nearer to death,
according to those schools of thought, the better, as witness
electric shock "therapy" and brain surgery - those efforts on
the part of the mental medical men to as closely approximate
euthanasia as possible without crossing the border into the legal
fact of death. These past schools have now been taken under
the wing of Dianetics, which embraces all fields of thought,
and are being re-educated. It is found that they quickly desert
the punishment-drive "therapies" as soon as they completely
understand that they are not necessary, now that the natural
laws of thought and behavior are known. One cannot, however,
wholly repress a shudder at the fate of the hundreds of
thousands of human guinea pigs whose lives and persons were
ruined by the euthanistic methods employed in the dark ages
of unreason.

  Your health depends almost entirely upon your confidence
in your ability to handle the physical universe about you and

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to change and adjust your environment so that you can survive
in it. It is actually an illusion that you cannot ably handle
your environment, an illusion implanted by aberrated people
in the past, during moments when you were unconscious and
could not defend yourself or when you were small and were
directed and misdirected and given pain and sorrow and upset,
and had no way to effect your right to handle yourself in your
environment.

  On Lake Tanganyika the natives have a very interesting way
of catching fish. There on the equator the sun shines straight
down through the clear water. The natives take blocks of wood
and string them along a long rope. They stretch this rope
between two canoes and with these abrest begin to paddle
toward the shoal water. By the time they have reached the
shoals, schools of fish are piled and crowded into the rocks
and onto the beach. The blocks of wood on the rope made shadows
which went all the way down to the bottom of the lake and the
fish seeing the approach of these shadows and the apparent
solid bars which they formed in the water, swam fearfully
away from them and so were caught.

  A man can be driven and harrassed and worked upon by
aberrated people about him until he too conceives shadows to
be reality. Should he simply reach out toward them, he would
discover how thin and penetratable they are. His usual course,
however, is to retreat from them and at last find himself in
the shadows of bad health, broken dreams and an utter disownment
of himself and the physical universe.

  A considerable mechanical background of the action and
peculiarities of the energy of thought make it possible for
these lists to bring about the improved state of being that
they do, when properly used; but over and above these mechanical
aspects, the simple recognition that there have have been times
in one's life when he did control the physical universe as
needful, when he was in harmony with organisms about him,
validate the reality of his ability.

  Caught up by the illusion of words, stressed into obedience

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when he was a child by physical means, man is subject to his
greatest shadow and illusion - language. The words, forcefully
spoken, "Come here!" have no actual physical ability to draw
the individual to the speaker. Yet he may approach, although
he may be afraid to do so. He is impelled in his approach
because he has been made to "come here" by physical force so
many times in the early period of his life, while the words
"come here" were being spoken, that he is trained much like
a dog to obey a signal. The physical force which made him
approach is lost to view and in its place stands the shadow
"come here"; thus, to that degree he loses his self-determinism
on the subject of "come here." As life goes on, he makes the
great error of supposing that any and all words have force
and importance. With words, those about him plant their shadow
cages. They restrict him from doing this; they compel him
to do that - and almost hour-by-hour and day-by-day he is
directed by streams of words which in the ordinary society are
not meant to help him but only to restrain him because of the
fear of others. This Niagara of language is effective only
because it substitutes for periods when he was physically impelled
against his wishes to accept things he did not want, to care for
things for which he actually had no use or liking, to go where
he did not wish to go, and to do what he did not want to do.
Language is quite acceptable when understood as a symbol for
the act and thing, but the word "ain tray" is no substitute for
an ash tray. If you do not believe this, try to put your ashes
on the airwaves which have just carried the words "ash tray."
Called a "saucer" or an "elephant," the object intended for
ashes serves just as well.

  By the trick of language, then, and a magical wholly
unsubstantial trick it is, men seek to order the lives of men
for their own advantage and men caged about by the shadows
observe and believe to their own detriment.

  All languages derive from observation of matter, energy,
space and time and other organisms in the environment. There

184                    CHILD DIANETICS

is no word which is not derived and which does not have the
connotation of the physical universe and other organisms.

  Thus, when you answer these questions by recalling incidents
which they evoke, be very sure that you do not evoke language
incidents but action incidents. You do not want the time when
you were told to do something - you want the time when you
performed the action. You do not have to connect the language
to the action in any way, but you will find as you answer
questions on any of these lists that the value of language
begins to depreciate considerably and that language strangely
enough will become much more useful to you.

  Can you recall a time when:

1. You moved an object.
2. An object moved you.
3. You threw an organism up into the air.
4. You walked down stairs.
5. You acquired something you wanted.
6. You created something good.
7. You felt big in a certain space.
8. You were proud to move something heavy.
9. You handled energy well.
10. You built a fire.
11. You lost something you didn't want.
12. You forced something on somebody.
13. You promoted survival.
14. You pleasantly expended time.
15. You closed in space.
16. You were master of your own time.
17. You opened up a space.
18. You handled a machine well.
19. You stopped a machine.
20. You raised an object.
21. You lowered yourself.
22. You destroyed something you didn't want.
23. You changed something for the better.

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24. An organism you did not like moved away from you.
25. You obtained something you wanted.
26. You maintained a person.
27. You brought somebody you liked close to you.
28. You left a space you didn't like.
29. You conquered energy.
30. You destroyed a bad organism.
31. You handled fluid well.
32. You brought a number of pleasant objects together.
33. You placed a number of objects into space.
34. You threw unwanted objects away.
35. You dispersed many objects.
36. You tore an unwanted object to pieces.
37. You filled a space.
38. You regulated another's time.
39. You held an object close that you wanted.
40. You improved an object.
41. You emptied a space you wanted.
42. You went a distance.
43. You let time go.
44. You did what you wanted to do yourself.
45. You won out over an organism.
46. You got out from under domination.
47. You realized you were living your own life.
48. You knew you didn't have to do it.
49. You escaped from a dangerous space.
50. You entered upon a pleasant time.

                    ASSISTS TO REMEMBERING

  "Remember" is derived, of course, directly from action in
the physical universe. How would a deaf mute teach a child
to remember? It would be necessary for him to keep forcing
objects or actions on the child when the child left them
alone or omitted them. Although parents are not deaf mutes,
children do not understand languages at very early ages, and
as a consequence learn to "remember" by having their attention
first called toward actions and objects, spaces and time. It
violates the self-determinism of the individual, and therefore
his ability to handle himself, to have things forced upon him
without his agreement. This could be said to account, in part,
for some of the "poor memories" about which people brag or
complain.

  Because one learns language at the level of the physical
universe and action within it, he could be said to do with
his thoughts what he has been compelled to do with the matter,
energy, space and time in his environment. Thus, if these have
been forced upon him and he did not want them, after a while
he will begin to reject the thoughts concerning these objects,
but if these objects, spaces and times and actions are forced
upon him consistently enough he will at length go into an
apathy about them. He will not want them very much but he
thinks he has to accept them. Later on, in school, his whole
livelihood seems to depend on whether or not he can remember
the "knowledge" which is forced upon him.

  The physical universe level of remembering, then, is retaining
matter, energy, space and time. To improve the memory,

                    ASSISTS TO REMEMBERING               187

it is only necessary to rehabilitate the individual's choice of
acceptance of the material universe.

  In answering these questions, particular attention should be
paid to the happier incidents. Inevitably many unhappy incidents
will flick through, but where selection is possible happy or
analytical incidents should be stressed. This list does not
pertain to asking you to remember times when you remembered.
It pertains to acquiring things which you wanted to acquire.

  Can you remember a time when:

1. You acquired something you wanted.
2. You threw away something you didn't want.
3. You abandoned something you knew you were supposed to have.
4. You did something else with the time which was otherwise
   appointed for you.
5. You went into a space you were not supposed to occupy.
6. You left the place you were supposed to be.
7. You were happy to have acquired something you couldn't afford.
8. You happily defied directions you had been given.
9. You were sent to one place and chose to go to another.
10. You chose your own clothing.
11. You wore something in spite of what people would think.
12. You got rid of something which bored you.
13. You were glad to have choice over one of two objects.
14. You didn't drink any more than you wanted to.
15. You successfully refused to eat.
16. You did what you pleased with yourself.
17. You did what you pleased with a smaller person.
18. You were right not to have accepted something.
19. You gave away a present you had received.
20. You destroyed an object somebody forced upon you.

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21. You had something you wanted and maintained it well.
22. You maliciously scuffed your shoes.
23. You didn't read the book you had been given.
24. You refused to be owned.
25. You changed somebody's orders.
26. You slept where you pleased.
27. You refused to bathe.
28. You spoiled some clothing and were cheerful about it.
29. You got what you wanted.
30. You got back something you had lost.
31. You got the person you wanted.
32. You refused a partner.
33. You threw the blankets off the bed.
34. You had your own way.
35. You found you had been right in refusing it.