6201C16 SHSpec-100  Nature of Withholds

     We are not trying to teach you not to have withholds.  It is OK not to do
everything that occurs to you, good or bad.  We are trying to get you out of
the tangle you got yourself into: "What do you mean, having such terrible
impulses?" Why does the PC have these impulses that he now has to withhold?

     The withhold is that area of motionlessness following that area of
doingness which you shouldn't have done.  This classifies actions into things
you should have done and things you shouldn't have done.  Of course there are
laudable withholds, e.g. not to have gotten angry or done some overt.  A
laudable withhold is something society expects of you, providing you have
these other impulses to do things you "shouldn't", according to society.  So
all actions divide into laudable and undesirable.  A laudable withhold goes
with an undesirable action: withholding self from doing it, and the laudable
action goes along with an undesirable withhold.  So society can always enforce
mores by making some actions and some withholds laudable.  But since there are
so many groups, whose mores conflict, one can get rather confused.  The same
action in different times or places can be "good" or "bad".  There is no
action that is good in all times and places, and there is no withhold that
should be withheld at all times and places.  It all depends on viewpoint.

     When sec checking, we must then be dealing with another factor.  People
compute that good people withhold more than bad people, so the "gooder" you
are, the less you communicate, so the "goodest" people are in cemeteries.  We
must be doing something other than pulling withholds.  We are.  We are
remedying the compulsion or obsession to commit actions that have to be
withheld.  Sec checking is to remedy unreasonable action, that's all.  What
you want to rehabilitate is his ability to determine his own actions.  This
also rehabilitates his communication, as well as covering whatever mores he
will wind up with.

     Control of communication downgrades into MEST as control of reach.
Communication is the ability to control an outflow or inflow or stop it.  This
downgrades into control of reach.  Where you have a person who is unable to
leave his house, the trouble is not the house but Picadilly Circus.  The PC is
afraid that someday he will be in Picadilly Circus and take off all his
clothes.  But he has forgotten this.  All he knows is that he mustn't leave
home.  He has occluded the overt and the withhold.  The mechanism is that the
PC can be so worried about taking his clothes off in Picadilly Circus that he
will think of nothing but withholding this.  This circumscribes his life
considerably.  [This is the mechanism of phobias.]  Having to remember to do
some desirable action is a similar attention trap, e.g. the superstitions that
kids get into.  If we educated the same man never to outflow and never to
withhold either, both equally balanced, we would have an insane ridge.  He
would get stuck in an inaction because he would forget what he wasn't supposed
to do and what he was withholding.  He would have a covered overt and a
covered withhold and be motionless.  In some sphere, he would not be free to
communicate because he couldn't find out what the desirable action was.  The
average person is in this condition.  He doesn't know what he must reach and
what he must withhold, but the habit pattern of caution stays with him.  All
psychoanalysis trained people to be was cautious.

     Someone with an enforced outflow has a similar problem.  He must go, or
do, or whatever, without knowing why.  In order to restore control over one's
reach / not reach, be reached / not be reached, one must get these unknowingnesses
out of the road or the person will sometimes be nervous to the point of
collapse when you ask them to do something or other.

     In order to aberrate somebody, establish compulsion to reach or to
withdraw (withhold) as an absolute necessity, then shift them in time and
place to produce no necessity for this, so they forget it; make an
unknowingness out of it all.  Do this several hundred thousand times, and the
person will start to feel he didn't know what he should be doing.  When a
person gets very bad off, any decision to act causes him to withhold and vice
versa.  Government programs are good examples of this.

     Some people are totally susceptible to any inflowing action of any kind.
Anything that happens to them in society causes them to have an instant
reaction to have that with them.  In assessing such pcs, if the auditor
suggests some item, they will take it.  Even if they are assessed by an
auditor with a degree of altitude, they will hold like briars to whatever is
found, right or wrong.  You can test such an item by getting in suppress,
inval, and eval on the item and see if it is still in.  The average person is
on a gradient scale of this sort of thing.  He sees a few things which
restimulate him and put him on a total effect basis.

     The only thing wrong with that total effect basis is that a person has no
command over his reach and withdraw, so he is not master of his actions and
can't be sensible about what he does.  I.Q. is one's ability to govern one's
environment.

     Scientology is almost alone in considering that Man should have any
self-determinism, because others, falling short of this, have looked on the
fact that a criminal has a compulsion to commit crimes.  Being unable to do
anything for a criminal, they think the only answer is to make the criminal
withhold his crimes harder.  That philosophy doesn't work.  You can compel
someone not to do something to the point where he can do nothing else.  He
withholds so far that the withhold fails, and it becomes a compulsion.  That
is the danger of the philosophy that the more "good" withholds we have, the
better off we are.

     The basis of action in human beings is:

          1. He doesn't know what his compulsive actions are, so he doesn't
             know what he is withholding.  Not-knowingness is the common
             denominator of all O/W's that are operative on the individual.

          2. The half-knowns that arise in sec checking, where the PC knows
             and you don't, are also a source of trouble.  Withholds are half
             a "know".  If the PC knows something, that is not enough.  The
             auditor has to know it too.  The PC will get upset if you go on
             not-knowing about it when he knows.  The half-know is very
             uncomfortable.  It won't duplicate, so it won't blow, so it is an
             upsetting thing to have.

     The withholds don't have to be serious.  In session, they can be very
trivial bits of non-communication which multiply.  They are relatively unknown
to the PC as they drift by.  An invalidation often betokens a withhold, so
check for inval and withhold to keep the ruds in and the needle clean during
sec checks and assessments.  Withhold is the common denominator of every out
rudiment.  The only exception is where you are running the session for form's
sake and not for the PC, where you are not auditing the PC who is in front of
you, where you have disobeyed the Auditor's Code through not being in
communication with the PC and have set up an unintentional withhold for the PC
throughout the whole session.  The PC who cannot talk to the auditor, because
the auditor is not really there, is on an unintentional withhold, which still
causes an ARC break.  You must run the session for the PC.  The PC owns the
session.  Almost all breakage amongst children is due to their being put on an
unintentional withhold.  All withholds must contain an intention to
communicate.

     The intention to reach must exist before a withhold can occur.  There
must have been an intention to communicate before there is an ARC break.
Therefore, a PC being audited by someone who is out of comm with him will ARC
break.  Remember that every session you run is for that PC and by the auditor,
and for no one else.  In training, you could get auditors to make a long list
of all the reasons why they were running a session.  You are liable to get
fabulous things, not including that it is for the PC.  It is the PC who owns
the session, not the auditor.  If you master that point, you will overcome
most of your difficulties with auditing and any distaste you might have for
it.

     If a PC feels that he can't comm to the auditor, this equates to the fact
that he must be withholding.  This restimulates other withholds of undesirable
action.  The restimulated withhold may be a failed withhold which brings about
obsessive action at once, and the PC finds himself in the God-Awful position of engaging in actions he knows are reprehensible and incapable of stopping himself from acting.  He wonders how he got in this position as he berates the auditor.  He feels bad about the fact that he is doing these actions while he is doing them.  So you, by letting him have a session withhold, are likely to get him into this weird action which amazes him most of all.  TR-0 and TR-4 are the most important TR's from the standpoint of getting and keeping the PC in session.  TR-0 is important from the auditor's viewpoint, TR-4 from the PC's.  The way to handle TR-4 is to be sure that it is the PC's session.  Just give him the session.

     In sec checking, you are trying to discover the actions that are
considered undesirable by the PC and the withholds that restrain them.  You
get off the withhold by blowing the prior confusion.  When you are sec
checking, you are on the business of the prior confusion and the motionless
point.  The prior confusion is the overt; the stable datum is the withhold.
The anatomy of withhold is:

     1. Done undesirable action.

     2. Stop undesirable action.

     3. Natter.

The guy can't reach and he can't withhold, but he can natter.

     When you have the withhold, you have the motionless point, but you must
get the prior confusion; you must get what the flowed, since this PC is the
one who is there being audited.  [This is why you must get the done in pulling
a withhold.] Use the critical statement to find the overt.  But don't pull the
unkind thought; pull the overt underlying it.  This overt is what gives you a
sort of motor action.  Natter is not necessarily motivatorish.  To get the
charge off Step 2 (above), you can ask the PC, "Have you ever done that
since?" The PC will think you are asking for more overts, but in fact you are
getting him to spot whether he has been withholding himself from doing it ever
since.  He will be relieved when that withhold is off, because the stress of
maintaining the withhold is relieved.  He can feel uncomfortable just getting
off the fact of having done some undesirable action, because you have
unstrapped some of the restraint against doing it again.  He won't feel relief
from the session, because the full extent of the withhold isn't off yet.  So
ask the above question.  The PC may not be entirely happy about giving up the
withhold.  Doing this may trigger off ways he was restraining himself without
getting the overt.  He may be afraid to get all the withhold off because he
might do the action!  So make it a rule always to find the overt.  Also, ask
for other times he did it and didn't do it.  [Get all.]