L. Ron Hubbard
claimed in his book, Dianetics - The Modern Science of Mental Health, that he based Dianetics, the precursor of Scientology, on several great
thinkers. "The ancient hindu writings, the work of the early Greeks and Romans
including Lucretius, the labors of Francis Bacon, the researches of Darwin and
some of the thoughts of Herbert Spenser compose the bulk of the philosophical
background." Dianetics, p. 530
I wonder what Lucretius had to contribute? Hubbard actually took most of Dianetics' theory and techniques from Count Alfred Korzybski's writings on General Semantics and Sigmund Freud's writings on emotional catharsis.
Harvey Jackins claims to have stumbled onto the discharge and re-evaluation process which he calls Re-evaluation Counseling by accident, but as you will see, it was no accident. Jackins and others incorporated the Dianetics Auditing Center of Seattle in 1952. He later broke from Dianetics around the time that Hubbard was developing Dianetics into The Church of Scientology. Hubbard became obcessed with making money and getting power. He operated the Church to that end, ruthlessly attacking anyone who he perceived as an enemy. He blackmailed people based on their confidential audits, targeted anyone who challenged him with harassment, organized raids of the IRS to steal information, tried to get control of Rhodesia to use as his base, etc. This culture of paranoia and lawlessness has sadly been passed on to the current leadership of Scientology under David Miscavige. Jackins claims to have developed Re-evaluation Counseling out of his personal experiences, specifically an incident when he stayed with a friend who was undergoing a difficult time and who cried whenever Jackins gave him any attention. Jackins' story goes that this scene lasted for days until his friend stopped crying and said he was feeling much better. Jackins claims that he and others experimented with giving attention like this for the purpose of eliciting emotions, and out of this experimentation came Re-evaluation Counseling. What actually happened is that Jackins and others incorporated and franchised Hubbard's for-profit Dianetics Auditing Center of Seattle, Washington USA, and used Dianetic auditing techniques on their clients to elicit emotional discharge for the purpose of healing old hurts. Sometime during the late '50's or early 60's, they dropped the Dianetics copyrighted names, terminology and manuals and substituted "Re-evaluation Counseling" names, terminology and manuals. The Dianetics Auditing Center of Seattle became Personal Counselors, Inc, the same office building in a former church that RCers go to today for one-way intensive counseling. Only the E-meters have been dropped since the the days of Dianetic auditing as you will see. Read on.
A comparison of Hubbard's terms, techniques and concepts in his 1950's book, Dianetics - The Modern Science of Mental Health, with Jackins' terms, techniques, and concepts in the Re-evaluation Counseling Fundamentals Manual and The Human Side of Human Beings reveals much borrowing on Jackins' part. The Re-evaluation Counseling term that is equivalent to the Dianetics term will be in parentheses.
He describes how recounting hurtful experiences and discharging (LRH's term) seems to heal the hurt, allowing us to re-evaluate (Korzybski's term) the perceptions recorded when hurt. He describes engrams (distress patterns) that are in constant restimulation and how to audit them (chronic distress patterns) "Engrams can...be held in chronic restimulation! This means a chronic partial shutdown of analytical power." He describes how 2 auditors can audit each other in turn to release and clear engrams (co-counseling). He describes the goal of basing one's life on rationality rather than aberation (distress) "Sanity depends upon rationality." He describes how we futilely dramatize (LRH's term) the unprocessed hurtful experience unless we find an auditor and discharge the engram. He describes how we humans are naturally cooperative, immensely intelligent, never to be blamed for the engrams we've acquired or the dramatizations we done. He describes how homosexuality is a psychosomatic illness caused by early engramatic (distress) experiences which become attached to sex and is dischargeable (Jackins' gay policy) "He (the homosexual) is very far from culpable for his condition, but he is also so far from normal and so extemely dangerous to society that the tolerance of perversion is as thoroughly bad for society as punishment for it." He describes how preventative Dianetics would audit and clear parents and their children so that they would not pass on engrams to their children by contagion (family work). He describes how an auditor does not evaluate or force on any pre-clear any opinion or advice. He describes how "it is vey very true that aberation (distress recordings) is caused by what has been done to not what has been done by the patient". "The word auditor is used...because it is a cooperative effort between the auditor and patient" (2 intelligences focused on the clients distress patterns). "A reactive mind (where distress patterns are stored) will not permit an individual to be aberrated or chronically psychosomatically ill unless the illness has survival value". "The problem of discovering true data could be resolved only by jettisoning all former evaluations of humanity and the human mind and all 'facts'...and starting fresh, evolving the entire science from a new highest common denominator". "...engrams appear in chains of incidents, each incident much like the next...The first incident on the chain, the basic for that chain, holds the others... more recounting whenever he finds the preclear (the client) unwilling to recount again, for here...more charge (discharge) is present". "Not until you have worked out every moment of physical pain and discharged all moments of painful emotion will the case be cleared". (reemergence) "The engram of physical pain...and if it is going to lift...it comes off in yawns.". "If a man has, arbitrarily 1000 units of life force, he has the ability to channel them, when clear, into highly zestful existence (Zest is Best)".
"The techniques available for an auditor are as follows: "Dramatization is survival conduct - in the silly reactive mind way of thinking - based on the premise that the organism, in a 'similar' situation, lived through it because those actions were present.". 'Discharge the reactive engram bank and the schizophrenic faces reality at last, the main-depressive sets forth to accomplish things...". "The engram is the single source of aberrations and psychosomatic ills" (Distress patterns are the single source of irrationality, mental illness and devisiveness).
"It is not enough for
the individual to be himself aberrated, for he discovers himself within the
confines of a society which itself has compounded its culture into many
unreasonable prejudices and customs." (oppression theory and social activism).
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This page, and all contents, are Copyright (c) 1998 by Rich Mesek, Weymouth, Massachusetts, USA.