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HCOB: Psychosis

SPDL Note: In HCOB 28 Nov 1970 Psychosis and HCOPL 5 Apr 1965 Handling the Suppressive Person The Basis of Insanity, Hubbard provides his “technical” criteria for determining if someone is a Suppressive Person.  To avoid being identified as an SP, a person must a) submit to Scientology’s “psychotherapy,” called “auditing, ” and b) say that he or she benefited from it, called “making case gain.”

If either a) or b) is answered in the negative, Scientology treats the person as an SP. It’s as simple as that — if the person won’t submit to the auditing, or won’t say he benefited from it, that person is an antisocial personality, an insane criminal, and fair game.

There is quite clearly a very high motivation for Scientologists to have “huge wins” in their auditing and to write “glowing success stories” about all the “fabulous gains” they’ve gotten.

 

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO BULLETIN OF 28 NOVEMBER 19701; 2; 3; 4

Remimeo
Class VIIIs
Class VIII Checksheet

C/S Series 22

PSYCHOSIS

Through a slight change of procedure on certain preclears I have been able to view the underlying motives and mechanisms of psychosis.

Very possibly this is the first time the mechanisms which bring about insanity have been fully viewed. I must say that it requires a bit of confronting.

The alleviation of the condition of insanity has also been accomplished now and the footnote in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health concerning future research into this field can be considered fulfilled.

The things a C/S5 should know about insanity are as follows:

HIGHER PERCENT

About 15 percent to 20 percent of the human race apparently is insane or certainly a much higher percent than was estimated.

The truly insane do not necessarily act insane visibly. They are not the psychiatric obvious cases who go rigid for years or scream for days. This is observed only in the last stages or during temporary stress.

Under apparent social behavior the continual crimes knowingly committed by the insane are much more vicious than ever has been cataloged in psychiatric texts.

The actions of the insane are not “unconscious”. They are completely aware of what they are doing.

All insane actions are entirely justified and seem wholly rational to them. As they have no reality on the harmful and irrational nature of their conduct it does not often register on an E-Meter.

The product of their post duties is destructive but is excused as ignorance or errors.

As cases in normal processing they roller coaster continually.

They nearly always have a fixed emotional tone. It does not vary in nearly all insane people. In a very few it is cyclic, high then low.

All characteristics classified as those of the “suppressive person” are in fact those of an insane person.

The easiest ways for a C/S to detect the insane are:

1. Pretending to do a post or duties, the real consistent result is destructive to the group in terms of breakage, lost items, injured business, etc.

2. The case is no case gain6 or roller coaster7 and is covered under “PTS symptoms”.8 “A POTENTIAL TROUBLE SOURCE is defined as a person who while active in Scientology or a preclear yet remains connected to a person or a group that is a suppressive person or group. ¶ A SUPPRESSIVE PERSON or GROUP is one that actively seeks to suppress or damage Scientology by suppressive acts. ¶ SUPPRESSIVE ACTS are acts calculated to impede or destroy Scientology or a Scientologist.” — L. Ron Hubbard Introduction to Scientology Ethics]

3. They are usually chronically physically ill.

4. They have a deep but carefully masked hatred of anyone who seeks to help them.

5. The result of their “help” is actually injurious.

6. They often seek transfers or wish to leave.

7. They are involved in warfare with conflicts around them which are invisible to others. One wonders how they can be so involved or get so involved in so much hostility.

TYPES

The German psychiatric 1500 or so “different types of insanity” are just different symptoms of the same cause. There is only one insanity and from it springs different manifestations. Psychiatry erred in calling these different types and trying to invent different treatments.

DEFINITION

Insanity can now be precisely defined.

The definition is:

INSANITY IS THE OVERT OR COVERT BUT ALWAYS COMPLEX AND CONTINUOUS DETERMINATION TO HARM OR DESTROY.

Possibly the only frightening thing about it is the cleverness with which it can be hidden.

Whereas a sane person can become angry or upset and a bit destructive for short periods, he or she recovers. The insane mask it, are misemotional continuously and do not recover. (Except by modern processing.)

THE NATURE OF MAN

Man is basically good. This is obvious. For when he begins to do evil he seeks to destroy his memory in order to change and seeks to destroy his body. He seeks to check his evil impulses by inhibiting his own skill and strength.

He can act in a very evil fashion but his basic nature then makes it mandatory that he lessens himself in many ways.

The towering “strength” of a madman is a rarity and is compensated by efforts at self-destruction.

Man’s mortality, his “one life” fixation, all stem from his efforts to check himself, obliterate his memory in a fruitless effort to change his conduct and his self-destructive habits and impulses and losses of skills and abilities.

As this rationale proves out completely in processing and fits all cases observed, we have for the first time proof of his actual nature.

As only around 20 percent are insane, and as those who previously worked in the mental field were themselves mainly insane, man as a whole has been assigned an evil repute. Governments, where such personalities exist, listen to the opinion of the insane and apply the characteristic of 20 percent to the entire hundred percent.

This gives an 80 percent wrong diagnosis. Which is why mental science itself was destructive when used by states.

TECHNIQUES

The only technique available at this writing which will benefit the insane is contained in all the overt-motivator sequences and Grade II technology. At Flag at this writing new improvement on this exists but it is so powerful that slight errors in use can cause a psychotic break in the insane. It therefore will only be exported for use by specially trained persons and this programming will require quite a while.

MEANWHILE it helps the C/S to know and use these firm rules:

ALWAYS RUN DIANETIC TRIPLES.

Never run Singles. The overt side (Flow 2) is vital. If you only run Flow 1 Motivators, the pc will not recover fully. Further running Flow 1 (motivator only) any psychotic being processed will not recover but may even trigger into a psychotic break. If one never ran anything but motivators, psychotic manifestations would not erase.

DEPEND ON EXPANDED GRADE II TECHNOLOGY TO EASE OFF OR HANDLE THE INSANE.

Don’t keep asking what’s been done to him as he’ll trigger.

A new discovery on this is that when you run out the motivator the person gets a higher reality on his overts. If you ran out all his motivators he would have no reason for his overts. If these are not then run out he might cave himself in.

PATTERN OF BEHAVIOR

The APPARENT pattern of insane behavior is to come in (ask for processing, go on staff, etc) with the advertised intention of being helped or helping, then mess up either as a pc or on post, then state how bad it all is and leave. It looks obvious enough. He came, found it bad, left.

That is only the APPARENT behavior. APPARENT REASONS.

Based on numerous cases, this is the real cycle. Hearing of something good that might help these hateful awful rotten nasty people, the psycho comes in, wrecks this, upsets that, caves in this one, chops up that one and WHEN SOMEBODY SAYS “NO!” the psychotic either

a. caves himself in physically or

b runs away.

The psychotic is motivated by intent to harm.

If he realizes he is harming things he shouldn’t, he caves himself in. If he is afraid he will be found out, he runs.

In the psychotic the impulse is quite conscious.

CONCLUSION

None of this is very nice. It is hard to confront. Even I find it so.

Freud thought all men had a hidden monster in them for he dealt mainly with the psychotic and their behavior was what he saw.

All men are not like this. The percentage that are is greater than I supposed but is a long way from all men.

Sometimes one only becomes aware of these when things are getting worked on and improved. They stay on as long as it can be made bad or there is hope it can be destroyed. Then when attention is given to improvement they blow.

Artists, writers often have these types hanging around them as there is someone or something there to be destroyed. When success or failure to destroy or possible detection appears on the scene they blow, often as destructively as possible.

Orgs are subjected to a lot of this. A psychotic sometimes succeeds in blowing off good staff. And then sooner or later realizes how evil he is acting and sickens or leaves.

The society is not geared to any of this at all. The insane walk around wrecking the place and decent people think it’s “human nature” or “inevitable” or a “bad childhood”.

As of this writing the insane can be handled. The proof of any pudding is the processing. And this is successful. It is also rather swift. But, as I say, it is so swift the special technique has to be done by the specially trained flubless auditor.

For a long while I’ve realized that we would have to be able to handle insane people as the psychiatrist is fading. I have had opportunity to work on the problem. And have it handled. Until it is fully released, the C/S will benefit greatly from knowing the above as these come on his lines far more often than he has suspected.

The insane can be helped. They are not hopeless.

I trust this data will be of use.

L. Ron Hubbard
Founder

Notes

  1. Document studied on the How to Confront and Shatter Suppression PTS/SP Course. (2001 ed.) ↩
  2. Document studied on DSA Investigations Officer Full Hat. ↩
  3. Document studied on Confidential GO Intelligence Course. ↩
  4. Document studied on the Hubbard False Purpose Rundown Auditor Course. ↩
  5.  C/S: Case supervisor.  Case supervisors are in charge of programming and overseeing the “psychotherapeutic counseling” called ” auditing” of Scientologists. ↩
  6. “case gain: an improvement or resurgence experienced from auditing; any case betterment according to the preclear.”   —  L. Ron Hubbard Introduction to Scientology Ethics ↩
  7.  “ Roller Coaster — a case that betters then worsens. The person is doing well or he is not doing well, and then is doing well, and then is not doing well. That is a roller coaster. And when he is not doing well he is sometimes ill. ¶ A roller coaster is always connected to a suppressive person and will not get steady gain until the suppresive is found on the case.” — L. Ron Hubbard Introduction to Scientology Ethics ↩
  8. “ PTS [Potential Trouble Source ↩

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HCOPL: Responsibility

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO POLICY LETTER OF 2 NOVEMBER 19701
Issue III

Remimeo

RESPONSIBILITY

Note: This policy is extracted verbatim from HCOB 4 Feb. 60 I, THEORY OF RESPONSIBILITY PROCESSING. Certain paragraphs have been omitted where they applied specifically to auditing.

In order to make up one’s mind to be responsible for things it is necessary to get over the idea that one is being forced into responsibility.

The power of choice is still senior to responsibility. What one does against his will operates as an overt act against oneself. But where one’s will to do has deteriorated to unwillingness to do anything, lack of will is itself an aberration.

There is nothing wrong, basically, with doingness. But where one is doing something he is unwilling to do, aberration results. One does, in such a case, while unwilling to do. The result is doingness without responsibility.

In the decline of any state into slavery as in Greece, or into economic strangulation of the individual as in our modern Western society, doingness is more and more enforced and willingness to do is less and less in evidence. At length people are doing without being responsible. From this results bad workmanship, crime, indigence and its necessities for welfarism. At length there are so many people who are unwilling to do that the few left have to take the full burden of the society upon their backs. Where high unwillingness to do exists, democracy is then impossible, for it but votes for the biggest handout.

Where high unwillingness to do exists then we have a constant restimulation of all the things one is really unwilling to do such as overt acts. Forcing people who do not want to work to yet work restimulates the mechanism of overt acts with, thereby, higher and higher crime ratio, more and more strikes and less and less understanding of what it is all about.

The individual who has done something bad that he was not willing to do then identifies anything he does with any  unwillingness to do—when of course he has done this many times. Therefore all doingness becomes bad. Dancing becomes bad. Playing games becomes bad. Even eating and procreation become bad. And all because unwillingness to do something bad has evolved and identified into unwillingness to do.

The person who has done something bad restrains himself by withholding doingness in that direction. When at length he conceives he has done many many bad things, he becomes a total withhold. As you process him you encounter the recurring phenomenon of his realization that he has not been as bad as he thought he was. And that’s the wonderful part of it. People are  never as bad as they think they are—and certainly other people are never as bad as one thinks they have been.

The basic wonder is that people police themselves. Out of a concept of good they conceive themselves to be bad, and after that seek every way they can to protect others from self. A person does this by reducing his own ability. He does it by reducing his own activity. He does this by reducing his own knowingness.

Where you see a thetan who sleeps too much and does too little, where you see a person who conceives bad doingness on every hand, you see a person who is safeguarding others from the badness of himself or herself.

Now there is another extreme. A person who must do because of economic or other whips, and yet because of his own concept of his own badness dares not do, is liable to become criminal. Such a person’s only answer to doingness is to do without taking any responsibility and this, when you examine the dynamics, falls easily into a pattern of dramatized overt acts. Here you have a body that is not being controlled, where most knowledge is obscured and where responsibility for others or even self is lacking. It is an easy step from criminality to insanity, if indeed there is any step at all. Such people cannot be policed since being policed admits of some obedience. Lacking control there is no ability to obey, and so they wind up simply hating police and that is that.

Only when economic grips are so tight or political pressure is so great as it is in Russia do we get high criminality and neurotic or psychotic indexes. Whenever doing is accompanied by no will to do, irresponsibility for one’s own acts can result.

Basically, then, when one is processing a pc, one is seeking to rehabilitate a willingness to do. In order to accomplish this one must rehabilitate the ability to withhold on the pc’s own determinism (not by punishment) further bad actions.

Only then will the pc be willing to recover from anything wrong with the pc since anything wrong with the pc is self-imposed in order to prevent wrongdoing at some past time.

Responsibility can be rehabilitated on any case.

L. Ron Hubbard
Founder

Notes

  1. Document studied on the How to Confront and Shatter Suppression PTS/SP Course. (2001 ed.) ↩

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HCOB: Overts—Order Of Effectiveness in Processing

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex
HCO BULLETIN OF 10 JULY 19641

Remimeo
Sthil Students
Missions

OVERTS—ORDER OF EFFECTIVENESS IN PROCESSING

(STAR RATED except for Forbidden Words List)

It will be found in processing the various case levels that running overts is very effective in raising the cause level of a pc.

The scale, on actual tests of running various levels of pc response, is seen to go something like this:

I ITSA — Letting a pc discuss his or her guilt feelings about self with little or no auditor direction.

I ITSA — Letting a pc discuss his or her guilt feelings about others, with little or no auditor direction.

II REPETITIVE O/W — Using merely “In this lifetime what have you done?” “What haven’t you done?”Alternate.

III ASSESSMENT BY LIST —   Using existing or specially prepared lists of possible overts, cleaning the meter each time it reads on a question and using the question only so long as it reads.

IV JUSTIFICATIONS — Asking the pc what he or she has done and then using that one instance (if applicable) finding out why “that” was not an overt.

Advice enters into this under the heading of instruction: “You’re upset about that person because you’ve done something to that person.”

Dynamics also permissively enter into this above Level I but the pc wanders around amongst them. In Level III one can also direct attention to the various dynamics by first assessing them and then using or preparing a list for the dynamic found.

RESPONSIBILITY

There is no reason to expect any great pc responsibility for his or her own overts below Level IV and the auditor seeking to make the pc feel or take responsibility for overts is just pushing the pc down. The pc will resent being made feel guilty. Indeed the auditor may only achieve that, not case gain. And the pc will ARC break.

At Level IV one begins on this subject of responsibility but again it is indirectly the target. There is no need now to run Responsibility in doing O/Ws.

The realization that one has really done something is a return of responsibility and this gain is best obtained only by indirect approach as in the above processes.

_________

ARC BREAKS

The commonest cause of failure in running overt acts is “cleaning cleans” whether or not one is using a meter. The pc who really has more to tell doesn’t ARC Break when the Auditor continues to ask for one but may snarl and eventually give it up.

On the other hand leaving an overt touched on the case and calling it clean will cause a future ARC Break with the auditor.

“Have you told all?” prevents cleaning a clean. On the unmetered pc one can see the pc brighten up. On the meter you get a nice fall if it’s true that all is told.

“Have I not found out about something?” prevents leaving an overt undisclosed.

On the unmetered pc the reaction is a sly flinch. On a metered pc it gives a read.

A pc’s protest against a question will also be visible in an unmetered pc in a reeling sort of exasperation which eventually becomes a howl of pure bafflement at why the auditor won’t accept the answer that that’s all. On a meter protest of a question falls on being asked for: “Is this question being protested?”

There is no real excuse for ARC Breaking a pc by

1.      Demanding more than is there or

2.      Leaving an overt undisclosed that will later make the pc upset with the auditor.

FORBIDDEN WORDS

Do not use the following words in auditing commands. While they can be used in discussion or nomenclature, for various good reasons they should be avoided now in an auditing command:

Responsibility (ies)
Justification (s)
Withhold (s)
Failed (ures)
Difficulty (ies)
Desire (s)
Here
There
Compulsion (s) (ively)
Obsession (s) (ively)

No unusual restraint should be given these words. Just don’t frame a command that includes them. Use something else.

WHY OVERTS WORK

Overts give the highest gain in raising cause level because they are the biggest reason why a person restrains himself and withholds self from action.

Man is basically good. But the reactive mind tends to force him into evil actions.

These evil actions are instinctively regretted and the individual tries to refrain from doing anything at all. The “best” remedy, the individual thinks, is to withhold. “If I commit evil actions, then my best guarantee for not committing is to do nothing whatever.” Thus we have the “lazy”, inactive person.

Others who try to make an individual guilty for committing evil actions only increase this tendency to laziness.

Punishment is supposed to bring about inaction. And it does. In some unexpected ways.

However, there is also an inversion (a turn about) where the individual sinks below recognition of any action. The individual in such a state cannot conceive of any action and therefore cannot withhold action. And thus we have the criminal who can’t act really but can only re-act and is without any self direction. This is why punishment does not cure criminality but in actual fact creates it; the individual is driven below withholding or any recognition of any action. A thief’s hands stole the jewel, the thief was merely an innocent spectator to the action of his own hands. Criminals are very sick people physically.

So there is a level below withholding that an auditor should be alert to in some pcs, for these “have no withholds” and “have done nothing”. All of which, seen through their eyes is true. They are merely saying “I cannot restrain myself” and “I have not willed myself to do what I have done.”

The road out for such a case is the same as that for any other case. It is just longer. The processes for levels above hold also for such cases. But don’t be anxious to see a sudden return of responsibility, for the first owned “done” that this person knows he or she has done may be “ate breakfast”. Don’t disdain such answers in Level II particularly. Rather, in such people, seek such answers.

There is another type of case in all this, just one more to end the list. This is the case who never runs O/W but “seeks the explanation of what I did that made it all happen to me”.

This person easily goes into past lives for answers. Their reaction to a question about what they’ve done is to try to find out what they did that earned all those motivators. That, of course, isn’t running the process and the auditor should be alert for it and stop it when it is happening.

This type of case goes into its extreme on guilt. It dreams up overts to explain why. After most big murders the police routinely have a dozen or two people come around and confess. You see, if they had done the murder, this would explain why they feel guilty. As a terror stomach is pretty awful grim to live with, one is apt to seek any explanation for it if it will only explain it.

On such cases the same approach as given works, but one should be very careful not to let the pc get off overts the pc didn’t commit.

Such a pc (recognizable by the ease they dive into the extreme past) when being audited off a meter gets more and more frantic and wilder and wilder in overts reported. They should get calmer under processing, of course, but the false overts make them frantic and hectic in a session. On a meter one simply checks for “Have you told me anything beyond what really has occurred?” Or “Have you told me any untruths?”

The observation and meter guides given in this section are used during a session when they apply but not systematically such as after every pc answer. These observations and meter guides are used always at the end of every session on the pcs to whom they apply.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder

Hubbard, L. R. (1964, 10 July). Overts—Order Of Effectiveness in Processing. Technical Bulletins of Dianetics and Scientology (1991 ed., Vol. VII, pp. 438-41). Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, Inc.

Notes

  1. This directive is referenced in HCOB: Scientology Marriage Counseling. It evidences the “gradients” of interrogation at various case levels. See also: OCMB thread: Scientology’s Interrogation Tech. ↩

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HCOB: Clean Hands Make a Happy Life

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO BULLETIN OF 5 OCTOBER 19611; 2

Missions

CLEAN HANDS MAKE A HAPPY LIFE

For the first time in the soggy stream that’s history to the human race, it’s possible that happiness exists.

This goal, repeated many times and sought so heavily, has been ungraspable as sun motes, unattainable as a loved one’s sigh.

What makes mankind, basically good beings all, such strangers far to happiness?

The rich man geysers out his wealth. The poor man peers in every crack. But wealth buys nought and crevices are bare. The child hopes he will realize it when grown and, grown, wishes he were happy as a child.

We grasp it but like gossamer, it’s nought. We marry a most perfect girl or man and then throughout our lives weep to make the other make us glad.

Often sought, but seldom found, there are no riches, gems or palaces as valued as mere happiness.

But listen! Here is happiness, just at our finger tips, awaiting only magic words “Start Session” to begin its quest.

But like we walk through rain toward a banquet ball, our happiness in processing is gained by passing through the phantom shadows of our “sins”.

What has made all man a pauper in his happiness?

Transgressions against the mores of his race, his group, his family!

We care but little what these mores were or are. It was transgression did the trick.

We agree to fixed moralities and then, unthinking, we transgress, or with “good cause” offend, and there we are, the first dull bars of misery draw stealthily behind us.

And as we wander on, transgressing more, agreeing to new mores and then transgressing those, we come into that sunless place, the prison of our tears and sighs and might-have-beens, unhappiness.

__________

Mutual action is the key to all our overt acts. Agreement to what ought to be and then a shattering of the troth works all the spell that’s needed for a recipe of misery.

There must be pain. So we agreed. For pain restrains and warns, shuts off, forbids. But goodness now must then consist of bringing in no pain.

Mutual motion is agreed. And then we disagree and part and so are tied no more—tied not save back there in our minds, with scars of broken faith. The faith we broke, and said it had to be.

We all agree to feel the sun and then protest it burns. We all agree to kiss and love and then are startled that such pain can follow in that wake.

Mutual motion is all right—until we act in cruelty to the rest.

Tied by agreements and co-actions, we dare be cruel to that to which the hard steel clasps of promises have bound us.

And so in being cruel to part of self—extended self as in a couple or a group—we then find pain in self with great surprise.

The overt act sequence is simple now to grasp. The scope is limited. But it began when we first had a cruel impulse to others bound to us by mores or coacts.

Why does one suffer pain in his own arm when he or she has struck another’s limb?

Because the cruel impulse has been a break of bond with others where pledge once lived.

The only overt act that can bring pain to self is that cruel act which then transgresses things to which we had agreed.

Share action with a group or person in your life, agree to mutually survive by some specific code and then be cruel to them and so transgress and you’ll have pain.

__________

All mankind lives and each man strives by codes of conduct mutually agreed.

Perhaps these codes are good, perhaps they’re bad, it’s only evident they’re codes. Mores bind the race.

Coaction then occurs. Thought and motion in accord. A oneness then of purpose and survival so results.

But now against that code there is transgression. And so because the code was held, whatever code it was, and man sought comfort in man’s company, he held back his deed and so entered then the bourne in which no being laughs or has a freedom in his heart.

So down the curtains come across the brightness of the day and dull-faced clouds enmist all pleasant circumstance. For one has evilly transgressed and may not speak of it for fear all happiness will die.

And so we shut ourselves from off the light and enter grey-faced gloom. And seal within our deepest vault the reasons why we dare not face our friends.

And afterwards we go on making others guilty with the rest, when like some scrawny scarecrow of a priest whose tattered filthy robes are rough with sacrificial blood, we point the way to hell for those who kill.

And deep within us secret gnawings ache. And then at last we cannot even cry.

__________

The road to hell—man’s very good at painting ugly signs that point its course and way.

The road to heaven—man’s often sent but never yet arrived—more like he found the “other place”.

But now a road that’s wide has opened up—in Scientology.

The meter and the process check, when done by auditors with skill, can open up transgression’s rush and loose a cascade out until hell’s spent.

And day will once more have a drop of dew upon the morning rose.

L. Ron Hubbard
Founder

Notes

  1. Document studied on the How to Confront and Shatter Suppression PTS/SP Course. (2001 ed.) ↩
  2. Document studied on the Hubbard Senior Security Checker Course. ↩

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HCOB: The Present Time Problem

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO BULLETIN OF 31 MARCH 19601

Mission Holders

THE PRESENT TIME PROBLEM

Everybody has present time problems at times. They come up unexpectedly. They happen, between intensives. They pop up between sessions. They, indeed, occur within sessions. And the auditor who neglects to handle them when they arise will get little auditing done.

It’s the present time problem that sticks the graph, makes it register no change. (It’s ARC breaks that drop one.)

What is a “PTP”, as the auditors write it in their reports?

It is basically the inability to confront the dual terminal nature of this universe.

It is an inability to span attention and denotes that the pc who is having lots of PTPs has his attention very fixed on something.

The definition of a problem is intention v. intention or “two or more opposing and conflicting views on the same subject”.

If the pc has problems with wife or husband, we can be sure that they have divergent views on some basic thing in life. Thus the auditor who has a pc who always has PTPs with one, the same, person, had better run O/W (overt-withhold) on that terminal in a specific form (George) and then responsibility on the general form (a husband). Thus a PTP is as good as an assessment. Find what terminals the pc has PTPs about and handle that terminal as above. Indeed this is more than a trick—it’s a great time-saver. One can waste hours on a pc who repeatedly comes up with a PTP on the same person. But that person in the PTP is often the current clue to the case. “Grace the wife” leads to “a wife” leads to “a woman”.

Present time problems are not always concerned with the world outside auditing. Auditors can be a PTP to the pc, especially when the pc has big withholds!

PROCESSES ON PTPs

Present time problem processes are many. The earliest was two-way comm. A later one was “Invent a problem of comparable magnitude to ……..” But this one of course is a create type process and is therefore very limited.

Still another process was “Tell me your problem.” “How does it seem to you now?” This almost runs the whole case.

A recent one that has workability is “What problem could you confront?” This finds out for the pc that he can’t confront a problem at first without doing something about it. That isn’t confronting the problem. This is an amusing, effective and educative process.

Problems tend to snap in on the pc. The mechanism here is that he cannot confront them so, of course, they snap in upon him. When he invents a few the first problem he had visibly moves away from him. This last is now a demonstration, not a process, because of the create factor.

The fastest current process is “Tell me your problem.” “What part of that problem have you been responsible for?” This is an alternate question process. You will find the problem changes and changes. It runs the whole case.

A general process on problems, which is a very healthy process, is “What problem have you been (or might you have been) responsible for?”

The easiest process on problems to run, if slower, is “Tell me your problem.” “What part of that problem could you confront?”

CONFUSION AND THE STABLE DATUM

Problems are nasty case stickers because in a problem one has an old solution causing new problems. This is the principle of confusion and the stable datum. The confusion (two or more opposed views or actions) stays in position because it is hung on a single fixed point. If you want to see a pc go into confusion ask him what solution he could confront. (This is not a good process, it’s a demonstration.)

A preclear is sometimes chary of motion in the bank. He seizes upon fixed particles to avoid moving particles. A very top scale process that does some fabulous things to a pc also illustrates this: “What motion have you been responsible for?” This truly sets a bank whizzing, particularly black cases or stuck picture cases. Running this, it is possible to discharge pc liability to problems.

THE DUAL UNIVERSE

The basic unit of this universe is two, not one.

The less a pc can confront two things, the more he fixes on one. This is the highly individual person, also the self-auditing case.

This is probably the basic trap of a thetan. He is a single unit that has not cared to confront dual units and is therefore subject to the persistence of all dual things. As he does not seem to care as much for two as he does for one that which is not admired tends to persist and we have a persisting dual universe.

Also, when he is with somebody else, he tends to confront the other person but not to confront himself. “What about you could you confront?” is a murderous process. It is all right to run. It picks up the times when his attention was off self and yet self was creating. This is the genus of a reactive bank. It is probably what pain is.

However, a better and more spectacular process that demonstrates this and gets to the heart of problems is “What two things can you confront?” This increases ability and reduces one’s liability to problems. I suppose one could go gradiently up in number and have at last a pc that could tolerate any motion or number.

It is quantity not quality which makes a bank. Thus running significances is of little worth. A thetan gets ideas of too many and too few. He cannot have, at length, anything that becomes too scarce—one of the old important rules of havingness given in Scientology 8-8008.

OUT OF SESSION

A pc is in session when (a) he is willing to talk to the auditor and (b) he is interested in his own case.

The primary violation of part (a) is overts and withholds—the pc is afraid to talk or talks to cover up.

The second violation (b) occurs when the pc’s attention is “over there” in present time, fixed on some concern that is “right now” somewhere in the physical universe. Technically a present time problem is a special problem that exists in the physical universe now on which the pc has his attention fixed. This violates the “in session” rule part (b). The pc’s attention is “over there” not on his case. If the auditor overlooks or doesn’t run the PTP then the pc is never in session, grows agitated, ARC breaks, etc.

And no gains are made because the pc is not in session. Hence the unchanged graph when the pc has a PTP that is overlooked or not properly handled.

PTPs are easy to handle. If you, the auditor, become impatient at having to “waste time” handling a PTP or if the pc considers it a waste of time to handle it, a mistake is being made. So long as a PTP falls on a meter even slightly, it had better be handled until it no longer falls when checked.

If the same type of PTP keeps coming up, use it as a case assessment and run it out-out-out as given above, using O/W and responsibility.

And if the pc always has problems, better note he also has motionless pictures, is only-one and self-audits heavily and get him used to motion and two particles as given in processes above and he’ll be a better case very soon indeed.

L. Ron Hubbard
Founder

Notes

  1. Document studied on the How to Confront and Shatter Suppression PTS/SP Course. (2001 ed.) ↩

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HCOB: Justification

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO BULLETIN OF 21 JANUARY AD101

Mission Holders
HCO Secs
Assn Secs
HCO and HASI Staffs

JUSTIFICATION

When a person has committed an overt act and then withholds it, he or she usually employs the social mechanism of justification.

We have all heard people attempt to justify their actions and all of us have known instinctively that justification was tantamount to a confession of guilt. But not until now have we understood the exact mechanism behind justification.

Short of Scientology Auditing there was no means by which a person could relieve himself of consciousness of having done an overt act except to try to lessen the overt.

Some churches used a mechanism of confession. This was a limited effort to relieve a person of the pressure of his overt acts. Later the mechanism of confession was employed as a kind of blackmail by which increased contribution could be obtained from the person confessing. Factually this is a limited mechanism to such an extent that it can be extremely dangerous. Religious confession does not carry with it any real stress of responsibility for the individual but on the contrary seeks to lay responsibility at the door of the Divinity—a sort of blasphemy in itself. I have no axe to grind here with religion. Religion as religion is fairly natural. But psychotherapy must be in itself a completed fact or, as we all know, it can become a dangerous fact. That’s why we flatten engrams and processes. Confession to be non-dangerous and effective must be accompanied by a full acceptance of responsibility. All overt acts are the product of irresponsibility on one or more of the dynamics.

Withholds are a sort of overt act in themselves but have a different source. Oddly enough we have just proven conclusively that man is basically good—a fact which flies in the teeth of old religious beliefs that man is basically evil. Man is good to such an extent that when he realizes he is being very dangerous and in error he seeks to minimize his power and if that doesn’t work and he still finds himself committing overt acts he then seeks to dispose of himself either by leaving or by getting caught and executed. Without this computation Police would be powerless to detect crime—the criminal always assists himself to be caught. Why Police punish the caught criminal is the mystery. The caught criminal wants to be rendered less harmful to the society and wants rehabilitation. Well, if this is true then why does he not unburden himself? The fact is this: unburdening is considered by him to be an overt act. People withhold overt acts because they conceive that telling them would be another overt act. It is as though thetans are trying to absorb and hold out of sight all the evil of the world. This is wrong-headed, by withholding overt acts these are kept afloat in the universe and are themselves as withholds entirely the cause of continued evil. Man is basically good but he could not attain expression of this until now. Nobody but the individual could die for his own sins—to arrange things otherwise was to keep man in chains.

In view of these mechanisms, when the burden became too great man was driven to another mechanism—the effort to lessen the size and pressure of the overt. He or she could only do this by attempting to reduce the size and repute of the terminal. Hence, not-isness. Hence when a man or a woman has done an overt act there usually follows an effort to reduce the goodness or importance of the target of the overt. Hence the husband who betrays his wife must then state that the wife was no good in some way.  Thus the wife who betrayed her husband had to reduce the husband to reduce the overt. This works on all dynamics. In this light most criticism is justification of having done an overt.

This does not say that all things are right and that no criticism anywhere is ever merited. Man is not happy. He is faced with total destruction unless we toughen up our postulates. And the overt act mechanism is simply a sordid game condition man has slipped into without knowing where he was going. So there are rightnesses and wrongnesses in conduct and society and life at large, but random, carping 1.1 criticism when not borne out in fact is only an effort to reduce the size of the target of the overt so that one can live (he hopes) with the overt. Of course to criticise unjustly and lower repute is itself an overt act and so this mechanism is not in fact workable.

Here we have the source of the dwindling spiral. One commits overt acts unwittingly. He seeks to justify them by finding fault or displacing blame. This leads him into further overts against the same terminals which leads to a degradation of himself and sometimes those terminals.

Scientologists have been completely right in objecting to the idea of punishment. Punishment is just another worsening of the overt sequence and degrades the punisher. But people who are guilty of overts demand punishment. They use it to help restrain themselves from (they hope) further violation of the dynamics. It is the victim who demands punishment and it is a wrong-headed society that awards it. People get right down and beg to be executed. And when you don’t oblige, the woman scorned is sweet-tempered by comparison. I ought to know—I have more people try to elect me an executioner than you would care to imagine. And many a preclear who sits down in your pc chair for a session is there just to be executed and when you insist on making such a pc better, why you’ve had it, for they start on this desire for execution as a new overt chain and seek to justify it by telling people you’re a bad auditor.

When you hear scathing and brutal criticism of someone which sounds just a bit strained, know that you have your eye on overts against that criticised person and next chance you get pull the overts and remove just that much evil from the world.

And remember, by and by, that if you make your pc write these overts and withholds down and sign them and send them off to me he’ll be less reluctant to hold on to the shreds of them—it makes for a further blow of overts and less blow of pc.And always run responsibility on a pc when he unloads a lot of overts or just one.

We have our hands here on the mechanism that makes this a crazy universe so let’s go for broke on it and play it all the way out.

L. Ron Hubbard
Founder

Notes

  1. Document studied on the How to Confront and Shatter Suppression PTS/SP Course. (2001 ed.) ↩