Word: engram
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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This hidden source, according to its discoverer, science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, is the "engram," "a moment of 'unconsciousness' containing physical pain or painful emotion." during this moment of "unconsciousness" the individual's "reactive mind" records all nearby utterances. No matter what their import, the "moronic" reactive mind misconstrues the words to be commands, and they influence the individual's later behavior like post-hypnotic suggestions...
...thought of the womb, because nobody ever asked. Thanks to dianeties, we learn; "it is very noisy in the womb . . . The womb is wet, uncomfortable, and unprotected." All in all, the first nine months are the hardest. "Mama sneezes, baby gets knocked 'unconscious.' Papa hits Mama, baby gets an engram. Junior bounces on Mama's lap, baby gets an engram. And so it goes." Besides these normal hazards, all Hubbard's patients have a pre-natal history of beatings by the father and attempted abortions by the mother. Small wonder that the child emerges punchy...
...woman is struck by a man, and while she is unconscious he kicks and reviles her. A chair is overturned and a faucet has been left running. She does not "remember" these things because she is unconscious, but according to dianetics her reactive mind records them all in an engram. Later, the crash of an overturned chair and the sound of running water might make the engram "key-in" to her analytical mind, vaguely bring back the pain of the kicks or actually make...
Count to Seven. To exorcise such a demon engram, the dianetics patient lolls on a couch or easy chair in a dimly lit room. The auditor says: "When I count from one to seven your eyes will close." He keeps counting to seven until the patient's eyes close. (The patient, says Hubbard, is still awake but in "reverie.") In a typical procedure, the auditor may next command: "Let us return to your fifth birthday." The patient's mind is then supposed to slip back along its "time track" to that birthday. Having "returned," he "relives" the experience...
...skipping from one point on the time track to another, the patient eventually relives a variety of painful experiences. In so doing, he may reel from the relived pain of a blow on the head, double up with stomach cramps, sweat or shiver in terror. Once these painful engrams have been run through the waking analytical mind, says Hubbard, they lose their "charge"-their power of evil. The analytical mind puts them in a dead file like so many closed accounts. The final goal of dianetics-in its own jargon-is to make the patient a "clear," a person whose...