Word: hubbardism
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...Hubbard, 39, a swashbuckling, red-haired six-footer, originally unveiled dianetics in the magazine Astounding Science-Fiction. As a result, its earliest devotees were science fiction fans. When Dianetics was first published (Hermitage House; $4), doctors and psychologists paid it little heed. But last week some were getting in on what seemed like a good thing. The Los Angeles Times carried an ad: "Those interested in receiving dianetic auditing please telephone DU 2-3260." At the end of the line was Dr. Vernon Bronson Twitchell, psychologist; he said he got about a dozen calls...
Reason & Records. According to Hubbard's "science," the mind consists of two parts: 1) the analytical (corresponding roughly to Freud's "conscious" mind), which perceives, remembers and reasons; and 2) the reactive (something like Freud's "unconscious"), which neither remembers nor reasons but simply records. Normally, the analytical mind is dominant. But it can be "switched off" by unconsciousness from injury or anesthesia, more often by acute emotional shock or physical pain...
Then, says Hubbard, the reactive mind is switched on. It does not store memories, but "engrams"-impressions on protoplasm itself. An engram is, he declares, "a complete recording, down to the last accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of ... 'unconsciousness...
Modern man's analytical mind, says Hubbard, is a perfect computing machine, incapable of error except when it is supplied with wrong data. An example, typical of Hubbard's cases: a 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...
...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...