CONCLUSION PROCESSING

A lecture given on 12 October 1951

Cleaning Up Self- determined Postulates

Now, you can move up from Effort Processing into what you would call Conclusion Processing.

You take a look at a person’s time track and you find, for instance, that Aunt Bessie was good to him, so he said, "Women are good" That was a conclusion. A little while later he had a schoolteacher by the name of Agatha Smirch who beat the dickens out of him, and she was a woman, so he said all of a sudden, "Women are no good" Then he looks at his mother and he can’t make up his mind.

He grows up and he meets a girl, and she is quite a pretty girl, so he buys her perfume and so on. But all of a sudden he finds out she just liked him because he bought her perfume: the night came when he wasn’t supposed to have a date but he called on her anyhow, and she was out with some other fellow. So he concludes, "Women are no good"

Now he goes along and he marries a girl, and she is perfectly fine for the first few months, but then all of a sudden he refuses to buy her the convertible so that she will have a baby.

I ran across a deal like this with a psychiatrist— his wife refused to have any children unless he bought her a convertible. So, just to show you his great command of the human mind, he bought her the convertible.

Anyway, this fellow’s conclusions have built up like this all along his time track.

With this computation type of processing, you are running on the basis of this axiom (which is not, by the way, part of the Axioms): An individual becomes the effect of his own causes. A conclusion is a static. An individual becomes the product of his own statics. Regardless of what the point of origin is, when he makes a static— a conclusion— he is then subject to it. Earlier statics cancel later statics, which is just another way of saying statics are unalterable. And they are unalterable unless treated by Dianetics, because what you are doing is knocking the facsimile to smithereens. In Dianetics, you could go back and knock out the facsimile of the conclusion and of course the fellow would no longer be subject to it. So we are violating a prime rule of aberrated thought, and that is just swell, because this is really aberration deluxe.

A person’s environment keeps changing, and as long as his environment insists on changing he has to make new conclusions with regard to his environment. Of course, he can become completely stet, he can become utterly static about his environment, but then the environment changes and that is the end of him. If a fellow made a statement to himself, in conclusion, that he would never be able to drive an automobile and he had to keep on driving a horse and buggy, he would sure look silly. And yet in one lifetime a person could have made that conclusion, and then he would keep wondering why he has accidents with an automobile. He made the conclusion once, but then he made another conclusion. That second conclusion didn’t cancel the first one. But, in view of the changed environment, he can "exert his willpower" and make himself go through the paces of violating his old conclusions.

When a person has an undetected static in the background, he is already set up to operate on the earlier conclusion. Then he has to go against it and he sets up a randomity with his new conclusion. The randomity exists between the new conclusion and the old conclusion. So there is an interplay.

First he says, "I always have colds" and later he says, "I’m not going to have colds anymore" The funny part of it is, when he says "I’m not going to have colds anymore" it actually has some force. He is able to postulate anytime he wants to, but it is going to be interfered with. So it is random. He isn’t going to get any "coldlessness" all of a sudden if that earlier postulate and the later one are the least bit in conflict.

Let’s take an individual who says to himself, "I always wanted to be a streetcar motorman, but somehow or other I have never been able to be one." What is he being influenced by? What is the only thing influencing him? It is just exactly this computation setup on the case. It isn’t that he has an engram against it.

Of course, you could get the conclusion out by knocking the engram out; you understand that. You could find the engram and knock it out, but we have found that there is a push button sitting there that makes it unnecessary for you to knock out the engram if you can find his conclusions. It is very simple. You also don’t have to run any of the perceptics out of an engram if you can find its effort.

Conclusions are run on the basis of Straightwire. So here we go on Straightwire: This fellow always wanted to be a motorman. Let’s go back and find a time when he concluded that he didn’t want to be one. Let’s go back and find a time when he found out he didn’t like streetcars— he said so. In other words, we can clean up that goal for him just by asking him conclusions regarding things associated with the goal. We are not looking just for a conclusion about the goal; that would be pretty simple- minded, because there are things associated with this goal other than just being a streetcar motorman.

Let’s go all around the thing then, and find when he reached an adverse conclusion about something connected with his goal. He wants to be a streetcar motorman, but he has several conclusions on the line to the effect that streetcars smell bad, and then we will probably find a counterconclusion whereby he finally had to conclude, in view of the fact that his mother begged and pleaded for him to be a street sweeper, that he would be a street sweeper. We knock that one out and we will rehabilitate his goal.

If this is the goal he wants, that is all very well, but the chances are he wanted to be this because he postulated it when he was about four. He had nothing to do with streetcars, but he knew a streetcar motorman that lived next door who was a nice guy, so he wanted to be a streetcar motorman too, which was a way of saying that he wanted to be like this other fellow. So if we could reach that goal, we would blow up all of his motorman goals.

Fortunately, there is a basic purpose postulated at the beginning of every life. It is your job to uncover it and the conclusions about it if you want a person to persevere well into the future. There is a formula for doing this.

You understand that you are just trying to get up conclusions and that one conclusion doesn’t nullify another conclusion— that the old conclusions hang fire. You go through this routine with the preclear and you will find yourself very much ahead of the game. This serves the purpose of diagnosis for you, because it will tell you the conflicts of the analytical life of the preclear. Regardless of how they are formed by the reactive mind, you can actually wipe them out. You can get out these conflicts by following this formula.

You start asking your preclear for future goals. What goals does he want in the future? Mind you now, that is "does he want?" not "did he want" What goal does he want in the future? He will try to tell you, "Well, once upon a time, I wanted to be an alpineer." Let’s not fool around with this, because he can get very, very involved. What you want is the future goal he wants now. The chances are, he will tell you that he can’t resolve one. You just switch over and ask him about what he is afraid of in the future, not snidely, but "What things are there in the future which you think might threaten your existence?"

He will think for a long time probably, and come up with some huge datum like "I might lose my job."

If you don’t find one on goals, find one on fears.

But if you find one on goals, you trace out the factors in the present which make this future goal possible. What is he doing now to make this future goal possible? We are assuming that he found a future goal for you; he said, "I want to fly to Moscow. It so happens that at the present time I’m just a file clerk, but I want to fly to Moscow." "Well, what are you doing at this time to do it?" You are liable to get a tremendous jolt out of the preclear right at that point. He is liable to say "But— but— nothing!" and this will strike him with the enormous impact of a sixteen- inch shell. It just never occurred to him that to have something in the future, you have to postulate it in the present. You will be surprised how often this is true.

So you get the present factors. Maybe he says, "Oh, I’m making model airplanes" Don’t ask him how this is going to make his future possible; don’t worry about that. Just say, "Are there any other factors in the present that make it possible?" and as he tells you this thing, he starts resolving his problem about that future goal. He realizes that making model airplanes is not likely to get him to Moscow and that his education as a file clerk and his pay as a file clerk are not likely to provide him with a Spirit of St. Louis. He starts thinking this over.

Your next factor is to get past goals. What goals has he had? You have just gone over this sequence once with him: "What is your future goal? What are your present factors with regard to your future goal? Now, what are some past goals which compare with the future goal?"

If he says he didn’t have any goal, you have him look in the present: "What factors are there in the present which prevent your having a goal?" He will tell you that. Then you want to find out where he concluded that he couldn’t have a goal in the past, more or less, along that line, or concluded that his goal would be no goal or something of that sort. But you want to get these past goals. These past goals are really past conclusions.

Don’t worry about how many of these you turn up or don’t turn up. This is just once around on the goal side.

Then you look for present factors. Maybe this fellow tells you he just doesn’t seem to have any goal there. But what is he afraid of right now? What is he afraid of now?

You understand that his environment includes anything— himself, too. You can use this routine for any one of the dynamics and you can transfer from dynamic to dynamic. That makes a system out of it.

Now, we were working on what he is afraid of in the present, and that is really past conclusions. He says, "Well, the reason I can’t get anyplace in the future is because my boss is so mean to me." "All right. When did you conclude he was mean to you?" He will remember this. "When did you conclude bosses were mean?" "Well, I worked for a grocery store once, and . . . gee whiz, do you know my boss looks like my father?"

You are liable to come up with stuff like this on him. But any time you get a past conclusion, you want the specific that went with it— the instant he made the conclusion. And if you can’t get it that time around, take note of it and get it the next time around.

You go over this and over this. Of course, your emphasis is on dynamic one. Your emphasis is very heavily on one, because you have to straighten him out on one before he gets much of any of the others, usually.

And you will find that when you have drilled him through this a few times he starts finding times in the past when his goals were in conflict. But what you want, again, are just the moments when he decided his goals were in conflict or his fears were in conflict or that he couldn’t do anything about what he was doing— positive or negative conclusions, whatever they are. You will be able to trace this individual’s present and his hopes for the future down to the conclusions in his life which he made himself that inhibit his accomplishment of any goal in the future and that inhibit his vanquishing of the fears he has for the future. That is what you are trying to do.

Now, there are central conclusions (we used to call them computations) on a person’s case, where all of a sudden he decided something. This is very definitely in terms of motion. They are usually conclusions that came right down to the basis of, for instance, a sudden decision that he could never influence his mother; he could never get her moving, in other words. Or he concluded that he would never be able to stay anyplace, because he kept getting yanked out of this place and that place all the time when he was a child. He will suddenly realize that his goal was to settle down. But he can’t settle down because every time he said he was settled down, his mother or father grabbed him by the nape of the neck and moved him someplace else. He could never have any friends because every time he made any friends he had to move. This is the way it looked to him; he made this conclusion himself.

You are not interested in finding anything but the most overall generality on the condition. What you want is the instant he himself concluded this to be the case.

You will be able to tear apart a person’s conflicts so fast with this little system, all by itself, that I bet you could have an office on Park Avenue and drive almost as good a car as some of the characters that sit up there and do nothing for people for years at a time. With this system you can take a person’s life to pieces in a one- hour or two- hour session. You can develop a knack for this sort of thing that will go right down to the center of the situation.

All you have to do is simply ask him, "Now, can you think of any future goal that you would like to do?" "No?" "Well, is there anything in your present that you are doing in order to accomplish something in the future?" "Well, I’m eating. I suppose that means I’ll be alive tomorrow." "Well, is there any goal in the past that you wanted to attain, that you decided to attain?" "Nope."

Obviously this is nuts. He did!

The next step is "What are you afraid of in the future?" "Nothing?" "What are you afraid of in present time? Is there anything you are concerned with in present time?" "No" "Is there anything you were ever concerned with in the past?" "No" "Well, now, take your goals for the future?" (You can do this without holding a piece of paper because there are only six of them; they are easy to remember.)?" Now, take your goals for the future. Can you think of one, now, you might possibly have?" "No" " Well how about any preparation, anything you’re building up?" "Yeah, I’d sure like— I sure wish I wasn’t so darn bored about life."

You may think you are triggering blanks, but you are not. Down on a lower strata, you are asking his memory to travel along, and every time it does, one of these things will move up a little closer. You will get line conclusions (just like you get line charges)— concepts of conclusions— and these are perfectly valid. He will get a concept that he wants to stay alive, for instance, without ever being able to tell you a moment when he was glad to be alive. But you unbury this stuff. He will get a concept of the fact that he is afraid of the future— and this is the commonest one you will get. He doesn’t know why, but he knows he is afraid of the future and his single recognition that he is afraid of the future brings some charge off the line.

Now, you are not trying to pin the preclear down or force conclusions on him, because you are introducing new- statics if you do this. That is one point to remember. You are trying to pick up his self- determinism.

You can just work with this. This is a very healthy little system— very healthy for your preclear— because, of all systems now in use in Dianetics, this is the only one which stresses future. Sanity is dependent upon computation into the future, smooth planning about the future; happiness, height on the tone scale, lack of fear— all of these things depend on smooth planning about the future. Low- tone- scale stuff is too much involvement in the past (you will find that in the book of Axioms) or too much involvement in factors of the present, evidently, which are so present that the fellow just can’t seem to do anything about them.

But you can straighten people out at a high rate of speed.

If you want to know about diagnosis— calling it as such— you run this system on a preclear for a while; it is just Straightwire.

It is very nice to get your hands full of efforts and see a chronic somatic staring you in the face and know you can take his glasses off or something like that. But is that, after all, your goal for this preclear? Your goal for this preclear is not necessarily that, unless you just want to do an assembly line and knock off chronic somatics— which is very good by the way; I won’t run it down for a minute. But if you want this preclear to come back to battery and be of more use to the human race, you will try to bring him up the tone scale.

The fastest way you can do that is to pick up all the conclusions that are hung up and garbled— in other words, pick out the randomities of his life. Because his randomity— and his only real, honest- to- goodness, troublesome randomity— is his inability to plan into the future, caused by his conclusions in the past, which inhibit such planning. We are not just trying to clean up the past and let an individual wander off sort of dazedly into the future. We should have a person pretty well back to battery on the problems of his life. But you don’t get him back to battery by advising him about those problems.

You get him squared around just on this basis: In order to return an individual’s self- determinism, you have to let him conclude his conclusions with maximal self- determinism. You, with a knowledge of existence, with a knowledge of Dianetics, can recognize a lot of things about a preclear that he won’t see himself. It is almost impossible at times not to say "But, you dummy, don’t you see? You keep telling me this phrase, ‘Well, I guess it’s all in my head’— and you’ve got sinusitis."

It is terribly trying to conclude this sort of thing and not do something desperate about it, because the mechanisms of words are just as aberrated as they ever were. But you know where words came from and you don’t have to worry about it now— the dickens with it. You are just processing illusions with processing words, but they can certainly make people sick. The way to make them well, though, is not by addressing words, because that is addressing the illusion. The reason words could make them sick is that words are illusion, not actuality. So you can just bypass words. Don’t worry about them.

But if the preclear keeps saying "in my head" and so on, you know darn well there is a conclusion about his head. It will be a conclusion under the conclusion under the conclusion. It will be way back. All of a sudden you will find out he concluded at one time to be sick because when he was sick, and only when he was sick, his mother was nice to him. The way he found this out was to have a spell of something, and she would come around and put cool cloths on his head or warm cloths on his jaw or something of the sort; this kind of got twisted around, and then his wife used to get very concerned whenever he would get a little bit of a sniffle or something of the sort, so he concluded that this was the way to get warm cloths on his head. He will figure this out himself, and all of a sudden you have gotten rid of the chronic somatic. And, believe me, if it blows on that conclusion line, it will blow. I don’t think there should be much question about this technique. It is very important to put people into the future, not by running them up there on the time track, but by taking away their fears about the future. And that is not really enough, because you could take away a fellow’s fears and you would have only gotten half the problem.

He has to have his goals. He had goals the day he was born. It is up to you to help him find them for himself. So if you want to do the whole problem up beautifully, you just ask him the right questions in this cycle and you vanish for him, in this wise, his fears in the future, and you rehabilitate for him his own goals into the future. When you have a preclear who can live relaxed in the present and who can postulate goals in the future and who can even look death in the eye without much fear, you have a well preclear. And that is what you are trying to do.

Any route is a valid route. You start to train individuals how to do this— how to do Effort Processing, Self- determined Effort Processing— and you could plunge right in, hand over fist, and tell them all about effort and the Axioms, but don’t forget that you have a tremendous orientation on Dianetics. It is easy for you to pick up new things, easy for you to extrapolate out the inevitable conclusions with regard to these things.

But maybe the people you will be training won’t have such an orientation, and as a net result what you should be doing is letting them get their feet damp before you make them swim. And this is a swell way to do it. You can even give yourself a little altitude by telling them about statics and so forth— but point out to them that this preclear makes a conclusion and that is it! He has made a conclusion in the past and that is it, but all you have to do to knock this out is make him remember it. If it doesn’t go away the first time, make him remember it two or three times. You teach them how to do it with this system and they will be able to go around with their friends and utilize this. It is a very easy- to- understand system.

It might take a lot more than this system, perhaps, on tough chronicsomatic cases. All this system does is stabilize an individual in the present so that he can hopefully and knowingly face what he wants to do in the future and progress toward that goal. And that, after all, is happiness. And this is the fastest way I know to get a tone 4.0.

I hope you find some of these things useful to you, and that their employment is gainful to the health and happiness, vitality and cussedness of your preclears.

Our aim is to put numbers of people out into the field again who are minus some of their very annoying difficulties. It possibly is not enough simply to take away a chronic somatic for an individual, but it should make him interested enough, maybe, to get further orientation. Perhaps if we set up some kind of an assembly line on knocking out chronic somatics on individuals we will also set up a Straightwire system of this character in order to rehabilitate the individual in other ways, besides handling the fact that he has had a bad ankle for a number of years.

A few months from now the second edition of Self Analysis will be out. It will contain quite a bit about self- determinism and other things so that you will be able to concentrate, perhaps, on training students. As for turning off heavy chronic somatics for individuals, you will have a book sitting alongside of you that you can toss them that should do this for them automatically.

Dianetics is doing a resurgence, and the main reason for its resurgence is the fact that it is better codified. Also, the loyalty of a great many people has made it possible for Dianetics to hang on until the lessons which it learned the hard way could be recodified and used. There are a great many things going to happen in the next few months. It is all on the blue side of the ledger, as far as I see. The sudden acquisition of a tool which works on chronic somatics with a good level of invariability should be in itself a certain amount of boost to Dianetics.

I can only hope that the matters we have covered have been of some use to you.