This book is built around a chart. On the many columns of this chart we find the majority of the components of the human mind and all those necessary to process an individual.
In this book we will take up these columns one by one from left to right, and explain each column. When this has been done, and you have read the book and thoroughly examined the chart, you will at least have the rudiments you need to process people. If you desire to process individuals on a limited basis, you may specialize in straight memory, lock reduction and lock scanning. This can be done to almost anyone you would ordinarily contact without any harm and with a great deal of improvement in his general tone. If you feel a little more adventurous, you can learn how to audit secondary engrams and so become proficient in discharging grief and fear from a case. Should you desire to go the whole way and feel yourself competent, you can try running engrams on a case, with a very close regard to the kind of case on which you try to run them.
For a full education in dianetic processing the elements are here. But just as you went to high school to learn algebra or physics, you should take a Foundation course in order to become a truly proficient auditor. Qualification at the Foundation, coupled with any other training you may have, will permit you to become a professional practitioner. Most people, however, take a Foundation course because they want to be better educated and to function better in their own professions, for Dianetics is not just processing. That’s not a thousandth of it. Dianetics deals with thought and the behavior of men and groups; and those who know the subject thoroughly survive better.
Simply reading this book then, although it contains all the basic information, does not qualify an individual to practise professionally. But once he has thoroughly studied this book, he should be able to handle routine cases without difficulty. He should not try Dianetics on insane or severely neurotic person unless he feels himself especially gifted in understanding or unless he has taken a qualification course at the Foundation. This particularly applies to analyzts and psychiatrists and medical doctors who, having concourse with the insane and the chronically ill, could achieve remarkably better and faster results with a knowledge of Dianetics. The science was made available to them in the past, and it is again urged that they take advantage of its techniques in the best interest of mankind and the advancement of their professions. Many physicians and psychologists have already been trained by the Foundation and they, experience shows, have made good auditors.
In the same vein, the layman should be very careful whom he allows to practise Dianetics upon him. Before submitting to dianetic processing, the individual should either look for the auditor’s certificate on the wall and see that it is in good order or demand the right to give his auditor a test as to the various definitions contained in this volume. The individual who desires processing should not submit himself to a psychiatrist or a psychoanalyzt or medical doctor for dianetic treatment in the belief that they, as practitioners, know Dianetics. Only those psychoanalyzts, medical doctors and psychiatrists trained by the Foundation are fully qualified to handle the whole parade of skills necessary in an auditor. If your auditor is not qualified by the Foundation, then let him run straight memory, locks and chains of locks on you until you are entirely satisfied he knows what he is doing.
An auditor, by diligent study of this volume and by entering slowly into the use of his tools, making sure he understands each one of them progressively before using the next, can achieve great skill in processing. These cautionary remarks are addressed to those who, by haphazard reading of the volume may attempt to plunge into the whole array of skills at once. This would be like trying to take a plane off the ground before one learns where the throttle is located and how to bank. Dianetics is not as difficult as flying a plane but it is a technical subject.
You can’t drive anybody mad with dianetic processing. Cases driven mad by dianetic processing do not exist. Cases do exist where reversed techniques have been criminally used on persons. Pain- drug- hypnosis can deliver anybody into a straightjacket with greater neatness and despatch than anything hitherto known. Dianetic processing, however, has nothing to do with restimulating or planting engrams.
So read what is written and get to know your chart. You will know more about men and women and their behavior when you have finished. If you feel you could stand some processing, come to the Foundation, or team up with somebody on whom you can rely, starting in with straight memory and locks and studying as you work. If possible, get supervision from a Foundation- trained auditor or take a basic or professional course. You can’t know too much about this subject.
No attempt is made in this volume to be literary or academic. I would happily take off a couple of years and write you something highly polished, but we’re trying to get where we’re going before the atom bomb gets there, and navigating the course takes a little time. So I’ve just written here what I know about this chart in a way I think you’ll understand. The book is organized around the chart, not around the longest words in the dictionary: this is made possible by a certain difference between Dianetics and some other subjects -- in those, the author has to make up in complication what he lacks in understanding of his subject, so the critics will be impressed.
Damn the critics, let’s get down to paragraph one and open up to flank speed. There’s a sane world to be won.
L. Ron Hubbard January, 1951