OK, let's get the party rolling.
Here's Ron mentioning his 270 cases - I grossly underestimated Ron's production in this area and posted his stat as a mere 240 cases. I stand corrected.
Just how many physical errors are psycho-somatic depends upon how many conditions
the body can generate out of the factors in the engrams. For example, the common cold has
been found to be psycho-somatic. Clears do not get colds. Just what, if any, part the virus
plays in the common cold is not known, but it is known that when engrams about colds are
lifted, no further colds appear -- which is a laboratory fact not so far contradicted by 270 cases.
...and...
At the end of a series of 270 clears and alleviations a short series of five cases was
taken to finally settle the argument. These five cases were not permitted to admit anything
before birth. They were treated with everything dianetics, hypnotism and other therapeutics
could offer, and no clear was obtained. This ruled out the “personality of the operator” or
“suggestion” or “faith” as factors in dianetics. These five cases had never been informed of
prenatal engrams. Each swerved in toward them but was restrained without informing him that
engrams existed that early. The five were alleviated as to some variety of psycho-somatic ills
but the ills were only alleviated, not completely cured. The aberrations remained but little
changed. They are extremely disappointed since each had heard something of “the miracles
dianetics could perform.” Before then 270 cases had been worked and 270 cases had reached
prenatal engrams. And 270 cases had been cleared or alleviated as the dianeticist chose and time
permitted. All could have been cleared with an additional average of 100 or so hours for each
of the persons who were alleviated. In short, on random cases -- and selected cases so that at
least two of each classification of neurosis or psychosis was included in the clearing -- when
prenatal engrams and birth were taken into account and used in therapy, results were obtained.
When these factors were not taken into account, results were no more favorable than those
attained in the best successes of past schools -- which is not nearly good enough for a science
of mind.
Of key importance here is the line "And 270 cases had been cleared or alleviated as the dianeticist chose and time permitted." We're going to investigate this claim - also worthy of comment is that, to my knowledge, the only two books that mention "dianeticist(s)" is DMSMH and the Brainwashing Manual. I'm certain it makes appearances in early PABs and such but I don't think it's in SOS. I could be wrong.
OK, first...let's examine the comments on Q quantity...from a passage called DRUGS.
There are some drugs which assist reverie, however. The commonest and most easily
obtainable is plain, strong coffee. A cup or two of this occasionally alerts the analyzer enough
so that it can reach through deeper layers of “unconsciousness.” Benzedrine and other
commercial stimulants have been used with some success, particularly on psychotic patients.
These bring the mind enough awake to permit it to overcome engramic commands. Such
commercial stimulants have the disadvantage of exhausting a Q quantity in the mind.
This Q Quantity has not been much studied. It is as though the brain burns a certain
amount of Q when it is exhausting engrams. For instance, therapy every day may bring results
more rapidly but it will also bring some stale sessions. Therapy every two or three days
produces the best results as observed. (Therapy once a week permits the engrams to sag and
slows a case, one week being too long.) Benzedrine burns up Q. After a few sessions with
benzedrine the current stock of Q is exhausted and the work has been observed to deteriorate
either until a higher dosage was administered -- and there is a close limit to that -- or until more
Q was manufactured.
Here, with all this, must be included an important and vital fact. It should be on a page
by itself and underscored. All patients in therapy should be given a dosage of vitamin B1 orally
or by injection at the minimum of 10 mg. per day. Reducing engrams exhausts Q which seems
to depend in some measure on B1. You can be absolutely certain of nightmares in a patient
who is not taking his B1. Taking liberal doses of that, he will have no nightmares. DT’s are
probably caused by a similar exhaustion of Q Quantity. DT’s are best treated by B1 and
dianetics. Something like DT’s on a very minor scale have been observed to develop in
occasional patients who were negligent about their B1. With it, in therapy, they thrive.
Next...we have Working Time in Therapy.
WORKING TIME IN THERAPY
The usual period of a dianetic treatment is two hours. In these two hours, with the
usual patient, everything is going to be accomplished which can be accomplished on that day.
Working every day is not necessary, but working every two days or every three days is
desirable. Working with periods a week apart is not optimum, for the case tends to rebalance.
Further, there is a “sag” in a case, usually every fourth day when it is not worked in periods as
short as three days. The fourth day “sag” is a natural mechanical thing: an engram, keyed-in,
when it is restimulated in life, takes about four days to cut in sharply. In therapy, three days is
sometimes required to “develop” an engram. This does not mean that three days have to elapse
before it is available and it does not mean that work has to stop for three days, but it does mean
that engrams, not being memories and articulate as such, take three days, sometimes, to come
to the surface.
To be more clear, an engram can be asked for on day one and will be found on day
three. Meanwhile the auditor is getting other engrams. This process is so automatic that it
requires no attention and will not come to notice except in cases that are being worked once a
week. The engram is asked for on day one, is ready to reduce on day three, sags on day four
and is rebalanced by day seven.
The three day aspect is interesting in another sense. This time of three days is just an
observation of the average behavior of pre-clears. Precision investigation may fix it at 2.5 days
or 3.6 days (it varies in individuals), but three days is close enough for our purposes. When
one is doing just a release on a case, he will sometimes find that it is necessary to take a late
engram and run it: the physical pain engram of later life (post-birth) will appear to rise, will
remain constant for three days and then will “sag.” When it sags, the auditor will have to go
back to it and run it again. Taking out these “sags” will eventually make the later life engram
stay in a recessed state.
Euphoria often sets in on a case when the auditor touches an engram which contains a
manic. The patient will then go around saying how wonderful dianetics is because he is now in
magnificent condition and is so happy. Watch out. In three or four days this manic will have
sagged back to a depressive state. Be wary if somebody experiences one of these sky-rocket
“recoveries” for it is about as permanent as the fire of a burning match. It goes out and leaves
very cold ashes. The auditor, seeing this euphoria, had better enter the case again and reduce
the engram it contains more thoroughly or get a more basic engram.
The length of time it takes to clear a person is quite variable. By blowing despair
charges and working a few early engrams, an auditor can get a better state of being in the
patient than in any past therapy in twenty or thirty hours: this is a release. It compares to two or
three years of past therapeutic work. The length of time it takes to get a clear cannot be
compared to any past standard because a clear is something no past standard ever dreamed
about.
In a sonic case, where recall is in good condition, a clear can be obtained in a hundred
hours. In a case which has thoroughly shut down recalls, anything can happen up to, in
extremity, a thousand hours. Similarly, the imaginative case which has things which never
happened, may be long.
Look at it this way: we can get the results of two or three years of psycho-analysis in a
score or two of hours of dianetics and what we accomplish with dianetics does not have to be
done again, which is not true with psycho-analysis. This is the release. He can go about his
business in a far more competent fashion, his emotional charges being largely freed. In the
clear we are attempting and can achieve a supernormal state of mind. Thousands and thousands
and thousands of hours were spent in the education of a man: the expenditure of two or even
ten thousand hours of work to make him rank about what would formerly have been possible
for him is work well spent. But we do not have to spend anything like this amount of time.
People have been cleared in anything from thirty hours, when they had sonic and little volume,
to five hundred hours when they had shut-down recall plus imaginary recall. What an auditor
can do with his first few cases by way of time is a question mark. He will get to the clear
eventually and certainly in less than twelve hundred hours in a severe case. All the time he is
working toward a clear he is achieving a higher and higher release which, after at least fifty
hours, rises well above the current norm and keeps right on soaring. Improvement is such that
from week to week the charge is physiologically noticeable and psychologically startling. If
one thinks the reach for clear is a short jump and a small gain, then he has no conception of just
how high that goal is.
Most auditors will try for release at first and are wise if they do. When their own case is
finally cleared, only then will they suddenly realize that the state was worth far more time than
was expended to attain.
It is impossible to forecast, with a new auditor, just how much time he will consume in
making errors, learning his tools, attaining skill. It is therefore impossible to estimate for him
how long it will take him to gain a clear in a patient. A well trained auditor never takes more
than eight hundred hours with the worst of cases: five hundred is high.
OK, this is where HH gets the idea of a 20 hour Clear - please note that it is a 20 hour Release.
Then, we have the History of Dianetics.
In 1935 some of the basic research was begun: in 1938 the primary axioms were
discovered and formulated. For the next several years these axioms were tested in the
laboratory of the world. The war interrupted the work, as wars will, being chaos, but shortly
after the cessation of actual hostilities, research was renewed. Within a year the fundamentals
of this science as they applied to the human mind had been integrated. They were tested on a
long series of random patients and each test further refined the work, but each application
brought specific results.
Five years after the initial resumption of labor, in 1950, the work was prepared for
release, all tests having brought forth the conclusion that dianetics is a science of mind, that it
does disclose hitherto unknown laws about thought and that it has worked on every type of
inorganic mental and organic psycho-somatic illness. Further, in the refinement of form
attained, it was proven possible for the work to be used easily by people not lengthily trained.
Finally, we have the Future of Therapy
One might say that it is an imposition upon a mathematician and philosopher to require
him to resolve all the problems himself and to put forth all improvements. Indeed, it is an
imposition that he be required to develop any technique of application at all, for there should be
in any society an apportionment of labor.
When the basic axioms and computations were finished, it was impossible to release
them for there were none to whom such research could be released for application. Thus the
work had to be carried out to its furthest extent of not only experimentation but the
development and proof of the techniques of application.
He's stating that he did the work by himself...that's what I get from this and within a paragraph he's saying what would you think of a society that watched someone build a bridge and then stood around doing nothing? For God's Sake - Build a better Bridge!
What sort of an opinion would you have of the society on the lower plateau if they but
moaned and wept and argued and gave no hand at all in the matter of widening the bridge or
making new bridges?
In this handbook we have the basic axioms and a therapy which works.
For God’s sake, get busy and build a better bridge!
The key here is that Ron, all by Ron's lonesome, Cleared and Alleviated 270 cases in 9 years. We get that with 1938 - 1942, then the war until 1945, then 1945 - 1950. Well, let's be generous and say that he spent 100 hours on each case as an average - we get 2,700 hours. Keep in mind that he states 2 hours per day and every 3 days.
I'll attempt some math here. Let's say Ron could do 4 people per day. That means 12 patients getting 2 hours every 3 days. This gives Ron the capacity to audit for 8 hours each day. We won't speculate here on how Ron did the logistics of scheduling and all routing and all that...marketing and drumming up the biz. Let's just assume that somehow he earned money while doing his research.
If I'm correct I get something like 50 days to do 12 cases to a 100 hours. This is non-stop 8 hour days straight through. That means 1,125 days of non-stop auditing for 270 cases. Somewhere around 3 years worth of non-stop auditing.
Now, he claims this is spread out over a 9 year period of testing - really it's 5 but let's give Ron some slack, OK? How does this give Ron any time to sponge off of the free sex Satan cult and two-time on his wife and kids?
None of these people from this time period, Nibs, Parsons, Sara, Polly, Navy personnel, L Sprague D Camp, Heinlein, Campbell - anyone or any of them, mention the "work" that Ron is doing. It's absolutely impossible to have not noticed 270 cases getting on the average of 100 hours of therapy!!
But you guys knew that already...