Avoidance of Double Acknowledgement is vital if you ever hope to keep the preclear in session.
Double Acknowledgement occurs when the pc answers up, the auditor then acknowledges, and the pc then finishes his answer, leaving the auditor with another acknowledgement to do (and also leaving the auditor with no session).
Wrong:
Command: “What could you say to your father?”
Pc: “I could say, ‘Hello’.”
Auditor: “Fine.”
Pc: “‘. . . Father, how are you?’ I could say that.”
Auditor: (weakly) “Good. What could you say to your father?”
Pc: “I could say, ‘Are you feeling well?’“
Auditor: (desperate by now) “Good!”
Pc: “‘. . . enough to go fishing?’“
Auditor: “Well okay all right. Now“
A pc is not always sure he has answered the question so he often changes his mind. If the auditor gives him Tone 40 or any acknowledgement at all in between a pc’s reply the auditor is wrong.
You just don’t “encourage” a pc with a lot of agreement OK’s and Yes’s in the middle of answers. The pc answers, the pc is sure he has answered and the auditor then acknowledges. After all, it is the pc that must be satisfied.
There are many ways to mis-acknowledge a pc. But any mis-acknowledgement is only and always a failure to end the cycle of a command — auditor asks, pc replies and knows he has answered, auditor acknowledges. Pc knows auditor has acknowledged. That is a full auditing command cycle. Don’t forget it and expect a process to work, it won’t. The roughest spot in most auditors is TR 2, not so much how to acknowledge but when.
An auditor running into this with a pc should handle it this way.
Auditor: “What could you say to your father?”
Pc: “I could say, ‘Are you feeling well?’“
Auditor: “Did that answer the question?”
Pc: “Well, no. I could say, ‘Are you feeling well enough to go fishing?’“
Auditor: “Did that answer the question?”
Pc: “Yes, I guess it did. He always liked fishing and sympathy.”
Auditor: (sure pc is through) “Good! What could you say to your father?”
And there’s the way of it. If the pc is not sure he has answered and that the auditor has accepted the answer, the pc will get no benefit from the auditing. And that’s how important that is.
Mood can be expressed by an acknowledgement. Evaluation can also be accomplished by acknowledgement, depending on the tone of voice with which it is uttered.
There is nothing bad about expressing mood by acknowledgement, except when the acknowledgement expresses criticalness, ridicule, or humour.
You can always spot a bad auditor. He does two things: he talks too much to the pc and he stops the pc from properly answering.
[The above HCO B is a combination of HCO B 15 September 1958, More on Training Drill Two, and HCO B 12 January 1959, Tone of Voice - Acknowledgement.]