In order to make up one’s mind to be responsible for things it is necessary to get over the idea that one is being forced into responsibility.

The power of choice is still senior to responsibility. What one does against his will operates as an overt act against oneself. But where one’s will to do has deteriorated to unwillingness to do anything, lack of will is itself an aberration.

Variations in the reactions of pcs to responsibility processes stem from the pc’s belief that his power of choice is being or has been overthrown. Where an auditor has a pc balking against a responsibility process, the pc has conceived that the auditor is forcing responsibility on the pc and very little good comes of the session.

There is nothing wrong, basically, with doingness. But where one is doing something he is unwilling to do, aberration results. One does, in such a case, while unwilling to do. The result is doingness without responsibility.

In the decline of any state into slavery as in Greece, or into economic strangulation of the individual as in our modern western society, doingness is more and more enforced and willingness to do is less and less in evidence. At length people are doing without being responsible. From this results bad workmanship, crime, indigence and its necessities for welfarism. At length there are so many people who are unwilling to do that the few left have to take full burden of the society upon their backs. Where high unwillingness to do exists, democracy is then impossible, for it but votes for the biggest handout.

Where high unwillingness to do exists then we have a constant restimulation of all the things one is really unwilling to do such as overt acts. Forcing people who do not want to work to yet work restimulates the mechanism of overt acts with, thereby, higher and higher crime ratio, more and more strikes and less and less understanding of what it is all about.

The individual who has done something bad that he was not willing to do then identifies anything he does with any unwillingness to do — when of course he has done this many times. Therefore all doingness becomes bad. Dancing becomes bad. Playing games becomes bad. Even eating and procreation become bad. And all because unwillingness to do something bad has evolved and identified into unwillingness to do.

The person who has done something bad restrains himself by withholding doingness in that direction. When at length he conceives he has done many many bad things, he becomes a total withhold. As you process him you encounter the recurring phenomenon of his realization that he has not been as bad as he thought he was. And that’s the wonderful part of it. People are never as bad as they think they are — and certainly other people are never as bad as one thinks they have been.

The basic wonder is that people police themselves. Out of a concept of good they conceive themselves to be bad, and after that seek every way they can to protect others from self. A person does this by reducing his own ability. He does it by reducing his own activity. He does this by reducing his own knowingness.

Where you see a thetan who sleeps too much and does too little, where you see a person who conceives bad doingness on every hand, you see a person who is safeguarding others from the badness of himself or herself.

Now there is another extreme. A person who must do because of economic or other whips, and yet because of his own concept of his own badness dares not do, is liable to become criminal. Such a person’s only answer to doingness is to do without

taking any responsibility and this, when you examine the dynamics, falls easily into a pattern of dramatized overt acts. Here you have a body that is not being controlled, where most knowledge is obscured and where responsibility for others or even self is lacking. It is an easy step from criminality to insanity, if indeed there is any step at all. Such people cannot be policed since being policed admits of some obedience. Lacking control there is no ability to obey, and so they wind up simply hating police and that is that.

Only when economic grips are so tight or political pressure is so great as it is in Russia do we get high criminality and neurotic or psychotic indexes. Whenever doing is accompanied by no will to do, irresponsibility for one’s own acts can result.

Basically, then, when one is processing a pc, one is seeking to rehabilitate a willingness to do. In order to accomplish this one must rehabilitate the ability to withhold on the pc’s own determinism (not by punishment) further bad actions. Only then will the pc be willing to recover from anything wrong with the pc — since anything wrong with the pc is self-imposed in order to prevent wrongdoing at some past time.

All types of responsibility processes have this as their goal: to rehabilitate the willingness to do and the ability to withhold on one’s own determinism.

Restraint in doing something one knows he should do is a secondary deterrent but comes with other offshoots of responsibility into the cognition area.

Thus we have a formula of attack on any given area where the pc cannot do, is having trouble or cannot take responsibility: (a) Locate the area. (b) Find a terminal to represent it. (c) Find what the pc has done to that terminal that he thinks he should have withheld. (d) Reduce all such incidents.

In short all we have to do to rehabilitate any case is find an area where the terminal is still real to the preclear and then get rid of what he has done and withheld, and we come up with an improved responsibility.

Of all the responsibility processes, the oldest one I developed is still the best one by test and that is:

“What have you done to a (terminal)?”

“What have you withheld from a (terminal)?”

The processing results depend in large part on the accuracy of assessment, on the willingness of the auditor to process the pc and upon running the process as flat as it will go before finding another terminal.

Assessment accuracy depends upon skilled use of the E-Meter. Dynamic Straight Wire is best, and a weather eye upon the tone arm to see what terminal varies it, once one has the dynamic and from that has selected a terminal.

The willingness of the auditor to process the pc depends upon the confidence of the auditor to obtain results — and this is established by deletion of things the auditor has done to pcs and withheld from pcs in general and this pc in particular. Thus co-audit teams would be right always if they took each other as the terminals to be run first, get these pretty flat (and keep them flat during processing with “What have you done to me?” “What have you withheld from me?”), then as the next thing to do run the sex of the auditor off the pc, then clean up Dianetics or Scientology (or use this as step two). And only then go into “case”. That would be a pretty fine co-audit team after they have survived the first explosions and gotten them gone.

Then in searching out areas to run as a case, care should be taken not to over-run a terminal or under-run one. A pc running out of answers can get very restless.

Responsibility can be rehabilitated on any case and when it has been you have a clear and that’s all there is to it.