This chapter is reproduced from notes taken by a student on the course in 1950. No recording of this lecture has been found, and without the actual tape recording we have been unable to verify the accuracy of the notes. The same material appears in a more condensed form in the book “Notes on the Lectures”.

In this lecture we are going to cover types of cases and we are also going to cover some more Standard Procedure. Standard Procedure is a pretty important subject.

As to types of cases, we might as well start with the punch-drunk fighter and the electric shock case in which the effect is more or less the same. In both types there are a tremendous number of late life engrams.

The nervous system will sustain a huge amount of punishment. The normal person ordinarily has several thousand engrams. It is often amusing when you start a case. He will say, “But I have never been unconscious in my life.” Then you find he has had 15 childhood illnesses, 12 anesthetics, and in the prenatal area received his daily dozen. And yet the person at the present date can state, “I have never been unconscious in my whole life”.

The main difference in cases is one of quantity. The case which has a great many late life engrams, such as a punch-drunk fighter, has a somewhat larger number of engrams than normal.

The first time I cleared up a fighter’s reactive mind, we had to pick up early fights, childhood griefs and basic-basic, and only then did late life engrams start to lift. (After getting basic-basic, you can start running almost anyplace; having the basic area cleared, the rest of the track is ready.) Fight after fight came, blow after blow. He had been hammered and punched in practically every place on his body. We even ran the crowd yelling, “Give us blood! Give us blood!” Then his manager used to escort him from the ring raving about everything he had done wrong. Pretty soon he didn’t know his right hand from his left. He was very confused.

After one fight he had lain unconscious for two hours with a terrific argument going on around him between the manager and his trainer, and both manager and trainer agreed he was a bum, and how much of a bum he was.

The net result of all this was the finish of this fighter. He had come to us with the initial trouble that he was living in 1935 and it was then 1947. This slight discrepancy of dates caused worry to his family. He would make an announcement about the fight he was going to fight “tomorrow night,” and he had been doing it ever since 1935. He was locked up at that point on the track.

It was easy to go back and knock the holders out. Then I had to go into the basic area and knock out very early engrams. He could move earlier than 1935, but if he tried to go later, it was February 12 of the year 1935. He was held there in such a way that he could not come to present time. Nothing existed beyond that point, but things existed below it.

The English language has a fantastic number of phrases which will accomplish such a thing.

It took about 28 hours before we could knock this material out. Engram after engram after engram — every blow had been recorded. Fighters often spend two-thirds of the time out on their feet, and that is all solid engram. The professional fighter’s career is fantastic for the number of hours of unconsciousness it contains, in addition to a good deal of physiological damage to the brain and such things.

Electric shock cases are very similar. Both have to be worked in the same way. There is a tremendous quantity of content. You will undoubtedly have a lot to do with these if you follow Dianetics. Or you may run across cases such as one man who tested sockets with his finger. “It didn’t do me any harm; it didn’t do anything to me.” We found, though, that every time he had made a test he had gotten an engram. He had one phrase in an engram about its not bothering him: “Electric shocks never bother me.”

All of these cases are basically the same; that is, they have engrams in the basic area: basic-basic or birth — or perhaps, as has recently been found, an aberrative sperm and ovum series.l Normally, however, the earliest engram is one day after conception.

The zygote is very easily injured. Every abdominal pressure affects it. However, an auditor should run the ovum-sperm series three or four days before conception. Although this hasn’t been checked objectively, cases respond much better if you get that series.

The time up to before the first missed menstrual period has been checked objectively, because somebody else has this material too, but it is not easy to check conception objectively. Conception is a specific moment and you are not quite sure when it arrives. However, until the time this data is checked objectively, the reality of it is strong.

Restimulation of the sperm or ovum series makes the person very uncomfortable. In fact, restimulation of the sperm or ovum series once or twice can trigger a psychotic.

Another point is to never ask the file clerk “Is this engram erased?” Never ask the file clerk about any condition of affairs. The file clerk never thinks; it just hands out data. In two cases auditors did that then just walked off and left it. Ordinarily this would have settled out in a few days, but the cases were interrupted.

Out of the sperm and ovum the whole organism is made. The whole body develops from those two cells, and every cell contains any injury that occurred in that basic time, so a basic engram is contained in every cell in the body.

The earlier on the track you find the engram, the more aberrative it is. The two reasons for this are that they have priority in terms of time, and the earlier one is more valid to the psyche than later ones. If an engram said “I hate men,” and a later engram said something different, the first phrase would be the one followed. What is contained in that one is known by the whole organism. If there is validity to the biological explanation, the whole organism would be permeated by the data in the basic engrams.

So, be very careful to run out everything you come in contact with. You can actually have a preclear in much better shape if you restimulate a late life pain engram. But don’t do that either!

These rules are important:

1. Don’t invalidate the preclear’s data.

2. Reduce everything you get your hands on.

You are going to find people who say they have no prenatals. This is one of the experiences of the game and is a very ordinary one. Such people will simply be lying there, out of contact with any pain. All very early engrams are more or less off the track. Ask the file clerk for one and you can get it. But often, even in a sonic case, the first words in the engram don’t come through. The person doesn’t get an immediate sonic reaction. He can be returned right in the middle and you can say, “Do you hear anything? Do you feel anything?” He answers, “No.”

Actually, the engram might be off to the side, not in the analytical line.

The way you get data is as follows: “The file clerk will give us the engram necessary to resolve this case. The somatic strip will go to the beginning of the engram.”

There might be a veil between the content of the engram and the analytical mind. The way you pull the veil away is to say, “When I count from one to five, the first phrase will flash into your mind.” The first words of it as given may be “Don’t let it go,” and the somatic turns on. If he is getting the impressions of words he will get the content, and then you can run whatever the engram is. But you do have to connect him up with it before you run it, and if you follow that procedure you can get prenatal.

Every case is basically the same, but the manifestations are widely different. At one time man classified psychotic states in a very ponderous way, and there were so many left over that the largest bin was the unclassified one. In Dianetics, by type of case we don’t mean such psychotic classifications. In Dianetics all classifications stem directly from manifestations of the engram. Out of this vast area we are interested in these four factors: whether the case moves, and whether he has sonic, pain shut-off, or dub-in.

If a person is stuck, he isn’t going to move on the time track. In the Handbook the editor deleted the quotes in one place from the word stuck, and there has been a misconception about being stuck in present time. A person cannot be stuck in present time. The engram might give him that illusion, but actually he is stuck in an engram, and it is necessary to touch that. To test if a person is moving on the track, you get an age flash by saying “How old are you?”

He says, “Forty-two.”

You say, “What is the first number that flashed in your mind?”

“Forty-two.”

You say, “Well, was there any change there at all?” You might still have some sort of built-in circuit that gives the proper age. This has to be broken down. Very often a person will give the year before, like a person giving a change into a new year. He may say 22 and it’s really 23.

This is a built-in mechanism.

You say, “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“What is your age?”

His circuit is tuned up to “How old are you?” and by throwing in “What’s your age?” it gives you what his age is.

Next you say, “Give me a number.”

“Seven.”

If a person gives you a number different than his proper age, he is stuck someplace on the time track.

“What is your age?”

“Twenty-six.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Give me a number.”

“Twenty-six.”

This should indicate he is not stuck.

But supposing it came out this way: “How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.“

“What is your age?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Give me a number.”

“Three.”

You would then say, “What happened to you when you were 3?” He might say, “Nothing — nothing at all.”

“Tell me, what happened to you?”

“Well, I had pneumonia.”

“What happened to you when you had pneumonia?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing.”

You say, “Tell me, were you delirious?”

“Oh, no! Well, I pretty nearly died.”

You can pick up many little bits of data this way. This method may give you the exact place where he is stuck.

It is interesting that some people can travel up and down the track with one perceptic while the others are stuck. A person may do it by smell, such as one man who was stuck in a tonsillectomy but could smell right up and down the track. His sense of smell validated his data for him. If he couldn’t smell it, it wasn’t there. It is interesting to take a person and give him this age procedure. You will catch people all over the place. You will even find them in operations. As a matter of fact, the girl that designed the book Dianetics is a good example. I asked her one day, “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“What’s your age?”

“Fourteen.”

“What happened to you when you were 14?”

“I had an automobile accident, I think. It wasn’t terribly important.”

But she had been unconscious for four days. She had sonic recall, and one of the first phrases was “Keep her right here, I’ll be right back.” When she got out, she went right back. Her ear had been bothering her with a chronic somatic. She had been having trouble all along with it, but the next day after this talk she said, “Something very strange happened; my ear doesn’t hurt today.”

In such a way you should test your preclear If he is in present time, he will be able to go to last year and come back to present time. If he can’t, he is stuck. His age may be off, and even if it isn’t, you can give him this. You say, “Give me a yes or no answer: Hospital?”

“No.” He looks at you rather puzzled.

“Mother?”

“Yes. What are you asking me?”

“Give me yes or no on the following: Doctor?”

“No.”

“Nurse?”

“Yes.”

“Home?”

“Yes.”

“All right. When were you sick and attended by your mother and a nurse at home?” And you find he is at that point. With anybody who is stuck, give him this yes-and-no routine, and you can quite often get the exact spot he is stuck. A person can be stuck in five or ten places at once. I know a very brilliant physicist who could think only in concepts and had no recall. He couldn’t remember if he had used a toothbrush or a horseshoe nail that morning. He was in bad shape. His whole memory bank was unavailable to him. His mind was innately very bright, so he derived all his information instantly. But he couldn’t remember data, so he had to re-derive it every time he needed it!

Some of these facts have given people the idea that neurosis and brilliance are somehow connected, but this isn’t true; because after Dianetic processing in a case like that, the person has all the potential he had before, plus the material in the memory banks that was not available to him earlier.

An occluded case is liable to boil off. We had one case in particular where we would put him on the couch and say, “Shut your eyes,” and it was no use for the auditor to talk because the person would promptly pass out. He was in the middle of boil-off right away. He ran prenatal engrams and five or six others; he boiled for four or five hours and then started moving up the track. The auditor would say, “Give me some data. What are you contacting?” (You can kick people in the feet, gently, to keep them going.)

The preclear said, “Mumble, mumble . . .”

The auditor asked, “What are you contacting?”

“Airplanes . . . mumble, mumble . . . railroad station . . .”

“Do you see a railroad station? What do you see?” This went on for 25 hours, just that and no more, until at the end of that time he started moving.

A real boil-off is distinct. A person may hallucinate and dream in the middle of it, with mirage-like illusions. You then have boil-off combined with control circuits. One preclear would get winter scenes with beautiful scenery. Sometimes he would start to describe the scenery. That is boil-off.

With one type of case, if you start anything, he just boils off and all you can do is let it boil.

Don’t get impatient. He is liable to swing into an engram at any time. Where there is unconsciousness, there is a somatic under it. He may experience no somatics and boil and boil.

Still, there isn’t a single case that has not boiled off. One case was in one engram for five hours. Electric shock therapy will do that. But if it takes five hours, it takes five hours. Do it; don’t go off, and don’t try to bring in anything else. Sometimes it may take five minutes, sometimes half an hour. Sometimes the somatic will turn on and the person will run it off.

Unconsciousness comes over the top of the engram.

Another type runs all over the track with visio, sonic and so on — all dub-ins. Such a case has a lot of control circuits. He moves very easily on the track and you can run engrams, but you generally find this person does not have a somatic. A self-controlled person can run engrams but have no somatics. Give him Straightwire and knock out those control circuits. He has some engram phrase such as “I have to discipline myself,” “You have to behave yourself,” “You have to mind,” “You have to do as you are told.” If you ask such a person “Who is the most self-controlled person in your family?” usually he doesn’t know.

In one case there was a dear, innocent, sweet grandma, who was very charming and full of enough aberrative phrases to scare you to death, giving the case an ally with phrases that ran like this: “It all comes down to this,” so the person would go down there and stay there.

Another phrase was “The next thing you know, there is trouble,” so he would start something and then there would be trouble. Another was “The trouble with you is you are no good.” A form of punishment was “Now stay there until I say you can come out,” and he was put in the closet; but she had never said to come out and as a result he was all locked up. There were also phrases like “Control yourself” and “Don’t make a fool out of yourself; people will be looking.”

In this particular case, out of the whole family this old lady was the one character who was aberrative in nearly everything she said, and you will find that a case growing up under such a person or in that environment has a terrific number of control circuits. They can “control themselves,” but the “I” isn’t doing it. Real self-control is accomplished by the “I,” but in these cases you get a sort of false auditor.

The person starts to go into an engram and there is no somatic. He will go all over the bank, with a demon circuits taking over a portion of the analytical mind. The engram actually thinks for him. These people won’t do what you tell them to do; they won’t let the somatic go on. They will feel you haven’t enough altitude to audit.

In reality, a person is more self-controlled with the control circuits out. The circuits actually interfere with the “I.”

Sometimes while you are running someone they will come in one day and say, “I was running through this engram today.”

You say, “You were what?”

“Oh, I went over it and I felt awfully sick, and I feel sick now.”

Don’t try to get that engram. Leave it alone, because that engram is not ready to lift. It may be prenatal or late life, but that does not mean it is ready to erase. Consequently, if you try to get that engram, you are going to run into a hornets’ nest, with more and more restimulation.

What you want is to get the earliest moment of pain or unconsciousness, or grief charges, and to proceed from there. “Give us the engram next in line, the next earliest engram,” and so on.

“The file clerk will give us the next engram necessary to resolve this case.” Keep the file clerk forced earlier.

Sometimes you find people who have been taught to-do auto-selfhypnosis. This is gruesome!

Someone said, “Any time you wish, you can do so-and-so. Now, forget what I have just said to you.”

This poor person will go around after that, and instead of letting his auditor do the auditing, he will try to run an incident by himself. He will start running engrams and will get hooked up on the track. He will say to himself, “Isn’t that a beautiful girl! Yes. Hmmmmm. Must be an engram, hmmmmm. I’ll say ‘I like beautiful women.”’ He repeats it. Then he doesn’t feel so good, so he starts saying “Doesn’t feel good.” That is your standard autocontrol case, and 30 percent of cases run have done it.

There is a way to administer Straightwire to yourself, but it is not that way. You can go over things from present time and can get therapeutic value from doing that, but the whole case will bog if you start running engrams by yourself. You will find you will be stuck in eight or nine or twelve or maybe eighty or ninety engrams! So don’t let anybody autocontrol himself if you can help it. Such a person must have had a very “commanding personality” in the family, who was actually a very aberrated personality.

Attack it with straight memory; let the preclear remember times when somebody said, “Control yourself.” But if you allow a preclear to run himself, he will ruin his case.

Then there is a dub-in case. You don’t find a person with dub-in who won’t do autocontrol.

People in psychoanalysis have been doing it and it has not been recognized. They have been lying down on the psychoanalytic couch, and the analyst has found he could get a lot of grief off but that it often latched up on something; and his patient would become neurotic some days. What really happened was that the person was going up and down the track and he didn’t know what it was. When psychoanalysis has triggered this, it has often made the subject neurotic.

Autocontrol subjects may be able to control themselves up and down the track, but they restimulate areas and don’t reduce the engrams. They are victimized by this mechanism.

Another one which will upset you is the “can’t believe it” case. Here is a bad case. He tells you he can’t believe he has any engrams.

Now, memory is the same process as remembering. In memory, maybe just one or two attention units go down the track into certain compartments, so to speak, and you may make contact with just a few units. A person remembering very deeply gets more and more into the incident, goes deeper and deeper, and thinks harder and harder and harder. If somebody says “Good evening” to him, he jumps. He has really returned to the incident. If his whole being goes down, he revivifies, and you can get it down to a point where a grown man will cry like a baby. Returning to 3 years of age, such a person may refuse to give any information, or he may just not want to tell you. So you can say to him, “Well, I’ll give you an all-day sucker.”

“Okay,” he says, and then he will talk.

I think of the attention units as little men with walkie-talkies switched on. They seem to be able to communicate. If an attention unit is down the track, it is in communication with present time.

And there seems to be an attention unit on guard at the engram saying such things as “There is somebody here saying ‘Get out”’; and if the person is in a room, he will feel he just has to get out. Perhaps there was a certain kind of lamp in that incident and the lamp, or one like it, is seen in the room; it keys in that part of the engram which says “Get out,” so he leaves the room.

It depends on how many attention units go back along the track as to whether you call it remembering or recalling or reliving. With remembering there is a little returning; returning is a little part of reliving; and reliving is when you are all there.

Psychotics are always living in an engram under control circuits and demon circuitry. They are not in contact with reality, and that type of case is the “control circuitry” case.

In the “can’t believe it” case the person’s mind has been trying to go back and believe things but his data is all in monotone — everything has the same value. He can’t believe he is hungry; he can’t believe Africa is where it is. There is trouble with all his data. You ask him, “Do you believe in psychoanalysis? “ “No, of course not.”

“Why?”

“You can’t believe it.”

One manifestation is “I don’t believe I have any engrams.” Now, don’t force it down his throat; you have to tackle this case and find out what person in his past life was very skeptical. You are running a case who has no sense of reality. If his communication is bad, he is going to be hard to like or work with. It will be hard to establish affinity. That is a specific type of case.

Another type is the person who believes everything you tell him. His case is almost as serious as the other. He would even believe it if you told him “The moon is made of green cheese.” His sense of humor has been blocked out. He, too, has a monotone of values. This person is going to receive everything you say as a hypnotic suggestion, so be sure you put in a canceler. This is the credulous case. The old phrase “Believe me!” is pretty acute in this case.

These are probably the major types of cases. Besides these, there is the non-coitus case. There are people who don’t believe in sex. I want you to be aware of that as an auditor because you will need to be able to distinguish this type of case. You get all the way down the track into the basic area, and you may get a phrase such as “Go away, leave me alone, I don’t like you.”

Somebody in the person’s past life will have used these phrases, and this person will be bounced out of that area. With phrases like “Go away,” “Get out,” “Leave me alone,” he will be getting bounced all the way and he will bounce out of the prenatal area. If you get into the conception area, you may find that conception itself is full of bouncers.

It may appear that the engram has vanished, but you check with the file clerk. “Give me yes or no, is there a bouncer here?”

Use Dianetic terminology. That language was chosen because it is mostly non-aberrative. It was designed that way. We say somatic, for instance, instead of pain, because the word somatic is usually not in the bank. You ask the file clerk, “Bouncer?” “Yes.”

“When I count from one to five the phrase will flash in your mind. One-two-three-four-five (snap!).”

“Get away.” Roll it and go into the engram.

This is very important to know, because when you have a non-coitus chains in existence in a case, the possibility is that there is a series of bouncers and denyers in the basic area. This is true if you have a case running for hours and hours who is still not in the prenatal area. If that is so, start Straightwire.

It has been my experience that the non-coitus chain with phrases such as “Get away, I don’t like you” is the biggest sinner in throwing people out of the basic area. It makes misanthropic people.

So, these are the stellar cases that will give you the most trouble. I wish we could have all cases with wide-open perceptics all the way down the line running pianola, but unfortunately we do not. To free your cases just follow out Standard Procedure.

According to notes made by the original transcriber, the above lecture was followed by a break and then a demonstration session. Unfortunately we have been unable to locate either a tape recording or a transcript of that demonstration.