psychotic cases

One time I was so amazed in session I could have fainted with humiliation, a long time ago. Poor old George Wichelow was running me on subjective don’t-know, which is the lousiest process there is; he knew it was a lousy process. I was just about to give a lecture, he didn’t have any business running a beefy process like this, but he was going to make me feel better. And he came over and the London fog had penetrated my beingness. And he came over to the hotel and just before I was going to give a lecture, why old George sat down with his usual cocky aplomb and decided that   he would run subjective don’t-know (even though he knew better, undoubtedly) on London and fog and things, you know, and cheer me up. See? And boy, he ran me right on down the line – boy, he ran me right on down the line. But as murderous as the session was, it took me, I think, oh, twenty-four hours to get totally destimulated from the session. It was pretty grim. Next time he audited me I felt fine and he did a good job, but he just picked a sour one that day.

But I found something out during the session that I sure didn’t like. I found out that the one thing I would never do, I had done. I found out that in about – in 1938, when I wrote the first notes and book on mental investigations, that every single cockeyed piece of terminology in it (none of which ever survived to 1949 or 50), every piece of that terminology was taken straight out of my own engrams. Boy, was my face red. And I was certainly pleased when I realized I’d had enough sense after the war to reevaluate, take other people’s experiences and do a totally analytical approach to the thing and drop all of these terms. You get the idea? Boy, was my thetan red.

And that experience, which happened several years ago, and seeing that I had done it once has made me just trebly cautious about it. So I always go around and I look at it myself and I’m on fairly good terms with my own bank now. I can look at it without it biting and I can mock up large sections of past, and it’s all right for me to remember the name of the guy that killed me in such and such a time, you know, without suddenly going into hate-hate-hate. The bank has tamed down considerably, you know, which means the past experience has tamed down considerably from a standpoint of its velocity. And to look over this vista of things and see whether or not there is any personal onus or curve on any of the material which I’m handing you, see? That’s quite a trick, quite a trick.

But it’s panning out now like it never panned out before. Because everything I’m giving you about case analysis is totally based on several months of intensive inspection of other cases. And every datum which I have picked up subjectively, I have very carefully set aside and classified it as such until it itself shook out of the woods, see? That I could knock out and get acquainted with my own Rock without much help and assistance might discredit my idea of “willing to be helped.” Right after I did that I said, “Gee, did I do this because I was unwilling to be helped?” You know, I looked it over, ‘spect it very carefully. I don’t want to add this thing into what we know, you know, if that’s the case, and then observed the fact the following day that, far from being unwilling to be helped, I was inventing things for some people around me so they could help me. I saw I was clean of that.

And I’ve handed this out to two or three other people (three to be precise) to see where they got – because I know that they are chronic self-boggers-inner. And when they got – came up bright and shining, why, I knew we had something that closely resembled a self-auditing process for the first time in the history of this business which, if used by an auditor, would go through to Clear because it improves help and it improves goals and improves desires up to a point where an individual can operate. Now do you understand this? It is possible to override your bank. Once in a while I feel like saying to somebody on staff or something like that – sure, maybe they’re awful caved in – I feel like saying to some of them, “You don’t have to obey a reactive mind. You don’t have to follow its orders. It is not absolutely necessary that you be crazy, or that you be chicken about something of the sort.”

So I well remember being thrown into a whole chain of engrams many, many years ago, 1949, and going up to Bethursday Naval Hospital and my total medical history was totally medical. It never had anything to do with psychiatric, but I was in a horrible state of restimulation. The auditor had thrown me clear back into a prenatal and here we went. See? God almighty, I didn’t know whether the world was falling in or going apart because the auditor got me all the way back down the train and then agreed with my mother. Oh man, that was rough, never brought me up to present time, never said another word.

Next morning I was walking down the corridor of Bethesda Naval Hospital and I’ll be darned if that corridor wasn’t moving itself into four, five different points of the compass, one after the other. First it was going north and then it was going northeast, and then it was going northwest, you know? It was heading different directions, actually physically heading different directions and I said, “Boy, I’ve had it. I – I don’t think I can go on, not another inch. After all, I’ve – I’ve had it,” I said to myself and I leaned shakingly and horrifiedly up against a door. Couldn’t even get on to the eye clinic where I was supposed to have an examination. And I looked up out of the corner of my eye and I saw the sign “Psychiatrist.” And I took myself by the nape of the neck and I straightened myself up and I squared myself into a straight line and walked on down to the eye clinic.

That’s easily the worst one I ever had, easily. But Dianetics had already pulled me up to a point where they certified me as totally fit for combat duty by rank and grade from total disability. I’d already gone through this; I’d already achieved this gain.

But I got a reality at that moment that has been a reality on me in research ever since. Two things: You don’t have to do what your bank says. And the other one is: You don’t have to add your own case in to any computation you make.¹

Notes