A fellow offered me a job one time. He said, "All you have to do is walk in here, leave your gun at the gate, walk in here and you're supposed to walk around for eight hours a day, and do so-and-so and so-and-so." And I said, "In where?" He said, "In that enclosure there." And I said, "What's the difference between that and a prison camp?" "Oh," he says, "you're nonsense. You get paid in there." That was the first and only time the government offered me a post as a nuclear … [Read more...] about Lecture: A Postulate Out of a Golden Age (1956)
self-determinism
Lecture: Control (January 14, 1956)
Look, there's a big difference between bringing a person to exercise power of choice, and quite another thing -- quite another thing -- that you "cannot do anything else." If you cannot do anything else but let somebody exercise his power of choice, do you know that only his bank exercises a power of choice in that session? He never does. The best thing he can duplicate is you. And if you give that body good control, he can duplicate you as part of the communication. The next thing you know, he … [Read more...] about Lecture: Control (January 14, 1956)
Lecture: Laughter in Processing (1954)
So if the sanity of your preclear could be said to depend upon any self determinism, could be said to depend upon the ratio of his own dangerousness compared to the dangerousness of his environment. When the environment is total danger, and an individual is no danger, you have somebody who is in very bad shape indeed. A badness of shape which is impossible to conceive, even to an auditor. Simply because it's never totally existed. It's an absolute. And let's get the other extreme - an … [Read more...] about Lecture: Laughter in Processing (1954)
Lecture: Where We Are At (2) (1952)
[At this point there is a gap in the original recording.] There’s more things necessary here, though, to make an AC current than have ever met the eye in any electronics textbook. But this one is the one [tapping on blackboard] that interests us particularly. Because there we are dealing with willpower. There we are dealing with self determinism, at the first time we close the switch and short-circuit those two terms and get the same thing. What is willpower? And what is self-determinism … [Read more...] about Lecture: Where We Are At (2) (1952)
Lecture: Technique 88: Overts Acts Motivators & DEDs (continued) (1952)
Now, perhaps you think I am being very unsympathetic with human beings and human aberrations by speaking in this gross, even disrespectful tone of voice with regard to the poor pitiful plight of people. Well, I am. Because the moment you understand a level of something, and understand it well, see it operating under your hands; you don't have to worry about it anymore, for it stops being serious. Why does it stop being serious? Because you can do something about it. If you can take a case, run … [Read more...] about Lecture: Technique 88: Overts Acts Motivators & DEDs (continued) (1952)