Keying in the engram

Now this starts off with a really odd, unproven premise. That a child can carry an engram but it can lay dormant. Once keyed in, or triggered if you will, the child then suffers a degradation in physical health and a beginning of suffering headaches. These are very specific claims for which, again, as usual, there is nothing to back them up.

Some of the claims here become more and more unbelievable, "It may be that a patient is urgent in her insistence that her father raped her when she was nine and that this is the cause of all her misery. Large numbers of insane patients claims this. And it is perfectly true. Father did rape her but it happened she was only nine days beyond conception at the time." Even at the stage of one month the baby is still an embryo. How the fuck is a child, which hasn't even got a brain at this point in their development, supposed to hold a memory of a mothers sex with the father?

"Psychotic women often maintain, after they are awakened from a drugged sleep (and sometimes a hypnotic sleep), that they have been raped. Men occasionally maintain that the operator has tried to perform a homosexual act upon them while they were drugged." You know, I really do wish that this sodding book contained references to the material it is purportedly reporting as I can't find anything on this, myself.

"One is reminded of a case which has severe asthma. He had received it in a very severe birth engram; his frantic parents carried him to every mountain asthma resort suggested and spent tens of thousands of dollars in these jauntings. When this patient was cleared and the engram refiled, it was discovered that the restimulator for his asthma was clean, cold air! The only certainty in the environment approach is that a sickly child will recover when removed from restimulative parents and taken where he is loved and feels safe - for his sickness is the inevitable result of restimulation of prenatal engrams by one or the other or both his parents."

Lets examine this. Asthma is when breathing is made difficult due to a narrowing of the airways that lead to the lungs. This is due to a swelling or inflamation and has various triggers. Amazingly, one of those triggers includes cold air...

Yahoo Health - "Asthma affects people in different ways. Some people only have asthma attacks during allergy season, or when they breathe in cold air, or when they exercise. Others have many bad attacks that send them to the doctor often."

National Institute for Health - "Common asthma triggers include:

* Animals (pet hair or dander)
    * Dust
    * Changes in weather (most often cold weather)
    * Chemicals in the air or in food
    * Exercise
    * Mold
    * Pollen
    * Respiratory infections, such as the common cold
    * Strong emotions (stress)
    * Tobacco smoke

eMedicine Health - "Each person with asthma has his or her own unique set of triggers. Most triggers cause attacks in some people with asthma and not in others. Common triggers of asthma attacks are the following:

* exposure to tobacco or wood smoke,
    * breathing polluted air,
    * inhaling other respiratory irritants such as perfumes or cleaning products,
    * exposure to airway irritants at the workplace,
    * breathing in allergy-causing substances (allergens) such as molds, dust, or animal dander,
    * an upper respiratory infection, such as a cold, flu, sinusitis, or bronchitis,
    * exposure to cold, dry weather,
    * emotional excitement or stress,
    * physical exertion or exercise,
    * reflux of stomach acid known as gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD,
    * sulfites, an additive to some foods and wine, and
    * menstruation: In some, not all, women, asthma symptoms are closely tied to the menstrual cycle.

So, there is a physical trigger. Where one might argue that clean, cold air should be good for the body and soul, in some cases it is not and there is a logical, medical trigger which has been the subject of far more scientific research than the claims in Dianetics has.

Then we come to something very interesting. Hang on because this is a bit of a ride...

In the educational field, new data or enthusiasms may very well key out engrams by overbalancing the reactive mind in the light of a new analytical surge. If a man can simply be convinced he has been fighting shadows or if he can be persuaded to hang his fears on some indicated cause, whether that cause is true or not, e can be benefited. Sometimes he can be 'educated' into a strong faith in some deity or cult which will cause him to feel so invulnerable that he rises above his engrams. Raising his survival potential in any way will raise his general tone to a point where it is no longer on a par with the reactive bank. Giving him an education in engineering or music, where he can receive a higher level of respect, will often defend him from his restimulators. A rise to a position of esteem is actually a change of environment, but it is also educational since he is now taught he is valuable. If a man can be made busy at a hobby or work by personal or exterior education that it is good for him, another mechanism comes in to being: the analytical mind becomes so engrossed that it takes to itself more and more energy for its activity and begins to align with a new purpose.

The first few sentences describes quite adequately why a cult or religion is successful. Make someone believe in something and the problems will fade out of the picture. It is unfortunate that in these cases, the problems may not disappear, in fact may get worse; but the person doesn't care because the fears have been tagged, filed and are put on the side lines; even if the basis for this is completely untrue and unfounded.

This paragraph is, in fact, a very good explanation of why it is better to tackle the issues you are facing in life rather than trying to side line them with beliefs of things which are not true; ie. joining a religion or a cult. Which, incidentally, is exactly what you are doing by deciding to follow scientology; whether you call it a religion or a cult ... according to this paragraph, it is the same thing.

Also concerning is this...

"On the physical therapy level, anything as violent as surgery or exodontistry in the psychosomatic plane is utter barbarism in the light of Dianetics. 'Toothache' is normally psychosomatic. Organic illnesses enough to fill several catalogs are psychosomatic. No recourse to surgery of any kind should be had until it is certain that the ailment is not psychosomatic or that the illness will not diminish by itself if the potency of the reactive mind is reduced. Mental-physical therapy is too ridiculous, with the source of aberration now a science, to be seriously mentioned. for no thinking doctor or psychiatrist possessed of this information would touch another electrode for electric shock therapy or even glance at a scalpel or ice pick to perform an operation on the pre frontal lobes of the brain unless that doctor or psychiatrist is himself so thoroughly aberrated that the act springs not from any desire to heal, but from the most utter and craven sadism to which engrams can bring a man."

Claiming that toothache is normally psychosomatic is basically down to how a person takes care of their teeth. That is the only way that I can equate a mental process as having a bearing on the coming about of toothache to the, "normal," degree claimed. However, is failure to care for ones teeth a conscious or unconscious thought process? Debatable, certainly. Scientifically provable? Unlikely.

However, once something like toothache has come about, it is a physical condition resulting from the physical deterioration and while I do not dispute that it is possible to mentally condition to block out pain or for stress to prevent the mental ability to focus on blocking the pain, getting the mind to reverse the damage caused to bone tissue is not so easy. In fact, the best I can think of is to create an environment where the normal bodily healing will take place on its own accord.

Again, we are basically back to the anecdotal evidence of the person in hospital who's recovery is affected by how they feel.

Also unfortunately, Mental-physical therapy is not ridiculous because the source of aberration is still not a science; and so long as this book continues to offer no actual science or research, that situation will continue.

The last sections claims that the process of electro convulsive therapy and pre-frontal lobotomy is the work of sadists rather than a genuine desire to improve the patients well being. This is a very nasty and deliberately directed venom of hatred. It only takes a look through history and even the present day, to find numerous examples of where a medicinal practice was carried out because of the belief that it was doing good; where all research and reasoning led those of their professions to believe that they were doing the right thing.

That later and improved research and experience proves that this isn't the case, is inevitable in a great many instances, not only in the field of psychiatric medicine, and to ignore this in judgement of what was done in the name of psychiatric science is a dangerous game indeed; inciting hatred of an entire branch of science and the people who become involved for the belief that they are improving the lives of people; for reasons which hold little water in the cold light of day.

I do not doubt that there are likely individuals who will inevitably bring shame on the practice, as there are in any field; religion included. However, to paint the entire science with the same brush is nothing but lunacy in my opinion.

You don't even need to restrain your examination to the field of medical and psychiatric research to find numerous examples of people doing wrong when they believed that they were doing right. Hindsight is always 20:20.

Not only that, but one has to question the involvement in dianetics. Is this nothing other than another example of people doing the wrong thing while believing that they are doing the right thing? It is a very valid question to ask, especially because of the lack of any actual evidence, research or reference contained in this work.