Diagnosis

Well, knock me down with a feather. There is a quotation here, with reference. Instantly, I can find no modern reference to John Jacob Brooke Morgan, but old copies of his work are available. This particular work was published between 1928 and 1944, although some listing have an edition claimed to be published in 1953 by Longmans, Green. From the posthumous publication listings, I can gather than Mr Brooke passed away between 1944 and 1945. It is difficult for me to establish the value that modern society places on this particular work of Mr Morgan, but I seem to be able to obtain used copies for reasonable prices, so we'll see what this chapter has to say first.

My joy at finding an external reference is short lived once I understand that the quote, "Psychology has ... no mental standards to set up ... The psychologist does not occupy himself with the establishment of norms." is used here to illustrate that psychology has no norms by which to work. The interpretation of this depends on your view point.

If you expect that each individual is treated on their own merits and is approached without preconception, then Morgan's words hold strength. If you expect that there is a scientific basis to the human personality then the quote will disappoint. The quote therefore needs to be put further in to context; it is not enough on its own to support or detract from anything.

So. Back to the chapter.

The long story short on the first page is an expansion of the above. That the field of psychiatry has been complaining that categorisation does not lead to cure, because categorisation is impossible.

With classic medicine, if someone has broken their arm it does not matter too much that they fell off a chair or tripped over a step. You treat the broken arm.

With mental issues such as depression, the individual could be depressed because of the death of a relative or the loss of a job; in these cases the causes must be treated. Berievement for the death of the relative or empowering the person in the search for employment. Should these prove effective then the depression should go of its own accord. Even though drugs can be used in the short term to alleviate the symptoms of the depression, without addressing the cause there will be no permanent relief.

So. Point well made. In fact, psychiatry and dianetics actually agree in this avenue.

Then, however, this chapter splits. It starts by making sense, "If he is sure he has to buy everything he sees, despite his income, he has an engram which tells him to buy everything he sees." and other understandable situations along the same compulsive obsessive line, but then ruins this good, solid train by continuing, "The man who 'cannot be sure', who 'does not know' and who is sceptical of everything is talking out of engrams. The man who is certain 'it cannot be true' that 'it isn't possible' that 'authority must be contacted' is talking out of engrams. The woman who is so certain that she needs a divorce or that her husband is going to murder her some night is talking out of either her own or his engrams." This is downright dangerous. What is being discussed here is paying no heed to logical conclusion and is laying some very serious situations at the door of having engrams. Such claims do not make sense, and my concerns on this are not alleviated elsewhere in the chapter. Hubbard appears to have really meant this when he wrote it.

In order for these latter people to actually be diagnosed as being suffering from these conditions internally, then there must first be an investigation in to the substance of these fears; they can not be dismissed as psychosomatic out of hand or by automatic conclusion.

The rest of the chapter goes on for a number of pages and I, personally, draw a number of parallels between this and modern counselling as I have experienced it.

The chapter finale at the end is another show of the works age; citing the horrors of early treatments such as pre-frontal lobotomy, transorbital leukotomy and electric shock treatment, abandoned by psychiatry for some decades. I still recall walking in to psychiatric buildings which bore the echoes of such shock cables, gone from practice but not from memory.

Psychiatry has moved on from the nineteen fifties.

Beyond the above, the chapter on diagnosis requires the individual to read it for themselves as it attempts to classify the conversation had between the auditor and the patient. As such it serves no further definition to dianetics as a working science.

The Auditor's Role

This chapter is a guide for confirming the role of an auditor as being the guide that shares the persons ills and is there with them for the journey. It details the qualities that an auditor should bring to their task in the application of dianetics and, as such, contains very little that further defines dianetics itself.

For the reason I gave before, that it is possible a guilt complex can make a situation worse rather than better, I am concerned by one of the last paragraphs in this section, "If an auditor assumes the state of mind that he can sit and whistle while Rome burns before him and be prepared to grin about it, then he will do an optimum job. The things at which he gazes, no matter how they look, no matter how they sound, are solid gains. It's the quiet, orderly patient who is making few gains."

This is concerning because there is no method by which the auditor has of knowing whether the patient is actually making gains, or whether the engram is actually gaining in strength.

It is automatically assumed that confrontation with the engram is making it weaker; and to my mind this is a dangerous assumption to make.