The book shares the scope of dianetics, how dianetics can bring a person from hopeless state to hopeful state with optimum life, how negative experiences are stored and how they affect us without us knowing it. Dianetics suggests some techniques which enables us to locate these hidden occurrences and restoring them to our full awareness as memories, freeing us from negative effects. The book describes the procedure as therapy to clear our mind from negative thoughts and for this, we need to understand mind and life itself. For example how mind stores information? What is the impact of stored thoughts on our lives? What is called survival and how it effects on us?

1. Mirfa Manzoor
PhD Candidate, JIBS
Dianetics
The Modern Science of Mental Health
Introduction
The book shares the scope of dianetics, how dianetics can bring a person from hopeless
state to hopeful state with optimum life, how negative experiences are stored and how
they affect us without us knowing it. Dianetics suggests some techniques which enables
us to locate these hidden occurrences and restoring them to our full awareness as
memories, freeing us from negative effects. The book describes the procedure as therapy
to clear our mind from negative thoughts and for this we need to understand mind and
life itself. For example how mind stores information? What is the impact of stored
thoughts on our lives? What is called survival and how it effects on us?
1. Philosophy of Science
Popper in his literature had focused on the idea of demarcation that how to distinguish
between the science and pseudo-science and what is the criteria to define the margin
between these two concepts. According to him, a scientific theory is the one which can
be put to test and there should be a design to conduct the test which determines whether
the theory is scientific or non-scientific. If a person is unable to design such test then
there is no other way to show that theory is false and such theory will not be considered
as scientific. This solves Hume’s induction idea and to justify this Proper described the
concept of Conjectures and Refutations. It is explained as, scientific theory develops
initially from the concept of proposing hypothesis and then testing it. The hypothesis
which are tested and proved as falsified concept are then rejected called as refutation,
while the hypothesis that successfully passes the test are accepted as conjectures. There
is also a possibility of refutation in future for the accepted conjectures and can be refuted
any time in future [1]. The Popper stated the criteria for scientific theory is falsifiability, or
refutability, or testability [2].
2. Dianetics
Dianetics is considered as science of mind. People referred to Dianetics’ book as the
Book, and thought of it more as The Bible. According to Hubbard the dianetics is the only

2. origin of scientology. Science of mind is responsible to answer what is the goal of thought,
what is the nature and function of human mind, what is the source that cause mind ill,
what are the methods of prevention of mental derangement and what is the cause and
cure of all psychosomatic illnesses. Dianetics originates the concept of Scientology and
incorporated the church of Scientology in 1953. Even today it is corporation-owned
religion. In 1993 in United States the Internal Revenue Service officially recognize it as a
religion [3].
Hubbard describes the dianetic as: based upon natural laws, contains therapies
techniques to cure mental illness, boost up the power of rational thinking, explains nature
and function of human memory, explains human nature, and propose treatments for
traceability and adjustment of traceability without brain surgery.
The painful experiences of our past always have a bad impact on our life which influences
on our thoughts and behaviour. It causes mind to move from rational state to irrational
state. The Dianetics has focused on at what degree and why these painful experiences
of our past influence on our thoughts and behaviour that causes our mind to think and
react irrationally. The mind records every moment of life what we see, touch, smell, taste,
listen, and also the emotions either those are painful or joyful. These recordings are
called time track which consecutively records all our experiences in a sequence.
According to dianetics our mind has two separate parts to store different type of
information. The analytical part of our mind or conscious mind stores information which
helps a person to survive in a daily life through our relational thoughts while on the other
side there is a reactive part of mind which stores painful experiences of life and causes
mind to think and behave irrationally. The concept of reactive mind is the discovery of
dianetics. Reactive mind throws those experiences back at you in a rational attempt to
get you to avoid the same painful thing from happening to you again. The painful
experiences are hidden in our reactive mind are the cause of our fear, insecurities ,
negative thoughts, unwanted emotions and negative thoughts and irrational behaviour by
us. In fact the most damaging among occurred before we were born. If we free ourselves
from these negative thoughts we can enjoy our lives more than ever. We will be more
confident, productive, intelligent and happier. For this reason, what we need to do is to
CLEAR our mind so these negative thoughts will no longer effect on our rational thinking.
Dianetics contains technology which enables us to locate these hidden incidents and
restoring them to our full awareness as memories, freeing us from negative effects.
Dianetics can help us to achieve this state of mind.
3. THE GOAL OF MAN
1.1The Goal of Man & the Four Dynamics
The concept of survival is one thing which is common in life of all living things. Survival
can be considered as a motivating force behind all activities done by living things. It is
not just a matter of being alive for one moment and dead for the next. We are not only
trying to live as long as possible but as well as possible so there are degrees of survival.

3. Some people are just barely surviving while other are surviving at a high level of
happiness and accomplishment. We have to know ourselves if we want to know how well
we are surviving. The author has plotted the survival level on graph as well having the
range from 1-4. The person in zone 4 is living and optimum and mentally happy while
zone 1 shows person is physical ill or near to death. Are we surviving for the sake of own
self or family or the group, or for the sake of sex or reproduction? None of them alone
can define the degree of our survival so all these factors are considered to explain the
degree of our survival. Dianetics describe the concept of dynamics and divides it into four
dynamics which is actually the urge to survive along a certain course. The first dynamic
is our courage to reach the highest potential which includes food, clothing, shelter,
ambition. The second dynamic is George which includes the activities such as sex and
reproduction. The third dynamic is our urge to survive in groups which includes friends
group, team, club, country etc. The fourth dynamic is the urge to survive for all mankind.
If we survive well in four dynamics we can live an optimum life and can survive as best
as possible but if we survive well in one or more of these not all, the chances are that
you are not surviving well. Therefore, we need strong dynamic thrust to beat life’s
obstacles to chase happiness and success and we need to be rational in finding solutions
for problems that threaten to lessen our potential to survive.
4. The Single Source of All Inorganic Mental and
Organic Psycho-Somatic ills
2.1 The Analytical mind
According to dianetics our mind is divided into three major parts; analytical mind, reactive
mind and somatic mind. The analytical mind is responsible for making all kinds of calculations
in order to keep human think rationally and decide rationally. It is like a good computing
machine and incapable of error and make certain decisions. It has standard memory banks
where it is located and needs data in the form of percept (feeling, sound, smell, sight, taste
pain, organic sensation, and rhythm), memory, and imagination to make decisions. This part
of mind is considered as incapable of making error that’s the reason it always makes rational
decisions. Optimum rationality brings satisfaction which is the source of happiness that
comes through analytical mind. The analytical mind brings happiness and this is survival.
2.2 Reactive Mind & The cell and organism & Demons
It was postulated that the cells themselves have the urge to survive and that urge was
common to life. It was further postulated that organism, individuals, are constructed of cells
which are seeking to survive. The action of survival if optimum will lead to survival. The
reactive mind is possessed by every human being. The reactive mind contains painful
emotions and physical pain and is the source of many diseases in human body. The reactive
can make irrational decisions which brings destructive and irrational behaviour and
decreases the passion of survival in human. It enters hidden irrational information into our
calculations made by analytical mind, we can compute or react irrational. This is called
aberration, it is actually a departure from rational thought or behaviour and our analytical

4. mind doesn't know its calculations are being corrupted by this irrational data in fact it doesn’t
even know the data exist. Whenever in life we feel some degree of pain our analytical mind
shuts down and protect itself and at that time the reactive mind immediately takes over and
starts recording this in mind. These incidents recorded in our mind later becomes memories
and dianetics call it as engram. Engrams are like movies it records all perception in episode
and each episode is an engram. It contains all your perception, site, sound, smell, taste and
sensation including everything people are saying around you during that incident. It also
records every perception present in a moment of pain and also when we are
unconsciousness. Demons are derived from the words contained in the engrams. Engrams
has a command value, so whenever a person feels himself in the same situation as stored in
the engram he reacts the same way as reacted in the past and utters the same words he
heard in the past.
2.3 The Mechanics of the mind using Dianetics
The reactive mind can command us without knowing us and for this we need to
understand that there is a part of mind which contains data that controls us. For example,
a hypnotist can install a positive or negative suggestions or commands in a partial
unconscious subject and then the person unknowingly act upon those commands when
he is conscious. Once in that state hypnotist stores the command that later control
persons thoughts and behaviour and person has no idea that command exists. His
analytical mind tries to explain or justify his rational behaviour. Just like hypnotist installs
commands in the subject, engram installs hidden commands in reactive mind. These all
recordings in the forms of engrams stored in our reactive mind can later control the way
we think, react and feel without us knowing it.
2.4 The Engram using Dianetics
An engram contains many things such as pain, and unconsciousness and all perceptions
of the incidents. Although the engram records everything when we are conscious or
unconscious but the most damaging among these all are the spoken words which are
recorded when you are unconscious. These recording lies hidden in the reactive mind
and can lie their dormant for a long time until something activates it. How these hidden
recordings get activate? In life when we face something similar to those elements stored
in the engram, that engram gets activate which is called key-in. key-in is the first time
engram gets activate and the person feels the same pain what he had gone through and
reactive mind attempt to warn that person is in a dangerous place and words spoken in
engram will become commands in the present and person will change his or her mind
and thinks he or she made these decisions rationally but they have no idea that they are
nervous because their engram has been keyed-in. Although at that time the situation is
not that hard the way person think. Once keyed-in it can now easily played back again
and again and whenever person feels the same situation the engram gets reactivate or
re-stimulate. Person starts to feel nervous but without knowing the reason and behave
the way it is stored in the engram and utters the same words stored in the engram. This

5. behaviour is called dramatization. Dramatization is replay in the present of something
happened in the past.
2.5 Psycho-somatic illness
Psychosomatic illness, psycho refers to mind and somatic refers to body, so the term
psychosomatic means the mind making the body ill. Dianetics describes that engram are
the cause of all psychosomatic ills because during injury engram can contain physical
pain with all the other perceptions in the incident. So when such engram which contains
physical pain re-stimulate the reactive mind plays back its recording, and the person feels
the same pain in real. In dianetics this is called SOMATIC has turned on. When a
SOMATIC turns on the part of the body injured in past feels the pain again in the same
body part to some degree.
The language contained in the engram can have a damaging effect on our body as well
as on our mind. These words or phrases then control us in future and make us feel sick.
That’s why many common physical problems migraine, headaches, allergies, high blood
pressure, can be traced back to harmful effects of engram. If we think we are relatively
accident free and we don’t have many engrams but the fact is that most damaging comes
from the period that you probably don’t remember. For example, the period when you are
in your mother’s womb.
2.6 Emotions and dynamics
The more obstacles we overcome on the way to our goals the happier we are and the better
we survive on dianetic survival graph. Our urge to survive would be an arrow that throw away
from pain toward pleasure. We call this trust the survival dynamic and we need a strong
dynamic thrust to overcome the things in our environment that try to suppress our survival. If
we make a mistake it threatens our survival that we will be punished with pain. Our analytical
mind tries to get us to avoid pain and it does this rationally while our reactive mind make us
feel pain and it does it irrationally. If pain is the punishment for failure so pleasure is the
reward for success, and pleasure is absolutely vital to your survival. Our potential to survive
can be found on dianetic survival graph which is divided into zones the higher the zone this
stronger your dynamic thrust and the better you survive for example in the fourth zone you
will be able to overcome those suppressors and have an excellent survival potential and
person will be enjoying life but in zone 0 this depresses would seem to be too great to
overcome you’d be barely surviving this is the zone of no hope. These zones also form a
scale of emotional tones as our survival potential rises and falls on the scale. In the fourth
zone person would be enthusiastic and would enjoy life, zone 3 is one of general happiness
and well-being, zone 2 is bored of the level of bearable exist, zone 1 is only one is anger, in
zone 0 is the tone of apathy. Good news, successes and pleasure raise your emotional scale
toward happiness and bad news, failures losses and pain will bring emotion down.

6. 2.7 Painful Emotions and dynamics
Pain is a warning signal telling us that you are experiencing something which is harmful
to your survival. In pain the analytical mind shuts down to some degree and a painful
emotion engram is received in reactive mind. In pain there is always a warning of loss.
The painful emotion engrams are caused by sudden losses, such as departure of
someone important to you, death of favourite pet, the lost or failure of job or business.
After losses such as these you may not feel better mentally because this loss lesser our
force to keep us alive which is called life force. The stronger your thrust to survive is,
more energetic, happier, active you live your life but if it is weak less vibrant in life you
are. Engrams captures your life force making it unavailable to you. As your enthusiasm
for life lessens so does your potential to survive. Dianetics helps to bring your life force
back as strong as possible and you experience a renewed, vigour and enthusiasm for
life. The more life force available to you the happier you are in life.
2.8 Prenatal experience and Birth
Dianetics has proven that majority of engrams occurs prior to your birth too and in fact
birth itself is an engram. In dianetics it has theorized that engrams are probably recorded
in the cells themselves after all they are the things that get injured. In fact the word
engram is medical term meaning a lasting trace on a cell. According to this theory when
cells divide and multiply the engram is recorded, and when a child is in womb which is a
very tight space gets strikes with something his cells and organs can easily injured, a
parental engram is recorded at that time that can cause aberration. The parental engram
may contain all pains and sounds. The unborn baby does not know the meaning of words
but what people say, and their emotions, it is recorded and that engram is merely a series
of impression recorded on the cells on his body. When this child will grow up whenever
that engram re-stimulated that recording will be played back and he most certainly will
understand the meaning of those recorded words. The person has no idea that engram
exists and he justify his behaviour. So some of the engrams stored in our reactive mind
we are not aware of those.
5. Therapy
The Dianetics therapy needs a patient and an auditor. During therapy the auditor tries to
return back the patient to his time track to recall the earlier recordings and ask the patient
to recall it again and again which is actually reactivating the engram. By this repeated
recall the auditor tries to clear or remove that engram from reactive mind. The repetition
helps the patient to reduce the pain so the engram is recalled and repeated until they
disappear. To remove the engram from the reactive mind means that the same engram
refiled in the memory bank which becomes the part of memory and are accessible to
remembering.

7. 3.1 The Mind’s Protection
The mind will not be overloaded much until it is conscious but when it is unconscious the
things human observes which are uncomfortable are stored in reactive mind and person
is unaware of it. In order to keep mind relax, we need to protect the mind from
uncomfortable situation if the person has ever gone through it and bring person back to
lively life with no engram history in reactive mind. There are different ways to protect the
mind such as (1) use of shock or surgery on the brain; (2) use of strong drugs; (3) use of
hypnosis as such; and (4) trying to cross-breed dianetics with older forms of therapy.
The therapy suggested by dianetics requires an auditor which contacts the patient’s
engram and try to destroy these engrams tactfully. The mechanism dianetics uses is an
ability of the brain which Man as a whole did not know he had and this is called process
of thoughts. Auditor ask patient to recall the latest occurred event stored in mind and tries
to locate the engram. Once the latest engram is found the auditor tries to disappear it
and tries to find the chain of the engram which is basically a complete event. Auditor asks
the patient to recall the incident again and again and by this the auditor destroys the
chain of engrams and ensure that patient is feeling better after that process. This is the
mechanism defined by Dianetics to protect the mind.
3.2 Release or Clear
In a release, the majority of emotional stress is deleted from memory bank. In a clear,
the entire content is removed. A release (noun) is an individual from whom major stress
and anxiety have been removed by dianetic therapy. A clear (noun) is an individual who,
as a result of dianetic therapy, has neither active nor potential psycho-somatic illness nor
aberration. A clear, for instance, has complete recall of everything which has ever
happened to him or anything he has ever studied. These are the two goals of the dianetic
auditor: clear and release and auditor has no idea about estimated time required for this
therapy. The auditor need to determine beforehand which case he or she is going to work
on. If the auditor attempts “release” case the auditor focusses his attention on the location
and release of emotional charge and if the auditor attempts “clear” case auditor gives his
attention to the location of the basic-basic engram, the discharge of emotion and the
entire engram bank. Once basic-basic engram is erased the remaining engram will be
much easier to locate and erased. Now these incidents are actually erased and shifted
to analytical memory. Those events are now filed as experiences in analytical memory
banks and these are now memories without any pain.
3.3 Auditors Role and Diagnose
Auditor is not a patient’s driver nor an advisors his task is just to audit. He is also not a
“therapist,” because it is a cooperative effort between the auditor and the patient. The
patient cannot see his own aberrations. That is one of the reasons why the auditor is
there. The auditor tries to reach or target the engram therefore when patient swears and
moans and weeps and pleads, those are engrams talking and after targeting auditor tries

8. to release or clear these engram. It is also the duty of the auditor to make very sure that
the pre-clear keeps attacking engrams, not the auditor or the exterior world or pre-clear
itself. The auditor should be kind, patient, trustworthy, courageous, thorough, persistent,
reassuring and uncommunicative. If the auditor is aware of all required skills, handling
patient emotions, attacking engram, and then relocating the engram, the auditor can cure
the patient in average time.
3.4 Returning the file clerk, and the Time track
This is a method of thinking which man didn’t know he had. The auditor use this method
to target, and relocate the engram. The method consists of ten main steps: 1. Assure
patient he will know everything that happens. 2. Count until he closes his eyes. 3. Install
canceller. 4. Return him to a period in the past. 5. Work with file clerk to get data. 6.
Reduce all engrams contacted so that no charge remains. 7. Bring patient to present
time. 8. be sure he is in present time. 9. Give him canceller word. 10. Restore full
awareness of his surroundings. This method need to repeat again and again to remove
the engram permanently.
3.5 Mechanisms and Aspects of Therapy
The last two chapters of book describes the mechanisms and aspects of therapy having
focus on The Case Entrance and Extra Sensitive Perception (EPS).
The Case Entrance: Every individual have gone through different types of pain ranging
from minor to sever degree. Therefore each problem has its own entrance to enter in
case because no two human beings will have exactly the same problem. However,
Dianetics proposes the same techniques to enter into the case. The case is classified by
three ways: the sonic-recall, the non-sonic recall and the imaginary recall (what auditor
calls a “dub-in” recall) and the easiest case among these all is sonic recall but for all
cases the basic procedure is same. The author defines a tool having 12 steps to enter
the case by removing the engram. There are different situations which auditor can face
to enter into the case. Therefore, the author has proposed some suggestions to deal with
those problems. The situations can be if patient gets stuck in present, handling the
somatic illness, approaching the basic-basic engram, foreign language, etc.
Extra Sensitive Perception: Every time the auditor has a case with dub-in recall or which
is highly charged with emotion, the case may return into the prenatal area and start
describing scenery. The dianetics has defined the mechanisms and aspects deal with
extra sensitive perception. For example, engrams caused by electric shock, painful
emotions, tacit consent etc. The auditor remove such kinds of engrams before entering
into the case to diagnose the illness properly.

9. 6. Dianetics: Science or Pseudo Science?
Hubbard described in his book that dianetics is based on “scientific fact” by explaining
that all the facts are scientific and produced scientifically but the Hubbard didn’t not define
the method to produce these scientific results which can be used by someone to test the
theory. He has not given the results of those scientific results to their readers. He has not
define exactly the participants involved in that test. So it can bring a doubt that Hubbard
work is actually can be called science on the basis of theories he explained and no
scientific results or proofs. There is no straight way to proof that whether Dianetics is
science or pseudo-science. This study will try to find these facts seeking help from the
Karl Popper’s idea about Philosophy of Science for unifying definition. According to
Popper the theory should be open to for criticism from scientific society. Thus, the society
may attempt tests to prove a theory wrong and fails to do so and if they get successful to
prove the theory wrong then the theory is not called scientific anymore. Popper has
defined some criteria to analyse the theory is science or pseudo-science.
 It is possible to acquire confirmations or verifications for a theory, if someone is
interested to confirm the theory.
 These confirmations or verifications should be from the results of risky predictions.
We can have an event which refutes the theory.
 The good scientific theory is a prohibition means it prohibits certain things to occur
and has it boundary to deal with it.
 A theory which is not refutable by any possible design is non-scientific.
 Every designed test is an attempt to falsify or to refute the theory. Testability is
falsifiability and there exists degrees of testability.
The idea of falsifiability can be a good approach to proceed with. It cannot be possible to
refute every possible case of theory or the entire theory so the study attempts to see
possible cases and try to find holes in theory of Dianetics.
Hubbard claimed many aspects from the Dianetics as scientific facts which are as
followed:
 Reactive Mind: Hubbard has discovered the reactive mind and the functionality
of reactive and claims the every human mind does exist it. He had performed the
experiments on people and found the reactive functional in every human.
o As the concept of reactive mind was the main pillar in building the dianetics
theory but it was not explained how it was discovered the exact method,
who have gone through this experiment and from which background they
belong to. There should be a mechanism define by Hubbard to validate this
concept and scientific community may take part in it to confirm its presence
or it is just a concept in scientology.

10.  Engrams: According to Hubbard engrams consists of recordings of painful
experiences. Anyone can analyse the existence of engrams by making a person
unconscious or sleepy and then hurting and giving commands to his unconscious
brain. According Hubbard whatever information you gave to person it can be
recovered with the same phrase which you entered.
o According to psychology no retention of such memories shall take place
and in result no such recordings can be retained from the mind whatever
the mechanism person choose to retained [4] while according to dianetics
the retention can take place by auditing.
o In 1958, three researchers from University of California give a try to this
experiment with the help of Dianetics Research Foundation. They used
sodium pentothal to render the person unconscious and they created pain
and uttered phrases to create the engram. The experimenter commands
some phrases from physics in his unconscious mind, including pain phrase
and processed the experiment. Dianetics claims that anything stored as
engram can be recovered. The people from Dianetics research foundation
tried to recover the stored engram for six months but it was found that
whatever the phrases experimenter commanded to the person, the
experimenter could not get success to retain those phrases from his
unconscious mind. The researchers tried the experiment repeatedly but
could not get success. That shows that engram hypothesis was not
validated [5], [6].
 It can also be an idea that Hubbard does not want to share his method to validate
engrams hypothesis and wants the scientific community to experiment it. It is
something like averting the scientific community to verify the hypothesis. The
Scientific community wanted to check the theory so they approached the theory
by Popper’s idea to shoot holes in the theory, which can be on logical or on the
basis of refutational experiments. Hubbard never welcomed the scientific to
validate his theory by opening his methods to them and if Hubbard was confident
about his theory he would have opened the doors to confirm his theory by his own
way.
 “Clear” hypothesis: Hubbard claimed that once the patient go through the
auditing process in order to clear the engrams from memory the person will
automatically be cures from most of the Psychosomatic illnesses and there are
scientific proofs available for this idea. Later, Federal Judge Gesell with the help
of E-meter experimented the idea to “clear” engrams and curing the body from the
illnesses and proved that it was just fraud and there no scientific proof exists
behind this idea [7].

11.  Memory: Pedro writes in his blog about the auditing session designed in dianetics.
Dianetics claims that after auditing the person will feel better and will have strong
force of survival. According to Pedro during auditing process when auditor tries to
recall lost experiences through auditing, the auditor may distort the experiences.
People who use dianetics and go for auditing session, most of the retained events
are not genuine memories, but in fact the constructed memories during the whole
session which could lead to worsen memory rather than to enhance it [8].
 Scientology as religion: Scientology which actually begins from the Dianetics
considered as a religion. In reality asking Scientologists what their religion is about
can cause people to rethink about the religion. Scientology is brought up with the
levels and with each new level more information about this religion is revealed.
The people reaching at highest level are being taught that they came from an alien
planet ruled by Xenu the Galactic Dictator which is not taught to the beginners [3],
[9].
Conclusion
The aim of the study was to analyse the topic through the demarcation theory to justify
the topic whether it lies in the margin of Science or Pseudoscience. The book is reviewed
and which was based on the concept of Dianetics considered as church of scientology
and was followed as religion. The Dianetics suggests that different theories regarding
mind and the cure of different diseases from the dianetics approved therapies of mind. In
order to prove this idea as science or pseudoscience, the Popper theory of demarcation
was being applied on Dianetics. It was not possible to analyse the entire idea of dianetics
so according to Popper “hit the holes in the theory”, I found the sub ideas behind this
main idea of dianetics and tried to prove it accordingly. Popper’s falsifiability idea is to
give demonstration that a statement is false by findings. We defined some premises from
the dianetics theory and tested them and the results obtained from the defined premises
refuted the idea that Dianetics is science. Therefore, the documents or reports studied
depicts that main concepts of dianetics defines as premises shows that the Dianetics is
pseudoscience and it is also considered as a fiction science [10].Moreover, when the
case about “dianetics is science” was put in court the court decision was also against it
[11].

12. References