Dianetics - Procedure in Practice

Procedure in Practice

The procedure of Dianetics therapy (known as auditing) is a two-person activity. One person, the "auditor", guides the other person, the "preclear". The preclear's job is to look at the mind and talk to the auditor. The auditor acknowledges what the preclear says and controls the process so the preclear may put his full attention on his work.

The auditor and preclear sit down in chairs facing each other. The process then follows in eleven distinct steps:

1. The auditor assures the preclear that he will be fully aware of everything that happens during the session.

2. The preclear is instructed to close his eyes for the session, entering a state of "dianetic reverie", signified by "a tremble of the lashes". During the session, the preclear remains in full possession of his will and retains full recall thereafter.

3. The auditor installs a "canceller", an instruction intended to absolutely cancel any form of positive suggestion that could accidentally occur. This is done by saying "In the future, when I utter the word 'cancelled,' everything I have said to you while you are in a therapy session will be cancelled and will have no force with you. Any suggestion I may have made to you will be without force when I say the word 'cancelled.' Do you understand?"

4. The auditor then asks the preclear to locate an exact record of something that happened to the preclear in his past: "Locate an incident that you feel you can comfortably face."

5. The preclear is invited by the auditor to "Go through the incident and say what is happening as you go along."

6a. The auditor instructs the preclear to recall as much as possible of the incident, going over it several times "until the preclear is cheerful about it".

6b. When the preclear is cheerful about an incident, the auditor instructs the preclear to locate another incident: "Let's find another incident that you feel you can comfortably face." The process outlined at steps 5 and 6a then repeats until the auditing session's time limit (usually two hours or so) is reached.

7. The preclear is then instructed to "return to present time".

8. The auditor checks to make sure that the preclear feels himself to be in "present time", i.e. not still recalling a past incident.

9. The auditor gives the preclear the canceller word: "Very good. Cancelled."

10. The auditor tells the preclear to feel alert and return to full awareness of his surroundings: "When I count from five to one and snap my fingers you will feel alert. Five, four, three, two, one." (snaps fingers)

Auditing sessions are kept confidential. This has come into question, though, that confidential information has been used to blackmail possible defectors (see Fair Game (Scientology)) However, a few transcripts of auditing sessions with confidential information removed have been published as demonstration examples. Some extracts can be found in Dr. J.A. Winter's book Dianetics: A Doctor's Report. Other, more comprehensive, transcripts of auditing sessions carried out by Hubbard himself can be found in volume 1 of the Research & Discovery Series (Bridge Publications, 1980). Examples of public group processing sessions can be found throughout the Congress Lecture series.

According to Hubbard, auditing enables the preclear to "contact" and "release" engrams stored in the reactive mind, relieving him of the physical and mental aberrations connected with them. The preclear is asked to inspect and familiarize himself with the exact details of his own experience; the auditor may not tell him anything about his case or evaluate any of the information the preclear finds.

The validity and practice of auditing have been questioned by a variety of non-Scientologist commentators. Commenting on the example cited by Winter, the science writer Martin Gardner asserts that "nothing could be clearer from the above dialogue than the fact that the dianetic explanation for the headache existed only in the mind of the therapist, and that it was with considerable difficulty that the patient was maneuvered into accepting it."

Other critics and medical experts have suggested that Dianetic auditing is a form of hypnosis, although the Church of Scientology has strongly denied that hypnosis forms any part of Dianetics. To the contrary, L. Ron Hubbard expressedly warns not to use any hypnosis or hypnosis-like methods, because a person under hypnosis would be receptive to suggestions. This would decrease his self-determinism instead of increasing it, which is one of the prime goals of Dianetics. Winter comments that the leading nature of the questions asked of a preclear "encourage fantasy", a common issue also encountered with hypnosis, which can be used to form false memories. The auditor is instructed not to make any assessment of a recalled memory's reality or accuracy, but instead to treat it as if it were objectively real. Professor Richard J. Ofshe, a leading expert on false memories, suggests that the feeling of well-being reported by preclears at the end of an auditing session may be induced by post-hypnotic suggestion. According to Hubbard: "Laughter is definitely the relief of painful emotion."