Before the year was up I decided to read a book that I've been hearing about for several years, namely "Dianetics". In my last two posts I mentioned some of the controversial statements made in the book (released 60 years ago), and compared them with modern popular science. In particular, I found that:
1. science does show that human beings can find themselves compelled to behave in ways that they would actually prefer not to (despite financial, physical, and other detrimental consequences) even after making serious attempts to stop.
2. science does show that human beings can start to store and recall perceptions prenatally (before birth), and furthermore that human beings can store what they have perceived accurately, for the rest of their adult lives (although most are not expected to recall this data in day-to-day life).
In this post I will mention a third very interesting, controversial claim and take a look at how valid science has determined it to be, 60 years later.
3. That the "reactive mind" (as a flawed self-defense mechanism) can intercept the functions of one's rational "analytical mind", causing people to make up and believe amazingly sensible - yet completely false - explanations for irrational behavior. This is another major concept of Dianetics, which is paired with the idea that the "reactive mind" can compel the body to manifest very real physical problems, without external causes present (these are known as psychosomatic conditions).
- Have you ever tried to explain something you didn't understand, and come up with a very reasonable - but ultimately wrong explanation? I once thought someone stole money from me and told them (angrily) that they must have took it when I went to the bathroom. You can imagine my surprise when I found the money in one of my own pockets - LOL! Anyway, I've experienced how well the human mind can convince one of something that isn't necessarily true. Let's see what science has to say:
Professor Robert Sapolsky, who's work is the subject of a National Geographic documentary, has shown that stress is useful to animals in the wild. In the wild, stress helps shut down various parts of the body, and focus only on those that can help the animal get the heck away from whatever predator is trying to bite their head off (in layman's terms). After a few minutes the animal is dead or has escaped, and the stress response ceases. Sapolsky shows that humans use the same stress response based on elements of their every day environment, and unfortunately we (including the professor) don't seem to turn them off after a few minutes, which results in chronic health issues.
According to Dr. Ian Wickramasekera, writing in the Handbook of Mind-Body Medicine for Primary Care, "Somatization is the name medicine gives to the process by which an individual, 'hiding' from threatening psychological information, expresses... his or her emotional distress into physical symptoms of maladaptive behavior." He goes on to list several of the physical symptoms that result. In terms of how common this is, the Dr. states, "Somatization may sound exotic, a phenomenon to be found in only a small number of patients. Nothing could be further from the truth. Estimates have determined that somatizing patients probably represent as many as half of the people seen by primary care doctors."
Ian says something else pertinent to Dianetics in an online article, "Many people who have stress-related pain aren't even aware of what they're fearful or angry about." He also says that right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, "In 30 years of specializing in stress-related diseases, I've never seen more flare-ups of physical pain, even in people who'd been free of symptoms for years."
In 2007, researchers published a study regarding, "...a key mechanism by which the stress hormone noradrenaline - which floods the bloodstream during grizzly encounters and other stressful events - affects the brain's pain-processing pathway to produce such analgesia."
Scientists have known for years that nerve endings send messages to the brain upon being damaged (for instance by a hot or sharp object), and in return the brain sends pain to that area, as if to compel us to move away from the dangerous object. Notably though, it is not the object that puts pain into the human body, but the human body that generates pain to protect itself from that object. Now modern science has verified that the human body can manifest pain and other chemical, biological phenomena in order to protect itself from a source of pain - minutes, hours, and yes, years after the original source of pain is gone.
As for the mind's ability to come up with reasonable - yet wrong - explanations for irrational behavior, this is known in the field of psychology as "rationalisation". It is known to psychologists as the defense mechanism of providing socially acceptable reasons for inappropriate behavior. Although you can find plenty of examples in every day life, most of the scientific research on rationalisation comes from tests done on hypnotic subjects. In fact, hypnotism has often been feared, specifically because of it's ability to have a subject rationalize (after committing) otherwise unacceptable behavior. Over 100 years ago, George Du Maurier wrote a novel (fiction) alerting the public to this danger, entitled "Trilby".
Today there are hypnotists working as entertainers, as well as in the field of self-help. When I was in college, our student activities council hired a hypnotist to entertain the students. I remember him having a student remove their jacket and replace it repeatedly, when the hypnotist touched his tie, and then come up with all kinds of sensible reasons for why he was doing it.
As for the science, Carla Emery collected a huge amount of the research for her book, "Secret, Don't Tell: the Encyclopedia of Hypnotism". In this book, she quotes a Yale hypnosis researcher by the name of Clark Hull, describing one experiment:
"I give him a posthypnotic suggestion that after waking he shall pick up and examine a book on my desk when I sit down in a chair, but that he won’t recall anything about why he did it. I wake him as usual with a snap of my finger...A few minutes later I sit down in the chair. He casually walks over to my desk, picks up the book, and after glancing at its title lays it down. I say, ‘Why did you look at the book?’ He answers that he just happened to notice it lying there and wondered what it was about."
So after 60 years, modern science indicates that Dianetics was not merely a theory or a work of science fiction. As I mentioned, there is a lot more to the book, but I wanted to research a few of the highlights that most interested me, and share what I found with anyone interested:
In summary, human beings do exhibit the ability to do the following:
1. Shut down normal mental and physical functions of the body in response to pain. 2. Switch mental and physical functions in to a defense mode (sounds like what our government would do if declaring a state of emergency - LOL).
3. Continue recording words, sounds, and other information (even if unconscious or still in the womb).
4. Become unaware of these incidents, even while keeping them stored.
5. Access previous recordings that contain similar information or similar moments of pain (no matter how long ago they were recorded - even if it was prenatally).
6. Act out words or emotions contained in these previous recordings (just as a hypnotist would have a subject act on previous commands through posthypnotic suggestion).
7. Find ways to make sense of words contained in these painful moments even if they don't initially make sense, in order to act out the information within them.
8. Find ways to explain the irrational behavior, even if they don't realize they were responding to recordings made during earlier moments of pain.
Along with more details about the mind, Dianetics includes a process for locating these moments of pain with the aware, rational part of the mind, so that they are no longer hidden - and no longer compel any irrational behavior during actual or threatened moments of pain in the future.
The best part of the book to me, was the example of the "held down 7". A calculator can be in perfect condition, capable of quickly solving complex problems. Yet, if somehow the "7" button gets stuck, the calculator will continue throwing an additional 7 into the computations, resulting in the incorrect answers. More specifically, by including additional "7"s in the problems, the calculator arrives at CORRECT ANSWERS to DIFFERENT PROBLEMS than it's operator is asking it to solve. Apparently, the human mind may work in a similar way. Unfortunately, finding the buttons that are pressed in one's mind is not as easy as finding a stuck "7" key on a calculator, especially since the mind does such a good job of rationalising strange behavior.
My final thought on this book, is that it reminds me of a quote from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, "There's nothing to fear, but fear itself."
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