| PAB 13
PROFESSIONAL AUDITOR'S BULLETIN
Via Hubbard Communication Office
163 Holland Park Avenue, London W11
1953, ca. mid-November
ON HUMAN BEHAVIOR
"Kraeplin in Germany a long time ago made a long and
varied psychotic classification. This has been refined and made, if anything,
even more unwieldy in modern times. It is valueless since it does not lead to
the immediate remedy of the situation. Further, we are not very interested in
types. There is really no such thing as a special type of psychosis or neurosis,
beyond those types which are quite aberrative around the preclear.
[...]
Probably the truly aberrative personalities in our society
do not number more than five or ten percent. They have very special traits. Where
you find in the preclear's bank a person with one or more of these
characteristics, you will have the person
who most thoroughly tried the preclear's sanity.
What we will call the aberrative
personality does the following things:
1. Everything bad that happened
to the preclear was (a) ridiculous, (b) unimportant, (c) deserved.
2. Everything the preclear
and others did to the aberrative person was (a) very important, (b) very bad,
(c) irremediable.
3. Those things which the
preclear could do (a) were without real value, (b) were done better by the
aberrative
personality or by others.
4. Sexual restraint or perversion.
5. Inhibition of eating.
Such people would be better
understood if I called them the "merchants of fear." The most degraded
control operation of which the GE is capable is utilized by these people for
their
sole method of getting on in the world. They have lost all ability themselves
to create, they cannot work themselves, they must either amass money which is
never to be spent or must prevent others from amassing money. They produce
nothing,
they must steal one way or another, and then devaluate whatever they obtain. They
speak very sternly of honesty or ethics and put on a formidable front of complete
legality. They are impartial, which is to say they are incapable of decision but
ride continually a maybe. They close terminals easily with courts, for courts
are, sad to say, more or less of this disposition themselves. They feel called
upon at no pretext to become adjudicative on subjects where their opinion has
not been invited.
Probably a society could be cleared and allowed to bloom
if these people were simply rounded up and removed from contagion with the
remaining
populace, for they are not numerous. Yet they are in sufficient number that it
is doubtful if your preclears who are more seriously badly off have not had at
least one in their past. It is particularly true of the occluded case that he
has been victimized by one of these "merchants of fear."
[...]
The "merchants of fear" specialize in being
offended
themselves and, even though the overt acts [crimes] against them are slight,
these
have become magnified in the preclear's bank until such people, on the overt act
phenomenon alone, occupy a major role in the preclear's thinking.
[...]
If one traces out these people, as I have done
occasionally
after processing a preclear, he will discover that the aberrative personality
is very close to the brink of a crackup, has a very low survival level, and quite
commonly goes insane.
It should be understood that
anyone going down Tone Scale in moments of anger is apt to use the above-numbered
steps one way or another. But this is a momentary thing; the above steps belong,
of course, on the Tone Scale and are significant of a level on the Tone Scale.
Thus, one going down Tone Scale into anger or into apathy is inclined to use
these
operations momentarily. This is quite different from the aberrative personality.
The aberrative personality is at work with this operation twenty-four hours a
day. Ceaselessly, relentlessly, calculatingly, with full knowingness, the
aberrative
personality continues this onslaught against those around him.
The entire computation of
this aberrative personality is that he is worthless; he himself knows himself
to be completely worthless. One might feel a little pity if the harm were not
so great, for there is nothing more terrible than this knowledge. The aberrative
personality feels he cannot succeed unless he drives others away from him with
fear, preferably with terror. He assumes aspects of ugliness in matters of
clothing;
he is quite prone to ugliness. Very often this personality does not bathe, his
breath is very often foul, his feet become odorous, the endocrine system has
failed
one way or another, the person has considerable bowel trouble. Other people than
the aberrative personality occasionally manifest these difficulties;
unfortunately,
it all stems from the same idea—to drive other people away.
[...]
There is no decision in such people; they do not know
whether to go up the street or down the street. Put into a certain routine and
forced into that routine, they will carry on, but they do not themselves produce
anything; they are entirely parasitic. This parasitism is gained either by the
inheritance or other accumulation of money or by a direct and forthright
nullification
of those around them into the status of slaves. For this person knows above all
other things that he cannot produce an honest day's work.
Now, in case you err and
try to apply this classification too widely, there is one definite characteristic
you must not overlook. This characteristic makes the difference between the
aberrative
personality and run-of-the-mill human beings. The secrecy computation is the
clue.
The best index to a secrecy computation is a refusal to be audited. Because of
this factor of the secrecy computation, and for no other factor, it chances to
follow that the aberrative personality can be known by his refusal to have any
auditing of any kind or, if he has any auditing, accepts it very covertly and
will not permit it to have any effect upon him. He will not have a second
session.
He has all manner of excuses for this such as "altitude," but in any
way, shape or form he escapes auditing. If your preclear's unwilling to be
audited,
he himself may fall into this classification.
Because justice in this society
prides itself upon impartiality, these impartial people—the aberrative
personalities—are
quite often listened to by those around them. The pose of being impartial is an
effort to escape decision. People who get things done or who are worth anything
to the society make decisions. The impartial people make no decisions if they
can possibly avoid them and at the very best put off decisions as long as
possible,
as in the case of a court of law. These people, being well downscale, are very
close to mest and have a very solid agreement with mest.
[...]
There is hardly a man of art or letters who does not bear
on him the scar of having associated with a "merchant of fear," for
these are vampire personalities. They are themselves so starved of admiration
and of sensation that they drink out of others around them any possible drop of
admiration in any form. Where a woman becomes a "merchant of fear,"
sexual starvation is continually attempting satiation and all the while the
"merchant
of fear" will protest and, to all visible signs, follow a life of complete
celibacy.
While it is not my purpose
here to revile, I wish to impress upon the auditor that the “merchant of
fear” is extremely dangerous, both to creative impulses and to sanity. One
could say airily “Why don’t we just audit these people upscale, since
they are so few," but these people will never present themselves for
auditing
and will discourage anyone else from having any auditing. A solution to the
"merchant
of fear" probably does not lie in the field of auditing.
[...]
They are neither strong nor wise and before an even
indifferently
forceful attack quickly capitulate. They live their whole lives in terror of
attack.
One often finds these characteristics
in company with paresis or hears the aberrative personality has actually
contracted
a dreadful disease to add to his repulsiveness.
[...]
Now and then some violent man in one country or another
has undertaken programs to rid a society of these points of contagion. Kings in
olden times handled the problem by decapitating people who continually brought
them bad news—this was a very wise measure. In more recent times it has
been said that Gomez, late
dictator
of Venezuela, discovered that the contagion point of leprosy in the country was
the beggar. He found that the beggars of Venezuela were using leprosy in order
to beg. People would pay in order to have the ugly thing taken away from them
(the basic philosophy of the beggar is to be paid to go away). Gomez had the
beggars
told that they were going to be taken to a very fruitful part of Venezuela and
given a colony of their own; he had them collected on a river bank and loaded
aboard two large river boats. The river boats proceeded into mid-stream, their
crews left them in skiffs and the boats blew up with a resounding explosion. This
was the end of leprosy in Venezuela. I am not telling you this to advocate the
immediate slaughter of the "merchants of fear;" I am merely giving you
an historical note. The extreme impatience of people trying to get something done
in a society will eventually center upon those who will not work and, in the case
of kings or tyrants, such people have very often been done away with. Thus the
precedent is very old of a society cleansing itself by removing from its ranks
the nonworkers.
[...]
People in societies are extremely punitive about those
who will not work and about those who depend on fear for their sustenance. But
society going downscale can become more and more apathetic toward the "
merchant
of fear" until the "merchant of fear" predominates as a class.
Just as the king or the society
revolted against the "merchant of fear," so has your preclear tried
to get the "merchant of fear" to work and to contribute something
besides
bad news. This effort, of course, was bent toward an organism which was
already rotten at the core. Whether the "merchant of fear" used money
or beauty to excuse his own lack of labor, only added to the maybe. The law
forbade
the preclear to use the measure of the tyrant or the Gomez, for the law is
utterly
infatuated with such people and defends them at every turn just as such people
use almost exclusively the law. As your preclear was balked in his natural
impulse
to clear the way, he was brought into staring recognition of the fact that the
necessary act—murder—was halted by the existence of police and
courts.
[...]
If your preclear is of the kind who produces or creates
or who works and makes his way in the world in general, you can find the
aberrative
personality in his bank immediately by asking him—with an E-Meter, of
course,
because he probably won't tell you direct—if he wanted to kill anyone. The
E-Meter will say that he did and on discovery of this identity the auditor will
find the aberrative personality.
[...]
The aberrative personality is so badly off that he can
lead only a parasitic existence. You will understand, then, that people going
down Tone Scale do not immediately and automatically become aberrative
personalities,
in our definition as here used. People become aberrative personalities out of
a malevolence which insists on a high level of survival without the production
of anything."
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