HCOB: Handling PTS Situations

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO BULLETIN OF 8 MARCH 1983¹

Remimeo
PTS/SP Checksheets
All Staff
HCOs
Tech/Qual
C/Ses
Auditors

HANDLING PTS SITUATIONS

Refs:

HCO PL 5 Apr. 72RD Rev. 10.9.83 PTS TYPE A HANDLING

HCOB 10 Aug. 73 PTS HANDLING

The following was taken from one of my taped lectures (7511C20) and is hereby issued in HCOB form:

I coached a pc one time as to how to talk to his parents. I coached him very, very carefully. This is a sort of MAA job, not a C/S job. I made him repeat everything after me, very carefully: “And when your mother says to you so-and-so and so-and-so, what are you going to say?” It was simply good roads and good weather. I forced him, at pain of being squashed, to follow that exact pattern with the parents. It was just good roads and good weather.

“Hello Mama, how are you? How’s Papa?” you know. And she says, “Yeow, yeow, yeow, yeow, yeow and you wha-wha, wha-wha.” Just say, “Well, all right, all right.” Don’t answer back and don’t engage in any argument of any kind whatsoever. Give it an ack. I said, “You’re calling them up just because you’re passing through and you were interested in how they were, and that is your whole story.” And he did, and that was the end of the whole situation. Pc came back to battery. Relationships with the parents went totally normal.

In other words, he was keeping it going—his worry, his upset, his letters, trying to answer their questions, his conversation with them. Whereas I cut it all into just a pattern of something on the order of about a tone 3.5 straight across the boards. That was the end of the PTS condition.

A PTS condition also has outside handling steps. But you as an auditor or you as a C/S are possibly limited by the fact that you don’t have an MAA, or you do not have somebody who is sufficiently skilled in order to do this job for you. And it winds up blowing everybody’s head off.

In such an instance, just get hold of the guy and coach him in exactly what he’s going to say.

“Oh, but no, she’d never listen, she won’t, she hasn’t talked to me for seven years! She won’t talk to me in any way, shape or form!”

“Well, all right, all right, all right. That’s fine, good.” You get a little bit inventive and you say, “Well, when is her birthday?” or something like that. The pc says, “Well, as a matter of fact, it was a month or two ago.” And you say, “Well, all right, why don’t you send her a birthday card and tell her it’s a belated birthday card and that you remembered her birthday and always had kind thoughts of her?”

Now, the incoming comm may blow his head off. You just cool him off. Don’t engage in any corner of this; this is not the game you are playing. You simply acknowledge any nice part that you can find.

“Papa went hunting and you’re a dirty dog and I’ve never seen the like of you and you’re an ungrateful brat and so on, and why don’t you be like your great Uncle Oscar who is now doing time in Sing Sing and will be executed next week?”

And you say, “I hope Daddy had a fine hunting trip.”

It’s the only part of it you answer. You coach him into two-way comm that is well above 2.0 on the Tone Scale, that mostly consists of acks and mild interest in what’s going on. You’ll find out these conditions will evaporate, if you can prevent the backflash from being responded to by the PTS person. In other words, there are ways to handle this in real life.

You will find a great many people who are “PTS” are antagonizing the people. They are antagonizing them beyond belief, and they’re telling them what’s wrong with them and they’re telling them this and they’re telling them that and the person eventually gets very resentful.

Well, even that can be patched up. You are not doing anything at the other end of the line. You cool off the PT scene sufficiently one way or the other so that the person can sit in the auditing chair.

L. Ron Hubbard
Founder

Notes