Book: Dianetics The Modern Science Of Mental Health: Chapter 1 (excerpt)

Of what must a science of mind be composed?
1. An answer to the goal of thought.
2. A single source of all insanities, psychoses, neuroses, compulsions, repressions and social derangements.
3. Invariant scientific evidence as to the basic nature and functional background of the human mind.
4. Techniques (the art of application) by which the discovered single source could be invariably cured, ruling out, of course, the insanities of malformed, deleted or pathologically injured brains or nervous systems and, particularly, iatrogenic psychoses (those caused by doctors and involving the destruction of the living brain itself).
5. Methods of prevention of mental derangement.
6. The cause and cure of all psychosomatic ills, which number, some say, 70 percent of Man’s listed ailments.Such a science would exceed the severest terms previously laid down for it in any age, but any computation on the subject should discover that a science of mind ought to be able to be and do just these things.A science of the mind, if it were truly worthy of that name, would have to rank in experimental precision with physics and chemistry. There could be no “special cases” to its laws. There could be no recourse to Authority. The atom bomb bursts whether Einstein gives it permission or not. Laws native to Nature regulate the bursting of that bomb. Technicians, applying techniques derived from discovered natural laws, can make one or a million atom bombs all alike. After the body of axioms and technique was organized and working as a science of mind, in rank with the physical sciences, it would be found to have points of agreement with almost every school of thought about thought which had ever existed. This is again a virtue and not a fault.

Simple though it is, Dianetics does and is these things:

1. It is an organized science of thought built on definite axioms: statements of natural laws on the order of those of the physical sciences.
2. It contains a therapeutic technique with which can be treated all inorganic mental ills and all organic psychosomatic ills, with assurance of complete cure in unselected cases.
3. It produces a condition of ability and rationality for Man well in advance of the current norm, enhancing rather than destroying his vigor and personality.
4. Dianetics gives a complete insight into the full potentialities of the mind, discovering them to be well in excess of past supposition.
5. The basic nature of Man is discovered in Dianetics, rather than hazarded or postulated, since that basic nature can be brought into action in any individual completely. And that basic nature is discovered to be good.
6. The single source of mental derangement is discovered and demonstrated on a clinical or laboratory basis by Dianetics.
7. The extent, storage capacity and recallability of the human memory is finally established by Dianetics.
8. The full recording abilities of the mind are discovered by Dianetics with the conclusion that they are quite dissimilar to former suppositions.
9. Dianetics brings forth the non-germ theory of disease, complementing biochemistry and Pasteur’s work on the germ theory to embrace the field.
to. With Dianetics ends the “necessity” of destroying the brain by shock or surgery to effect “tractability” in mental patients and “adjust” them.
11. A workable explanation of the physiological effects of drugs and endocrine substances exists in Dianetics and many problems posed by endocrinology are answered.
12. Various educational, sociological, political, military and other human studies are enhanced by Dianetics.
13. The field of cytology is aided by Dianetics, as well as other fields of research.

This, then, is a skeletal sketch of what would be the scope of a science of mind and of what is the scope of Dianetics.

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