Excerpt from Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

_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.

10. 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