Many things have been learned in the past several years of Dianetic research and investigation, as will be brought out in the book Dianetics: 1955!. But chief amongst these items is the fact that we have misplaced, to some degree, our accent mark.

Formerly we were intent upon surveys of many lines of human activity. We have covered such things as psychosomatic illness and aberration, and indeed the stress on these two is paramount as represented in the title itself of Book One, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Today’s accent is much more sharply aligned, and arrowed into human activity.

Today we know that man is so hungry for a game that he cannot but cling to, or even invent, psychosomatic ills and aberrations so as to satiate his apparently unappeasable thirst for problems.

All of us have had the experience of processing preclears who did not want to get well. Of course, today, we could give them a sufficient abundance of problems and illnesses in mock-up form, or in some other manner, so as to bring them into a state of realization that they could create more problems than they had and so convince them that it would be possible to release at least some of the ills to which they are dedicated. This does not mean, of course, that we could not bring preclears into a state of being well, or that we cannot bring them into such a desirable condition. All I wish to call to your attention here is that we have misplaced our accent. If man is so thoroughly engrossed in self-inspection so as to generate and multiply barriers such as psychosomatic ills and aberrations, then it must mean that his interest is centered on himself. And if his interest is centered upon himself, and we yet find it undesirable for our fellow men to be so out of communication, then there must be other spheres to which this interest can be directed.

We know that if his interest is so thoroughly involved with the first dynamic, then he must have abandoned many other dynamics. We see in this first dynamic fixation a lessening of force and ability throughout the whole of mankind or any group of men. When interest introverts, the subject which seems most compelling to man is psychosomatic ills and aberration, for he generates these only when his interest is so introverted.

It has been my good fortune to discover in the researches of the past few years that there were many roads out of this puzzle of self. Indeed, the entire span of the dynamics could be considered themselves a roadway. If an individual is to depart from a fixation on the first dynamic, then it is necessary for him to project himself and discover interests upon the remaining dynamics. This is, indeed, a very clear roadway, and one which anyone would take—unless, of course, he were confronted by a barrier sufficiently gigantic to him to debar his interests from forming on these additional dynamics.

Let us examine this situation further by inspecting the dynamics. According to the fundamental axioms of Dianetics, which have not changed, the dynamic principle

of existence is “Survive. ” Survival considered as the single and sole purpose subdivides into at least four dynamics. Dynamic One is the urge of the individual toward survival for himself. Dynamic Two is the urge of the individual toward survival through procreation and includes both the sex act and the raising of progeny. Dynamic Three is the urge of the individual toward survival through a group. Dynamic Four is the urge of the individual toward survival as Mankind. These, as stated in the First Book, are the legitimate sphere of interest of Dianetics.

If we are considering these dynamics as a roadway, and if we are seeking to draw man’s interest away from the First Dynamic where it can center only upon psychosomatic illness and aberration in order to have problems, then we see at once that the Second Dynamic is barriered. This is highly frowned upon in this society at this time, and yet the Second Dynamic is the only dynamic which will permit future generations to come into the world. Even the Archbishop who frowns and sneers on the subject of sex is, as a body, the product of a sexual act between his father and his mother. No matter how much he might rant and rave to his congregation, actually even for the persistence of the church and the survival of congregations, to say nothing of the revenue provided from baptisms, the church is entirely dependent upon the sexual act. When people interest themselves in juvenile delinquency they should interest themselves in that part of the sexual act which is the raising and caring for children. Unless we release, at least to some degree, the stigma attached to sex we have immediately blocked our road out to just that extent that the sexual act is forbidden or denied.

But consider that our individual has managed to bridge the sexual act, and has at least thought about adventuring on the road to the Third Dynamic. Here do we find any barriers? Indeed we do. We discover that before an individual can possibly be admitted into any group, whether small or large as that nebulous thing called “society,” he must be possessed of many abilities. Otherwise he will be improperly mannered and possessed of too few skills to make his presence in the group desirable, and here we have the foremost bar upon the line: the individual’s lack of social, artistic, technical, artisan, or labor ability.

Now, while we can understand ability upon the Third Dynamic, it becomes a little difficult to understand upon the Fourth Dynamic unless one conceives it in terms of absence of ability. Let us inspect this situation today wherein nationalism was launched upon the world to give into our possession at this time, in this atomic age, an anarchy of nations. These nations depend for their further continuance and sustenance upon the production and even worship of their citizens. A few years ago this system was not entirely unworkable. Distances were sufficiently great to permit an isolation to occur, but now we are in possession, according to the officials of at least three major governments, of weapons of such magnitude that these could very well destroy all life extant upon a continent of earth. This doubtlessly laudable ability on the part of our weapon-makers discovers a certain inadequacy in this arrangement of nations, for these nations live in an anarchy, and an attempt to reconcile them one to another has already met with defeat, where the biggest of these nations, in San Francisco, withheld to themselves the right to veto any action of the General Assembly.

Somewhere (you and I do not know where), some individual (you and I do not know who), has at this moment in his possession weapons of sufficient magnitude to lay flat continents of earth. If one is so naive as to suppose that one can wipe off a continent without endangering or even obliterating life on other continents, then one has not flown recently across an ocean and discovered what near neighbors these continents are, and that they breathe the same air recirculated by the prevailing Westerlies—for atomic fission is noted for nothing if not its ability to remain suspended in the air. We do not properly know who would give this man his orders, providing this man would stay there and wait for orders, nor do we know in what area of the world such a man might be located. Perhaps there are two such men. Perhaps there are two dozen. Perhaps three or four nations have such men standing by with such weapons. In this age of guided missiles it is highly doubtful if the services of a pilot and plane would have to be commandeered in order to accomplish the destruction of a continent. Do not think that I speak idly, for I am merely quoting Secretary of the Air Force, Harold

Talbott, to the effect that he is in possession—or somebody is in possession, he does not let us in on what or where—”of weapons that can lay waste an entire continent men, women, children, even the beasts and the vegetation. They can abolish in a single night not only an army, not only a nation, but a whole civilization. ” He also states, “Some of them are of such awful power that even the men who build them cannot fully visualize the carnage that would follow their use. ” He also tells us this is neither the time nor the place to dwell upon these weapons, just as though there were some time and some place where one could consider this problem. For none of us, on this Fourth Dynamic problem, which is what it is, has, evidently, any right whatsoever to think in such terms as the survival of Mankind.

If only by atomic power, and without regard to the anarchistic state of nations one to another, we are definitely barriered from a Fourth Dynamic survival. For instance, what would you do right this moment in order to resolve this problem on the Fourth Dynamic? What ability could you possibly assume to yourself, practice and perfect, which would remove from Mankind this threat of wanton and widespread destruction at the hands of irresponsible politicians and rather seedy nuclear physicists who have never been noted for their sanity—who, indeed, today, by National Proclamation (at least in the United States) are debarred even from a cursory examination of their sanity? For if they are given an examination on the subject of their sanity they have broken their “top secret classification’’ and thus must never more handle weapons or papers of that nature. They are not only debarred from the casual society of their fellows by these awful secrets which they possess, but they are debarred as well from any resolution of any mental problem which they might have. And, as we look at this situation where one man, with or without orders, can destroy an entire continent, we cannot but be amazed to discover that no-one is ever to be permitted to investigate his sanity or to give him any counsel along human lines. This individual is not being barred merely from the Fourth Dynamic, he is being compressed thoroughly back to the First Dynamic, and the result of this? Well, what would you do tonight if you had to solve this problem? Thus, you see, thee and me are lacking to some degree an ability in this, or ability on the Fourth Dynamic.

Now, looking this roadway over again, we see that each of the last two dynamics are rather thoroughly barriered by lack of ability. Let us investigate further. Most often we discover sexual aberration continuing from a complete lack of sexual ability. This was most marked in the very early years of Christianity, wherein we discovered a eunuch, Saint Paul, advising everyone to have nothing to do whatsoever with sex-a course which the church, without further inquisition, has happily helmed itself along. And we discover that if we can sufficiently suppress the ability of an individual sexually, or if we can suppress his ability to have children, we get those various manifestations which we call nymphomania, which we call perversion, and so forth. Anyone who has audited people has discovered that where we had lack of sexual ability we had various disabilities which are classified by law as sexual irregularities. And thus we find this problem of ability is very present on the Second Dynamic. Further, if one cannot have children we discover that one is prone to be rather diffident, to say the least, about raising children no matter whose, and thus any ability as a father or a nurse is suppressed.

On the First Dynamic we are continually struck by the fact that individuals in the society insist upon other individuals negating the First Dynamic. It is not merely common, it is socially polite to pretend to be unable. A man who can do courageous things is expected to discount his ability. A man who can work well in the field of the arts is expected to make nothing of it. This is simple politeness, but it is not good processing. For an individual who has to make a postulate nine times a day that he is incapable is liable, at long last, to become just that.

We long ago discovered in Dianetics that what we validate comes true. Thus, if we continue to process or connect with or continue to harbor entheta, we discover that entheta becomes quite live. But if we decide to process on the theta line, validating such things as affinity, reality and good communication, we make short work out of the case. Here we have the difference between making a preclear well and making him sick. We can actually process a preclear in the direction of difficulty to such an extent that these difficulties, imagined or actual, become real. The validation of difficulty will always result in the accomplishment of difficulty. Similarly, the validation of ability will always accomplish ability.

Thus we see that there were two sides to these dynamics. The lower side in each case, whether we had to do with the First, Second, Third, or Fourth Dynamic was aberration and psychosomatic illness. The individual, self-centered, is liable to dwell sufficiently upon his ills and injuries and negate himself sufficiently to become an “only one” and to suppress any ability which he has. On the Second Dynamic he broods about his inabilities to have or raise children until he has confirmed these inabilities. On the Third Dynamic he is made to feel a stranger to the group by his lack of skill or his lack of social presence, or by the group’s own aberration or psychosomatic ill, to a point where he is occasioned to abandon the group. On the Fourth Dynamic this has become so marked that one does not even think of the Fourth Dynamic as having ills, much less how to remedy them. But we discover in this anarchy of nations where any politician of any country can make capital of hatred for any other country, a psychosomatic illness and an aberration.

Confronted with this situation we see that the wrong thing to do would be to validate any dynamic’s ills, but rather, we should process along the lines of the wellness in the dynamic.

Now the upper range of all this would be ability. Ability on the First Dynamic would be the ability to handle and train and accomplish goals as one’s self. Ability on the Second Dynamic would be to have and raise and train children. Ability on the Third Dynamic would be to have the ability necessary to develop social, industrial or agrarian skills so as to be an asset to the Third Dynamic. And unfortunately, unless we have built up ability across these first three dynamics we will never attain an ability of any kind on the Fourth Dynamic. Man, indeed, today, is so antipathetic toward any ability on the Fourth Dynamic that he, as represented by one group, almost actively murdered an individual who dared to write a book called One World. That the individual, Wendell Wilkie, was murdered by heartbreak does not make it any the less a murder. When we approach a point of no ability, we approach a desperate state of psychosomatic illness and aberration. Abandonment of any dynamic is not an escape from that dynamic, but an enslavement to it. This is how this universe works.

The accomplishment of ability on any of these first four dynamics will be absolutely necessary if man is to survive, and indeed if individuals are to go forward and make any civilization in which it would be fit to live.

Our accent, from the first, should have been upon ability.

Thus, Dianetics was not really the modem science of mental health, but was (and I think all of us understood this basically) the Modem Science of Ability, for I have never had a preclear who did not hope, through processing, for other than to gain new ability or to regain his old. He was not there to be processed out of his psychosomatic ills and aberration.

On the definition of “sane” or “ill,” if we examine any page of world history we will discover that “sanity” had very little to do with ability. We find some of the men who have given the greatest service to mankind so completely “insane” that they could not have passed the first part of any modem test. “Sanity” is only “agreed upon behavior. ” When one departs from this “agreed upon behavior” one is of course susceptible to the label “insane. ” Any behavior which is visionary, compelling, or out of the ordinary is apt to be labelled insane. By “insane” we mean only that the conduct, or the vision, or the goal has not generally been agreed upon. Strangely enough, we also find “sane” men benefiting Mankind. And so we have here no definition at all. Conduct out of the ordinary has numberless times benefited Mankind. Thus we have no grounds on which to work at all if we use “sanity” as a basis. We are, however, on solid ground when we address the subject of ABILITY, and when we say that we are going forward to increase ability on the First, Second, Third and Fourth Dynamics, we would then be on solid processing ground, for ability is a common denominator just as survival is a common measure and urge in all man.

The modern processes of Dianetics increase ability. Each and every one of these processes which is successful in the hands of an auditor does nothing but increase ability. Ability is something which is created. If we are searching forever for the native kernel which is man we will only succeed in depressing him from communication on the Second, Third and Fourth Dynamics, and if we accomplish this then we have accomplished the “only one,” the aberrated, the sick individual.

Dianetics today is a Science of Ability. It has no traffic with psychosomatic illness or aberration. It does not care a whit about these two things. Dianetics today can be prepared to expect out of an asylum, or off a Mount, alike some benefit to mankind. It is prepared to discover in the sickest body possible, assets to man, and caring nothing for the sickness of the mind or the sickness of the body, it seeks only to increase the native ability of the individual and to create new abilities in the individual and for the individual so as to resolve the problems of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Dynamics.