Earlier material in Scientology has adequately covered the phenomenon of the overt act. More is known about this phenomenon today.

The overt act is the manifestation of retaliation. There are two types of overt acts. One is the simple motivator-overt act whereby something is done to the preclear and then the preclear does the same thing to somebody else. There is the second type called the DED-DEDEX wherein the preclear all out of his own imagination has done something to somebody else and then it has been done to him. In both of these one will find the motivator and overt act in a bundle and the DED-DEDEX in a bundle; in other words, the overt act phenomenon is the interlocking of incidents so that both incidents become more or less obscured.

There are several ways of undoing these. One of them is with Acceptance Level Processing. Where a person continues to complain about the things another person has done to him, all the auditor has to do is to discover what the preclear did to that person. In other words, a preclear who complains about A in actuality is suffering from a hunger of overt acts from A. The preclear has done something to A (or thinks he has done something to A) which makes it possible that A will retaliate. The retaliation has not occurred. This leaves the preclear with a hunger of overt acts from A. All the auditor has to do is listen to the complaints the preclear makes about the various people, and then have the preclear mock up as happening to himself these people causing dreadful things to occur to the preclear. This solves the bulk of overt act cases. Remember that the things happening to the preclear have to be done in quantity.

Another method of handling overt acts is to finish off the cycle of action. The preclear has wanted to kill somebody. He has wanted to kill somebody repeatedly and yet has not done so. The matter is obvious. One uses Creative Processing and has the preclear sufficiently and often in large quantities kill this other person. This finishes the cycle of action.

Yet another method is simply to have the preclear, without any further investigation of his case, start mocking up the side of the overt act phenomenon which seems to be missing. If this preclear is complaining about terrible things having happened to him, the auditor can be sure that the preclear has a hunger for things to happen to him. The preclear is started then on a process of simply having things happen to him. All manner of terrible things are made to occur to him at other people’s hands. His father shoots him many times, his mother repeatedly strangles him, his dog bites his head off, his wife runs off with another man and so on and so on until the starvation is remedied.

In the opposite case where the preclear is tremendously pugnacious and very threatening toward all the world, the auditor can be certain that the preclear, by this dramatization in present time, is trying to fill in a stagnation of action against other people. In this case one simply has him kill, maim, blow up and generally dispose of in many ways, shapes and forms, a great many people, particularly those he says he would like to murder.

One must not omit the overt act phenomena concerned with spirits, ghosts and God. People who spend too much time propitiating God are in actuality certain beneath the surface that they deserve a great deal of punishment from that being. People get to such a level of identification with Christ that they will run the Crucifixion complete with somatics and, indeed, there are several instances in history where on the holiday of the Crucifixion persons spontaneously bleed from the “thumbs.”

Where you have an individual going into the valence of another individual, you have the overt act phenomenon so interchanged and mixed up that you are only certain of the fact that the preclear is in the valence of the other person. Handling this overt act phenomenon one would simply create with mock-ups many things happening to the person whose valence has been taken, and then, in reverse, the person whose valence has been taken making many things happen to the preclear. This is run back and forth, back and forth, first with the preclear receiving overt acts, then as the other person receiving overt acts, until the gap between the two personalities widens sufficiently to inhibit further identification. Where you have a preclear solidly in grandmother’s valence, you can be certain there was a lot of trouble between the preclear and grandmother. The way to run this is to have the preclear injuring, maiming and killing grandmother in various ways and then having grandmother injure, maim and otherwise harm the preclear. This is helped out by having grandmother injure others than the preclear and having others than the preclear injure grandmother.

In this manifestation of sudden assumption of valence on the death of an ally, the preclear is certain he is responsible for the death of that ally. He does not know how this can be, but he is certain that it has taken place. An auditor can be certain that the preclear, prior to the death of the ally, actually was guilty of many overt acts towards the ally. The death will not come to view until the auditor has run the preclear doing many things to the ally and the ally doing many things to the preclear as above.

In some of the very difficult cases, the most serious problem is this assumption of another person’s identity in this lifetime. The solution of this affords great relief to the preclear.

In honest truth, the reason the preclear is stuck in the MEST universe is the overt act phenomenon. Space, energy, objects and time have done so many overt acts to the preclear and the preclear actually has done so many overt acts in the opposite direction, that the preclear now considers himself MEST. If you happen to be processing a scientist, be sure to remember this: he is not only studying the significance which immediately followed the explosion (the total of which significance is that there has been an explosion), but is also guilty of a great many activities which he at least thought were detrimental to the MEST universe at large; and the MEST universe in the form of inflicted accidents, explosions and so forth, has done many acts to him. We find these fellows, quite ordinarily, with many physical attributes of the MEST universe; which is to say, impartiality, a rotund body (imitating planets) and in a situation of stopped motion which would do credit to a policeman, or a Federal court judge.