Engram (Dianetics)

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This article is about the concept of the engram in Dianetics and Scientology. For other uses, see Engram (disambiguation).
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An engram, as used in

conception onwards, whenever something painful happens while the "analytic mind" is unconscious, engrams are supposedly being recorded and stored in an area of the mind Scientology calls the "reactive mind".[4][5]

History

The term engram was coined in 1904 by the German scholar

Joseph Winter, who collaborated in the development of the Dianetics philosophy, Hubbard had taken the term "engram" from a 1936 edition of Dorland's Medical Dictionary, where it was defined as "a lasting mark or trace...In psychology it is the lasting trace left in the psyche by anything that has been experienced psychically; a latent memory picture."[8] Hubbard had originally used the terms "Norn", "comanome" and "impediment" before alighting on "engram" following a suggestion from Winter.[9]: 109  Hubbard equates the reactive mind to the engram or reactive memory bank. An engram is described as a "cellular level recording" that includes both physical and emotional pain. Engrams are stored in chains or series of incidents that are similar.[10] Hubbard describes the engram as "a definite and permanent trace left by a stimulus on the protoplasm of a tissue. It is considered a unit group of stimuli impinged solely on the cellular being."[11]

Dianetics became Scientology in 1952 and the concept of clearing engrams remains a central part of the practices of the Church of Scientology.[12][13]: 49 

Description

In Dianetics and Scientology doctrine, engrams are believed to originate from painful incidents, which close down the "analytic function", leaving a person to operate only on the "reactive" level, where everything, including pain, position, and location are experienced as "aspects of the unpleasant whole." This engram is restimulated if the person is reminded of the painful experience days later, causing feelings of guilt or embarrassment – another engram. This cycle is called a "lock" in Scientology terminology.[14]

Hubbard's concept of the engram evolved over time. In Dianetics, he wrote that "The word engram, in Dianetics is used in its severely accurate sense as a 'definite and permanent trace left by a stimulus on the

Freudian psychoanalytic concept of abreaction, equating engrams to the painful subconscious memories that abreaction therapy brings up to the conscious mind. He quoted Nathaniel Thornton, who compared abreaction to confession.[4] Dorthe Refslund Christensen describes engrams in layman's terms as trauma, a means to explain the long and short term effects of painful experiences.[10] According to Christensen, Hubbard wrote about the dramatization of an engram, where the one who suffered and recorded the pain as an engram relates all sensory perceptions during the time of the painful incident to the incident. These sensory perceptions become "restimulators" that remind the individual of the pain and triggers him or her to re-experience it.[10]

Scholar Richard Holloway writes that according to Scientology, engrams are "damaging experiences that happen by accident," bruises through time implanted on thetans through the course of millions of lives. Sometimes the damage is intentionally inflicted by thetans who desired power over other thetans. Deliberate injuries are called implants in Scientology. Hubbard wrote, "Implants result in all varieties of illness, apathy, degradiation, neurosis and insanity and are the principle causes of these in man." The Christian idea of heaven is a deceptive implant, Hubbard taught, for there is an infinite series of lives after the first, contrary to the Christian notion of the afterlife.[17]

See also

References

  1. ISBN 9780080460642
    . Retrieved July 23, 2016.
  2. ISBN 9781483323954
    . Retrieved July 23, 2016.
  3. ISBN 9780313324574
    . Retrieved July 23, 2016.
  4. ^ a b Jeff Jacobsen. "Dianetics: From Out of the Blue?" Reprinted from The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 2, September/October 1991, pp. 1-5. Accessed on 2010-06-15.
  5. ^ "The Official Scientology and Dianetics Glossary". Church of Scientology International. Archived from the original on April 28, 2009. Retrieved July 23, 2016. a mental image picture which is a recording of an experience containing pain, unconsciousness and a real or fancied threat to survival. It is a recording in the reactive mind of something which actually happened to an individual in the past and which contained pain and unconsciousness...These engrams are a complete recording, down to the last accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of partial or full unconsciousness.
  6. ISBN 0-19-852087-5
    .
  7. ISBN 0-8184-0444-2. Convenience link at http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/mom/Messiah_or_Madman.txt
    .
  8. Winter, Joseph A. (1951). A Doctor's Report on Dianetics
    . New York, NY: Hermitage House.
  9. OL 9429654M
    .
  10. ^
    doi:10.1163/9789004330542_004
    .
  11. ISBN 9789004330542
    .
  12. ^ "Jon Atack: The games L. Ron Hubbard played". tonyortega.org.
  13. ISBN 9780691146089
    .
  14. S2CID 151258588
    .
  15. ^
    ISBN 1-870451-22-8
    .
  16. ^ L. Ron Hubbard Ability: the Magazine of Dianetics and Scientology, Issue 36, Washington D. C., mid-October 1956
  17. ISBN 978-0300208832
    .

External links
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