The reactive mind is a concept in the
Scientology
Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a Scientology as a business, business, or a new religious movement. The most recent ...
religion formulated by
L. Ron Hubbard
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986) was an American author, primarily of science fiction and fantasy stories, who is best known for having founded the Church of Scientology. In 1950, Hubbard authored '' Dianetic ...
, referring to that portion of the
human mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
that is
unconscious and operates on
stimulus-response, to which Hubbard attributed most mental, emotional, and
psychosomatic
A somatic symptom disorder, formerly known as a somatoform disorder,(2013) dsm5.org. Retrieved April 8, 2014. is any mental disorder that manifests as physical symptoms that suggest illness or injury, but cannot be explained fully by a general ...
ailments:
What can it do? It can give a man arthritis, bursitis, asthma, allergies, sinusitis, coronary trouble, high blood pressure and so on, down the whole catalog of psychosomatic ills, adding a few more which were never specifically classified as psychosomatic, such as the common cold
The common cold or the cold is a viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory tract that primarily affects the respiratory mucosa of the nose, throat, sinuses, and larynx. Signs and symptoms may appear fewer than two days after expos ...
.
: — L. Ron Hubbard ('' Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health'', 1999 paperback edition, p. 69)
Despite the lack of scientific basis for his claims, Hubbard's book ''Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health'' claimed that the reactive mind is composed of impressions of past events of pain and unconsciousness, which he called
engrams.
In Scientology, an
auditor
An auditor is a person or a firm appointed by a company to execute an audit.Practical Auditing, Kul Narsingh Shrestha, 2012, Nabin Prakashan, Nepal To act as an auditor, a person should be certified by the regulatory authority of accounting and a ...
uses an
E-meter
The E-meter, originally the electropsychometer, is an electronic device for displaying the electrodermal activity (EDA) of a human being. It is used for auditing in Scientology and divergent groups. The efficacy and legitimacy of Scientology's ...
(a
galvanic skin response
Electrodermal activity (EDA) is the property of the human body that causes continuous variation in the electrical characteristics of the skin. Historically, EDA has also been known as skin conductance, galvanic skin response (GSR), electrodermal ...
detector) to locate engrams in the parishioner
which are then erased, using
Dianetics
Dianetics (from Greek ''dia'', meaning "through", and ''nous'', meaning " mind") is a set of pseudoscientific ideas and practices regarding the metaphysical relationship between the mind and body created by science fiction writer L. Ron H ...
. Scientology promotes such treatments to clear engrams believed to limit the individual's spiritual ability, to halt the decline of his spiritual awareness, and to increase his survival potential.
From the end of the 1950s until the early 1970s, author
William S. Burroughs used Hubbard's reactive mind theory as the basis of his
cut-up method
The cut-up technique (or ''découpé'' in French) is an aleatory literary technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. The concept can be traced to the Dadaists of the 1920s, but it was developed and popularize ...
, which was applied to novels such as ''
The Soft Machine
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
''.
Criticism
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...
professor
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ...
wrote that Scientology purports to use scientific tools such as its controversial E-meter to augment the "
gullibility
Gullibility is a failure of social intelligence in which a person is easily tricked or manipulated into an ill-advised course of action. It is closely related to credulity, which is the tendency to believe unlikely propositions that are unsupp ...
" of this already "gullible age".
The Gullible Age
/ref>
Notes
See also
* Dual process theory
In psychology, a dual process theory provides an account of how thought can arise in two different ways, or as a result of two different processes. Often, the two processes consist of an implicit (automatic), unconscious process and an explicit ( ...
* Schema_(psychology)
In psychology and cognitive science, a schema (plural ''schemata'' or ''schemas'') describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them. It can also be described as a mental structu ...
External links
*
*
Scientology beliefs and practices
{{Scientology-stub