The reactive mind is a concept in
Scientology formulated by
L. Ron Hubbard, referring to that portion of the
human mind that is
unconscious and operates on
stimulus-response, to which Hubbard attributed most mental, emotional, and
psychosomatic 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 virus, viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory tract that primarily affects the Respiratory epithelium, respiratory mucosa of the human nose, nose, throat, Paranasal sinuses, sinuses, and larynx. ...
.
: — 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 an ...
uses an
E-meter (a
galvanic skin response detector) to locate engrams in the parishioner
which are then erased, using
Dianetics.
Scientology promotes such treatments to clear engrams believed to limit the individual's spiritual ability, to halt the decline of their spiritual awareness, and to increase their 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, which was applied to novels such as ''
The Soft Machine''.
Criticism
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...
professor
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an Oxford fellow, emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Simonyi Professor for the Publ ...
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 unsup ...
" 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 (: 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 structure of preconc ...
External links
*
*
Scientology beliefs and practices
Unconscious
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