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"The technique of therapy is done in what is called a dianetic reverie. The individual undergoing this process sits or lies in a quiet room accompanied by a friend or professional therapist who acts as auditor. The auditor directs the attention of the patient to the patient's self and then begins to place the patient in various periods of the patient's life merely by telling him to go there rather than remember.

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Dianetic reverie leaves a patient fully aware of everything which is taking place and with full recall of everything which has happened.

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Dianetics, then, uses the reverie for the majority of its work and using the reverie an auditor cannot possibly get himself into any trouble from which he cannot extricate himself and the patient.

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The mind was built to be as tough as possible. It will be found that it is difficult to get it into situations which make it uncomfortable and impossible, with the reverie, to embroil it enough to cause neurosis or insanity.

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The mechanism dianetics uses is an ability of the brain which Man as a whole did not know he had. It is a process of thought which everyone possesses inherently and which was evidently meant to be used in the overall process of thinking but which, by some strange oversight, Man has never before discovered. Once a person has learned that he possesses just this one new faculty, he is better able to think than he was before, and he can learn this faculty in ten minutes. Further, when one approaches an engram with this faculty (which, when intensified, is the reverie) some of that engram's sub-level connections are broken and the aberrative factors no longer have as much force either in the physical or mental spheres.

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Approaching an engram with the reverie is very far from the same as restimulating the engram exteriorly as is done in life.

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In place and active the engram can be restimulated to cause innumerable mental and physical ills. But approaching it with reverie is approaching it on a new circuit, one that disarms it.

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In short, the point which is offered here is that so long as the auditor takes a relatively simple case at first to see how the mechanisms of the mind work and uses only the reverie he cannot get into trouble.

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The engram bank is best attacked primarily by discharging its emotional charge anywhere it can be contacted. After that it is best attacked by finding out what the pre-clear, in reverie, thinks would happen to him if he got well, got better, found out, etc.

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This is an example: (In reverie – pre-natal basic area)

PRE-CLEAR: (Believing he means dianetics) I don't know. I don't know. I just can't remember. It won't work. I know it won't work.

AUDITOR: (repeater technique, described later) Go over that. Say, "It won't work."

/.../

Each time, it can be seen in this example, that the patient in reverie encountered analytically the engram in near proximity, the engram command impinged itself upon the patient himself, who gave it forth as an analytical opinion to the auditor. A pre-clear in reverie is close up against the source material of his aberrations. An aberree wide awake may be giving forth highly complex opinions which he will battle to the death to defend as his own but which are, in reality, only his aberrations impinging against his analytical mind. Patients will go right on declaring that they know the auditor is dangerous, that he shouldn't ever have started them in therapy, etc., and still keep working well and efficiently. That's one of the reasons why the auditor's code is so important: the patient is just as eager to relieve himself of his engrams as could be wished, but the engrams give the appearance of being a long way from anxious to be relieved.

It will also be seen in the above example that the auditor is not making any positive suggestion. If the phrase is not engramic, the patient will very rapidly tell him so in no uncertain terms and although it still may be, the auditor has no great influence over the pre-clear in reverie beyond helping him to attack engrams.

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Keep in mind these two parts of the mind: the time track and the file clerk and keep in memory this mechanism of returning. These are the three things we use, with the reactive and standard banks, in the dianetic reverie.

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The patient sits in a comfortable chair, with arms, or lies on a couch in a quite room where perceptic distractions are minimal. The auditor tells him to look at the ceiling. The auditor says: "When I count from one to seven your eyes will close." The auditor then counts from one to seven and keeps counting quietly and pleasantly until the patient closes his eyes. A tremble of the lashes will be noticed in optimum reverie.

This is the entire routine.

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The canceller is a contract with the patient that whatever the auditor says will not become literally interpreted by the patient or used by him in any way. It is installed immediately after the condition of reverie is established. A canceller is worded more or less as follows: "In the future, when I utter the word Cancelled, everything which I have said to you while you are in a therapy session will be cancelled and will have no force with you. Any suggestion I have made to you will be without force when I say the word Cancelled. Do you understand?"

The word cancelled is then said to the patient immediately before he is permitted to open his eyes at the end of the session. It is not further amplified. The single word is used. The canceller is vital. It prevents accidental positive suggestion.

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Patients will plead to be drugged or put into a trance. Let them plead! The reverie has a clear at its end – drugs and hypnotism have dependency on the auditor and many other undesirable aspects. A case takes longer in amnesia trance than in reverie. The gains in reverie are certain. The patient gets more and more well. When amnesia trance or hypnotism are used instead of reverie, no matter how easily the data seems to come up, the usual run of cases so treated experience little relief until the case is nearly completed, when the patient so long uncomfortable gets suddenly well.

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This is the reverie. This is all one needs to know about its actual mechanics. Experience will show him a great deal. But these are the basic processes:

1. Assure patient he will know everything that happens.

2. Count until he closes his eyes.

3. Install canceller.

4. Return him to a period in the past.

5. Work with file clerk to get data.

6. Reduce all engrams contacted so that no charge remains.

7. Bring patient to present time.

8. Be sure he is in present time.

9. Give him canceller word.

10. Restore full awareness of his surroundings.

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We have "I" in a reverie; we return him to a period in his life along his time track; the file clerk gives incidents forth which the pre-clear re-experiences; the auditor makes the preclear recount the engram until it is relieved or has "vanished"28 (all engrams will eventually "vanish" after basic-basic is erased); anything new the file clerk offers, even during the recounting, is addressed by the auditor to make the pre-clear re-experience it.

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In interviewing a patient, the auditor notes carefully without appearing to do so, what phrases the patient chooses and repeats about his ills or about dianetics. After he has placed the patient in reverie, if he discovers the patient, for instance, insists he "can't go any place," the auditor makes him repeat the phrase.

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This is part of the principle that any entrance of a case is better than a case not entered at all. For by return with standard reverie technique the source is approached, and if the source is contacted at all, the power of the engram to aberrate has become reduced in strength no matter how many mistakes the auditor makes.

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(If the data is obtained in therapy, it is obtained by actual contact with engrams and an engram contacted in reverie has lost its power to aberrate: dianetic therapy thus makes such an eventuality utterly impossible.)

Very well: this is the routine: it works but it can never be made to work too quickly or too well:

(1) Place the patient in reverie and scout into the prenatal area to see if engrams are available for lifting without further work. If they are there and can be found, take the charge out of them and erase them if possible. Do not try to erase anything as remote from basic-basic as birth unless the file clerk insists on presenting birth. In other words, get the subject into the prenatal area and look for the earliest engrams. Do not ask for specific instances, particularly for something like birth, just take whatever is presented. If you can't get back early, take step two.

(2) Scout the patient's life, while he is in reverie (do this in any event sooner or later if the case slows down but only if it slows down to a point where early engrams are either not reducing or are without any emotion). Establish in this scout whomever may have been depended upon by the patient and be suspicious always that he has not told you the really important allies, but do not tell him you are suspicious.

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The auditor will many times in his activity be begged by a patient "not to talk to me about so-and-so's death." If he is foolish enough to heed this tearful plea when the patient is in reverie, then the auditor is actively blocking a release. That is the first incident he should get!

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Recounting the matter in present time – without being returned, the patient is using all the intervening years as buffers against the painful emotion. The auditor returns the patient, without further preamble than the usual routine of putting the patient into reverie, to the moment when the patient learned of /.../

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/.../ in all cases the basic procedure is the same. Put the patient in reverie (and don't worry too much if he doesn't go into a very deep reverie because reverie only serves to fix his attention on himself and the auditor and you can at least accomplish that). Install a canceller. Return him to childhood to pick up a pleasant incident and then find a minor pain incident such as a slap in the face. Run him through this a few times just to let him get the idea. If he doesn't respond well, put him into yesterday and let him ride to work and ask him about sounds and sights, then send him to childhood again.

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Sometimes the pre-clear will go into a deeper reverie than you wish. But do not try to wake him into a higher level. Work him where he is. But if he seems to be in something approaching hypnotic trance, be very careful of your language. Never tell him, for instance, to go back there and stay there until he finds something.

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These are the tools:

(1) Reverie or fixed attention if you cannot get reverie.

(2) Return.

(3) Repeater technique.

(4) A knowledge of bouncers, holders, groupers, misdirectors, denyers.

(5) A knowledge of the painful emotion engram.

(6) The reduction or the erasure.

(7) The flash answer.

(8) The valence shift.

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To reduce means to take all the charge or pain out of an incident. This means to have the pre-clear recount the incident from beginning to end (while returned to it in reverie) over and over again, picking up all the somatics and perceptions present just as though the incident were happening at that moment. To reduce means, technically, to render free of aberrative material as far as possible to make the case progress.

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Charging into any late period of "unconsciousness" such as surgical anesthetic, where physical pain is present in large quantities, can bring about this needless restimulation. You can, of course, fare better with such things in reverie than in hypnosis or narco-synthesis where such a restimulation might bring about severe results. In reverie the effect is light.

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"The somatic strip will now go to birth," says the auditor. The patient in reverie begins to feel the pressure of contractions thrusting him down the birth canal.

"The somatic strip will now go to the last time you injured yourself," says the auditor. The pre-clear feels a mild reproduction of the pain of, perhaps, a bumped knee. If he has sonic and visio recall, he will see where he is and suddenly realize that it was in the office: he will hear the clerks and typewriters and the car noises outside.

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Anyone who has a chronic psycho-somatic illness is definitely stuck somewhere on the time track. Snap questions about it get, "Three," or "Ten years," or some such answer quite ordinarily even when asked of people who suppose they are in good health. Reverie reveals to them where they are on the track. Sometimes, in the first session, a pre-clear shuts his eyes in reverie to find himself in a dentist's chair at the age of three. He has been there for the last thirty years or so because the dentist and his mother both told him to "stay there" while he was shocky with pain and gas – so he did, and the chronic tooth trouble he had all his life is that somatic.

This doesn't happen very often, but you can find someone you know, it is certain, who would flash answer "Ten years" and, being put in reverie, would find himself, as soon as the engram came to view, lying flat on his back in a ball park or some such situation, with somebody telling him not to move until the ambulance came: that's his arthritis!

Try it on somebody.

Don't ever retaliate in any way when a patient in reverie gets angry at you. Follow the auditor's code. If you get angry with him you may throw him into an apathy which will take you many hours to undo.

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Using reverie or merely asking the patient to close his eyes, the analyst can request him to return and be in the instant wherein he was disturbed. That instant may be in the same day or the same week as the office call. A moment of analytical shut-down will be discovered wherein some restimulative person or circumstance upset the equilibrium of the patient. This moment is a lock. It can be recounted, ordinarily, as an engram and the latest source of tension will relieve so that work can be continued.

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By the way, in using repeater technique, word or phrase, the auditor must not stir the case up too much. Get what shows and reduce that. Reduce the somatic the person manifests when he goes into reverie and always try to find it for a while, even if you don't succeed.

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The auditor will return this patient to a somatic which tears half his head off, which is confirmed by scars, which is confirmed by aberration, and which is doubted as an incident. The way to handle this case is to take his pat phrases and feed them to him in reverie or out of reverie with repeater technique. Make him go over and over them, sending his somatic strip back to them. Shortly a release of the phrase will take place.

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There are some drugs which assist reverie, however. The commonest and most easily obtainable is plain, strong coffee. A cup or two of this occasionally alerts the analyzer enough so that it can reach through deeper layers of "unconsciousness."

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Many efforts by many patients have been made to put dianetics on an auto-control level. They have all failed and thus far it is believed to be utterly and completely impossible. The pre-clear in auto-control reverie may be able to reach some locks: he can certainly reach pleasant experiences and achieve data recall by return: but he cannot attack his own engrams without a standard auditor-pre-clear arrangement.

Aside from dianetic reverie, some pre-clears have been foolish enough to attempt auto-hypnosis and thus reach their engrams. Hypnotism in any form is unwarranted in dianetics. Auto-hypnosis used in dianetics is probably as close to fruitless masochism as one can get. If a patient places himself in auto-hypnosis and regresses himself in an effort to reach illness or birth or prenatals, the only thing he will get is ill. Of course, people will try. None are ever convinced until they have tried once they begin to agitate about auto-control. But be sure to have a friend and this book handy so that he can audit away the headaches and such that suddenly turn on.

Dianetic reverie, which means with an auditor present, is not dangerous or severe. Auto-control is often very uncomfortable and often fruitless. It should not be attempted.

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Using reverie or merely working the patient with his eyes closed, and working the patient as soon after the injury as possible, the doctor, nurse or relative can return the injured person to the moment when the injury was received and usually recover and exhaust the incident as a usual engram. Once the engram of the injury is reduced, the general mental tone of the patient improves.

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A Problem In A Restimulated Case

G was cleared in ten months of sporadic sessions. His case had the initial diagnosis of non-sonic, non-visio, pain and emotional shut-off, permanent light trance, permanent "regression" at the age of three years. This is to say that the instant he went into reverie he was startled and frightened to find himself in a dental chair, three years old, and having a tooth pulled, an engram in which he had been situated, unknowingly, about half of his ensuing life.

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Any good hypnotist, if he can conquer his desire to talk, should make a good auditor: but if he tries to combine dianetics and hypnotism he will find himself with a very thoroughly sick patient on his hands. Never install a positive suggestion of any kind in a patient no matter how much he may beg for one. It has proven nearly fatal.

An entire case can be worked in deep amnesia trance. It is often possible to waken a sleeping person into a deep trance simply by speaking to him quietly several nights in succession at the same hour and finally getting him to respond to the invitation to talk. Dianetic therapy can then be entered upon and pursued and will succeed particularly if the auditor is not careless enough to artificially restimulate a late physical pain engram, treating in the post birth life mainly engrams of painful emotion. If the person on whom the therapy is being done
is aware of the action, he can be put into reverie so that earlier data can be reached, "I" being more powerful than the weak if wise attention units which constitute basic personality. He is alternately worked in amnesia trance and then in reverie. The case will resolve eventually even if reverie is not used. But there are grave responsibilities with amnesia trance: a canceller must always be installed and used in every session. Minimal conversation must be employed. All auditor desires should be stated as questions if possible, as these are not aberrative to the degree that commands are. This method has been successful and can be used, but reverie, even if it appears slower, even if sonic is not present, is far more satisfactory for the excellent and incontrovertible reason that the patient recovers more swiftly and recovers on a steady upgrade whereas amnesia trance may incapacitate him for days together, when incidents are apparently lifted in deep trance but nevertheless "hung up" in the awake state. Amnesia trance is definitely not advised: it has been subjected to much research and has been
found to be both uncomfortable for the patient and harassing to the auditor. However, if other methods cannot be used for one reason or another (and none of those reasons include the desire of the pre-clear who, if the auditor would let him, might crave drugs, hypnotism and positive suggestion in an effort to escape his engrams and who, if allowed, would have himself a wonderfully messy case for the auditor to unsnarl), amnesia trance can be employed, but always with the greatest caution and always with the full knowledge that the patient's recovery is retarded by as much as a factor of three, for working on a level with the engram bank leaves the analyzer circuits unused in the discharge. Reverie is best.

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21. The pre-clear may find himself begging for amnesia trance, hypnosis, drugs and other means to "facilitate therapy." Such yearnings are not derived from any other reason than that the pre-clear is afraid to face his own engrams; deep trance does not resolve this problem. It can be used but is useful mainly on the insane. Dianetic reverie keeps a steady progress and is accompanied by a steady rise in the individual's health and outlook. Short-cuts have not proven practical. If they had, they would be included in dianetic therapy.

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO POLICY LETTER OF 5 OCTOBER 1971

Remimeo
All PRs

PR Series 12

PROPAGANDA BY REDEFINITION OF WORDS

A long-term propaganda technique used by socialists (communists and Nazis alike) is of interest to PR practitioners. I know of no place it is mentioned in PR literature. But the data had verbal circulation in intelligence circles and is in constant current use.

The trick is-WORDS ARE REDEFINED TO MEAN SOMETHING ELSE TO THE ADVANTAGE OF THE PROPAGANDIST.

A prime example is the word CAPITALIST. Once it meant "one who makes his income from the interest of loaning money to others." That is still the definition in economics. Through propaganda redefinition a capitalist became a person of wealth who invested in business (making him an owner, not a banker) and currently is someone who exploits others, urges war and stamps on workers! In short, the word is changing in meaning by the efforts of those who are trying to own everything in the country under the guise of being the workers' friend. Totalitarian socialism must eradicate the private owner in order to grab the property for themselves. Hence, an intense concentration on redefining the word "capitalist" and "capitalism."

Many instances of this exist. They are not "natural" changes in language. They are propaganda changes, carefully planned and campaigned in order to obtain a public-opinion advantage for the group doing the propaganda.

Given enough repetition of the redefinition, public opinion can be altered by altering the meaning of a word.

The technique is good or bad depending on the ultimate objective of the propagandist.

"Psychiatry" and "psychiatrist" are easily redefined to mean "an antisocial enemy of the people." This takes the kill-crazy psychiatrist off the preferred list of professions. This is a good use of the technique as for a century the psychiatrist has been setting an all-time record for inhumanity to man.

The redefinition of words is done by associating different emotions and symbols with the word than were intended.

The American Medical Association and the National Association for Mental Health in England and South Africa and the "British Psychological Association" in Australia have been working very hard to redefine Scientology in the public mind.

Two things occur because of this-the Scientologists are redefining "doctor," "psychiatry" and "psychology" to mean "undesirable antisocial elements" and are trying to stabilize the actual meaning of "Scientology."

The AMA has even gotten US dictionaries to redefine "Dianetics" as a "pseudoscience from science fiction."

Fortunately the public does not respect and is not responding to mass news media. Mass news media believes it steers public opinion, but in actual fact can get a reverse effect.

"The capitalistic AMA is seeking to deny the people the benefits of new discoveries such as Scientology because it would eradicate the great profits the AMA makes from the psychosomatic illnesses of the people," would be a statement reversing the reversal of meaning. One has to find, pinpoint and denounce the propagandists to make headway against such an effort of redefinition. One brands the propagandist and blows the effort to redefine, using a steady, standard PR campaign to do so.

One can also use redefinition by exposing the effort to redefine.

A case in point is the word "psychology."

Webster's International Dictionary of the English Language - 1829 defines "Psychology: A discourse or treatise on the human soul; the doctrine of the nature and properties of the soul."

Webster 's High School Dictionary - 1892 "Psychology: The powers and function of the soul."

Merriam Webster's 3rd International Dictionary- 1961 "Psychology: The science of mind or mental phenomena or activities; the study of the biological organism (as man) and the physical and social environment."

Somewhere along the way, man lost his soul!

We pinpoint when and we find Professor Wundt, 1879, being urged by Bismarck at the period of Germany's greatest militarism, trying to get a philosophy that will get his soldiers to kill men. And we find Hegel, the "great" German philosopher, the idol of supersocialists, stressing that WAR is VITAL to the mental health of people.

Out of this we can redefine modern psychology as a German military system used to condition men for war and subsidized in American and other universities at the time the government was having trouble with the draft. A reasonable discourse on why "they" had to push psychology would of course be a way of redefining an already redefined word, "psychology."

The way to redefine a word is to get the new definition repeated as often as possible.

Thus it is necessary to redefine medicine, psychiatry and psychology downward and define Dianetics and Scientology upwards.

This, so far as words are concerned, is the public-opinion battle for belief in your definitions and not those of the opposition.

A consistent, repeated effort is the key to any success with this technique of propaganda.

One must know how to do it.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder

THE DIANETIC AUDITOR'S BULLETIN
Volume 1, No. 8 February, 1951

Official Publication of
The Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, Inc.
Elizabeth, New Jersey

The Theory of
Affinity, Reality and Communication

From Lectures By
L. Ron Hubbard

These three words: Affinity, Reality and Communication, do not seem on the surface to have much to do with each other. A little thought will discover that your Affinity with another person will have something to do with your ability to Communicate with him, but how these two are related to Reality is not so easily seen. As a matter of fact, these three words have an extremely close and interesting relationship.

AFFINITY

The term "affinity" as it is used in Dianetics is fairly close in meaning to the word like. However, affinity is a two-way proposition. Not only do you like something, but you feel that it likes you. Affinity is also very much like the word love when love is, used in its universal sense. It includes both love and like and is broader than both. It includes all feelings of good will and kinship.

Man would not be man without affinity. Every animal has affinity to some degree but man is capable of feeling an especially large amount. Long before he organized into cities, he had organized into tribes and clans. Before the tribes and clans there were undoubtedly packs. Man's instinctive need for affinity with his fellow human beings
has long been recognized and his domestication of other animals shows that this affinity extends also to other species. One could have guessed that the race which first developed affinity to its highest degree would become the dominant race on any planet and this has been borne out. Although the kind of affinity enjoyed by the insect world can be shown to be an entirely different type of affinity (since it is not based on the individual remaining an individual and having affinity for another individual), nevertheless, this pseudo-affinity has made the insect world a dangerous rival for planet supremacy. The dangers of broken affinity have long been recognized by students of the human mind.

A child is full of affinity. Not only does he have affinity for his father, mother, brothers and sisters and his playmates, but for his dogs, his cats and stray dogs that happen to come around. But affinity goes even beyond this. You can have a feeling of affinity for objects: "I love the way the grain stands out in that wood." There is a feeling of oneness with the earth, blue skies, rain, mill ponds, cartwheels and bullfrogs which is affmity.

Affinity is never identification, nor does it go quite so far as empathy. You remain very much yourself when you have affinity for something but you also feel the essence of the thing for which you have affinity. You remain yourself and, yet, you draw closer to the object for which you have affinity. It is not a binding quality. There
are no strings attached when affinity is given. To the receiver it carries no duties and no responsibilities. It is pure, easy and natural and flows out from you as easily as sunlight' flows from the sun.

Affinity begets affinity. A person who is filled with the quality will automatically find people anywhere near him also beginning to be filled with affinity. It is a calming, warming, heartening irifluence on all who are capable of receiving and giving it.

COMMUNICATION

"For all who are capable of receiving and giving it" indicates quite clearly that the use of affinity (and affinity ceases to exist unless it is used) is dependent on the ability to communicate.

Communication has been equally important in the development of the race. A man's impact on the world has been directly proportionate to his development of a means of communication. Communication in its broadest sense, of course, includes all the ways in which a person or thing becomes aware of or becomes aware to, another person or thing. Man's unusual ability to communicate in a number of different ways is largely responsible for the growth of his intelligence and the growth of his civilization.

In the main, however, communication in man divides itself into two large groups. Language forms such an important part of the communication lines between people that it deserves a special consideration and a classification all its own. All other forms of communication are in another class. Perhaps in the future, other forms of communication will be developed which are superior to spoken or written language per se, but until these tools have developed a great deal more objective accuracy than they are at present capable of obtaining, language will remain the chief tool of communication.

Music is a very fine means of communication which can bypass the use of words completely. Music, however, is limited in its communication to broad implications rather than to exact facts. Of course if you speak of emotional states as fact, then music could be considered an exact form of communication; but an entire symphony might be built around the idea of trying to communicate the fact that a typewriter was moved from a chair to a desk. This is admittedly not efficient communication at this level of abstraction. On the other hand, music can successfully describe, in one small turn of one phrase, an emotional state which might fill two volumes with large and
mellifluous psychological speech.

Before the development of language, man communicated quite readily and successfully by means of signs, gestures, imitation and pure identity of perceptic imagery. Perhaps in the future, methods of transmitting states of being will become sufficiently advanced so that the objective considerations of matter, energy, space and time (MEST in Dianetics) may be also transmitted in the same way that emotional states are now transmitted by music.

At the moment, however, language remains our most useful tool of communication. It is notable that the great men of history have almost unanimously been particularly adept at communication. A very large percentage of these men have used language as their primary means of communication, but some have used music, and some have used the other less exact methods of transmitting affinity and of having force with other men. Quite recently, the development of mathematics has placed an extremely flexible and useful language in the hands of a few people. The work of the
late Count Korzybski has pointed out with great distinctness the advantages which the language of mathematics has given to scientists of the physical universe. Rationality, in their special field, is very high among physicists and chemists who do a great deal of their thinking in terms of the rational language of mathematics.

Starting with affinity with each other and working by means of communication with each other, mankind has gradually changed and tamed the world in which he lived. Order is slowly being evolved out of disorder and, once the hurdle of irrationality is crossed, man will reach out for other worlds. With affinity and through communication, man is remaking the world.

REALITY

Most people are unaware of how much man really does make his own world. It is surprising how much reality is dependent on an agreement between individuals that an object or an idea exists.

Take the case of a person who has been hypnotized and has been told that there is a chair in the center of the room. This, in effect, is an agreement entered into between the hypnotist and the person who is hypnotized that there is a chair in the center of the room. The person who is hypnotized is temporarily cut off from the rest of
mankind and finds that his only communication and his only affinity, for the duration of the hypnosis, is with a hypnotic operator. So that when this person goes into the center of the room, he can feel the chair, sit on the chair, stumble over the chair, or even burn the chair up with a match. For him, the chair in the center of the room really exists. To the hypnotic operator who is still in communication and agreement with the rest of mankind, or at least a portion of it, the spectacle of someone who believes a chair to be in the middle of the room when obviously no chair is there may be very ludicrous. Yet it may be possible that the chairs which to everyone else in the room seem to be sitting around the walls may be there only because everyone else agrees that they are there.