Author: Hubbard, L. R.
Document date: 1956, 13 November
Document title: Aberration and the Sixth Dynamic
Document type: lecture
Event: Fifteenth American Advanced Clinical Course
Location: Washington, DC
Document ID: 15ACC-22
Description: Hubbard discusses death and insanity as "cures" for each other; relates this to catatonic schizophrenia.
But death itself becomes an unwanted, a very painful and an extremely difficult mechanism. But it was once a therapeutic mechanism. It was once one way to get out of the game you were tired of playing, and one could do it rather easily; he could do it at any time.
It is today no less a pretense, since you can walk up alongside of any corpse and call the thetan back. It’s no longer as fashionable as a game-end condition, but it is very definitely present. And it’s now compulsory and inhibited at the same time and is quite a confused piece of stuff. Do you see that? It’s very confused, this whole subject of death. It’s quite funny, as a matter of fact, the amount of this and that that is paid, the amount of flowers and that sort of things which are shipped around at dead corpses after the thetan has shoved off, and so on. It’s very amusing.
Well, was there any other mechanism like death? Yes, there was another mechanism that predated death, and that was insanity. Now, you could say it predated death or it followed death. You could fit it into either logical sequence rather easily. But point of the matter is it simply said, “I am now incapable of further responsibility for my own acts, so cessation of punishment is thereby indicated.” It was a method of declaring that one was through with a game.
Therefore, death was a cure for insanity. That’s one of the mechanisms. The reverse, too: Insanity is a cure for death. Death was a cure for insanity. You get the catatonic schiz. Catatonic schiz is stopping being insane by dying. But, you see, insanity itself was a method of ending the game.
One had to work real hard. He said, “Look. I’m irresponsible. I’m no longer capable of doing anything. I can’t direct my attention; I don’t know who I am; I don’t do anything but this silly motion this way. I’m no longer a menace or a danger to you in any way, and therefore you should go away and leave me alone.”
Hubbard, L. R. (1956, 13 November). Aberration and the Sixth Dynamic. Fifteenth American Advanced Clinical Course, (15ACC-22). Lecture conducted from Washington, DC.