Almost all serious comanomes occur early in life—amazingly early. The early ones form a basic structure to which it is very simple to append later comanomes. Comanomes can wait from childhood to be “keyed in” and active at 25, 50, 70 years of age.

The comanome, a period of unconsciousness which contained physical pain and apparent antagonism to the survival of the individual, has been isolated as the sole source of mental aberration. A certain part of the mind seems to be devoted to their reception and retention. In Dianetics, this part of the mind is called the reactive mind. From this source, without otherwise disclosing themselves, the comanomes act upon the body and cause the body to act in society in certain patterns. The reactive mind is alert during periods when the analytical mind—or conscious mind—is reduced in awareness.

It is a matter of clinical proof that the persistency, ambition, drive, willpower and personal force are in no degree dependent upon these comanomes. The comanome can only inhibit the natural drives. The value of this unconscious experience is valuable in an animal. It is a distinct liability to man who has outgrown his animal environment. The reactive mind, so long as it limits its activity to withdrawing, instinctively, a hand from a hot stove, is doing good service. With a vocabulary in it, it becomes deadly to the organism. Those familiar with general semantics will understand how the reactive mind computes when it is stated that it “computes” in identities. The word “horse” in the reactive mind may mean a headache, a broken leg, and a scream. Such a comanome, one containing these things, would be computed that a broken leg equals a scream, a scream a broken leg, a horse equals a scream, etc., etc. If the comanome contained fright, then all these things are fright. The value of such a mental computation is entirely negative, inhibits the perfect calculations of which the analytical mind is capable and reduces the ability of the individual to be rational about, as noted, horses. Comanomes also contain complimentary material which can bring about a manic state and which, again, is of slight use in computations.

The technique of Dianetics deletes from the reactive mind all comanomes. They were hidden beneath layers of unconsciousness and unknown to the conscious mind before therapy. They were inhibitive to good impulses and productive of bad ones. After they are deleted by therapy the conscious mind gains certain attributes it did not possess before, the individual is capable of greater efforts, his actual personality is greatly heightened and his ability to survive is enormously enhanced.

Comanomes are contagious. A man has one he dramatizes as a rage pattern, and everyone has many. He dramatizes it while another individual is partly unconscious. The comanome has now been implanted in the second individual.

Deletion of all comanomes is practicable. The technique is relatively simple. There is little space here to give more than a most cursory glance at it but an expedition commander can use it without any great knowledge of medicine and no other knowledge of psychiatry, which was the original goal at the beginning of research eleven years ago.

Therapy does not depend upon hypnosis. A state has been found which is much more desirable. Hypnosis is amnesia trance for the purpose of planting suggestions. The problem of hypnosis is to put the patient to sleep. The purpose of the Dianetic reverie is to wake the patient up. Narcosynthesis and other drug therapies have some slight use in Dianetics. But the primary technique consists of stimulants. The best stimulant is Benzedrine. In its absence an overdose of coffee will do.