Editing Auditing (Scientology) (section)

=== Engram ===

The use of the word ''engram'' in Dianetics and Scientology is different from the meaning of [[Engram (neuropsychology)|"engram" in cognitive psychology]].{{r|cordon}} According to Hubbard, an engram is a detailed mental image or memory of a traumatic event from the past that occurred when an individual was partially or fully unconscious. Whenever something painful happens while one's "analytic mind" is unconscious, engrams are said to be recorded and stored within the reactive mind.{{r|Jacobsen}}{{r|hubbard-techdict|p=141}}

In 1950, Hubbard first described an engram as a "cellular level recording" that includes both physical and emotional pain,{{r|Refslund|p=52}} but later redefined his concept as being "a mental image picture of a moment of pain and unconsciousness".{{r|abilitymag36}}

Engrams are said to originate from painful incidents, which close down the "analytic function", leaving a person to operate only on the "reactive" level, where everything, including pain, position, and location are experienced as "aspects of the unpleasant whole." An engram is restimulated if the person is later reminded of the painful experience, causing feelings of guilt or embarrassment – another engram. This cycle is called a "lock" in Scientology terminology.{{r|cook|p=59}} Engrams are stored as series of incidents that are similar, called "chains".{{r|Refslund|p=52}}

Jeff Jacobsen compared the process of auditing engrams to the [[Freudian psychoanalysis|Freudian psychoanalytic]] concept of [[abreaction]], equating engrams to the painful subconscious memories that abreaction therapy brings up to the conscious mind. He quoted Nathaniel Thornton, who compared abreaction to confession.{{r|Jacobsen}} Dorthe Refslund Christensen describes engrams in layman's terms as trauma, a means to explain the long and short term effects of painful experiences.{{r|Refslund}} According to Christensen, Hubbard wrote about the dramatization of an engram, where the one who suffered and recorded the pain as an engram relates all sensory perceptions during the time of the painful incident to the incident. These sensory perceptions become "restimulators" that remind the individual of the pain and triggers him or her to re-experience it.{{r|Refslund}} 

Scholar Richard Holloway writes that according to Scientology, engrams are "damaging experiences that happen by accident," bruises through time implanted on [[thetan]]s through the course of millions of lives. Sometimes the damage is intentionally inflicted by thetans who desired power over other thetans. Deliberate injuries are called [[#Implants|implants]] in Scientology. Hubbard wrote, "Implants result in all varieties of illness, apathy, degradiation, neurosis and insanity and are the principle causes of these in man." The Christian idea of heaven is a deceptive implant, Hubbard taught, for there is an infinite series of lives after the first, contrary to the Christian notion of the afterlife.{{r|Holloway}}

The term ''engram'' was coined in 1904 by the German scholar [[Richard Semon]],{{r|dudai}} who defined it as a "stimulus impression" which could be reactivated by the recurrence of "the energetic conditions which ruled at the generation of the engram."{{r|corydon|p=Cha.2}} Hubbard re-used Semon's concept when he published ''[[Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health]]'' in 1950. He conceived of the engram as a form of "memory trace", an idea that had long existed in medicine. According to physician [[Joseph A. Winter|Joseph Winter]], who collaborated with Hubbard during the early years of the Dianetics organizations, Hubbard had taken the term "engram" from a 1936 edition of ''[[Dorland's Medical Dictionary]]'', where it was defined as "a lasting mark or trace...In psychology it is the lasting trace left in the psyche by anything that has been experienced psychically; a latent memory picture."{{r|winter}} Hubbard had originally used various terms such as "norn", "comanome" and "impediment" before settling on "engram" following a suggestion from Winter.{{r|atack|page=109}}

{{Anchor|Incident|Incidents|Implant|Implants}}