The reactive mind is a concept in the Dianetics and Scientology systems of L. Ron Hubbard, referring to that portion of the human mind that is unconscious and stimulus-response, which Hubbard blamed for most mental and physical ailments. These ailments are regarded by Scientologists as psychosomatic ones:
"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." - L. Ron Hubbard (Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, 1999 paperback edition, pg.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 stores impressions (which he called engrams) of past events, which occurred while the person was unconscious or otherwise not completely aware.
Scientology and Dianetics use a galvanic skin response detector called an E-meter originally designed by Volney Mathison that is basically a Wheatstone bridge designed to help the work of erasing one's own "engrams" According to Dianetics, erasing one's own reactive mind altogether can be facilitated by measuring the changes in resistance experienced by a living organism. Scientology promotes such treatments as a means of "spiritual rehabilitation" called auditing.
Read more about Reactive Mind: Criticism
Famous quotes containing the word mind:
“Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,—never darkened across any man’s road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul’s mumps, and measles, and whooping- coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe a cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)