Present day psychiatry can hardly be called an exact science. Mixing up psychiatry with terminology and concepts borrowed from physics, chemistry, mathematics and engineering doesn't make it more exact. Emotional disturbance and mental illness afflict both the sophisticated and the naive, the learned and the ignorant. It is undoubtedly true that there are some persons who have been helped by dianetics. When an auditor devotes time, interest and sympathy to an individual with worries, tensions and anxieties, he provides an opportunity for the ventilation of these problems.
Ventilation is an old and successful method of reducing emotional tension.
The relationship between auditor and patient will be particularly successful if the patient has been lonely or misunderstood or scolded. Furthermore, information or discussion about sexual matters always has considerable therapeutic value, at least temporarily. In mild tension states where the symptoms are not too severe, these methods may be successful for a variable period in relieving or diminishing distressing symptoms. But in severe neuroses or nervous ills, the kinds of mental disorder that affect so many people in our society, the superficial methods of psychotherapy have a very limited value. Sometimes they may even be harmful, particularly in the hands of a person without much training.