The “Missed” Withhold

In HCOB 3 MAY 62R – ARC Breaks, Missed Withholds, LRH defined a “missed” withhold as:

“AN UNDISCLOSED CONTRASURVIVAL ACT WHICH HAS BEEN RESTIMULATED BY ANOTHER BUT NOT DISCLOSED.”

I emphasize missed withhold because it is a distinctly different phenomena than a “withhold” which is simply defined in the same reference as:

“AN UNDISCLOSED CONTRASURVIVAL ACT.”

I believe these may be the most misunderstood words in all of Scientology. Even LRH made reference to such in the same HCOB mentioned above:

“Give a new auditor the order to clean up ‘missed withholds’ and he or she invariably will start asking the pc for withholds. That’s a mistake. You ask the pc for missed withholds. Why stir up new ones to be missed when you haven’t cleaned up those already missed? Instead of putting out the fire we pour on gunpowder.”

This one misunderstood could be singularly responsible for the decline of results within the Church, as LRH warns in the last paragraph:

“If pcs, organizations and even Scientology vanish from man’s view it will be because you did not learn and use these things.”

In this essay I will attempt to make clear just how this simple bit of technology is being misapplied by every Auditor within the Church, and how that can affect the cases of every PC.  And of course, in doing this, I will also direct you to the correct Tech as the solution.

The first and foremost way in which this Tech is misapplied occurs at the beginning of every session in the running of “rudiments.”  Per HCOB 11 AUG 78 I – RUDIMENTS, DEFINITIONS AND PATTER the third rudiment question asked is:

“Has a withhold been missed?”

If the Auditor gets a read on this, he is then instructed to find out:

a)  What was it?
b)  When was it?
c)  Is that all of the withhold?
d)  WHO missed it?
e)  What did (he/she) do to make you wonder whether or not (he/she) knew?
f)  Who else missed it? (Repeat (e) above).

“Get another and another who missed it, using the Suppress button as necessary, and repeating (e) above.”

This is the exact point that the breakdown occurs for most Auditors.  They tend to focus on steps (a) through (c) above, and get concerned about the thoroughness of the PC’s recanting of the overt/withhold rather than what was done to miss it.  Auditors will even get worried at this point that if they do not pull all of the withhold, then they will be continuing to miss it – a crime which carries heavy penalties in the Church.

Compare the above procedure for cleaning up a missed withhold, to that LRH originally described in HCOB 15 AUG 69 – FLYING RUDIMENTS :

“If you get a withhold you find out WHO missed it, then another and another using Suppress.”

You will notice that the emphasis in this case is definitely on “who” missed it rather than what the withhold was.  This makes sense since the actual charge of a missed withhold is on the moment that the withhold was missed, NOT on the withhold itself.  Ron made this very clear in a lecture given on 1 November 1962, entitled “The Missed Missed Withhold.”

“A missed withhold is a withhold that people nearly found out about, but didn’t. And you’re only looking for the nearly-found-outs. You don’t give a damn what the guy did. You don’t care what the person did. You only want to know what people almost found out!

“You see it’s all very neat. You got it all figured out that if you didn’t get the withhold in a session, why, therefore, it’s a missed withhold. And that’s not what a missed withhold is! A missed withhold has nothing to do with what the pc said. Nothing! Not — not anything to do with what the pc did and then withheld. It actually hasn’t a damn thing to do with what the pc is withholding.

“The missed withhold is something people nearly found out. It’s an other-person action! Look: It’s not the pc’s action! It’s nothing the pc did or is doing! You keep trying to pick up missed withholds by asking the pc what he’s withholding, you never get anything but withholds, and then you miss some more of these and you’ve got a pc even further upset.”

The confusion is most likely an identification between the fine art of “pulling” a withhold, as in Confessional Procedure, with the simplicity of cleaning a rudiment. This identification is most evident in an alteration found in the Golden Age of Tech (GAT) Procedure Drills for “Flying Rudiments”.  In these drills, the Auditor is supposed to insert between step (c) and (d) the question:

“Have you justified that overt?”

The reference that is used to support this is HCOB 8 JUN 84 – CLEARING JUSTIFICATIONS which states:

“One of the tools of the successful auditor is the technique of getting off the pc’s justifications when pulling overts and withholds. When this tech has fallen out of use, auditing has been less effective. Therefore, in auditing the False Purpose RD it is mandatory that on each overt pulled the pc’s justifications of that overt must be cleared.”

Note that it doesn’t say anywhere that this should be added to the missed withhold rudiment. However, doing so places even more emphasis on the wrong side of the equation (the overt/withhold.) It also tends to confuse the PC by changing the command from asking for a missed withhold to asking for an “overt” instead.  This goes directly against what LRH told us in the above lecture:

“It hasn’t a thing to do with what the pc is withholding. Let’s just sever the end off the ‘missed.’ Let’s forget that it is even a withhold.

“You’re looking for exact moments in the lifetime or lifetimes of this pc when somebody almost found out, and he’s never been sure since whether they did or didn’t. And we don’t care what they almost found out! We only care that they almost found out something!”

Instead, the Auditor should simply follow what LRH advised, and clean up the “missed” W/Hs which will get the PC back in session, and potentially rehabilitate any latent gains from previous sessions as well. It is certainly a technology worth applying Standardly!

“And that is the address to a missed withhold. It’s an other-person-than-the-pc’s action. It’s an other-person’s action.

“And as long as you keep getting knocks on missed withholds you keep asking for them. And when he gives them, you don’t develop them. You just understand and acknowledge them. That’s all you do with them. Don’t do another thing. And the pc just sinks back into session beautifully. He just goes right back into session. It’s gorgeous. It’s marvelous. It’s such magic, nobody ever heard of such a thing. It’s unbelievable until you’ve done it.”