Five Reactions to Danger: The Black Panther Mechanisms

People react to danger in five distinct ways: attack, flee, avoid, neglect, or succumb.

### Understanding Reactions to Danger: The Five Panther Mechanisms
* 🐆 People react to sources of danger in various ways, and these reactions can be categorized into **five distinct courses of action** known as the **black panther mechanisms**.
* 🏃 In a hypothetical scenario where an angry black panther blocks your path, you could choose to **attack the panther**, **flee the situation**, **avoid it by climbing**, **neglect its presence**, or **succumb to it**.
* 🧠 These mechanisms illustrate how individuals handle pain or punishment, reflecting the ways our **reactive mind deals with survival problems**.
* 👧 For example, a child facing physical punishment from her mother may react by **obeying out of fear**, which indicates **succumbing to the pain**, or she might try to **flee or avoid the situation altogether**.
* 🪄 Alternatively, if she can't physically confront her mother, she may **express her distress indirectly**, such as by **causing minor damage in the home**.
* 📉 The text emphasizes that four of these reactions—**succumbing, neglecting, avoiding, and fleeing**—are considered ineffective, while only **attacking the source of pain** is deemed a proper response.
* 🔍 The goal in addressing these engrams, or sources of pain, is to **confront and re-experience the incident**, allowing the mind to **process and overcome it effectively**.
* 🤝 The collaboration between the auditor and the pre-clear is crucial, as they work together to **confront the engram bank**, ultimately leading to the **release of the reactive mind's hold on past traumas**.

So, have you ever noticed that people react to the same source of danger in different ways? Turn around, get them on the right now. Listen, don't do anything stupid, okay? Money, no money, right now, right now. Get out, get out, go home. You might be surprised to learn

that all the seemingly different ways we handle these contra-survival problems really fall into just five courses of action. In other words, there are five ways that we can react to any source of danger, pain, or punishment. For the sake of illustration, let's imagine that one night you're sitting in

your living room and you decide to go upstairs to bed, but you discover to your surprise that a particularly angry black panther is sitting on the stairs. Now, this panther is definitely a source of danger to you, and he's giving you a problem because

you have to get past him to go to bed. There are five ways of handling this situation, five things you can do about this panther: One, you could attack the panther; two, you could run out of the house and flee the panther; three, you could avoid the panther by going

outside and climbing up the porch lattice; four, you could neglect the panther, in other words, just refuse to admit that it is a black panther and attempt to go up the stairs anyway; or five, you could succumb to the panther and hope that he eats you quietly and

without too much pain. These are the five courses of action you can take: attack, flee, avoid, neglect, or succumb. In Dianetics, these have become known as the black panther mechanisms. They're the five different reactions you can have to any source of danger.

pain or any conscious survival problem, and they're also the five ways your reactive mind handles engrams. Jessica, what are you doing? I was just coloring. You haven't done any of your homework. Let's take an example of a child whose mother punishes her by beating her with

a hairbrush every time she's supposedly been bad. Physical punishments contain pain and are therefore engrams to this girl's reactive mind. Her mother is now considered a source of pain or danger. The reactive mind reacts to punishment sources in one of those five ways, and there's no telling which one it will

choose. If she is punished and thereafter obeys, she's actually succumbed; she sunk into apathy. She could flee the punishment source or try to avoid her, which might be considered cowardly, or she could neglect the matter and simply ignore her mother. I'm very upset

by this because I came home today and I walked into the bathroom and the clothes were everywhere, Jessica. Or she could attack that source of pain, but her mother is much bigger than she is, so she can't attack her physically. She has to attack in a less direct

fashion. So those accidental stains on Mama's rug could be a reactive mind attack against the dangerous woman it considers to be a source of pain. But as long as a human being responds to a valid threat with an attack, she can be said to be in a fair or

normal mental condition. An engram contains pain, and my mother's hitting me with a hairbrush. So when your analytical mind tries to contact an engram in a session, it shuts down to some degree and it reacts toward that source of pain just as it would in life.

it chooses one of the five ways to handle it. I I can't see anything else. I guess there's nothing there. I understand what's the somatic of those five ways? Four of them are wrong. My thigh hurts really bad. And to succumb to an engram is apathy.

to neglect one is carelessness and to avoid or flee from one is cowardice. The actual incident must be located and re-experienced. That's it. I can't see anything else. Therefore, attack and only attack resolves the problem. Go back to the beginning and go

over it again. Pick up whatever additional data you can. Contact it's the auditor's duty to make sure that the pre-clear keeps attacking those engrams. The target is the engram bank. It's the auditor's job to attack the pre-clear's

engram bank, and it's the pre-clear's job to attack her engram bank. When they team up together against the reactive mind, it gives up its engrams.

14-The Black Panther Mechanisms-Using Dianetics: The Modern Science Of Mental Health

Captain Joe

Introduction to the Five Courses of Action (Black Panther Mechanisms)

There are five ways to react to danger, pain, or punishment.

Example scenario: encountering a black panther on the stairs.

Five reactions: attack, flee, avoid, neglect, succumb.

These are known as the 'black panther mechanisms' in Dianetics.

Application to Child Punishment and Engrams

The reactive mind reacts in one of the five ways.

Possible reactions: succumb (apathy), flee, avoid, neglect, attack.

Indirect attack: accidental stains on the mother's rug.

Normal mental condition involves attacking a valid threat.

The analytical mind shuts down when contacting an engram.

Four of the five reactions are negative (succumb, neglect, avoid/flee).

The auditor's role is to ensure the pre-clear keeps attacking engrams.

Joint attack against the reactive mind leads to releasing engrams.