1988 was an irritating year for me. The town council was sidelining the road in front of my business premises and after the construction had been in progress for 3 months I felt like a raw nerve. The sound of diesel engines and compaction rollers was driving me mad. I had no patience. I snapped at staff and customers and family for the slightest thing. I felt so irritable I could scream.

     I had learned of Scientology and Dianetics a few months earlier, and decided at this time to buy a few hours of Dianetics auditing to see if I could discover any engrams (moments of pain or unconsciousness). During this auditing I recalled an incident which occurred five years previously. I had been erecting a radio antenna at a police station in a remote part of the Kalahari desert, when I pulled a back muscle. The pain was too great to continue working so I rested in the station commander’s office. However, my condition deteriorated that at sunset, I couldn’t even walk. The station commander allowed me to sleep in an unused prison cell. That night I lay on a hard bed; dying to use the toilet, but in too much pain to lift myself off the bed; and the sound of the diesel electric generator outside the cell all night made me so irritable I could scream. On recalling this incident I realized that the sound of the roadwork equipment outside my work place was similar to the sound of the diesel electric generator outside the cell and had restimulated the associated feelings of irritability and frustration. After this Dianetics auditing, the next day at work I found that the roadwork sounds had very little effect on me, and I was calm.