Dianetics 75: What the Nobel physicist got out of Scientology's bible

As we continue to count down to the 75th anniversary of Dianetics tomorrow, we’ve heard from a couple of very helpful readers who sent us various reviews which were written soon after the May 9, 1950 appearance of L. Ron Hubbard’s magnum opus.

And while it is interesting to look through those takes on the hot-selling volume of Hubbard’s “modern science of mental health,” for us there is one review that towers above the rest.

We just wish more people had paid attention to it at the time.

The brief review appeared in the January 1951 issue of Scientific American, and it was written by Isidor Isaac Rabi, who had won the Nobel prize for physics in 1944.

That’s right, Scientific American had an actual Nobel prize winner review Ron’s fanciful “handbook of dianetic therapy” and render an opinion. Can you imagine?

Rabi is a fascinating figure. Born in 1898, he met J. Robert Oppenheimer in Europe in 1929 while they were doing post-docs there. In 1942, when Oppenheimer was given the task of building the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert, he asked Rabi to be his assistant director of the project.

Rabi turned him down. At the time, Rabi was working on radar, and while he understood the importance of the Manhattan Project, he and others believed that radar would actually be more important to winning the war.

Despite turning down the job, though, Rabi did occasionally travel to Los Alamos to consult on the A-bomb project, and he was with Oppenheimer on the morning of July 16, 1945 when the Trinity test went off. He said that after he got over the intensity of the initial blast, he got gooseflesh thinking about the new world they had ushered in.

Rabi’s work on radar was key to the Allied victory in the war, but his impact on our current lives is probably more related to what he won his Nobel prize for, and that was in nuclear magnetic resonance, which led to the MRI machines that are so helpful to our health care today.

Rabi was a brilliant and thoughtful man who stood by his friend Oppenheimer, remaining loyal to him during the 1954 inquisition that stripped Oppenheimer of his security clearance and that was the subject of Christopher Nolan’s 2023 film.

In that movie, Rabi was brilliantly portrayed by actor David Krumholtz, and he delivered this line about the awful machine they were developing at Los Alamos…

“You drop a bomb, and it falls on the just and the unjust. I don't wish the culmination of three centuries of physics to be a weapon of mass destruction.”

After the war, Rabi became a science adviser to President Eisenhower, and continued to teach at Columbia. He died in 1988 at 89 years old.

Anyway, we figure that if Rabi’s short review of Dianetics showed up in the January issue of Scientific American, he probably submitted it a couple of months earlier, and by then, around October 1950, Dianetics was already a bestseller.

But that provides the reason for the final line in Rabi’s review, which is one of the best assessments of this book ever written, as far as we’re concerned.

We only wish his warning about the vacuous nature of Hubbard’s evidence-free theories had been heeded by more people.

Here is that review, in total.

I.I. Rabi, winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1944, is professor of physics at Columbia University.

Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, by L. Ron Hubbard. Hermitage House ($4.00).

This volume probably contains more promises and less evidence per page than has any publication since the invention of printing.

Briefly, its thesis is that man is intrinsically good, has a perfect memory for every event of his life, and is a good deal more intelligent than he appears to be. However, something called the engram prevents these characteristics from being realized in man's behavior.

During moments of unconsciousness and pain and at any time from conception onward, the “reactive mind” can still record experience, but experiences so recorded — engrams — are a major source of man’s misery, his psychosomatic ills, his neuroses and psychoses, his poor memory, and his generally inefficient functioning.

By a process called dianetic revery, which resembles hypnosis and which may apparently be practiced by anyone trained in dianetics, these engrams may be recalled. Once thoroughly recalled, they are “refiled,” and the patient becomes a “clear,” who is not handicapped by encumbering engrams and who can thenceforth function at a level of intellect, efficiency and goodness seldom if ever realized before in the history of man. The system is presented without qualification and without evidence. It has borrowed from psychoanalysis, Pavlovian conditioning, hypnosis and folk beliefs, but, except for the last, these debts are fulsomely denied.

The huge sale of the book to date is distressing evidence of the frustrated ambitions, hopes, ideals, anxieties and worries of the many persons who through it have sought succor.

— I. I. Rabi

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Scientology closer to control of Clearwater street

[Scientology’s plan for L. Ron Hubbard Hall, right, and the plaza in front of it]

We heard from Mark Bunker last night that David Miscavige is now closer to securing the street he wants to buy from Clearwater to complete his plans for L. Ron Hubbard Hall.

Previously, Mark told us about a new, alternative proposal (“Save the Garden”) that was asking the city council to postpone its vote on Miscavige’s plans.

A key council member, David Allbritton, who had previously voiced his support of Scientology’s plan, was intrigued by the alternative proposal and voted for a delay to consider it.

But yesterday, that changed, Mark says.

“David Allbritton went on a local radio show with Scientology’s Sarah Heller to cement his support for the project,” he tells us.

Now, with a 3-2 majority, Miscavige has the votes he needs. Mark talked about the new situation last night at his YouTube channel.

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

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