Once again, our generous helper who dives through newspaper and other databases has found a gem for us today.
It’s from that heady time in 1950 after L. Ron Hubbard’s book Dianetics had come out in May and caused such a sensation.
In August, he made his famous demonstration of Dianetics principles at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.
A month later, he was in San Francisco to do the same, and ran into a rather skeptical reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, Alvin D. Hyman, who was apparently rather astounded to see the famous opening lines in Dianetics, that it represented an advance in human understanding “comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and arch.”
It’s a ludicrous statement to open what is, in actual fact, a turgid and ridiculous tome that we blogged from cover to cover back in 2013 to save you the trouble of wading through it.
Anyway, Chronicle reporter Alvin D. Hyman was understandably perplexed to see a book start out that way, and so he asked its author about it.
Not only was Hubbard’s response fascinating, but we also enjoyed Hyman’s other observations about the kinds of claims that Hubbard was making at the time.
You have to wonder how so many people over the years actually took Hubbard at face value.
San Francisco Chronicle, Sept 24, 1950
Creator of Dianetics Here — Explaining His Therapy
By Alvin D. Hyman
L. Ron Hubbard, a prolific writer of space-ship fiction who invented "dianetics" and thereby became a kind of latter day, native American yogi, said yesterday that he is no egocentric idiot.
He entered his denial in explanation of the opening words of his best selling opus "Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health," a fat $4 book that has sold 75,000 copies since May and is picking up circulation at the rate of 4000 a week.
That volume, already venerated by thousands upon thousands of disciples, who are panting after dianetics as the hart after the brook, takes off with this unequivocal admission:
"The creation of dianetics is a milestone for man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and arch."
OUT OF WINCHELL
Hubbard said yesterday he never said that. He said that quotation is out of Walter Winchell by Arthur Ceppos, president and editor of Hermitage House, his publisher. He said that some months before the book was published, Winchell learned, as only Winchell can, that its author was infanticipating, and rushed into print with the "comparable to fire and superior to the wheel" appraisal.
Then, said Hubbard, his publisher picked up the quote and used it where so many readers have been jolted by it at the very outset of the book. "My publisher wrote the synopsis that opens the book, he said. "I didn't know about it and didn't see it till the book was in covers. I have since asked him repeatedly to delete it. Already the sixth edition is out and that quote is still in. If it doesn't come out in the seventh edition, I intend to raise a little hell with my publisher."
(Ceppos, interviewed by telephone yesterday, told The Chronicle that the synopsis was, indeed, his work, but, he added, Hubbard knew about it and saw it before publication. He said: "That young man has made a great and undeniable contribution to our knowledge of mankind — possibly the greatest in our time — but unfortunately, he has also been guilty of a number of errors in judgment.")
'TERRA INCOGNITA'
In disclaiming that he is the kind of self-centered idiot who would talk about his achievement as Winchell and Ceppos did, Hubbard referred his interviewers to the "real" opening of the book, the foreword that he, himself, wrote. It says: "Dianetics is an adventure. It is an exploration into 'terra incognita,' the human mind, that vast and hitherto unknown realm half an inch back of our foreheads."
There have been other definitions since dianetics first began blazing across the psychotherapeutic firmament — an appearance foretold by Hubbard himself, in the magazine "Astounding Science Fiction."
It has been called the poor man's psychoanalysis (though Hubbard says it is not psychoanalysis at all); it has been called a magnificent piece of scientific spoofing (though Hubbard says he is entirely sincere and has enlisted colleges and scientific institutions to test his claims); it has been called "one of those Coue' things that generate a lot of enthusiasm among the half-baked and then collapse."
ONE REPLY
Hubbard and his followers have one simple reply for all psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and other critics who scoff at his claims that he has discovered the hidden source of all human aberration and most human ills, not excluding cancer and diabetes — and that he has made it possible for any intelligent and ordinarily persistent person to clear up all those ills and aberrations. They say: "It works."
To that effect, Hubbard said yesterday that the Virginia Medical Institute is treating 50 per cent of its cases with dianetics; that "the Missouri State Institution" is doing most of its work with dianetics, and that Pierce's General Hospital in Beaumont, Texas, won't permit a doctor to operate in the place unless he and everybody around him is firmly grounded in dianetics.
He said professors of biology and chemistry and medicine and neurology and psychiatry write him enthusiastic letters about dianetics, and that several of the staff members of an important psychiatric institution are using dianetics despite a sneering attitude on the part of the institution's head-men. He says, too, that one psychiatrist informed him he had busted a case of schizoid paranoia in two hours with dianetics.
250,000 IN IT
"There are at present more than 250,000 persons in the United States undergoing dianetic therapy," said the discoverer of the method. "I predict that within five years no other method of psychotherapy will be in use."
He agrees with his critics who say there is nothing new in his system. He says it is all old stuff — all conceived and talked about by scientific men before him — but mostly forgotten, and never before integrated and organized as he has integrated and organized it in dianetics.
"Dianetics is an organization job," he said, as partial explanation for the odd fact that he first announced his discovery in a science fiction magazine instead of in a scientific journal. He said he wouldn't dare announce somebody else's discoveries in such a publication.
Furthermore, he said, he deliberately chose "Astounding Science Fiction" in order to reach every university and seat of scientific learning in the country — a statement not so ludicrous as it seems in view of the fact that the Nation's laboratories are peopled with ardent fans of that periodical.
RECORDING CELLS
Hubbard says his basic biologic discovery is the discovery of cellular recall — he says cells record all goings-on around them even before they have increased, and coalesced into an organism with a brain; he says the human cell begins to make such recordings within 24 hours after the ovum has been fertilized. And, he says further, that painful, pre-natal recordings buried deep in the unconscious mind (dianetics calls it the "reactive" mind) are what later cause human aches, pains, and unpleasant and dangerous emotions.
To rout out these early recordings ("engrams" is the dianetic term) Hubbard's system of therapy merely takes the patient back to the time when the recording took place, has the patient re-experience the painful incident and thereby moves it out of the "unconscious" or reactive mind into the "conscious" mind (called the analytical mind in dianetic terminology).
In the analytical mind, says Hubbard, the painful incident becomes a harmless memory without power to cause emotional or physical upsets.
(The dianetic concept of the human embryo perceiving and recording events has led one reviewer to suggest that dianetics be sub-titled "A Womb With a View.")
Hubbard has set up a simple procedure by which psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, or laymen can carry a patient "back along the time track" to the painful incidents graven on the cells; such a return, he says, permits the engrams to discharge their evil power.
SOME ALARM
This suggestion that anybody can become his brother's psychotherapist has been looked upon with considerable alarm by men who have spent years studying and practicing the treatment of mental ailments. One local psychiatrist, informed that his alarm was possibly based in fear that he might lose a lot of patients to amateurs, retorted:
"On the contrary; dianetics is going to bring us business instead of taking it away; dianetics is going to leave so many people so deeply confused that our hands will be full for years."
It was the same man who admitted that more than one patient has come to him with a copy of dianetics under his arm; has asked for dianetic treatment, and, being refused, has offered to give the psychiatrist a treatment.
THE TRIP HERE
It was to straighten out these and allied matters that Hubbard came to San Francisco yesterday, with a small retinue of Hollywood press agents. He delivered an "introductory" lecture on elementary dianetics at the Oakland Municipal Auditorium last night — admission $1.50 — and will follow up with a course of four lectures, including demonstrations of the dianetic method on actual patients — next week. The full course can be had for $25.
Despite the vast sale of his book, and the success of his lectures, and the rush recently experienced in Los Angeles to take his professional auditors' course at $500 (the dianetic therapist is called an auditor), Hubbard said yesterday that he isn't getting rich.
As a matter of fact, he said, he made more money writing fiction. He said the royalties and fees all go to the Dianetics Institute, which is setting up research centers, and conducting tests, and doing much more to put dianetics in position where it will not only heal and clear up madness but will also stop murders, war, and such.
Hubbard feels that he owes it to Oakland to start a new course there. As a boy, he said, he went to school in Oakland. He remembers he went to Grant school, but can't remember the name of another school he attended (a somewhat odd lapse for a man who has been "cleared," that is, cured and made entirely normal by dianetics and thereby should be able to remember everything he ever experienced and in the minutest detail).
THE LAST LINK
And it was in Oakland, too, that he forged the last, binding link in his science of mental health. He says he was invalided out of the Navy early in 1945 — sent to Oak Knoll Hospital for discharge with a "complete disability" rating because of peptic ulcers, bursitis, arthritis, tendonitis and other assorted ills. He says he used up his year or so there in studying the medical library and that such study gave him the therapy to go with his philosophy of dianetics.
So, he says, he instructed his wife in the new science; made her his auditor; became "cleared" and then, called before the Navy Retirement Board, so confounded them with his well-being that the board had him fingerprinted to convince itself that it had the right man. The board examined him for 21 hours, he said, and restored him to full duty status.
Want to help?
You can support the Underground Bunker with a Paypal contribution to bunkerfund@tonyortega.org, an account administered by the Bunker’s attorney, Scott Pilutik. And by request, this is our Venmo link, and for Zelle, please use (tonyo94 AT gmail).
Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:
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
Here’s the link for today’s post at tonyortega.org
And whatever you do, subscribe to this Substack so you get our breaking stories and daily features right to your email inbox every morning.
Paid subscribers get access to two special podcast series every week…
Up the Bridge: A weekly journey through Scientology’s actual “technology”
Group Therapy: Our round table of rowdy regulars on the week’s news
"You have to wonder how so many people over the years actually took Hubbard at face value." Tony, you have a wonderful penchant for understatement. I do like the somewhat skeptical tone in Alvin Hyman's article. All of grandiose claims of the 'psychs' using Dianetics is hilariously stupid. A few phone calls would have outed that bovine excrement.
As for Lron's claim of 'not making money' off of Dianetics, what bollocks. What hubris, what a proper snide remark about the whole Dianetics craze. And crazy it was and is. Lron's lie about being returned to full Navy duty was a lie. I see no mention of Lron trying to get a disability award from the Veterans Admin and no mention of his conviction for passing bad checks.
I love the response to old ghost ron’s plagerizing in DMSMH.
It Works.
My response to all those still in the grip of david or old ghost ron,as I was yrs ago, is to say.
Yes it works, until it doesn’t.
Then all the wheels come off….