Bare-Faced Messiah, FBI Archives DIANETICS SCIENCE OR HOAX?

From the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.

[Look Magazine article, 5 Dec 1950, page 79; badly xeroxed]

DIANETICS SCIENCE OR HOAX?

Half a million laymen have swallowed this poor man's psychiatry.  Now
they're set to try it on others.

By Albert Q. Maisel

[photograph of woman lying prone, Hubbard seated next to her, audience;
captioned: "L. Ron Hubbard, originator of dianetics, demonstrates his
new "science" with a woman student."]

A year ago, L. Ron Hubbard was an obscure writer of pseudoscientific
pulp fiction.  Today, he has:

...Half a million devout followers.

...A foundation with a chain of bustling [?]ches stretching from
Elizabeth, N.J., to far off Honolulu.

...The best-selling nonfictio since Dale Carnegie discovered the secret
of success.

...A swarm of pop-eyed students, who stand in line for the privilege of
plunking down 500 bucks for [illegible words] month course which
converts them into "professional auditors," complete with couch and
capable of outpsyching any ordinary psychiatrist.

...Even larger and faster-growing tribes who pay $200 each for the
15-lecture short course--or $25 an hour to have their "case opened" by
$500 professional auditors.

...And a small army of associate members, at a mere 15 smackers each,
who gratefully keep up with the whirlwind developments of Hubbard's new
"science" of dianetics through the _Dianetics Auditors Bulletin._

Dianetics and the Discovery of Fire

Hubbard, you might gather from the foregoing, has discovered the key to
success and demonstrated once again that Barnum underestimated the
sucker birth rate.

But that, by Hubbard's own admission, is probably the least of his
discoveries.

Unencumbered by the modesty that hogties ordinary mortals, Hubbard starts
his book --THE BOOK, his followers call it-- with the calm assertion
that "the creation of dianetics is a milestone for Man comparably to his
discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and the
arch."

A few lines beyond, one learns that, with dianetics, "the intelligent
layman can _success[?]y_ and _invariably_ treat all psychosomatic
[illegible word] and inorganic aberrations."

Farther on, one discovers that these psychosomatic ills, "uniformly
cured by dianetic therapy," include such varied maladies as eye trouble,
bursitis, ulcers, some heart difficulties, migraine headaches and the
common cold.

But you ain't heard nothing yet.  For Hubbard's auditors (anyone with
four dollars to buy The Book and the stamina to read through it can "audit"
without further license) achieve these miracles by the simple process of
re-

_(Continued on page 81)_

[page 81]

DIANETICS continued

[photograph of Hubbard and a three people looking at a document;
captioned "Hubbard and secretary meet fervent followers after Los Angeles
lecture-demonstration.  Enthusiasm is high at five other centers."]

[large type under photo: Dianetic auditors, trained one month, need no
license]

leasing the "engrams" that have been bedeviling their friends and
customers.

This opens uo marvelous possibilities which Hubbard is not loath to
point out.  "A number of germ diseases," he flatly states, "are predisposed
and perpetuated by engrams.  Tuberculosis is one.  Engrams predispose people
to accidents.  Engrams can predispose and perpetuate bacterial
infections."

Modesty Prevails

[illegible word] the present time," Hubbard continues, "dianetics research
is scheduled to include cancer and diabetes.  There are a number of
reasons to suppose that these may be engramic in cause, particularly
malignant cancer."

At this point, an unsuspected sense of caution overcomes the new Messiah,
and he hastily points out that "this is not to be taken as any kind of
avowal of a cancer cure."

But then, once more overwhelmed by the awe-inspiring nature of his own
discovery, author Hubbard swings back onto his familiar track and asserts
that "those diseases which were catalogued above [illegible word] is,
everything from eye trouble through tuberculosis, accidents and bacterial
infections) have been been thoroughly tested and have uniformly yielded
to dianetic therapy."

Most Ills Succumb

Nor has Hubbard's new science been content to deprive the doctors of seven
tenths of their business.  Dianetics lays claim to the ability to remove
"aberrations" of an infinite variety.  Neuroses, of course, can be cured,
Hubbard asserts.  So, too, can sex deviations and "every type of inorganic
mental illness."

And that's just the beginning.

To dianetics for individuals, Hubbard and his buys associates are hastily
adding political dianetics, child dianetics, judiciary dianetics, medical
dianetics and industrial dianetics.  "Education, medicine, politics and
art and, indeed, all branches of human thought, are clarified with
dianetics," Hubbard claims.

"And even so," he sighs, "that is not enough."

It may not be enough for Hubbard.  But it has outraged scores of
psychiatrists, biochemists, psychologists, physicians and
just-plain-ordinary scientists, who look upon the astounding claims and
the growing commercial succes of this strange new phenomenon with awe,
fear and a deep disgust.

"Exaggerated Claims"

The American Psychological Association, for example, has denounced
Hubbard's claims as "not supported by empirical evidence," and has called
upon its members "in the public interest" to avoid using Hubbard's
techniques except when making "scientific investigations to test the
validity of his claims."

Dr Will Menninger, past president of the American Psychiatric Association
and co-head of the famous Menninger Clinic of Topeka, Kans., goes even
farther in indicting dianetics: "It can potentially do a great deal of
harm.  It is obvious that the mathematician-writer has oversimplified the
human personality, both as to its structure and function...He has made
in-

_(Continued on next page)_

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DIANETICS continued

[Large type: Scientists say dianetics can often do real harm]

ordinate and very exaggerated claims in his results."

Dr. Frederick J. Hacker, a Los Angeles psychiatrist, adds: "If it were not
for sympathy for mental suffering of disturbed people, the so-called
science of dianetics could be dismissed for what it is...a clever scheme
to dip into the pockets of the gullible with impunity.  The dianetic
auditor is but anoher name for the witch doctor, exploiting a real need
with phony methods."

Hubbard Recalls Birth

The man who touched off all this frenzy was born on a blustery March
morning in 1911 at Tilden, Nebr.  Like most newborn babies, L. Ron Hubbard
did not seem at the time to be paying much attention to the proceedings.
But with the aid of his new science, he has recently recalled all the
details of his own birth and sent them to his aunt, who, he says, agrees
that they check most accurately.

In his youth Hubbard traipsed around the world with his father, a
lieutenant commander in the Navy, and ultimately wound up at the George
Washington University Engineering School.  His biography in _Who's Who in
the East_ says that he got his bachelor's degree in civil engineering
there in 1934.  His publishers, Hermitage House, Inc., identify him as a
mathematician and theoretical philosopher.  Hubbard himself finds this
somewhat embarrassing, because, as he is quick to tell interviewers, "I
never took my degree."

Exploring the Pulps

He also deprecates the inaccuracy of his _Who's Who_ biography, which
lists him as "explorer since 1934."  Actually, as Hubbard now recalls the
details, he led the Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition, conducting a
group of college students from island to island.  "It was a two-bit
expedition and financial bust," he says, "and I quit the ship at Puerto
Rico in 1933."

Hubbard really got going a few years later, however, when he took to
writing for the pulp magazines.  He moved into the science-fiction field
under such six-shooter pseudonyms as Winchester Remington Colt.  A dynamic
(though not yet dianetic) writer, he says he used to bat out as many as
120,000 words between Friday and Monday.

But after a time, despite such success, he just couldn't put his heart to
science fiction any more.  For he had begun to fathom the innermost
regions of the mind, and life took on a new meaning and purpose.

The war interrupted the development of dianetics.  As a Naval Reserve
lieutenant, Hubbard served on escort vessels until he was sent to the Oak
Knoll Naval Hospital near Oakland, Calif., where he stayed for the best
part of a year, suffering, he now recalls, from "ulcers, conjunctivitis,
deteriorating eyesight, bursitis and something wrong with my feet."

But his sufferings were not entirely in vain.  For the hospital had an
excellent medical library, and Hubbard, with dianetics boiling up within
him, wanted to avail himself of this facility.

"Doctor" in the Library

The library, unfortunately, was not for patients but rather for the use of
staff medical officers.  But the young scientist got around that easily
enough.  "I just had a friend in the Marines refer to me as Doctor,
loudly, several times, within earshot of the librarian.  After that I
had free run of the joint."

By 1947, Hubbard, discharged from the Navy and granted a VA disability
pension, had pretty well unraveled the mysteries of the engram and was
venturing to "process" his friends, who urged him not to withhold this
great boon from suffering humanity.  There remained, however, the problem
of choosing a suitable scientific medium in which to announce and expound
dianetics.

This problem was resolved in May, 1950, when John W. Campbell, Jr.,
convinced Hubbard that _Astounding Science Fiction_, which Cambell edits,
was the ideal medium.  A month after that, the definitive issue of
Dianetics, 452 pages for four bucks, appeared between hard covers under
the imprimatur of Hermitage House.  It carried an introduction by J. A.
Winter, M.D., an appendix on the Philosophic Method by Will Durant
(reprinted from _The Story of Philosophy_, 1926) and two other appendixes
by Campbell and Donald H. Rogers.

Birth of a Best Seller

Since then, history has been in the making.  Although virtually
unadvertised, the volume has been disappearing from bookstore shelves at
an astounding rate.  Virtually boycotted by book reviewers for many
months, and later panned by them, it nonetheless climbed onto the
best-seller lists and has remained at the top.

The Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation shortly was set up as a nonprofit
New Jersey corporation, with Hubbard as president, Arthur R. Ceppos (of
Hermitage House) as executive vice president, John W. Campbell, Jr. (of
_Astounding Science Fiction_), as treasurer and Mrs.

_(Continued on next page)_

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DIANETICS continued

[photograph of Hubbard standing, dictating to a woman; captioned "[?]ting
to his secretary, Hubbard deals with some of the mounds of
[?]rrespondence from devotees who have read his best seller."]

Hubbard as librarian.  Hubbard went on the payroll at a picayune $500 a
month, and the rapidly accumulating book royalties, student fees and
associate-membership revenues have all been channeled into the Foundation,
for the support of dianetic research and the greater glory of dianetics.

[continued in #88B]