Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series Hypnosis, Drugs, Sex Deviants: Why Dianetics sounded like loads of fun (in 1950). Transcriptions are from the Los Angeles Daily News, September 6 through 9. Los Angeles Daily News September 6, 1950 "Hubbard's disciples vary but they've all read THE BOOK" by John Clarke (This if the first of a daily series to be published on the newly formulated science of Dianetic processing. The series will continue an objective and impartial report on the claims and accomplishments of L. Ron Hubbard, formulator of scientific axioms of human thought processes which already have attracted millions of adherents). Filling the small ampitheatre are 120 men and women. They present manifold contrasts. Youth, the middle-aged, the elderly. More than two-thirds are men, a statistic which only later acquires a pertinent significance. There are numbers of young women, some of them bright-eyed and most attractively turned out; some of them wan, drab, underweight and of strained countenance. And young men you might more readily expect to find in an art institute, so alternately tight-visaged and dreamily aesthetic do they manage to compose their features. Determined intellectuals. Maiden ladies suffering through the sterility of their middle years or having already left them behind, gray-haired and somehow forlorn. A liberal sprinkling of their male counterparts, men no longer young who you privately decide have met defeat and disillusion but live on alone in the early twillight of glimmering hope. A few of their generation sit among them pink and plump and openly prosperous in the measure of worldly possessions. But they are no less attentive for being well-fed. Conspicuously, a handful among the younger men betray the tell-tale markings and mannerisms of sex deviates. As for the rest you automatically, if conventionally, classify them as being "normal". But all in the audience have a common denominator - the unwavering attention, something very near devotion, which they are directing to the words, the gestures, the smallest act and utterance of the man on the cramped stage before them. For the man is L. Ron Hubard and he is discoursing on Dianetics, that magic if yet mysterious latchkey, which, once turned, will reveal and explain and set right all the maddening complexities of the organism known as the human mind. The speaker is the man who authored the phenomenal best-seller, "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health," a new book already in its sixth printing since April. He is the man who has postulated and formulated what he boldly declares not only to be a new science, but an exact science, of the human mind. Through the science of Dianetics, he has promised, man can free himself of his aberrations, cure and eradicate his psychosomatic ills, attain a degree of intellectual and physical vigor heretofore beyond his conception, increase his longevity, erase the underlying causes of crime and war, vastly reduce the incidence of insanity, eliminate the curse of alcoholism, halt traffic accidents, stamp out sex perversion, sharpen his eyesight, hearing and other senses and bear new generations with little or no pain. His hearers are not startled, for the shock of revelation came for then when they first read "the book," which each has done. Those in the auditorium not only have purchased the book; they have paid over $500 each for the four-week course being conducted by the author and his associates at the Los Angeles branch of the Hubbard Dianetic Research foundation, housed in a two-story structure at 715 South Paris View street. In all, there are 220 such students currently enrolled in carious sections, in the somewhat costly course. It was opened here only three weeks ago. A second four-week "intensive" course will open next Monday. Its enrollment lists already have been filled. In their reading of the book, novitiates were assured they need only study the volume carefully from cover to cover to qualify themselves, in at least some degree of expertness, as Dianetics "auditors". But so swiftly has the current run and so broad has become the stream in the matter of a few months that Hubbard now is seeking to more carefully screen and qualify those who have flocked to take up Dianetics as a profession unto themselves and as a boon to their fellowmen. More than a studious perusal of the book is indicated, it is now agreed, in preparing the individual for the role of professional auditor. The foundation, constantly readjusting its sights, thus has instituted a system of certification which will be the reward of those students adjudged to meet proper standards for practice of the science. With infinite patience and attention to detail, Hubbard explains and expounds from the lecture platform the axioms and premises of Dianetics, sometimes summarizing, sometimes elaborating the remarkable contents of his 180,000 word book. The book, incidentally is at the top of the non-fiction best-seller list in Los Angeles and like cities. Dianetics, says Hubbard, constitutes an exact science of the mind and its practice is an entirely new form of mental therapy. The human mind, he explains, exists and functions on at least two levels. These are the conscious, or "analytical" mind, and a hitherto unsuspected sub-mind, which us called the "reactive" mind. Herein lies the important discovery that what has long been known as the "unconscious" mind is, in fact, the only mind which is always conscious. It is this sub-mind which in Dianetics is called the reactive mind. The reactive mind operates exclusively on physical pain and painful emotion. It acts on the stimulus-responde basis. It is not capable of reason or "memory". The reactive mind, Hubbard tells disciples, is the sole source of human aberration. Under the impress of physical or emotional pain, the analytical mind is switched off. The reactive mind automatically is switched on. It becomes and infallible recording machine. During periods of painful stress, it does not receive its recordings as "memory" or "experience" but only as forces to be reactivated. It receives its recordings as cellular "engrams" when the conscious mind is unconscious. The engram then, is a moment of unconsciousness containing pain and all the attendant perceptions of the senses, and is not available to the analytical mind as experience. Hubbard says engrams are possible from the precise moment of a person's conception in his mother's womb and it was this bland announcement to an astounded world which provided scoffers and critics with the heaviest, if not their most deadly, ammunition. All aberrations of the human mind are caused by engrams, which are accountable for all deranged and irrational human behavior and are the seat of all psychosomatic ills. It is to "erase" the engrams, cause them to be refiled in the "standard memory banks" of the analytical mind and thereby render the individual free of their aberrative influences forever, that dianetic therapy is employed. All persons prior to therapy, or "processing," are "aberees" in the terminology designed by Hubbard to translate his discoveries into common meaning. Upon entering therapy, patients are "pre-clears." They are treated in therapy by the "auditor," who may be a foundation associate, a friend, a fellow pre-clear or may merely have read the book and even remained part skeptic. In any case, Dianetics can do no injury to the mind, its formulator insists. For that reason it is a science which can be placed in the hands of the uninitiated in the manner it now is. Every human, the theory goes, possesses a "time track," stretching from conception to now. An auditor places the pre-clear in Dianetic "reverie," not to be confused (unless you would brook Hubbard's red-haired ire) with hypnosis. In reverie, the pre-clear travels back along his time track to his childhood, his infancy, his very birth, and, it is vouched, to the "prenatal area." It is in this area that the auditor must contact "basic-basic," the first engram after conception of the pre-clear, "discharge" the engram's pain content and cause it to be refiled in memory. After the release of the basic-basic, contacting other engrams along the time track of the pre-clear's life is relatively simple. When all such engrams have been discharged - he may be in possession of 200 of them and 20 to 500 hours of therapy may be required - the pre-clear emerges in possession of greater mental and physical efficiency than he ever had dreamed attainable. He is the Dianetic "clear," or optimum individual. Hubbard's students listen avidly, hour on end. They see actual demonstrations in the amphitheater. They believe. And to those who will not come and listen and witness, but denounce and decry in scorn, Hubbard smilingly replies: "It works." Los Angeles Daily News September 6, 1950 "Author tells birth of scientific brainchild" by John Clarke (This is the second of a daily series published by the Daily News on the newly formulated science of Dianetics and the technique of mental therapy known as Dianetic processing. The series will continue an objective and impartial report on the claims and accomplishments of L. Ron Hubbard, formulator of scientific axioms of human thought processes which already have attracted millions of adherents) L. Ron Hubbard is a onetime engineer, mathematician, philosopher, Navy officer and prolific producer of science fiction of the space ship, or fantastic, school of literature. He is, more, by his own account, an independent thinker and as such a rebel against Authority and Orthodoxy. He is a man of 39 years, blocky frame, shocks of very red hair, large and mobile features, seemingly endless energy and ready humor. Energy and humor stand him in good stead, for since the overnight success of his book, "Dianetics," Hubbard has become, in a swift few months a personality, a national celebrity and the proprietor of the fastest growing "movement" in the United States. It has, in fact, become a mass movement of the mushroom type, so great are the numbers of its adherents, whether they be persuaded that Dianetics is pure science, plausible philosophy, the true faith of the ages or mere hope. As its creator, Hubbard, of course, espouses Dianetics as an exact science of the human mind, and he does not equivocate in rebutting the challenges of those who deride his claim. Those men of medicine and the allied fields who have embraced Dianetics he in turn has embraced with a fraternal warmth and professional welcome. Such men of repute in the sciences now comprise upwards of 10 per cent of the associate membership of the Hubbard Dianetics Research foundation. Those who have made no gesture more friendly than to refrain from critical opinion are the recipients of the ample Hubbard patience. He indicates his confidence they'll come around. Of his detractors he makes short shrift. They are simply motivated our of ignorance (of Dianetics) which is deplorable, or (economic) self-interest, which is even more deplorable. But if medical men, the book trade, the literary critics, contemporaries in the writing craft, economists, politicians and observers of human phenomena generally have been astounded, appalled, or puzzled by the instantaneous appeal and acceptance of Dianetics, Hubbard is astonished least of all. An almost utter lack of surprise over his success is due in part to his implicit confidence in the invulnerability of his findings in the field of mental science, and in part to the fact that Dianetics is to him, if to him alone, somewhat old hat. For it is the product of 12 years of exhausting research by him "in the laboratories of the world," and of even more years of earnest thought, of intellectual adventuring beyond the charted paths of man's pursuit of knowledge about himself and the world he inhabits. It was while Hubbard was an only mildly interested student at George Washington university, absorbing what courses conventionally were required of undergraduates to become bachelors of science, that he found himself taking leave of the main body to conduct his independent explorations into the mysteries of the mind and the contradictions of human behavior. Earlier, as the teen-age son of a Navy officer often transferred, he had knocked about the Orient and had introduced himself to several of the hardier Asiatic philosophies, by which he was much stimulated. It was at the university, however, that he launched his profanely unorthodox studies with true purpose. "I became fascinated with life as a potentially understandable phenomenon," he recalls. "I wanted to learn and understand how the mind perceives. I began to think of men as basic units with culture laid over them." "After a while I discovered that what I was studying was epistemology, the study of knowledge." It was in this early period that Hubbard says he first came upon what is now the underlying premise of Dianetics, that is the dynamic principle of Existence is Survive. Concluding that the basis, the bottled-down essence of all knowledge was "Survive," the young scholar set about to learn by what manner this fundamental command was transmitted and constantly reasserted to human awareness. It was his attack on this problem that led him to a study of semantics, and semantics eventually provided the key whereby engrams are contacted and their aberrative contents discharged. It suggested, the first clue that emotion "is ordinarily based on the word content of the engrams." Hubbard also took up an inspection of endocrinology "because it was obvious that mind meters body function." He was later to conclude that "what has been called emotion is really in two section: first, there is the endocrine system which handled either by the analytical mind...or the reactive mind...brings emotional responses of fear, enthusiasm, apathy, etc." Glands were an instrument of body control! Hubbard confesses he finally tired of listening with half an ear to lectures repeating the dictums of authority while he was doing his own thinking on other planes, and he left the university sans degree. He went on a cruise to the West Indies aboard a four-masted schooner. This was at the depths of the depression of the early 1930s and upon his return he encountered the necessity of nourishing the body as well as the mind. During his student days he had begun to write pulp fiction and he turned to this as a means of livelihood. His first stock in trade were flying stories, to be followed by by travel and adventure yarns and by science fiction. When he married his economic problem was doubled, so he doubled his output. He became one of the most prolific and most successful writers in his field. "I got pretty good at it. I wrote 100,000 words a month to support myself." A note to critics here. So not expect any apology from Hubbard today for Hubbard's past. As for his lack of academic degrees or trappings, he regards higher education as now administered as mere surface scratchings. Neither will he offer any excuses for popular identification of him solely as a pulp author. Hacking out potboilers was a living and a means to an end. He regarded himself first and always the scholar and scientist. By 1935 he was ready to begin some of the basic research, and by 1938 the primary axioms of Dianetics had been discovered and formulated. Hubbard at that time was so nearly tempted to send up a trial balloon that he wrote a book embracing the principles of his science, but he allowed the book to languish unpublished. "I knew what the principles were, but I did not know if they would work," he now freely admits. It was not until 12 years and mountains of research later that he at last decided he did know and that he wrote a book meant for publication. Those years were filled with case histories, cataloging and computation. The work was interrupted only by World War II, in which Hubbard served as a Navy officer. Hospitalized in 1945, he used the year which followed to great profit, gaining access to the medical library on the Naval base by the harmless, if prankish, device of arranging with ambulatory Marines to address him as "Doctor." "Five years after the initial resumption of labor," he summarizes, "the work was prepared for release, all tests having brought forth the conclusion that Dianetics IS a science of the mind, that it DOES disclose hitherto unknown laws about thought and that it HAS WORKED on every type of inorganic mental and organic psychosomatic illness." The first publicity given to Dianetics came early this year in a 16,000 word summary by Hubard published in a pulp paper monthly, "Astounding Science Fiction," to which he had been a regular contributor for years. Appearing in the modest medium it did, Dianetics was an immediate target for the oracies of orthodoxy. It was dismissed as a fraud by some savants who did not, albeit, trouble to investigate, and was sneered at by others who took a hasty, apprehensive peek and were amazed by what they saw. The dissenters and denouncers were in the minority, as it turned out. Such magazines and their contents, it appears, are favorite escape reading not only among the unlearned but among the erudite as well. Between them, it was only a matter of days before that issue of "Astounding Science Fiction," with its sensational article, was sold out. Letters by the thousands urgently demanding immediate answers to a multitude of questions concerning Dianetics swamped the offices of both the magazine and of Heritage House, which recognized a good thing and rushed the book into publication ahead of schedule. The book's earning have been diverted to the research foundation set up by Hubbard. Branches have been opened in six urban centers reaching from the Atlantic coast to Hawaii. Others are planned. The returns have been sufficiently handsome to permit the recent purchase of a 35-room, 15-acre country estate near Norristown, PA, where weekend retreats for advanced pre-clears and student auditors will be conducted. The town folk of Tilden, Neb. can be proud of Ron Hubbard, born there March 13, 1911. (Continued tomorrow) Los Angeles Daily News September 7, 1950 "Dianetics: Husbands are auditing their wives; neighbors form discussion groups" by John Clarke (This if the third of a daily series published by the Daily News on the newly formulated science of Dianetic processing. The series will continue an objective and impartial report on the claims and accomplishments of L. Ron Hubbard, formulator of scientific axioms of human thought processes which already have attracted millions of adherents). National headquarters of the Hubbard Dianetic Research foundation are in Elizabeth, N.J., but, like population, the trend is in the direction of Los Angeles. That is not to say there is flagging interest detected at other branches which have been established in New York, Washington, Chicago and Honolulu. On the contrary, things are booming. But nowhere has L. Ron Hubbard's new science of mental health been so quickly and so unquestioningly taken up by so many people as in Los Angeles and Southern California. Unrecruited social students comment that this was to be expected, what with this area's peculiar history of spawning and incubating the unheard of, the untried, and the outlandish. Yet even before the foundation's local branch was opened, and before Hubbard came here to lecture and conduct demonstrations of therapy before the initial class of paying students the movement had fanned out at an epidemic rate. Dianetics clubs blossomed like wild flowers in the spring, organized by people who merely had read the book, "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health," urgently recommended to them by other people who had read the book. Neighbors formed discussion groups, husbands began to "audit" their wives and wives their husbands, and seminars on such vaguely comprehended topics as "Survival Dynamics" and "The Optimum Individual" became standard cultural fare on college campuses. It was not until late in July that the Los Angeles branch opened its doors, with modest offices at 3950 West Sixth street. Professional courses opened Aug. 14 in a two-story building housing a lecture theatre and 20 "processing" rooms at 715 South Park View street. Even more recently acquired was a 100-room building at Hoover street and West Adams boulevard. This is the local "clearing house," where advanced student auditors receive intensified instruction and guidance from foundation assistants. This is a sort of practical laboratory, where aspiring auditors themselves are audited as well as as auditing or processing pre-clears. It is something akin to the pre-graduation cramming of students everywhere. These are seeking to be certified by the foundation as professional auditors. Much of this type of training is performed on a team basis, with student A and student B alternating as auditor and pre-clear, as practitioner and patient. Also much favored in polishing up students is the tryad system, wherein student A audits student B, B audits C and C audits A. Regarded as the "ideal" tryad is one in which all three members are of the same sex, the same general cultural level and whose relationships each to the others are friendly but not intimate. Still another project involves the reservation of 20 to 30 rooms each weekend at the Country club Hotel-Villa at 445 North Rossmore Avenue, where what is obscurely described as "intensive auditing with chemical assist" is conducted on a continuous (number illegible) hour basis. Participating in these sessions of concentrated therapy each week are 40 student auditors and 20 pre-clears. For each four students there is a professional auditor. He is present not only for purposes of instruction but presumably to supervise the administration of the chemical "assists." This practice does not constitute narco-synthesis, it is insisted, although Hubbard himself reports employing both this method and the ancient art of hypnosis in the course of his formulative research. The drug administered to pre-clears during these weekend retreats is "one which can be purchased in any drugstore," we were assured. Presumably it is given to pre-clears who have difficulty in entering Dianetic "reverie," a problem reported as a rarity but admittedly encountered from time to time. Undergoing separate therapy, too, is a group of 25 cases classified as acute neurotics and psychotics, selected at the invitation of the foundation by co-operative psychiatrists to serve as a test and a challenge to the powers of Dianetics, and as a source of research material. The case histories of these subjects are being minutely recorded, and data on their responses to Dianetic therapy is being collected and compiled through a series of check tests employing all the techniques of psychiatry, neurology, psychology, psychometry and internal medicine. The findings will b e used by the foundation in re-evaluating some of its present concepts and practices (for "there will be numerous revisions of the techniques of Dianetics") and probably will be included in the documentation of Hubbard's second book, now in preparation. It should be noted, however, that Hubbard is quick to disclaim Dianetics as a cure-all, or even as an essential method of treatment, for the insane, although he is hopeful of future discoveries in this direction. He says again and again that Dianetics is a science whereby so-called "normals" can attain greater happiness through enhanced mental and physical vigor. When psychotics appeal to him for treatment "I send them back to their psychiatrists." An atmosphere of animated cheerfulness and investigative curiosity pervades the very premises where Dianetics activities are being carried on. Students, staff members and even the clerical employees look upon one another as guinea pigs in an unending game of research. Employees, in fact, are chosen for their interest and their "drive" rather than for their business experience and qualifications. Because of its very newness and its abnormally rapid growth to national proportions (with the end by no means in sight), Hubbard of necessity still is the whole hub of control and direction and decision in the spinning Dianetics whirlpool. The demands upon his time, his counsel and his energies already have gotten out of hand, and he has been prompted to adopt a number of devices to alleviate the situation. One of these has been to utilize mechanical and technological shortcuts. Because, like all mortals, he finds it impossible to be physically in two places simultaneously, Hubbard has hit upon tape recordings of his lectures and demonstrations as a means of maintaining schedules of instruction at distant branches of the foundation. Recordings are flown east to New York and west to Honolulu. Presently under consideration are motion pictures as a medium of audio-visual education in absentia. Another thing Hubbard has done, and is doing, to take the pressure off is to enlist and indoctrinate a corps of aides to whom he can safely delegate many of the functions indigenously thrust upon him as the father of Dianetics. Those in the upper section of the newly founded dynasty are of a wide range of talents. They include a former teacher, a youngish serious-minded man, who enjoys the title of "special assistant to Mr. Hubbard" and who talks expertly in Dianetic jargon. They also include a gregarious, redheaded Irishman of worldly tastes and native wit whose only claim to previous scientific achievement rests on his Hollywood reputation as an exploitation man extraordinarily successful in persuading large numbers of people to pay good money to see bad movies. He is Hubbard's national director of public relations. The special assistant, W. Bradford Shank, was once a teacher in the Chicago public schools and studied both at the University of Chicago and University of Illinois. He was lecturing at Pepperdine college last spring on a subject called "Integrated Behavior" when a copy of Hubbard's book was placed in his hands. He read it in 24 hours, staying up all night to do so, and as quickly as he could manage to gain admission he was off to take the 90-day professional course in Dianetics auditing; then available only in Elizabeth, N.J. Shank then was sent here as the first director of the Los Angeles training school, in which post he served only briefly before succeeding to his present high office. He harbors a singular devotion to his mentor and employer. "The time will come when Ron Hubbard will be recognized as a very, very great man," Shank declared just the other day, with a simple earnestness that could not be impugned. There are many people who are still waiting for the jury to come in. (Continued tomorrow). Los Angeles Daily News September 8, 1950 "New mental science helps to increase rationality, zest for living, claim" by John Clarke (This if the fourth of a daily series to be published on the newly formulated science of Dianetic processing. The series will continue an objective and impartial report on the claims and accomplishments of L. Ron Hubbard, formulator of scientific axioms of human thought processes which already have attracted millions of adherents). Spectacular success, particularly the sudden variety, does not bring rewards wholly unadulterated by tribulations, irritations and complications previously unexperienced. L. Ron Hubbard has learned this lesson, if he did not know it before, in the inordinately busy months since the day last April when the literary and scientific worlds were startled with the publication of his book on Dianetics. The electrifying popularity of the volume admittedly has been gratifying, but it brought with it a set of special problems which the author could not have anticipated. Because he laid down in his clearest terms that Dianetics was a simple science of the human mind, accessible in understanding to all but the mentally crippled, he was not prepared for the distortions and improvisations gratuitously supplied by converts and critics alike. Today, with Dianetics established as a household byword and with its neophytes numbering in the millions from coast to coast, Hubbard is as much plagued by the necessity of emphasizing what Dianetics is NOT as he is pleased with explaining what it is. Almost hourly, by way of illustration, he is called upon to rebuke the misconception that his theories and his conclusions constitute a new religion. This is the most common of all the false notions about Dianetics which he is called upon to confront and attempt to batter down. Although he asserts that all human behaviorisms can be accounted for without resort to metaphysics or mysticism, and although he does have a great deal to say about human morals and mores, Hubbard rejects and considers unfair the attempts which have been made to identify or confuse his (scientific) concepts with organized religions, religious philosophies, spiritual beliefs, faiths, cults, or deitific venerations. By the same token, he resents with equal vehemence such irresponsible insinuations as have gained currency that Dianetics is in diametric opposition to religious belief and seeks to negate its influence, or is in conflict with religious forces. Whereas he declares flatly that Dianetics is not is not interested in saving Man, in the sense of preserving his immortality after death, he does assert (Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, p. 105): "It is no the religion which is at fault, it is the blaspheming of the religion. Such blasphemy makes the insane zealot and the murderous atheist, both of whom the church would very gladly do without." His point is that there would be no insane zealots or murderous atheists were they not impelled by aberrations from which Dianetics could liberate them. Hubbard likewise gravely dismisses other unsympathetic misinterpretations of what he is up to. Dianetics, for example, is not psychiatry, a substitute for psychiatry, the rival or opponent of psychiatry. It is a new and largely independent mental science through which normal people simply can increase their degree of rationality and zest for life by at least one-third. Nor is Dianetics a blueprint for the revolution of human civilization, although the author sees implications of vast social and economic change, for the better of course, in a world dominated by "clears" or optimum individuals. Dianetics therapy, furthermore, does not involve either narcosynthesis or hypnosis to be showily effective, as some have unkindly claimed. The use of drugs, Hubbard contends, may be indicated in the specific treatment of psychotics and neurotics, although he is dubious of the clinical results because they may not secure the erasure of basic engrams, the seat of all human aberration. Drug therapy, he believes, has value only in the field of research. The same is true of hypnotic techniques, he feels. Hypnosis is useful in research, but it represents what he calls a "wild variable" in therapy, and he argues that it even can be dangerous to sanity when patients are left in a state of restimulation without relief. "If people would just lay off hypnosis and talking of hypnosis (in discussing him and his works), I'd be a lot happier," commented this seemingly very happy man. Dianetics' list of positives, on the other hand, is a lengthy one, by its composer's own recital. It can remove the aberrations which make man a selfish and anti-social creature. It can put an end to his psychosomatic illnesses, such as the common cold, arthritis, migraine, ulcers, allergies, asthma, sinusitis, bursitis, (hysterical) paralysis, and (non-pathological) eye trouble, to mention only a few, and possibly a whole host of other ailments which up to now have not been recognized as psychosomatic in origin. As an example of the latter he reports: "A number of germ diseases are predisposed and perpetuated by engrams. Tuberculosis is one." Dianetics can rid society of the costly curse of alcoholism: "All alcoholics are alcoholic because of their engrams. Discharge the reactive engram bank ... and the dipsomaniac can drink when he likes and stop." It can largely discourage the "criminal" practice of abortion, a "crime committed against a child," and it can decimate crimes of violence where the penal system has failed. It holds hope that man may at last dispense with the ugly institution of war, because wars are the end product of social aberrations at the national level: "By contagion of aberration, both nations (go) mad. Rationality alone can guide man past these threats to his extinction." It can stamp out homosexuality, which is attributed to attempted abortion: "...with an effective science to handle the problem, a society which would continue to endure perversion...doesn't deserve to exist." Linked with psychosomatic illnesses, chronic mental derangements, be they cyclical or continuous, can be wiped out. Dianetics can rectify the mental short circuits which bring accidental death, can increase longevity, minimize the pain of child bearing and present mankind with vast new intellectual vistas by freeing him from the fetters imposed by Precedent and Authority. "Advance comes from asking free-minded questions of nature, not from quoting the works and thinking the thoughts of bygone years," Hubbard argues. "So long as Aristotle remained the Authority for All, the Dark Ages reigned." But best of all, he says, Dianetics is available to all. The technique of Dianetic therapy, he insists, is basically simple and can be understood and applied to each other by any two reasonably intelligent people. "No previous background in psychoanalysis or psychology is necessary." That claim is the target on which professional men have trained their heaviest critical guns. (Concluded tomorrow) Los Angeles Daily News September 9, 1950 "Noted doctors attack new treatment" by John Clarke (This if the last of a daily series to be published on the newly formulated science of Dianetic processing. The series presented an objective and impartial report on the claims and accomplishments of L. Ron Hubbard, formulator of scientific axioms of human thought processes which already have attracted millions of adherents). Not one of the numerous and seemingly immodest claims L. Ron Hubbard has made for Dianetics, both in his best-selling book and from the lecture platform, has failed to draw fire from the stronghold of psychiatric medicine and its allied sciences. In large part, however, the criticism of qualified authorities thus far has taken the form of single-shot sniping from ambush, with a uniform reticence on the part of those who have been pulling the trigger to stand up and show themselves. Only most recently have there been evidences that this type of guerrilla warfare is about to give way to one of frontal attack across the battlefield of controversy, with Hubbard and his defenders lined up on one side and medical opinion almost unanimously on the other. A few literary critics who also happen to be amateur scientists have blasted away openly in the public prints, mostly in periodicals of localized circulation and limited appeal. But professional men generally, while they have arrived at resounding opinions regarding Dianetics as "an exact science of the mind," have refrained out of respect for ethical considerations from publicly joining up with the opposition. Many still are reluctant, but their numbers are suffering desertions at an accelerated rate, as one by one men of orthodox repute are emboldened to denounce Dianetics in theory and practice. Probably this trend toward frankness will receive its greatest impetus from first publication here of expert - and unfriendly - testimony by one of the country's foremost authorities, Dr. William C. Menninger. Dr. Menninger, with his equally celebrated brother, Dr. Karl Menninger, heads the Menninger Clinic and Menninger Foundation School of Psychiatry, which are located at Topeka, Kans., and are known the world around. Dr. William Menninger, whose very name is to psychiatry what Shakespeare is to literature, served with the rank of brigadier general during World War II as director of the neuropsychiatry consultants division of the office of the surgeon general of the Army. He is a part president of the American Psychiatric association and the author of such valid volumes as "Psychiatry in a Troubled World." He has written and has authorized the use of this damning indictment of 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 and my impression is that he has made inordinate and very exaggerated claims in his results." "He coins some new terminology and disregards all the psychological theories and observations that have been so extensively studies by so many people." Dr. Menninger, it might be noted, is known to his colleagues not only as a scientist of progressive mind but as a man of personal conservatism. John H. Pratt, Los Angeles psychologist and writer and researcher on psychological subjects, is a member of the Menninger Foundation and had reported to Dr. Menninger on the burgeoning Dianetics program here: "Hubbard's West Coast followers are now increasing the tempo by claiming Dianetics is a proven science..." "I conclude with the opinion that the author's claims are fantastic, that Dianetics is not a science, and that it will, in the hands of the lay person, do a great deal of harm." Dr. Menninger placed himself on record a second time by replying: "I fully agree with you that this Dianetics is very possibly an extremely harmful thing...they make the most fantastic, wild claims that sound Utopian." Apparently in anticipation of attacks on his theories by competent opinion, Hubbard warns in his book that readers must be unswayed by those who would dissuade them from entering therapy and traveling in "reverie" retrogressively along their "time tracks" in search of "engrams." He wrote that those who would come forward to challenge his remarkable conclusions would do so either in ignorance or in self-interest. No more pointed rebuttal had been made to the implication that psychiatric practitioners would oppose any new attempt to deal with mental afflictions solely because of threats to their own economic security that is contained in a succinct statement by Dr. Karl Menninger. He said: "Right now there are 10 jobs for every psychiatrist there is." Pratt, a Meninger associate, directs much of his critical fault-finding at what he feels are Hubbard's intemperate predictions of the ultimate benefits of Dianetic therapy, as well as at the jargon-like language employed in the book. "Hubbard, his publishers and his followers," Pratt says, "appear to be making wild and bombastic claims and a reader is led to believe, if he is gullible enough, that Hubbard has evolved a 'science' that almost every lay person can utilize to cure all psychosomatic disorders, even though a psychiatrist has failed." "The author offers his excuses to the physician- psychiatrist for his failure to use medical or known psychiatric terminology, and seeks to justify this by promising to use lay language in his book for the benefit of his readers." "Hubbard then proceeds to appropriate psychiatric terms and to give his own meaning to them, so that the average reader who is unacquainted with psychological and psychiatric language becomes thoroughly confused." "That the book had become a non-fiction best seller is perhaps an indication that psychiatry had not yet reached or become easily available to the vast number of our people who need some aid in these stressful times." Form another quarter came criticism that was equally biting and incisive, a condemnation that Dianetics is "a cure-all patent medicine." Dr. Frederick J. Hacker, Beverly Hills psychiatrist whose educational background is Viennese, bluntly disposed of Hubbard with these words: "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." "None of it is either new or novel. It has been practiced in one form or another since time began. In many parts of the world, where the aborigines dwell, it is considerably more popular than it is in Los Angeles." "The Dianetic auditor is but another name for the witch doctor exploiting a real need with phony methods." Hacker warned that Dianetics "is more the symptom of a disease then its cure" and "pretends to offer a relief from a condition it itself represents." He concluded that there is no "bargain counter selling of sanity and peace of mind" and that the claim of Dianetics "to produce a 'clear' on a pseudo-scientific diet of confusion is likely to prove a longish and costly aberration." Hubbard's sketchy documentation of his case histories and conclusions has been harpooned by numerous scientists, not the least of them Dr. Rollo May, one of the nation's leading psychologists, who said: "Nowhere are the cases used for more than brief illustration, and the careful investigator is left with no possibility of studying these cases to discover what actually happened." "As far as one can tell from the data given, the therapy consists of oversimplified forms regular psychotherapy together with some vaguely hypnotic suggestion - though the author goes to great lengths to insist that Dianetics is not hypnosis." What Hubbard's ultimate answer to the deep-gong barbs of his assailants will be is at the moment a matter of conjecture. In his present eminence he can well afford to ignore his detractors. His book is still heading the national parade of best-sellers. Its by-products - the professional training schools with their high tuition fees and his public lectures in the biggest hall in every town and city he visits - are bringing enormous returns. His teachings are bringing even greater numbers of followers to rally around his banner. And Hubbard has what, so far, has served him well as the last word in the debate: "Anyone attempting to stop an individual from entering (Dianetic) therapy either has a use for the aberrations of that individual or has something to hide."
Re: Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series We need to get full sauce of the quotes from and follow up any later info on: W. Bradford Shank Dr. William C. Menninger John H. Pratt in case they became targets.
Re: Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series also: Dr. Rollo May. Dr. Frederick J. Hacker Some Hubbard quotes: "Anyone attempting to stop an individual from entering (Dianetic) therapy either has a use for the aberrations of that individual or has something to hide." "He wrote that those who would come forward to challenge his remarkable conclusions would do so either in ignorance or in self-interest." WHAT ARE YOUR CRIMES? "readers must be unswayed by those who would dissuade them from entering therapy and traveling in "reverie" retrogressively along their "time tracks" in search of "engrams." This really shows how fundamental the abusive ideas of SPs, fairgaming, entheta, etc. were right from the start.
Re: Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series The Menninger Foundation has a wiki page Menninger Foundation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Because of Karl Menninger's conclusion that insanity was similar to biblical demonic possession, their center was referenced in the film "The Exorcist"
Re: Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series References to narco-synthesis in Sept 8, 1950 correlate to Hubbard's lecture later that month in Oakland, California which mentioned "GUK" (a pill concoction with benzedrine). http://forums.whyweprotest.net/123-leaks-legal/leak-l-ron-hubbard-likes-amphetamines-72126/
Re: Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series The sheer quantity of lies told in these articles also evidence Dianetics' fundamental nature.
Re: Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series "The drug administered to pre-clears during these weekend retreats is "one which can be purchased in any drugstore," we were assured. Presumably it is given to pre-clears who have difficulty in entering Dianetic "reverie," a problem reported as a rarity but admittedly encountered from time to time." Dianetics has been going down hill ever since they stopped using benzedrine!
Re: Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series This is the section that was noted in a prior thread. http://forums.whyweprotest.net/123-leaks-legal/shocking-find-dianetics-71128/
Re: Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series Was this the first "critical" article about Dianetics in 1950?
Re: Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series If they were going to become targets, it would probably have happened within the first 60 years since they spoke out. Also, crazy article series is crazy.
Re: Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series "Participating in these sessions of concentrated therapy each week are 40 student auditors and 20 pre-clears. For each four students there is a professional auditor. He is present not only for purposes of instruction but presumably to supervise the administration of the chemical "assists." This practice does not constitute narco-synthesis, it is insisted, although Hubbard himself reports employing both this method and the ancient art of hypnosis in the course of his formulative research. The drug administered to pre-clears during these weekend retreats is "one which can be purchased in any drugstore," we were assured. Presumably it is given to pre-clears who have difficulty in entering Dianetic "reverie," a problem reported as a rarity but admittedly encountered from time to time."
Re: Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series It's likely a response to the following publications leading up to it by dates: Publisher's Weekly June 17, 1950, page 2627: At American Bookseller's Association convention, Dr. Fredric Wertheim denounces Dianetics as "neither a good book nor a hoax," but a "harmful mixture of science and science fiction". New York Times Book Review July 2, 1950, page 9: "Dianetics" reviewed (unfavorably) by Dr. Rollo May The Nation: August 5, 1950, page 131: unfavorable book review of "Dianetics", by Milton Sapirstein The New Republic, August 14, 1950, pages 20-21: unfavorable book review of "Dianetics", by Dr. Martin Gumpert New York Herald Tribune Book Review, September 3, 1950, page 7: unfavorable book review of "Dianetics", by Erich Fromm
Re: Sept. 1950 LA Daily News Article Series Of Two Minds July 24, 1950, TIME Magazine Letters August 14, 1950, TIME Magazine Tests & Poison September 18, 1950, TIME Magazine
A Doctor’s Scathing 1950 Takedown of L. Ron Hubbard’s ‘Dianetics’ By Martin Gumpert, The New Republic, May 5, 2015 In 1950, science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard published a $4 self-help book he called Dianetics, drawing on Greek roots for "through" and "the mind." Hubbard claimed to be able to cure "human aberrations" with auditing, an intensive form of counseling. Readers ignored rebukes by medical and therapy professionals; the book quickly became a bestseller. Scientologists — of which there are currently about 25,000 in the United States — now refer to the text as "Book One." In his review of the book for The New Republic, physician Martin Gumpert outlined the dangers of following Hubbard's advice. "There can be no doubt that many will feel helped by the new fad," Gumpert wrote, sensing the allure of easy-fix pseudoscientific suggestions such as taking Vitamin B1 to prevent auditing-induced nightmares. While Gumpert at times tilted towards hyperbole ("It may prove fatal to have put too much trust in the promises of this dangerous book," he wrote), his warnings against the false prophets of science ring true today. This piece originally appeared in The New Republic on August 14, 1950. Continued here: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121590/1950-takedown-l-ron-hubbards-scientology-book-dianetics
