Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
From End The Cult
This article is about the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. For the pseudoscience, see Dianetics.
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (also called Book One, DMSMH, or simply Dianetics) is the book where L. Ron Hubbard outlines Dianetics, his pseudoscience of mental therapy. It was published on May 9 1950 and became a best seller.
Contents |
Reception
After the release of the book, the majority of, if not all reviews were negative. Reviewers from various medical institutions, universities, and psychiatric associations essentially purported the same criticisms of the book and also expressed additional concerns relating to the techniques that were already being naively accepted by some medical practitioners and the public at large without any form of scrutiny or review.
Many of the reviewers, some of different fields, outlined the same issues with the book as others -- that many of the claims were unfounded, untested and unscientific and often borrowed from folk-belief, hypnosis, psychoanalysis and various other sources. Because of the influx of new-religious movements, cults, and various other spiritual-healing techniques that were available at the time, some reviewers were more lenient on the book and simply dismissed it as a fad that lent itself to the social phenomenon.
However, other reviewers expressed their concerns that although Dianetics may effect marginal personal or social change, the underlying issue of interference with established medical practice remained. Because Dianetics presented itself as not only an alternative to psychology but also as an outright cure for various diseases, it could detract valuable time better spent with a qualified medical practitioner, and could prove fatal for those with more severe illness.
Reviews
Scientific American (1951)
The original book, "Dianetics: The modern science of mental health" was reviewed by Nobel Prize Laureate and Columbia University Physics professor Isaac Isidor Rabi in the January 1951 edition of Scientific American. [1] In his review of the book, Rabi criticised the lack of evidence for the many baseless[2] medical claims which were further dismissed as quackery;
| This volume probably contains more promises and less evidence per page than has any publication since the invention of printing.[3] | |
He also drew attention to lack of qualification in presenting the supposed techniques of auditing and the concepts outlined in the narrative of the book [2] -- namely the Engram and the state of Clear -- and their likelihood of being borrowed from psychoanalysis, behavioural psychology, hypnosis and folk beliefs; the latter being denied repeatedly in the book.[4]
He also expressed his concerns that although these claims were completely unfounded, the sales of the book at the time were alarmingly high, and perhaps evidentiary of frustrated hopes, dreams and ambitions of the public.[5]
Differences in Editions
The content of DMSMH has had changes between printings, most of them subtle but many of them dramatic. This section focuses on the changes between the 1950 original printing and the most recent 2007 edition.
Synopsis
| 1950 version | 2007 version |
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. | [expunged] |
With the techniques presented in this handbook the psychiatrist, psycho-analyst and intelligent layman can successfully and invariably treat all psycho-somatic ills and inorganic aberrations. | With the techniques presented in this handbook the intelligent layman can successfully and invariably treat all psycho-somatic ills and inorganic aberrations. |
Introduction
- The original printing had an introduction by Joseph Winter that was expunged in all later printings.
Quotes
Hubbard had a belief that many problems in adults could be traced back to attempted abortions in the womb, and that many many attempted abortions happened on most people.
| Attempted abortion is very common. And remarkably lacking in success. The mother, every time she injures the child in such a fiendish fashion, is actually penalizing herself. Morning sickness is entirely engramic, so far as can be discovered, since clears have not so far experienced it during their own pregnancies. And the act of vomiting because of pregnancy is via contagion of aberration. Actual illness generally results only when mother has been interfering with the child either by douches or knitting needles or some such thing. Such interference causes the mother to become ill and, from an actual physical standpoint, is much harder on the mother than on the child. Morning sickness evidently gets into a society because of these interferences such as attempted abortion and, of course, injury.... | |
| The amniotic sac can be pierced many times and repeatedly and emptied of all water after the first missed period and the child can still survive. Twenty or thirty abortion attempts are not uncommon in the aberree and in every attempt the child could have been pierced hrough the body or brain. | |
| The attempted abortion human being is often struck unconscious by the earliest part of each attempt since the head is so available to the knitting needles, hat pins, orange-wood sticks, buttonhooks, and so forth which are employed. These periods of unconsciousness must be penetrated and will quite ordinarily release slowly.... | |
Hubbard relates how an attempted abortion results in a cough later in life:
| A cough, however, although it is present in birth and seems to be alleviated by the exhaustion of the birth engram, is quite ordinarily blood running down the throat of the prenatal during an attempted abortion. | |
DMSMH had hallmarks of Hubbard's cultural chauvinism that permeated his writings and lectures. In this passage, he describes how teaching a Zulu the English language would help greatly in "civilizing" him.
| Primitive societies, being subject to much mauling by the elements, have many more occasions for injury than civilized societies. Further, such primitive societies are alive with false data. Further, their practice of medicine and mental healing is on a very aberrative level by itself. The number of engrams in a Zulu would be astonishing. Moved out of his restimulative area and taught English he would escape the penalty of much of his reactive data; but in his native habitat the Zulu is only outside the bars of a madhouse because there are no madhouses provided by his tribe. | |
