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Abstract

Dianetics was unveiled to the public in the May 1950 edition of Astounding Science Fiction. Dianetics was the brainchild of science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, and became the foundation for scientology toward the end of the decade. Dianetics was marketed as a “scientific” method for mental improvement—a robust alternative to conventional psychiatry—and was strongly debated in science fiction (sf) magazines. This article follows the trajectory of this cultural phenomenon from 1949 to 1999 as it appeared in this form of popular culture. A proximal reading method was applied to analyze 4,431 magazines, and identified 389 references to dianetics and scientology. References were found in advertising, reader letters, stories, feature articles, and editorials. Significant fluctuations in the prominence and perception of dianetics became clearly visible in the source material across a broad spectrum of content. Negative criticism was present from the outset, and based on logical and scientific arguments. This was countered by obfuscation, or attacks on the authors of these critiques. The followers and promoters of dianetics did not provide scientifically rigorous proof of their claims, and by the mid-1980s, dianetics and scientology were no longer serious topics in the magazines but had been added to other fads and fallacies of sf history. This article demonstrates the effectiveness of a digital humanities proximal reading method to underpin objective classification and analysis of this culturally significant phenomenon.

Keywords

science fiction scientology dianetics religion cult digital humanities advertising magazines

Introduction

In May 1950, a work by science fiction (sf) author L. Ron Hubbard, “Dianetics: A Science of the Mind,” was the feature article in Astounding Science Fiction (ASF; Hubbard, 1950a). Editor John. W. Campbell believed dianetics was extraordinary, even revolutionary, and promoted it enthusiastically (Campbell, 1950l). At the time, there was open public mistrust and concern regarding orthodox psychiatric therapies. Motives and merits of institutional practices around this time have been debated at great length, generally negatively, by a wide range of commentators (Fitzpatrick, 2004; Foucault, 2001; Halliwell, 2013; Rustin, 2015; Scull, 2015; Whitaker, 2015). Views on official practices have been summarized by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who used the term “the therapeutic state” to describe invasive treatment of citizens, often against their will, being justified by poorly supported theories (Szasz, 1960, 1994, 1999). Ken Kesey would later fictionalize the barbarity of psychiatric institutions around this period in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Kesey, 1962), and it was into this paranoid environment (perhaps justifiable in some cases) that Campbell portrayed Hubbard’s dianetics as a viable alternative to conventional treatments.

Sheila Schwartz described Campbell as having “broadened the subjects of sf to include politics, business, war, religion, and philosophy” (Schwartz, 1971, p. 1044), and dianetics fitted Campbell’s interest in the potential for humans to exceed their physical limitations through mind powers. Dianetics promised that by a process of “auditing,” it was possible to attain a superhuman state of the “clear.” This was a sensible concept to a predominantly male readership, who were accustomed to reading about heroic figures who were “enhanced” versions of the “average male reader” (Menadue, 2017, p. 136). Dianetics was debated widely in sf magazines, and reflects the enduring fascination of sf editors, authors, and readers with more or less fantastical fads and movements.

Sf is especially effective for investigating cultural phenomena, which cross over between the factual and the fictional, and which are categorized by readers’ identification of plausible science and technology (Menadue, Giselsson, & Guez, 2018). Sf is so pervasive in modern culture that it has even been described as “cultural wallpaper” (Aldiss & Wingrove, 1986). The genre also often demonstrates a diegetic relationship between culture and fiction (Kirby, 2010). According to Schwartz (1971),

[Sf] is not only a bridge between the two cultures of science and the humanities; it is a bridge between all cultures as it summarizes and expresses the nightmare fears, myths and inescapable concerns of all people today. (p. 1044)

Sf reflected interests not only in psychiatry and powers of the mind but also in race and eugenics, which were associated in the magazines with dianetics. Sf is commonly used in research education, communication, and advocacy (Menadue & Cheer, 2017), and can indicate changes in cultural values and beliefs (Menadue, 2017, 2018). As dianetics emerges in the medium of sf, this relationship becomes clear. An analysis of the occurrence of L. Ron Hubbard’s dianetics in the sf magazines of the 20th century provides an insight into the reception of Hubbard’s work. I employed a proximal reading approach for this article to identify and explore how contemporary interests in—and concerns about—dianetics are found in science fiction culture. One can gain a greater objective insight into the cultural phenomenon of dianetics as displayed in sf texts by using such a mixed digital and traditional humanities analytical method—compared with the limitations of using singular distant or close reading methods. Proximal reading combines digital, objective, identification of sources with statistical analysis of findings, primary source readings, and outward reading of other material associated with the primary sources in the magazines. Analysis of the attitudes to dianetics in the magazines provides a valuable critical perspective that is unfiltered by later commentary, and is untainted by the revisionist history of the Hubbard organization and Church of Scientology. Information provided by the scientologists on Hubbard’s background, and the origins and foundations of dianetics, tends toward vaguely defined hyperbole:

Scientology is defined as “the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, to universes and to other life.” Through the practice of Scientology one can increase his spiritual awareness and ability and realize his own immortality. Dianetics, though it might not have guessed it in its early publication, was dealing with the human spirit. Dianetics is a forerunner and substudy of Scientology. (Church of Scientology, 2018b)

The official scientology page Who Was L. Ron Hubbard? does not mention Hubbard’s science fiction background, or that “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health: The First Comprehensive Text Ever Written on the Human Mind and Life” (Church of Scientology, 2018c) was first published in a science fiction magazine. Dianetics is still with us, under the aegis of the Church of Scientology, and the organization claims that since 1983, it has “touched the lives of billions” (Church of Scientology, 2018a), which alone would naturally make it an essential subject for cultural studies, if such a claim could be substantiated.

This article adds informative context to the cultural environment and development of Hubbard’s work by independently assessing the history of dianetics and scientology as perceived by contemporary commentators. Dianetic theory, the claims and activities of the dianetics organization, scientology, and scientologists are not being independently evaluated here, as the broader context of the history, practices, and controversies surrounding scientology have been discussed elsewhere (Urban, 2013). The focus of this article is on the content and context of references to dianetics and scientology in the sf magazines of the second half of the 20th century, and the perspective this provides on the origins and growth of this significant cultural phenomenon.

The aim of this article is to provide an independent review—from the origins of dianetics to the end of the 20th century—of the discussions around, and reception of dianetics and scientology, and to present this from the perspective of the original primary audience for dianetics—the readers, writers, and editors of sf magazines. This article also serves to demonstrate the practicality of applying proximal reading methods to identify cultural interests embedded in a specific corpus text.

Method

I carried out a text search of a comprehensive digitized corpus of 20th-century sf magazines to identify all references to “dianetic” and “scientology” as well as derivations, finding the first mention of dianetics in December 1949 (Campbell, 1949). The search employed a simple Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) model (Liberati et al., 2009; Stevens et al., 2014; the appendix). Any single advert, letter, editorial, feature article, or story in which any of the target words occur was categorized as a single reference. The source texts included complete or near-complete runs of the major professionally published titles including Amazing Stories (Amazing), Asimov’s Science Fiction (Asimov’s), ASF, Fantastic, Fantastic Adventure Magazine (Fantastic AM), Future Combined With Science Fiction Stories (Future), Galaxy Science Fiction (Galaxy), The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF), Marvel Science Stories (Marvel), New Worlds, Omni, Other Worlds, Planet Stories (Planet), and Worlds of IF (IF). The digital corpus examined represents approximately 40% of 20th-century professional and semiprofessional sf magazines, as indexed in the exhaustive Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Weird Fiction Magazine Index (Miller, Contento, & Stephensen-Payne, 2017). The results were indexed and cataloged by author, date, magazine, issue, type, and attitude expressed (Table 1) toward dianetics or scientology. Specific types of reference found during the initial search were sorted into natural categories of letters, editorials, reviews, advertising (of various sizes and types), features on dianetics or scientology, fictional stories, articles that included direct or indirect references to dianetics but did not focus on it, interviews, convention reports, and cartoons.

Table 1.

Categorization of References.

Content/context of reference	Categorization
Created by members of dianetics or scientology organizations, including advertising, or by others who portray dianetics as effective and beneficial	Positive
Criticism of dianetic methods or claims, or deliberately comical	Negative
No prominent value judgment—sometimes as part of a list of activities or interests that had been grouped together	Neutral
Suggests the author intends to try dianetics, is seeking more information, or wishes to meet people familiar with dianetics	Interested
Suggestions that dianetics is misplaced in sf magazines, or not of interest	Indifferent

Note. sf = science fiction.

Comparison and cross referencing of references identified emerging themes, attitudinal changes, and connections between and within discussions. Reading other content of the same issues provided additional information to add depth to the analysis by “outward reading” employing, but not limited to, the sampling, selective close reading, and “moving in and out” activities suggested by Robert Scholes and Clifford Wulfman (Scholes & Wulfman, 2010).

This combination of methods identified significant content from these primary sources. This “proximal reading” (Menadue, 2018a) is distinct from “close reading,” which entails the subjective selection of a small number of primary sources by the researcher for detailed enquiry (B. H. Smith, 2016), and also from the “distant reading” of Moretti, which applies digital techniques to analyze text at a more global level (Moretti, 2000, 2011). Proximal reading examines corpus-level bodies of literary work, to identify specific references for closer analysis without the influence of subjective selection bias. The method applies “degrees of separation” (Karinthy, 2011) to extend the analysis beyond selected text, both within and external to the individual work that has been identified, and the specific source in which it has been identified (e.g., to examine a newspaper article on dianetics referred to in an editorial). Analysis is more detailed than distant reading, and especially suited to thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2016; Clarke & Braun, 2013)—proximal reading may, consequently, provide more rigorous cultural analysis than broader, or more specific, approaches. It is most clearly applicable to unique subjects, such as “dianetics” and “scientology” that can be identified unequivocally from the words used to describe them. In this example, the corpus correlated to the research topic is the 20th-century science fiction magazine.

For this application, one degree of separation was permitted, and one external item from Oz, a counterculture magazine with similarities to New Worlds, was correlated with an article in Fantastic. To compare the thoroughness of findings with that available from a specialist online database, a search of the Internet Science Fiction Database (ISFDB) for the word “dianetics” identified 15 unique references (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=Dianetic&type=All+Titles), including one cartoon. All were captured independently by the “proximal” methodology. The limited number found in the ISFDB reflects that only titles, illustrations, and some editorials and letters are indexed. The text search undertaken for this article captured all recognizable word instances within the corpus.

Data and Statistical Comparisons

References were tabulated by format, and number for different publications and authors, using Excel. Statistical analysis was applied using R (R Core Team, 2018) to discover any correlation between advertising frequency of dianetics/scientology and the frequency of its appearance in other references, using Kendall’s tau. The data outputs and catalog have been published in a permanent online database (Menadue, 2018b).

Findings

Search Results

The search found 389 references in 258 issues of sf magazines out of a corpus of 4,431 issues over 50 years (Figure 1). Findings were categorized by type, attitude, publication, year, and author.

Figure 1.

Dianetics/scientology references by year, 1949 to 1999.

Outward reading identified articles by other organizations focused on mind powers. Twelve full-page advertisements were discovered for the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis - Rosicrucian Order (AMORC), which describes itself as “a community of mystics who study and practice the metaphysical laws governing the universe” (The Roiscrucian Order, 2018). One full-page advertisement was found for Psychiana, a spiritual, antitheology, self-improvement program created by Frank Robinson in the 1930s—at one point “the world’s largest mail order religion” (Psychiana, 2018). In addition, eight additional articles and letters, which focus on powers of the mind, were associated with references to dianetics.

Content Analysis

L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health first appeared in ASF (Hubbard, 1950b), and later became the source text for scientology. As an sf author, Hubbard had a historic relationship with editor John W. Campbell, who promoted dianetics within the pages of ASF. The May 1950 issue featured articles supporting dianetics by Campbell, who had written an editorial leader celebrating this new “science” in December 1949—the first time we hear mention of “dianetics” (Campbell, 1949). The first reference found to the “Church of Scientology” was an advert in Galaxy from October 1956. Content analysis revealed advertising and promotion of dianetics and scientology, fictional representations of dianetics, advocacy, and controversy over dianetics in the early 1950s—including threats of litigation, letters from patients and doctors at psychiatric and veteran’s hospitals, and scientific or quasi-scientific articles. References to scientology after the 1970s were limited to advertising, retrospectives on the history of the sf community, and satire. This may be explained, in part, by the changing demographic of the science fiction readership from predominantly young males (Berger, 1977) to a contemporary older, better educated, and perhaps more skeptical audience (Menadue & Jacups, 2018).

Advertising

Advertising frequency and scale may indicate advertiser resources, and target market. As cost-dependent marketing, it may provide a benchmark for organizational success. As advertising is placed intentionally and systematically, its placement is not necessarily subject to specific reader or editorial influences. A reader criticized the moral probity of Asimov’s in February 1984 for taking adverts from the scientologists, but editor Isaac Asimov dismissed this on the basis of free speech (Tabery, 1984). It is suggested that editorial considerations have little to no impact on publishers’ acceptation of advertising income.

Advertising of dianetics and scientology

Advertising varied in frequency and prominence. An initial “bubble” of activity following the May 1950 publication date burst in the mid-1950s, possibly connected to financial troubles later described by author and dianeticist A. E. van Vogt (Van Vogt, 1982, p. 11). Dianetics reappeared under the banner of scientology in 1970 with an advertising campaign in Galaxy, IF and Worlds of Tomorrow employing the tagline “Whatever happened to dianetics?” (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Whatever happened to dianetics.

Visibility returned to a new maximum in 1975 (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Dianetics/scientology advertising frequency and size, 1950 to 1984.

Frequent advertisements for dianetics were found in ASF in the early 1950s, alongside editorials and letters—adverts were found in every 1950 issue from March to December, and comprised 48 out of all 57 references in that year. In 1952, ASF contained 21 out of all 100 references in magazines, nine of which were adverts, and dianetics appeared in every issue of ASF from January to July, and in November.

Comparison of the frequency of advertising references with nonadvertisement references from 1949 to 1999 (Figure 4) discovered a significant, and perhaps unsurprising, correlation. (Kendall’s rank correlation tau = .24, where 0 is no correlation, p < .05 using R version 3.4.0). Whether this correlation is due to advertising encouraging debate is unclear, although we know from Asimov’s that in at least one instance, advertising practice was independent of opinion.

Figure 4.

Comparison of frequency of advertising and nonadvertising references to dianetics/scientology 1949-1999.

Advertising by competitors

Dianetics advertising was not exceptional among competitors in the market of mental self-improvement. From 1951 to 1973, outward reading discovered the Rosicrucians were often publishing full-page advertisements concurrent with small ads for dianetics. An alternative “provider” advert for Psychiana Guideposts of decision! was found alongside a reference to dianetics in Amazing in 1952 (Psychiana, 1952, p. 3). There were adverts in 1953 (Fantasy Fiction, June) and 1975 (Galaxy, July) for books on extra-sensory or occult powers, indicating other approaches were available, and dianetics was by no means a unique phenomenon. No advertisements were found after 1984.

Dianetics in Fiction

Hubbard wrote the first fictional appearance of dianetics, and featured a heroic dianetics practitioner (Hubbard, 1950c). This story was described by a reader in the February 1951 issue as “corny” (Carr, 1951), and criticized for its feebleness by L. Sprague de Camp in El-Ron of the City of Brass (Sprague de Camp, 1975). There was only one other story, which apparently presented dianetics seriously: in New Worlds, January 1953, where “reverse dianetics” was employed as a method of torture (Duncan, 1953, p. 22). A cartoon likening dianetics to the addictive “mother’s helper” Hadacol appeared in Imagination in January 1952 (Hearne, 1952; Figure 5).

Figure 5.

Imagination, Inc.

Fourteen other stories published between 1952 and 1990 were satirical or derogatory. Robert Bloch suggested dianetics was only for the gullible in the satirical “My Struggle by Floyd Scrilch” (Bloch, 1951):

Here I was, stuck in a rut, no Get Up and Go, no Aggressiveness, no Dynamic Personality . . . I went out and bought a copy of DIANETICS FOR EVERYBODY AT HOME IN YOUR SPARE TIME . . . if other people could be “cleared” and find new success, so could I . . . I read the book down at the office and the boss heard about it and fired me. But I didn’t care . . . The landlord said he’d throw us out if we didn’t pay the rent, but I had to use the money for my [dianetics] treatments. I didn’t worry. Pretty soon we were going to be on Easy Street! After two months I was “cleared.” . . . I knew all the proper Psychological Approaches to Handling My Life. I took a lot of notes, but I had to burn them for fuel on account of we didn’t have any coal. But my memory was perfect now and I knew everything. (Bloch, 1951, p. 144)

Scrilch confidently approaches a potential new employer with predictable results: “he kicked me out on my face” (Bloch, 1951, p. 145). In March 1954, Robert W. Lowndes, editor of Future, associated dianetics with Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf:

just before reading dianetics, I had finally gotten around to a long-delayed perusal of Mein Kampf . . . the resemblance of Hubbard’s rhetoric struck me so forcefully that his mesmerizing style had no effect. Or rather, not the affect intended by the author. (Lowndes, 1954, p. 84)

In the same year, The Turning Wheel by Philip K Dick, described how a dianetics-based culture had caused the complete collapse of technological civilization:

Sung-wu fingered his beads miserably. “Elron be praised,” he muttered; “you are too kind . . . ” . . . Sung-wu . . . bypassed the rows of rusted, discarded machines, and entered the still-functioning wing. He located his brother-in-law . . . laboriously copying material by hand. “Clearness be with you,” Sung-wu murmured. (Dick, 1954, p. 68)

In The God Business, protagonists read aloud to stun and capture animals for food: “Friend of mine says that the best book for the birds is Hubbard’s dianetics, but one ought to take pride in one’s tools, you know. I’ve always caught my pheasants and geese with Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex” (Farmer, 1954, p. 21). Anthony Boucher wrote in The Star Dummy: “‘That escapist dianetics-spawning rubbish?’ the analyst exclaimed, as if each word were spelled with four letters” (Boucher, 1952, p. 48). Hubbard had claimed in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health that “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” (Hubbard, 1950b, p. 9), and this may have inspired satirical and parodic works. Larry Niven later put an sf author who invented a religion into the inferno:

The human face seemed quite mad. He founded a religion that masks as a form of lay psychiatry. Members try to recall . . . their own past lives . . . and that adds an interesting blackmail angle, because those who hear confession are often more dedicated than honorable. (Niven, 1975, pp. 80-81)

By 1990, there was no remaining respect shown for dianetics, and Joe Haldeman described one of his characters as “a dope addict hip-deep into the dianetics horseshit” (Haldeman, 1990, p. 187).

Editorials, Letters, and Features

Discussions regarding dianetics and scientology occurred in features, letters pages, and editorials. Whereas ASF and John W. Campbell generally supported dianetics, a Marvel feature in 1951 presented different perspectives on the subject and received a range of responses. Other Worlds, edited by Raymond Palmer—promulgator of the Shaver Mystery—depicted dianetics unfavorably. Letter writers expressed all attitudes, but over time, opposition to dianetics became more prominent. Widespread criticism appeared shortly after the first publication, focused on the lack of supporting scientific evidence. Fanzines—independent titles published by fans—were particularly scathing regarding dianetics, with one exception: Arc Light, which Rog Phillips (1951a) suspected was a mouthpiece for the Dianetics Organization.

Campbell and ASF

John W. Campbell was the strongest advocate of dianetics in sf magazines. He published enthusiastic editorial features praising dianetics and supporting Hubbard’s claim that dianetics was a revolutionary innovation that would bring a fundamental change to humanity. Campbell ridiculed critics:

Sorry you find dianetics of no interest, but it was my belief that knowledge of the human mind was of the utmost immediate and general interest because each of us possesses one. (Campbell, 1950d, p. 161)

Campbell printed nine positive editorial and feature articles on dianetics, all appearing before the end of 1950 (Campbell, 1949, 1950a, 1950l, 1950m, 1950o, 1950q, 1950r, 1950s, 1950t). Campbell was skeptical regarding the science establishment, and championed the right of dianetics to be taken as seriously as the existing “sciences,” which he suggested were self-interested and unwilling to accept new ideas—ideas that included Campbell’s own concerning psionics and mind powers (Campbell, 1950e, 1951b, 1958a, 1958b). Campbell’s interest in mind powers is known from numerous retrospectives that appeared around and after his death in 1971 (Elliot, 1979; Flynn, 1990; Fraser, 1978; Gardner, 1983b; Gould, 1975; Malzberg, 1976; S. Morris, 1982; Panshin, 1971; Pohl, 1981; Schweitzer, 1998; Williamson, 1999). His support of dianetics became less consistent, as was apparent in later comments on letters, and editorials (Campbell, 1950n, 1956a, 1956b, 1957). Campbell’s publicly close connection to dianetics began to cool by the end of the year of first publication, when he clarified the separation of the Dianetics Foundation from his magazine, and stated a preference for readers to contact them directly (Campbell, 1950c, 1950p). Campbell was impressed by the boost in magazine sales that came from dianetics, however (Campbell, 1950b), and coadvertised dianetics and ASF subscriptions in the early months (ASF, 1950a, 1950b). But even Campbell stated in November 1950 that his magazine was about sf, not dianetics (Campbell, 1950u), in response to a letter by Robert Kelly:

The Dianetic Foundation is publishing bulletins on new dianetic techniques. That is not our province. We are publishing general articles on the mind; they are science articles of general interest. But this magazine’s business is science-fiction. (Campbell, 1950j, p. 156)

Other editors were less partial to mind powers, and from 1950 to 1952, there were robust debates about dianetics in other magazines. Arguments against dianetics tended toward evidence-based arguments focused on a lack of independent, replicable, substantiation of the extraordinary claims made about the benefits arising from dianetics practices. C. Daly King wrote a dismissive book review, published in F&SF in December 1950:

THIS volume is full of assertions and claims, and frequent reference . . . to scientific evidence, but your reviewer could find no item of such evidence in its 400-odd pages. Unsupported assertions are not evidence and, since the author presents every appearance of sincerity, one can conclude only that he is unfamiliar with the nature of scientific evidence. (King, 1950, p. 99)

James Blish explained evidential research in Future in 1951, when the dianetics debate was “raging as loudly as ever” (Blish, 1951d, p. 78), and criticized examples of unsubstantiated claims: “a fact can be authenticated; it can be measured; it can be substituted in a formula. A statement of fact which fails any one of these three tests may nevertheless be true enough—But it is not evidence” (Blish, 1951d, p. 80).

Marvel science stories

Robert Erisman’s Marvel editorial in May 1951 introduced three feature articles by prominent authors: negative—by Lester del Rey, neutral—by Theodore Sturgeon, and positive—by Hubbard himself. Erisman (1951b) proclaimed, “For the first time in the short but epithet-scarred history of dianetics a sf magazine presents all aspects of the controversy” (p. 2). He affirmed,

CONTROVERSY is the life-blood of intellectual development, and all too often, publications take one side or the other, from bias, advertising pressure, or just plain fear. MARVEL dedicates itself to the honest presentation of those arguments which rage throughout the science-fiction field. (Erisman, 1951a, p. 110)

Hubbard was afforded the unique opportunity of being provided advance copies of the critiques of the other authors, which gave him the opportunity to tailor his response—to del Rey’s objections in particular.

del Rey was cynical in Superman—C. O. D. (del Rey, 1951), considering dianetics to be little more than a money-making exercise. He was disturbed by the eugenic implications of dianetics: “Racism is based on the need to believe in superiority, and one of the basic factors underlying many neuroses is the doubt of even equality. L. Ron Hubbard has capitalized on this situation” (p. 115). del Rey was also unimpressed by the quality of argument demonstrated by Hubbard:

the first pages alone show the flimsiness of the “scientific” knowledge behind it. After a brief opening eulogy to himself as greater than the inventor of fire, the wheel or the arch, Mr. Hubbard says: “dianetics is the science of the mind. Far simpler than physics or chemistry.” (p. 115)

del Rey described the tautology inherent in the primary axiom of dianetics: “The dynamic principle of existence is SURVIVE, according to him. Sheer gobbledegook. The principle of living is living!” (p. 116).

In Homo Superior, Here we Come! (Hubbard, 1951), Hubbard stated that the result of dianetics was to create a “better human being” (p. 111; Figure 6).

Figure 6.

Portrait of L. Ron Hubbard: “Homo Superior.”

Hubbard denied the validity of scientific methods, but insisted that his own approach was a science—and employed familiar political rhetoric to undermine “so-called experts”:

. . . a large segment of the population has grown used to the idea that the opinion of an authority; that facts and statistics presented on large charts in red letters is evidence enough to outweigh the observations which they, themselves can make. Fortunately, thousands of others are still filled with the true spirit of scientific curiosity. It is to these open minded people that dianetics owes its first obligation. It is also these people who will be most able to carry the science of dianetics forward. (p. 112)

Hubbard rejected eugenic concerns: “Mr. del Rey begins by carefully trying to hang the label of racism and superiority complex on a science which proves for the first time that all human beings can be better human beings” (p. 111). This is not clear from scientology materials, which refer to “dominance” in descriptions of the outcomes of dianetics. The Components of Understanding states, “the race which first developed affinity to its highest degree would become the dominant race on any planet and this has been borne out” (The Church of Scientology International, 2015, p. 5). Hubbard employed a circular argument based on his own theories to discredit opposition: “The viciousness of Mr. del Rey’ s attack displays so clearly the aberrative force behind it, that no defense on this matter should be necessary” (p. 112). del Rey especially and expressly criticized the avarice of Hubbard’s organization. It is ironic, therefore, that in the second part of Hubbard’s article, his editor Forest J. Ackerman asked: “What are you doing about becoming a superman? The first step is to read the remarkable 180,000-word book by L. Ron Hubbard (Hermitage, $4)” (p. 113). Ackerman affirmed the superhuman powers attainable through dianetics:

A clear has an abundant store of energy, and needs but 4 hours sleep out of 24. A clear has a photographic memory, can return to any moment on his (or her) time-track and re-experience anything with full perceptics (sight, sound, sensation, etc.). (p. 113)

Theodore Sturgeon, in “How to Avoid a Hole in the Head” (Sturgeon, 1951), was more circumspect, presenting “a plea for general open-mindedness and progressive thought” (Sturgeon, 1951, p. 113). He described the debate as violent and polarized, and suggested readers make an impartial assessment: “If and when you get results from dianetics, don’t conclude therefore that everything Hubbard says must be true. Don’t consider the unproven as false, either. If it’s the science its adherents claim, it will bear investigation” (Sturgeon, 1951, p. 115).

Other Worlds

In 1950, dianetics appeared briefly in Other Worlds: in a review, an editorial, and a classified advertisement (Ackerman, 1950; McDowell, 1950; Palmer, 1950). Other Worlds later provided a forum for dianetics debate through 1951 and 1952. Dianetics appeared in Robert Bloch’s satire, editor Raymond Palmer’s response to criticisms of Bloch, and Palmer’s later dismissal of relevance to sf. Dianetics also appeared in classified advertisements by people interested in knowing more (Paul, 1951; A. Smith, 1951; Stuart, 1952). Raymond Palmer was central to the correlation of dianetics with the Shaver Mystery, and commented freely on dianetics during this period. Bloch’s relevance is discussed in further detail in section “Letters.”

Planet Stories

In Planet, we can follow author James Blish’s journey from enthusiast to skeptic, in a debate moderated by the editor Jerome Bixby. Blish was a cautious enthusiast in November 1950:

If dianetics does work—and every check I’ve been able to run thus far indicates that it does—it may well be the·most important discovery of this or any other century. It will bring the long-sought “rule of reason” to the problems of local and world politics, communication, law, and almost every other field of human endeavor. (Blish, 1950, p. 102)

By January 1951, Blish was less certain. Al Wickham said in a letter,

My own advice . . . is that you, Mr. Blish, and your readers take dianetics with a large salt pill. So far, there is not a single shred of real evidence for it-and the layman is not the least bit obligated to prove Mr. Hubbard’s claims for him. (Wickham, 1951, p. 106)

Blish agreed: “Here I am with Mr. Wickham 100% . . . I have terminated my own experiments in this field, and I urge anyone else who has been tempted by Hubbard’s claims to do the same,” and affirmed that evidence was required to support the assertions of dianetics, and the burden of proof was with Hubbard (Blish, 1951b, p. 107). Dianeticist Robert Sewell was unhappy with Blish’s response:

The assertion that Ron Hubbard has dim awareness of what constitutes science is your cross to carry, and certainly not his to disprove . . . I am truly sorry to hear James Blish say . . . that only experienced persons should experiment with dianetics . . . Where is the evidence? I have evidence, for I have worked with DIANETICS . . . Do you have evidence? And if not, why not? You can get it the way I did. (Sewell, 1951, pp. 104-105)

Blish became increasingly exasperated over the obfuscation regarding evidence: “I am already familiar with the claims . . . I wish some one person [sic.] associated with DIANETICS would actually come forth with some of this evidence they all claim to have . . .” (Blish, 1951c, p. 105). The debate in Planet was otherwise mild and politely skeptical, lacking the vehemence found in other magazines (Gibson, 1951a, 1951b; Kyne, 1951; Sneary, 1951).

Letters

Campbell replied in ASF to early critical letters with legitimizing rhetoric (Campbell, 1950h, 1950i, 1950k), responding to one skeptical letter writer: “It is no hoax. It will be history” (Campbell, 1950f, p. 158). Shortly after C. Daly King’s article appeared in F&SF, King was ridiculed in the letter pages of ASF along with Erich Fromm, another critic of dianetics (McLaughlin, 1951). J. S. Horan, a doctor working in a psychiatric hospital, queried absent empirical evidence for the claims of dianetics, as well as allegations that enormous numbers of people were being lobotomized or subjected to electroshock treatments (Horan, 1950). Campbell responded with unsubstantiated statistics and hearsay: “doctors have said that seventy percent of all physical ailments stem from psychosomatic causes,” and “while prefrontal lobotomy is recognized, and certainly effective, it treats intractableness—something which bothers the psychiatrist, not the insanity which bothers the patient” (Campbell, 1950g, p. 153). A more open debate occurred in other magazines. One writer to Amazing reported,

Reliable scientific authorities are cautioning against the all-embracing claims made by the new science . . . Psychological analysis is not a toy and playing with the human faculties medically is dangerous. Whatever the merits of dianetics, its practitioners should make this clear. (A. Morris, 1951, p. 35)

Medical practitioners responded, and patients wrote from psychiatric hospitals, including those for World War II veterans. Medical professionals such as Lew Cunningham of Stanford University—who had read Hubbard’s book and reported being approached by Campbell to become a supporter—were scathing. Cunningham suggested, “it is a hoax deliberately perpetrated for the sake of money and acclaim” (Cunningham, 1951, p. 99). He reported finding

ludicrous blunders in [Hubbard’s] writings . . . they are not the work of a man who knows how to improve memory or intelligence . . . the writings of dianetics are not the writings of supermen or of people who know how to produce supermen. (p. 99)

Letters from patients demonstrated distrust of medical practices, and fear of lobotomy and electroshock. Dianeticists fueled these fears. Although Cunningham rejected Hubbard’s advances, Dr. Joseph A. Winter had not, and became the professional “poster boy” for dianetics in its early incarnation. Existing practices, even if not commonly used, were sensationalized as standard operating procedures of the psychiatric profession. In the preface to the original Dianetics article in ASF in May 1950, Winter wrote,

Modern psychiatry holds that . . . there is no cure for several forms of insanity—they can only be treated by surgically excising a portion of the brain in a prefontal lobotomy, or—this is an actual and literal description of the operation known as a transorbital leucotomy—by electro-shocking the patient unconscious and running an ice-pick-like instrument into the brain by thrusting it through the eye socket back of the eyeball and slashing the brain with it. (Winter, 1950, p. 159)

Letters, which often descended into antagonistic debates, described ongoing experiences of letter writers with dianetics. Clarence McFarland wrote in May 1951 of his interest in learning more about dianetics (McFarland, 1951c). William Hamling responded in September to warn McFarland about the spurious claims of dianetics (Hamling, 1951a), but by November, McFarland’s response to Hamling’s “Dianetics Fraud?” article in Imagination (Hamling, 1951b) demonstrates McFarland had become a convert (McFarland, 1951a). Emory Mann was another reader who provided “follow-up” letters to describe his success. He said he was keen to “try dianetics” on his wife and other members of his family (Mann, 1950), which he followed up in Marvel, reporting having spent “ . . . two hundred hours on my wife . . . she is full of psychosomatic ills . . .” As a result, a problem with her right hand appeared to have improved (Mann, 1951, p. 116). Critics tended to apply logic to scientific evaluation of dianetics, and ascribed any effects to hypnotic suggestion. A doctor congratulated del Rey on his piece in Marvel:

His criticism is completely logical and just, based as it is upon facts which are glaringly apparent to any scientifically trained mind. Hubbard, on the other hand, falls back on his old tried and true technique of playing with words which to the average person sound quite convincing. (Montgomery, 1951, p. 100)

In contrast to analytical approaches by detractors, a prodianetics respondent, asserting that he had found no evidence himself against dianetics, called del Rey a “Milquetoast” (Feeney, 1951a, p. 100). A letter from the secretary of the China Lake Dianetics Society applied the circular “aberration” excuse to condescend to and undermine del Rey: “In some cases he is handicapped by lack of information, and in some cases his aberrations drive him to somewhat irrational conclusions. I don’t blame him: the poor fellow can’t help it. I know someone just like him” (Forbes, 1951, p. 105).

Dianetics followers also made ad hominem attacks on story writers—a response to Bloch’s My struggle, by Floyd Scrilch described it as “a ridiculous bit of toilet tissue by Blochhead . . . It is obvious he knows nothing of dianetics, probably being congenitally illiterate. Did he ever graduate from kindergarten?” (Anon, 1952, p. 153). Editor Raymond Palmer responded in kind, defending Bloch (Palmer, 1952b).

Letters to future—the debate in microcosm

There was a detailed conversation in Future from May through September 1951 (Vol. 2, numbers 1-3). The 15 references comprising this exchange reflect the trajectory and content of the general debate on dianetics in microcosm: one editorial, 11 letters by nine writers—seven of whom are repeat writers to this and other magazines—and three editorial comments on letters. Six of the references were negative, five neutral, two indifferent, one positive, and one interested. In May, Jay Tyler commented, “One becomes suspicious . . . when questions are simply met with evasions, more repetitions of the original claims, or admonitions to ‘try it, and see for yourself-it works!’” (Tyler, 1951, p. 95). Tyler would remain consistently skeptical, positively reviewing “Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies Name of Science” in the April 1958 issue of Future (Tyler, 1958). In July, John Feeney, who was later to describe Lester del Rey as a “milquetoast” in the August edition of Marvel, responded to Blish’s article “What Is Evidence?” Feeney said that demanding proof of dianetics was unreasonable because we do not seek scientific proof of aerodynamics before getting in an airplane, as “everybody knows” it works (Feeney, 1951b). Blish observed that scientific evidence was available for the capability of flight, but not for proof of dianetics, adding that Hubbard’s suggesting the public try dianetics for themselves was not dissimilar to being “shown an airplane and asked to fly it to prove that it was safe” (Blish, 1951a, p. 86). Alfred Bomar wrote similarly to Blish (Bomar, 1951), and Robert Lowndes added a caution that if dianetics was so powerful, it should not be recommended to “try it for yourself” (Lowndes, 1951b). Alice Bullock praised Blish, suggesting that Hubbard made a giant leap in his pronouncements similar to the jumps made by any good sf writer when writing a story, and with a similar lack of realism (Bullock, 1951). In September, Frederick Hehr extended the dianetics discussion to Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) (Hehr, 1951), Louis Martello described Pavlovian conditioned reflexes (Martello, 1951), and McFarland was being used as a “guinea-pig” by a local dianetics organization (McFarland, 1951b, p. 89). Calvin Beck suggested that, without evidence, either way, dianetics was a weak proposition (Beck, 1951), and Robert Lowndes called for an end to these letters on dianetics to what was, in fact, an sf magazine, and not a dianetics forum (Lowndes, 1951a).

Fanzines

Fanzines contained critical evaluations of dianetics, as Rog Phillips described in a review of Fantasy Times: “There’s an article discussing an article in Liberty magazine branding dianetics as the number one fraud of the year, and lumping it with sf—to sf’s detriment” (Phillips, 1951c, p. 146). Phillips’ fanzine reviews indicated generally negative fan interest from July through December 1951, after which interest seem to have petered out. In September 1951, there were three fanzine reviews by Phillips that mentioned dianetics and all of them were negative: from Peon, “‘The Annals of Aardvark’ discusses dianetics, being somewhat agin [sic] the new mind fad. And somewhat pessimistic about any possible plans to squelch it” (Phillips, 1951d, p. 144). In Censored,

J.W. Campbell Jr. has an article in defense of dianetics. Some of his statements are quite remarkable. For example. Psychiatry is badly in need of a fresh approach; the present approach is over half a century old, and has produced no notable advances. He also states, “the continuing high population of our institutions is, in itself, an indictment of the present methods . . . ” . . . Could it be that dianetics gives one the license to depart from reason? Or is logical thinking engrammatic . . . (Phillips, 1951d, p. 145)

In Fantasy Times, “There is also an article ‘Fan Feeling Against dianetics is Growing,’ which surveys fan reaction to this latest ‘mystery’” (Phillips, 1951b, p. 145). By December 1951, Phillips was exasperated by the perceived larceny of dianetics courses, and joined the ranks of those frustrated by the continued lack of empirical evidence to support dianetics:

[Fanzine Arc Light] doesn’t seem to be a fanzine at all, but a pamphlet on dianetics. I don’t know why I include it in the reviews this time unless it’s because it’s the only thing I’ve seen connected with that expensive subject that sells for only 20c and my guarantee of money’s worth doesn’t apply even to this. [dianetics claims] can fool you . . . But what I and a good many quite sensible people I know would like to see done is for L. Ron Hubbard to pause in his training of auditors at twenty-five dollars or more per hour in group classes . . . and publish the results of concrete cases. If I were in possession of a cure-all that could return the hundreds of thousands of patients in mental hospitals to normalcy and a normal life I would force proof down the throats of the psychiatrists in charge of those hospitals. (Phillips, 1951a, p. 146)

In the same issue, Phillips relayed a comment he had heard in June that year at the Westercon sf convention in San Francisco: “somebody described dianetics as push button psychology. Whereupon he chortled: You push the button here, The engrams go ‘round and round,’ And you come out clear!” (Palmer, 1951, p. 150).

Relevancy to sf, and the Magazines

From 1951 onward, contributors said that dianetics was not relevant to the magazines, or that it would be better to talk about more scientific, or sf matters—that dianetics was a fad like other pseudoscience and cults, or simply tiresome, even incomprehensible. Robert Lowndes in his capacities as editor of Dynamic and Future stated firmly that dianetics had no place in sf magazines (Corley, 1953; Fogal, 1952; Lowndes, 1953a, 1953b, 1953c, 1953d; Porter, 1952; Vick, 1951; Wheaton, 1952; Wiederhold, 1951). Campbell distanced himself from commenting on dianetics methods in 1951 in response to a letter from the author Poul Anderson (Campbell, 1951a). Raymond Palmer was carefully neutral in a 1952 response to Boyd, an official spokesperson, but did not consider dianetics relevant for his publication: “we don’t disagree with dianetics as a science, but it doesn’t belong in a stf [scientifiction] mag!” (Palmer, 1952a, p. 148). Edwin Corley—who later became a best selling author—expressed his interests clearly: “I like Bradbury. Dianetics bewilders me. I like dames on my covers” (Corley, 1953, p. 131). In the 1970s, editor Ted White expressed his irritation that writers continued to associate scientology with sf, when there was no relevant connection. He quoted an article by Peter Prescott published in Newsweek on November 29, 1971, which did this, describing it as a “remarkable example of critical bigotry” (White, 1972, p. 4):

[Peter Prescott claims] “Not very long ago ‘Astounding Science Fiction’ presented Ron Hubbard’s crackpot theory . . . saying that medical journals took too long to get the important news to the public. Since then, Hubbard has founded a religion, scientology, the rest of us have landed on the moon, discovered DNA and made blueprints of the coming ecological catastrophe.” . . . Prescott has distorted the facts to his advantage, linking a 1950 dianetics article with present-day sf, while pretending that sf ignored moon-landings, genetic manipulation and ecology . . . There are probably more copies still around of the May, 1950 Astounding (the one which came out “not very long ago” with Hubbard’s first piece on dianetics) than there are of the issue of Newsweek which came out that same week . . . Perhaps we’re better off remaining within our own ghetto, where at least we are among friends, and we are appreciated for our real values. (pp. 124-126)

Ironically a full page advertisement for dianetics appeared on page 5 of that same issue of Amazing. As noted previously, this was likely inserted by the publisher without editorial consultation.

Dianetics, the Shaver Mystery, and Fads

Dianetics was compared with, or associated with, the Shaver Mystery—a deliberate and provocative hoax about aliens and mythical pre–human beings fictionalized in stories by Richard Shaver, cynically disseminated by Raymond Palmer when he was the editor of Amazing in the 1940s to increase sales. In 1951, the fanzine TMLA connected engrams and the evil subterranean deros of the Shaver Mystery, which Rog Phillips said was

calculated to cause pro-dianeticists to rise in arms. Perhaps it will yet come down to a basic argument over whether an engram is a dero. Or maybe it will go even deeper and speculate on whether deros are that way because of engrams. (Phillips, 1951e, p. 148)

In Other Worlds, Albert Lewis wrote, “I regard Shaver as the one thing lower than dianetics” (Lewis, 1951, p. 153). A prodianetics letter writer, Carla de Paula Lopes suggested that Palmer’s support for Shaver and opposition to dianetics was inconsistent:

I would be interested to know why as intelligent a man as you seems to be willing to swallow the Shaver myth and somebody’s idea of the final answer to the Flying Saucer as TRUTH and yet absolutely refuse to be open-minded about as rational a thing as dianetics? (Lopes, 1952, p. 147)

Palmer’s critical response to Lopes was, “I would as soon trust my neuroses to the average dianetics auditor as surgery to an ape” (Palmer, 1952c, p. 148). An official letter from dianeticist Walter Boyd sought to correct Palmer’s errors, describing the utility of dianetics in thwarting the brainwashing techniques of “the enemy across the water [Russia],” and providing “a ray of sunshine in a dank prison to know that through Dianetic techniques such vicious practice has met its counter-measure” (Boyd, 1952, p. 145). Boyd also stated he had proof of self-serving opposition to dianetics by the American Medical Association, from practitioners who unfortunately had to remain anonymous for fear of losing their professional status (Boyd, 1952). The discussions regarding Shaver and Hubbard were so similar that Robert Lowndes, as editor of Future, apologized to readers for not clarifying that he was referring to dianetics in one comment, leading many to mistakenly connect it to the Shaver Mystery:

Some readers seemed to think that the reference to “The Hoax,” in our last issue, was aimed at the so-called “Shaver Mystery.” My apologies; I thought it would be apparent to all that I was referring to the alleged “science” of “mental health,” which has aroused so much comment. (Lowndes, 1951c, p. 68)

Fans frequently confabulated dianetics and the Shaver Mystery. In 1955, letter writer Frank Kerr paralleled the Shaver Mystery and dianetics in Amazing: “The letters were fair, will be better. Mr. Spalding [editor of Amazing] may be starting a new Shaver Mystery, or more likely, dianetics” (Kerr, 1955, pp. 124-125). In a personal advertisement in Other Worlds, May 1957, Seth Johnson said, “Welcome correspondence; interested in Shaver, dianetics, psychology, Club organization, Esper and fantasy in general” (Johnson, 1957, p. 27). In 1957, Walter Willis looked back on Shaverism and dianetics as the controversies of fan magazines, describing Hubbard as having voyaged from “pulp to pulpit” (Willis, 1957, p. 106).

In Martin Gardner’s authoritative book Fads & Fallacies in the Name of Science (Gardner, 1957), Gardner attacked many pseudo-sciences, including dianetics. Shortly after this, Edward Wood stated,

The fanaticism so characteristic of fandom during and before the second World War is gone . . . partially because of the hankering of the professional magazines for borderline topics such as flying saucers, Shaverism, dianetics, etc. etc. (Wood, 1959, p. 127)

In October 1974, editor and author Isaac Asimov categorized dianetics as a “crackpot” subject to be considered alongside the Shaver mysteries and various other fads:

[John W. Campbell’s] correspondence with me . . . dealt mainly with his own notions, many of which were bizarre indeed . . . he denounced scientific orthodoxy, and upheld various follies such as dianetics, the Hieronymus machine, and the Dean Drive. He pictured himself always as a persecuted rebel, hounded relentlessly by the great and powerful scientific priesthood. I finally broke down and wrote as follows: “Why do you persist in considering yourself part of a persecuted minority, John? Look about you. Billions of idiots on Earth believe in magic, in ghosts, in omens and the evil eye, in astrology, in any and every variety of folly that you ever heard of or can invent . . . there are perhaps one or two tens of thousands who are rationalists and who accept only what their senses and their reason tell them. We few are friendless and alone and it’s cold out here exposed to the winds of logic. Can’t you leave us to our misery and spare us the wild accusations of evils we lack the power to commit even if we had the will?” (Asimov, 1974)

Author Charles Sheffield later expressed similar reservations, describing the many historic “fads for orgone theory, mesmerism, dianetics, and pyramidology” (Sheffield, 1990, p. 228).

Van Vogt

A. E. Van Vogt was an author who featured mind powers in his writing, and was an early adopter of dianetics. As manager of the Los Angeles chapter of the embryonic organization, he was described in a letter to Planet as “the Moses” of dianetics in California (Barnett, 1951, p. 101). Meanwhile, Campbell bemoaned the fact that Van Vogt no longer had time to write sf for him (Campbell, 1950u). Van Vogt discussed dianetics in several interviews, and his dianetics links were described in features on his life and works (Brennart, 1975; Drake, 1977; Elliot, 1978; Elliot & Flyn, 1979). Van Vogt was not taken seriously in some circles, and was described in New Worlds as the “Last of really charming sf loonies” (Partington, 1978, p. 48). As the former head of the California foundation, Van Vogt provided authoritative information on the difficulties in the early years of dianetics, which may explain the changes we find in advertising expenditure. In a 1982 interview, he said,

Unfortunately, those early dianetic organizations lasted less than a year. I had the interesting experience of watching half a million dollars dwindle to nothing. All across the Hubbard dianetic foundations went into bankruptcy. (Van Vogt, 1982, p. 11)

Despite this, he added “I have never regretted my sudden feeling that this was probably my chance to study human behavior in a direct way” (p. 11). Van Vogt remained a defender of dianetics, as Martin Gardner described:

When I attacked dianetics in my old Fads and Fallacies book van Vogt wrote to warn me that my hostilities would soon cause serious heart disease and crippling arthritis and that only Dianetic therapy could avert such disasters. Today thirty years later my heart and joints are in fine shape thank you but van Vogt’s mind and career were seriously crippled by Hubbard nonsense. (Gardner, 1983b, p. 68)

Van Vogt responded to Gardner’s comments in 1983 with unsubstantiated claims about the impact of dianetics on the medical profession, its success in treating trauma, and added an ad hominem attack on Gardner as a “conformist” (Van Vogt, 1983, p. 11). Gardner believed Van Vogt to be delusional:

That Van Vogt . . . believes that this idiotic therapy has put psychiatrists in the United States out of private practice, passeth all comprehension. Was there ever a cult more authoritarian than scientology, or anyone more conformist than a Scientologist? I rest my case. (Gardner, 1983a, p. 12)

Threats, Scorn, and Litigation

Some commentary on dianetics and scientology provoked litigious responses—direct or implied. In August 1970, Ted White (editor of Fantastic) published an editorial on the murder of Sharon Tate, in which he implied Charles Manson was a fan of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, and a devotee of scientology—White’s comments were likely informed by an identical statement in Satan’s Slaves by James Moffatt, published under the pseudonym of James Taylor (Taylor, 1970). White’s editorial received an ad hominem attack from the well-lettered “Rev. Dr. C.E. Deckard, BS, DD, PhD,” which White published, and responded to, in the December 1970 issue of Fantastic—adding a defense of Barry Malzberg, who had clashed with the scientologists in November. Deckard attacked White personally, adopting a disparaging tone of higher moral authority:

Frankly, I was astounded by such frothings masquerading as responsible editorial comment. I suppose charitably charging your babbling to your, evident, extreme youth would be the Christian thing to do, and I would do so if it were not for the fact that your vituperation was given national circulation through your magazine. However, someone must call you to account for your irresponsibility. To take your mouthings in the order in which they appeared . . . (Deckard, 1970, p. 129)

Barry Malzberg’s critical article “Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science” in the November 1970 issue of Amazing had included a fresh suggestion that eugenics was a natural consequence of Hubbard’s statements about dianetics: “Hubbard notes, that as the result of the introduction of Dianetic therapy, some one-fourth of the human race will shortly become dominant over the remaining three-fourths, and thus control the destiny of the globe” (Malzberg, 1970, p. 127). Fortunately, Malzberg noted, perhaps with some degree of skepticism, “the fact that this master race will show far more compassion than could be otherwise expected, will avoid the possibility of genocide of non-clears” (p. 127). Following this, in March 1971, however, Malzberg wrote an apologetic letter saying, “It has come to my attention that an attorney claiming to represent the alleged interviewer in the introductory scientology film mentioned in my November 1970 article . . . has stated that I have libelled his client” (Malzberg, 1971, p. 129). Malzberg’s letter was printed with a lengthy rebuttal of his original article by the “Deputy Guardian for the U.S. Churches of scientology,” who stated, “In a field as retarded as human science, the emergence of a method to restore conclusively the tremendous power of true sanity is predictably subject to rejection before inspection” (Thomas, 1971, p. 104). A letter, from dianeticist J. E. Stewart, printed in the same issue managed to include all the techniques commonly used to defend dianetics—the conspiracy theory that the establishment was suppressing dianetics:

The substance of the letter I received [from John. W. Campbell] was that dianetics had been fairly successfully treating psychosomatic illnesses and that the AMA [American Medical Association] stepped in and stopped them, that Hubbard was infringing on the Medical Profession. (Stewart, 1971, p. 122)

And, moreover, that A. E. Van Vogt was a practitioner “of overpowering integrity” (Stewart, 1971, p. 122).

He also reversed the burden of scientific proof: “no outsiders have ever proved it not to be a science,” as well as hinting at a media conspiracy: “Twenty years is a long time [for Van Vogt] to be interested in something in which mass-media magazines have insisted is entirely without scientific basis” (p. 123). Ted White, the editor, commented wryly on the response: “Apparently Barry’s article angered the Scientologists considerably” (p. 123). A review of Satan’s Slaves in Oz magazine that year inspired a rebuttal from the Church of scientology (Neville, 1971; Parselle, 1971), which referred to litigation against the publishers of Satan’s Slaves. Later, in a 1976 article, Malzberg became more circumspect, reporting secondhand the doubts author Alfred Bester had expressed regarding John W. Campbell’s enthusiastic embracing of dianetics, rather than making another direct critique of his own (Malzberg, 1976). L. Sprague de Camp later warned of these widespread, aggressive, and litigious practices of the scientologists in El-Ron of the City of Brass:

More than one author has complained of harassment from outraged Scientologists by abusive letters and threatening telephone calls . . . While, so far as I know, none of these suits has ever come to trial they effectively discourage the publication of views unsympathetic to Hubbard and his followers. (Sprague de Camp, 1975, pp. 64-65)

There was a pattern in the magazines of the followers of dianetics employing ad hominem arguments, evading the burden of scientific proof and threatening legal action against critical opposition. Governments concerned about dianetics advocacy and practices have carried out their own due process, also often confrontational. Scientologists were finally granted payroll tax exemption in 1983 in Australia, following a series of state judgments and legal arguments. The rationale for this did not flatter Hubbard:

charlatanism is a necessary price of religious freedom, and if a self proclaimed teacher persuades others to believe in a religion which he propounds, lack of sincerity or integrity on his part is not incompatible with the religious character of the beliefs, practices and observances accepted by his followers. (Mason, Murphy, Wilson, Brennan, & Deane, 1983)

In France, scientologists were accused of defrauding French citizens (Bitterman, 2009), significant issues were raised in Germany (Moseley, 1997), and the church of scientology has pursued extensive litigation to achieve charitable status as a religion in a number of countries (Carobene, 2014; Richardson, 2009).

Conclusion

References to dianetics and scientology in the pages of sf magazines are not easily distinguished from those concerning pseudo-science and fads in general. John W. Campbell provided an initially positive platform in the pages of Astounding, but dianetics was subjected to immediate criticism in competitor magazines. Rational argument for independent scientific evaluation of dianetics was countered by rhetoric, which attacked or discredited critics, but implied, and actual, threats of litigation were not numerous during this period. Size and frequency of dianetics and scientology advertising fluctuated: Advertising changed cyclically from 1950 to 1984, when it ceased to appear in our sample corpus. There was a noticeable trend that might be associated with a resurgence of the scientology brand in the mid-1970s, and although it is beyond the scope of this article, parallel investigations of causes for such variations may be suitable subjects for further study.

Almost immediately after being revealed in ASF, dianetics became the subject of critical appraisal and analysis, parody, and satire, and there was no evidence that it was considered significant by readers and editors after the late 1950s. Soon after it emerged in the sf magazines, dianetics came to be considered irrelevant, rather than revolutionary. In later magazine issues, retrospectives attributed its emergence to an unsophisticated period when sf included many esoteric interests, such as the Heironymous Machine and the Shaver Mysteries—as one of many naïve beliefs, fads, cults, and deceptions promulgated in the history of sf.

The debate regarding dianetics and scientology revealed in the pages of the magazines is of particular significance considering the persistence of scientology to this day, despite being subject to consistent logical critique, and unmet demands for independently confirmed evidence. This might be explained by the success of scientologists in achieving recognition as a religion. Religions are reliant on faith, rather than empirical and replicable results, and a lack of scientific evidence may simply confirm the validity of scientology as a church, not answerable to demands for scientific proof.

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author is the recipient of an Australian Research Training Program Award for his research.

ORCID iD

Christopher Benjamin Menadue

Author Biography

Christopher Benjamin Menadue research is based in the digital humanities and the applied analysis of ephemeral literature. He currently works on how science fiction reflects human cultural values and experiences of social, environmental and technological change, how this can be inferred from people’s responses to and interests in science fiction, and the significance of science fiction in its original context. He employs a combination of literary and digital methods in his research analysis.

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Hubbard Bubble,Dianetics Trouble: An Evaluation of the Representations of Dianetics and Scientology in Science Fiction Magazines From 1949 to 1999

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Method

Data and Statistical Comparisons

Findings

Search Results

Content Analysis

Advertising

Advertising of dianetics and scientology

Advertising by competitors

Dianetics in Fiction

Editorials, Letters, and Features

Campbell and ASF

Marvel science stories

Other Worlds

Planet Stories

Letters

Letters to future—the debate in microcosm

Fanzines

Relevancy to sf, and the Magazines

Dianetics, the Shaver Mystery, and Fads

Van Vogt

Threats, Scorn, and Litigation

Conclusion

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Author Biography

References