Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, sometimes abbreviated as DMSMH, is a book by L. Ron Hubbard describing a pseudoscientific set of ideas, Dianetics, that would later become part of Scientology. Hubbard claimed to have developed it from a combination of personal experience, basic principles of Eastern philosophy and the work of Sigmund Freud. The book is considered part of Scientology's canon. It is colloquially referred to by Scientologists as Book One. Published in 1950, the book launched the movement that Hubbard later characterized as a religion. As of 2013, the Scientology organization's publishing arm, New Era Publications, sells the book in English and in 50 other languages.
In the book, Hubbard wrote that he had isolated the "dynamic principle of existence", which he states as the basic command Survive!, and presents his description of the human mind. He identified the source of human aberration as the "reactive mind", a normally hidden but always conscious area of the mind, and certain traumatic memories (engrams) stored in it. Dianetics describes counseling (or auditing) techniques which Hubbard claimed would get rid of engrams and bring major therapeutic benefits.
The work was criticized by scientists and medical professionals, who note that the work has no scientific basis and that the claims presented in the book are written in superficially scientific language but without evidence. Despite this, Dianetics proved a major commercial success on its publication, although B. Dalton employees have stated these figures were inflated by Hubbard's Scientologist-controlled publisher, who had groups of Scientologists each purchase dozens or even hundreds of copies of Hubbard's books and then sold these back to the same retailers. Adam Clymer, a New York Times executive and journalist, said the newspaper examined the sales patterns of Hubbard's books and uncovered no instances in which vast quantities of books were being sold to single individuals.
Background
Before the publication of Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard was a prolific writer for pulp magazines. He attended George Washington University engineering school, but did not graduate. The Church of Scientology considers the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health as a representation of Hubbard's concepts of "the human mind, its functions, and the problems related to these functions." Hubbard presented Dianetics as a "therapeutic technique with which can be treated all inorganic mental ills and all organic psychosomatic ills, with the assurance of complete cure in unselected cases." In this body of work, Hubbard also attested that human beings are motivated "only" by survival.Lewis, James R. Handbook of Scientology. 1st ed., vol. 14, BRILL, 2017.
According to Hubbard, the ideas in Dianetics were developed over twelve years of research, although many of his friends at the time said this claim is false. The first public outline of those ideas was an article in the pulp magazine Astounding Science Fiction, titled "Dianetics: A new science of the mind" appearing a few weeks before the publication of the book but published in the May 1950 issue of the magazine, the same month the book was published; the book-length article was later published as the book Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science. This advance publicity generated so much interest that in April 1950, Hubbard and Astounding editor John W. Campbell with other interested parties established the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation. Hubbard claimed to have written Dianetics in three weeks. His writing speed was assisted by a special IBM typewriter which accepted paper on a continuous roll and which had dedicated keys for common words like the or but. An early version of the book, Abnormal Dianetics, intended for the medical profession, was rejected by numerous publishers as well as the medical profession but was passed in mimeograph form from hand to hand and was later sold under the name Dianetics: The Original Thesis; the same book is published at present as The Dynamics of Life. Like other works by L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health has been subject to continuous editing since its inception so that at present it hardly resembles the original 1950 edition.
Content
According to religion scholar Dorthe Refslund Christensen, in Scientology, DMSMH represents "the most elaborate of Hubbard's presentations on the human mind, its functions, and the problems related to these functions." The opening chapter presents the context of Dianetics as human beings being preoccupied with "finding a science of the mind that could not only isolate the common denominator of life and the goal of thought" but also isolate the only source of "strange illnesses and aberrations". Hubbard claims that the two answers to the question of human misery across time and civilizations have been religion and magical practices and modern psychotherapy that includes the practice of electroshocks and brain surgeries, which according to him, have turned patients into "helpless zombies". Dianetics, he claims is the answer to this dilemma.
In the section "How to Read this Book", L. Ron Hubbard suggests to read right on through. An "Important Note" appeared in later editions of the book advising the reader to understand every word read. In the book, Hubbard uses two different and contradictory definitions for the word engram. In Book One, the Goal of Man, chapter 5, summary, Hubbard states the Fundamental Axioms of Dianetics, among which is "The engram is a moment of 'unconsciousness' containing physical pain or painful emotion and all perceptions and is not available to the analytical mind as experience." Later in the text, Hubbard writes of the engram in a footnote on page 74 of Book Two, chapter two, of the 2007 edition of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. The footnote reads: "The word engram in Dianetics is used in its severely accurate sense as a 'definite and permanent trace left by a stimulus on the protoplasm of a tissue'. It is considered as a unit group of stimuli impinged solely on the cellular being." In other words, Hubbard takes a definition previously debunked by biology and labels it Dianetics. Dianetics, in and of itself, thus presents nothing that was not already known to science in that area, while adding phenomena and functional systems that have no basis in fact. Robert Todd Carroll, writing in the Skeptic's Dictionary, characterises Hubbard's work as essentially anti-science, in that the claims made in the books are based not on peer-reviewed observation of phenomena, with its attendant blind testing, control groups etc., but rather on an a priori decision that a phenomenon exists–followed by an attempt to prove its validity.
In Dianetics, to explain the abilities of a Clear, Hubbard makes use of tropes and special idioms and draws the attention away by pointing to old colloquialisms as the "mind's eye". Hubbard uses such terms as "optimum recall", "optimum individual", "What a Clear can do easily, quite a few people have, from time to time, been partially able to do in the past", "A clear uses imagination in its entirety", "Rationality, as divorced from aberration, can be studied in a Cleared person only", a Clear's intelligence is above normal, a Clear is free from all aberrations and the attributes of a Clear have never been previously included in a study of man and man's inherent abilities. After faithfully attributing all kinds of benefits to the Clear state, Hubbard finally admits "Until we obtain Clears, it remains obscure why such differences should exist" as if no Clear has ever been made or no Clear ever made it. L. Ron Hubbard was extremely apt and able in using these tropes to suit Dianetics presentation of a new reality.
Through Dianetics, Hubbard claimed that most illnesses were psychosomatic and caused by engrams, including arthritis, dermatitis, allergies, asthma, coronary difficulties, eye trouble, bursitis, ulcers, sinusitis and migraine headaches. He further claimed that dianetic therapy could treat these illnesses, and also included cancer and diabetes as conditions that Dianetic research was focused on.
In 1951, Consumer Report announced a one-month $500 course, based on the recently published Dianetics, open to anyone and intended to produce the Clear, the goal of Dianetic therapy. The report on "a new cult" places Dianetics beyond the scope of medical practice.
According to Hubbard, the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health follows the original line of research:
A) The discovery of the dynamic principle of existence and its meaning. B) The discovery of the source of aberration: the reactive mind. C) Therapy and its application.
Hubbard leaves out all the basic philosophy.
Dianetics purports to reveal revolutionary discoveries about the source of psychosomatic illness, neuroses and other mental ailments, as well as an exact, infallible way of permanently curing them. Hubbard divides the human mind into an "analytic mind" which supposedly functions perfectly, and a "reactive mind" which is incapable of thinking or making distinctions. When the analytic mind is unconscious, the reactive mind physically records memories called "engrams". As a result of all stimuli it receives, the Reactive Mind is a mass of engrams, feeding the otherwise perfect Analytical Mind incorrect data. Misinterpretation of these Reactive Mind engrams by the analytical mind causes damage later in life. Actually, these engrams cause compulsions and repressions in later life. According to Hubbard, a person is affected in later life by the unconscious effects of these engrams. By a process called "Dianetic auditing", the book promises, people can achieve a superhuman state called "Clear" with superior IQ, morally pure intentions and greatly improved mental and physical health. In August 1950, Hubbard predicted that Clears would become the world's new aristocracy, although he admitted that he had not achieved the state himself. In welcoming expectancy, the Theosophist Magazine compares the Dianetic engram to the Theosophic permanent atom as these atoms receive and retransmit impressions received life after life so that as the ego descends to a new birth, the new incarnation receives the stored impressions of engrams from previous lives. As the appearance of a new science, it was not so explicitly stated in DMSMH but eventually, Hubbard would go into the exploration of past lives with Dianetics.
A) The dynamic principle of existence: Survive!
According to Hubbard, the basic discovery is not that man survives, but that he is solely motivated by survival.
B) The single source of aberration: The Reactive Mind
According to Hubbard, the Reactive Mind works solely on a stimulus-response basis and it stores not memories but engrams.