From: cultxprt@indirect.com (Jeff Jacobsen)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: CofS critique part 1
Date: 24 May 1994 07:21:05 GMT
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                           THE HUBBARD IS BARE        
INTRO
                            by Jeff Jacobsen
                               PO Box 3541
                               Scottsdale, AZ  85271

     copyright 1992 by Jeff Jacobsen
     may be reprinted so long as it is kept in its entirety and not 
     edited.
          
      
      
      INTRODUCTION
     
        In June of 1989 I was in Chicago at a large used book sale,
     one of the largest in the country.  I stumbled upon Physical
     Control of the Mind, by Jose Delgado.  Delgado had experimented
     with various animals by placing electrodes in certain parts of
     the brain, then passing an electrical signal to those electrodes. 
     By this process he could induce behavior in the animal.  Delgado
     became a notorious figure to me when I had read some of his
     experiments while researching mind control for a college paper.
        In discussing the brain's development, Delgado made the
     following statement about the writings of psychoanalyst Robert
     Sadger;
     
         Sadger reported that when he could not relate some patients'
         neuroses to their embryonic periods, he induced them to 
         recall what happened to their original spermatazoa and ova, 
         or even to remember possible parental attitudes which could 
         have produced a trauma in their delicate germinal cells 
         before conception.  Sadger maintained that these cells have 
         a psychic life of their own with the capacity to learn and 
         to remember.1
     
        This sounded strikingly like some theories I had read in
     Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health, by L. Ron
     Hubbard.  I had been reading and studying Hubbard's works, and
     had even written a tract critical of his Church of Scientology
     after studying the church's doctrine and history.  Dianetics
     seemed to be full of new and unique theories and ideas, but
     Delgado's statement caused me to wonder whether perhaps Hubbard
     had not actually ripped off some of his ideas instead of
     discovering them.  Sure enough, the reference date on Sadger's
     article was 1941 - eight years before Dianetics was published! 
        That was the beginning of the booklet you are about to read. 
     I had studied Hubbard's works since 1986, and had taken an
     introductory course in about 1983 (which included some "Book one"
     auditing).  By the time of the Chicago book sale, Hubbard's
     writing style, wacky theories and smugness were wearing on me,
     and I hoped to begin a study on electrical brain stimulation -
     hence the interest in Delgado.  But since the revelation hit that
     Hubbard borrowed rather than invented his theories, it seemed to
     be a ripe and exciting subject to pursue.
        The reason I thought this was an exciting topic was Hubbard's
     insistence that he came up with his ideas by himself and that
     they were as monumental a breakthrough from what came before as
     was the discovery of fire to the cavemen.  If it could be shown
     that dianetics was simply a synthesis of previous ideas, then
     Hubbard would be exposed as a huckster and fraud.  And I don't
     like hucksters and frauds.
        Generally speaking, it is my contention that Hubbard did no
     credible research of his own.  Instead he distilled ideas from
     books he had read, the few college courses he took, his own
     experiences, and his very fertile and disturbed mind, and came up
     with a mish-mash of bizarre theories which he wrote down in
     scientific-sounding phrases and words.
        The ideas Hubbard borrowed were generally bizarre ideas to
     begin with, and his fertile, twisted mind altered and embelished
     them to produce an even worse hodge-podge.
       It is a mammoth task to try to piece where Hubbard took ideas,
     since there is no definitive list of works he had read.  He did
     in the early years of dianetics credit some people such as
     Korzybski, Freud, and some others, but Sadger, for example, never
     shows up in any credit by Hubbard.  Thus, one has to pick an idea
     (from dianetics or some writing) and practice a little detective
     work to see whether the idea originated elsewhere.  Of course,
     this bares me to criticism that I am simply reading dianetics
     back into some work that just happens to sound like dianetics,
     but in fact what I am trying to show is that almost none of the
     ideas in Dianetics is new or unique, as Hubbard claims. My goal
     is not so much to trace back to the definite source where Hubbard
     took ideas, but to demonstrate that his "new" and "unique" ideas
     are neither.  But I think it is possible to show  that Hubbard
     absolutely stole ideas from some definite sources, such as Sadger
     and some others without ever crediting their works.  The examples
     I have been able to uncover I am convinced are just the tip of
     the iceberg.  There are ideas, for example, from William L.
     Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (which
     coincidentally was first published in 1950) that I find markedly
     reflected in the organization of Scientology.  Were it possible
     to get a list of what Hubbard read, I am certain that a very
     large volume could be written comparing what he read to what he
     wrote.  It is most certainly clear that Hubbard was first and
     foremost a synthesizer of ideas, not a creator.
     
        Some of the sections in this booklet are the culmination and
     conclusion of about 5 years' part-time research into Hubbard's
     teachings.  I wanted to put down what I had learned in order to
     move on to other topics.  
        Towards the completion of this work, I was reading the
     Australian "Report of the Board of Inquiry Into Scientology" from
     1965, and was amazed to see that some of my research was a
     repetition of that work.  The advantages to the Australian report
     are that they were able to call many actual experts to give their
     opinion of Hubbard's theories.  They also had representatives of
     Scientology at hand who were allowed to present evidence as well,
     although they apparently did not produce anything that negates
     anything in my writings.  This is a wonderful document despite
     its age, and I highly recommend it to anyone wishing to delve
     deeper into the subjects I have written about in this work.
        Actually, there should be no need to write about Hubbard's
     ideas at all, since most of them are so absurd and indefensible.  
     Hubbard's writing style is grandiose, difficult, exasperating,
     and just plain wacky.  But despite all this, there are still
     around 70,000 Scientologists today who consider Hubbard a genius
     and live their lives according to his dictates.  Scientology
     still actively advertises and recruits the unwary, and so long as
     this is happening, those of us who know better must speak out and
     expose the lies and deceits.   The way scoundrels win is by
     having no opposition.  One of Hitler's first official acts when
     he became chancellor was to silence his critics.  If we as
     critics remain silent, Scientology can go a long way, and Hubbard
     knew this - hence the constant attacks by Scientology on its
     perceived enemies.
     
     
     1 Jose M.R. Delgado, M.D.  PHYSICAL CONTROL OF THE MIND (Harper
     Colophon Books, New York, 1969) P.47-8.
     
     
     


--
cultxprt@indirect.com
Jeff Jacobsen
PO Box 3541
Scottsdale, AZ  85271      Here I stand - I can do no more.



