From: cultxprt@indirect.com (Jeff Jacobsen)
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Subject: CofS critique part 6
Date: 25 May 1994 06:29:08 GMT
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                           THE HUBBARD IS BARE        
PART 6
                            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.
          
      
     
     HUBBARD'S SOURCES
     
          Advance comes from asking free-minded questions of nature, 
          not from quoting the works and thinking the thoughts of 
          by-gone years.1
     
        There is certainly no book in existence quite like Dianetics,
     with its wild scientific claims and unsubstantiated arguments. 
     The claim is that dianetics was a totally unique theory of the
     mind wrought from Hubbard's "many years of exact research and
     careful testing."2 But was it rather a loose composite of already
     existing theories mixed with novel, unproven ideas?  Despite
     Hubbard's claims of originality, many of the ideas in dianetics
     were already existing and even in vogue before dianetics
     appeared.  Either Hubbard really studied other (uncredited) works
     before he wrote Dianetics, or he wasted years of his time
     re-inventing the wheel.
        Although there are no reference notes in Dianetics to see what
     are Hubbard's ideas and what are borrowed, we can quickly
     eliminate the idea that dianetics appeared "from the blue" by
     Hubbard's own statements.  In Dianetics itself is the statement
     that "many schools of mental healing from the Aesculapian to the
     modern hypnotist were studied after the basic philosophy of
     dianetics had been postulated".3  Alfred Korzybski, Emil
     Kraepelin, Franz Mesmer, Ivan Pavlov, Herbert Spencer, and others
     are mentioned as resources in Dianetics, so we must assume
     Hubbard was crediting these people to some degree.  He must
     certainly have known, then, of at least some of the research from
     his time which will be mentioned in this article.  Hubbard in
     other settings acknowledged Sigmund Freud (especially through
     Commander "Snake" Thompson),4 Count Alfred Korzybski,5 and
     Aleister Crowley,6 as contributors to his ideas on the human
     mind.  In a speech in 1958, Hubbard stated that he had spent much
     time in the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital medical library in 1945
     during a stay for ulcers, where "I was able to get in a year's
     study."7
        In fact, many of the theories and ideas in Dianetics can be
     found in scientific and philosophical literature previous to the
     first publishing of Hubbard's theories.  Parts of Dianetics, for
     example, have striking resemblance to two articles found in
     Volume 28 (1941) of the Psychoanalytic Review.
        Dianetics theory posits the existence of engrams.  These are
     memories of events that occur around us when our analytical mind
     is unconscious, and they are recorded in a separate area of the
     mind called the reactive mind.  A seemingly unique theory in
     Dianetics is that these memories begin being stored "in the cells
     of the zygote - which is to say, with conception."8  These
     engrams can cause problems for the person throughout life unless
     handled through dianetics auditing.
        Dr. J. Sadger, nine years before the introduction of Dianetics
     in 1950, wrote that several of his patients were not cured of
     their psychological problems until he had taken them back to
     their existence as sperm or ovum.  He declared that "there exists
     certainly a memory, although an unconscious one, of embryonic
     days, which persists throughout life and may continuously
     determine an action."9  Sadger spends much time explaining how
     his patients' memories of the time when they were zygotes or even
     sperm or ovum had affected their adult behaviors, noting that "an
     unconscious lasting memory must have remained from these
     embryonic days."10   There were "unmistakable dreams" of being a
     sperm in the father's testicle.
        Engrams, those unconscious memories in dianetics, are said by
     Hubbard to be stored in the cells of the body and passed on to
     their clone cells and finally on to the adult being.  Hubbard
     claimed to discover that "patients sometimes have a feeling that
     they are sperms or ovums... this is called the sperm dream."11 
     It was impossible, he claimed, to deny to a pre-clear that he
     could remember being a sperm.  But Sadger wrote about this first,
     and Hubbard could well have read this in his "year's study" at
     Oak Knoll Hospital.
        Another coincidental "discovery" of Hubbard and Sadger was
     that mothers often attempt to abort their child.  Sadger states
     that "so many a fall or other accident of a pregnant woman is
     nothing else than an attempt at abortion on the part of the
     unconscious, not to mention those cases where the mother seeks to
     free herself more or less forcibly from the unwanted child."12  
     Hubbard concurs; "Attempted abortion is very common,"13 and in
     fact "twenty or thirty abortion attempts are not uncommon in the
     aberee".14  Again, not an idea "from the blue."
        Life in the womb was not very kind, according to one of
     Sadger's patients; "Perhaps when father performed coitus with
     mother in her pregnancy I was much shaken and rocked.  Shall that
     have been one reason that I so easily became dizzy and that all
     my life I have had an aversion even as a child from swings and
     carousels?"15  Hubbard, in a similar vein, insists that the
     mother "should not have coitus forced upon her.  For every coital
     experience is an engram in the child during pregnancy."16  "Papa
     becomes passionate and baby has the sensation of being put into a
     running washing machine."17
        There are at least three other similarities like the "sperm
     dreams", commonality of abortion attempts, and fetus discomfort
     during parental sex.  This seems quite a coincidence, but it is
     not known whether Hubbard read Sadger's article.  Suffice it to
     say that these are major ideas in dianetics, but they are not new
     ideas.
     
        The second article under discussion from Psychoanalytic Review
     deals with the unbearable conditions during birth and the affects
     of these in later life.  Grace W. Pailthorpe, M.D., argued in
     this 1941 article that patients should be psychoanalyzed more
     deeply into the period of infancy, or at least to the 'trauma of
     birth'.  Otherwise no lasting therapeutic effect could be
     expected.  Birth has traumatized all of us, she declares, and
     these unconscious memories drive us in our adulthood.  "It is
     only when deep analysis has finally exposed the unconscious
     deviations of our vital force"18 that we can recover and enjoy
     life.  
        "It was no obscure theory," wrote Hubbard, "which brought
     about the discovery of the exact role prenatal experience and
     birth play in aberration and psychosomatic ills."  He
     coincidentally concurs with Pailthorpe's obscure theory, however.
        With Pailthorpe's article, for example, we can also note the
     dramatic similarities of dianetics with simple Freudian
     psychoanalysis.  There is in both the return to past times in the
     patient's life to search for the source of his or her current
     problems.  Once these problematic memories are discovered and
     treated the problems vanish.  In Pailthorpe's article we have a
     man who was hopelessly traumatized by the events at his birth. 
     He was cruelly kicked out of his "home" in the womb, and his
     resistance to this was assumed to be the cause of the immediate
     traumas of the nurse's and mother's attentions (which were
     "painful to the child's sensitive body"19).  These traumas caused
     headaches and social disorders in adult life.  Psychoanalysis
     discovered the causes (birth trauma) and when these were brought
     to the conscious level with their meaning explained, the
     headaches and social dysfunctions were alleviated.
        Dianetics follows this line of reasoning to a great degree. 
     According to Hubbard, engrams (past traumas) are discovered in
     the pre-clear's past, and bringing these engrams into
     consciousness (from the reactive to the analytic mind) alleviates
     the disorder.  Hubbard claims that after auditing people (he had
     the pre-clear lie on a couch in Freudian imitation),
     "psycho-somatic illness...by dianetic technique...has been
     eradicated entirely in every case."20 
        In Dianetics, the reader is left with the impression that the
     ideas of birth and pre-birth memories and traumas, multiple
     abortion attempts, and fetal discomfort in the womb are new
     discoveries.  As can be seen, this is not the case.  And there
     are many impressions of "new" and "unique" that are incorrect as
     well. 
     
     THOMAS HOBBES
     
        Another important "discovery" of Hubbard's is that "Man, as a
     life form, can be demonstrated to obey in all his actions and
     purposes the one command: 'Survive!'."21   Hubbard's four
     "dynamics" of self, sex (meaning procreation), group, and
     mankind, all deal with survival of man.  Although Hubbard makes
     grandiose claims that he discovered that man's ultimate goal is
     survival, one can trace this idea back to Thomas Hobbes, an
     English philosopher who wrote in the 1600's.  In his famous work,
     Leviathan, Hobbes wrote; "The Right of Nature... is the Liberty
     each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the
     preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life;
     and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement,
     and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means
     thereunto."22  This, in Hubbard's terms, is the first dynamic, or
     personal survival.  Leviathan is divided into three parts, on
     Man, Commonwealth, and Darkness.  The first, in Hubbard's terms,
     could be said to deal with the first dynamic (self-survival), and
     the second with the third dynamic (group survival).  "The finall
     Cause, End, or Designe of men... in the introduction of that
     restraint upon themselves (in which wee see them live in
     Common-wealths), is the foresight of their own preservation."23 
     Again we have an idea which Hubbard claims to have discovered,
     found in another's writings years earlier.
        Coincidentally (?), Hobbes has some other ideas in common with
     Hubbard.  At the beginning of every dianetics and Scientology
     book is this note: "In reading this book, be very certain you do
     not go past a word you do not understand."24  Throughout both
     dianetics and Scientology training is the notion that words must
     be clearly understood before course study can continue.  This is
     a useful suggestion, and many Scientologists may believe Hubbard
     "discovered" this idea, but Hobbes stressed it over 300 years
     before Hubbard did.  In Leviathan, Hobbes derided others whose
     ideas he was critical of thusly; "The first cause of Absurd
     conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method; in that they begin
     not their Ratiocination [argument] from Definitions; that is,
     from settled significations of their words."25  Hobbes covers
     this idea several times, stressing that "in the right Definition
     of Names, lyes the first use of Speech; which is the Acquisition
     of Science: and in wrong, or no Definitions, lyes the first
     abuse; from which proceed all false and senselesse Tenets."26
        I will leave it to the reader to investigate the other similar
     ideas between Hobbes and Hubbard, and will leave the question
     open whether Hubbard borrowed rather than discovered these ideas,
     since again there is no complete list of what books Hubbard had
     read.
     
     
     1 DIANETICS, p. 173
     2 DIANETICS, p.ix of 1975 edition.
     3 DIANETICS, p.165.
     4 BARE-FACED MESSIAH pp.230-1
     5 L. Ron Hubbard, cassette tape, "Introduction to Dianetics",
     Dianetics Lecture Series 1.  1950.  Bridge Publications, Inc.
     6 L. Ron Hubbard, Philadelphia Doctorate Course series, cassette
     #18
     7 L. Ron Hubbard,"The Story of Dianetics and Scientology" , 1958
     cassette tape #581OC18
     8 DIANETICS, p.176.
     9 Dr. J. Sadger, "Preliminary Study of the Psychic Life of the
     Fetus and the Primary Germ."  PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW July 1941 
     28:3. p.333
     10 Sadger, p.343-4.
     11 DIANETICS, p.391.
     12 Sadger, p.336.
     13 DIANETICS, p. 211.
     14 DIANETICS, p.214.
     15 Sadger, p.352.
     16 DIANETICS, p.214.
     17 DIANETICS, p.176.
     18 Grace W. Pailthorpe, M.D., "Deflection of Energy, As a Result
     of Birth Trauma, and its Bearing Upon Character Formation" (The
     Psychoanalytic Review, vol. 27, pp.305-326) p.326
     19 Pailthorpe, p.307.
     20 DIANETICS, p.123.
     21 DIANETICS, P.29
     22 Thomas Hobbes, LEVIATHAN (London; Penquin Books, 1968) p.189
     23 LEVIATHAN, p.223
     24 DIANETICS, p.vii
     25 LEVIATHAN, p.114
     26 LEVIATHAN, p.106


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



