Perhaps Hubbard’s distorted views on abortion attempts were coloured by his own experiences. In an interview over 30 years after Dianetics was published, L. Ron Hubbard Jnr said he’d walked in on his father conducting an abortion on his mother, Polly. ‘He had a coat hanger in his hand. There was blood all over the place. I remember my father shouting at me, “Go back to bed!” A little while later a doctor came and took her off to the hospital.’39 Hubbard’s estranged son claimed he’d been born prematurely at six and a half months due to an attempted abortion. Hubbard himself had claimed his mother had tried to abort him as well.40
Hubbard wanted people to believe that all the ‘breakthroughs’ in Dianetics were original and based on his own scientific research. Yet he never provided a single case study on any of the 273 individuals he claimed to have worked on, nor did he offer his work up for peer review. Not one of these 273 ‘clears’ has ever come forward.
Prominent scientists were scathing of Dianetics. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Issac Isidor Rabi began his review in Scientific American with a damning assessment: ‘This volume probably contains more promises and less evidence per page than has any publication since the invention of printing.’41 Professor Rabi accused Hubbard of quackery and deception: ‘The system is presented without qualification and without evidence. It has borrowed from psychoanalysis, Pavlovian conditioning, hypnosis and folk beliefs, but, except for the last, these debts are fulsomely denied.’42
The American Psychological Association warned ‘these claims are not supported by empirical evidence’.43 A review in the Journal of Clinical Medicine described Dianetics as ‘nothing but a rumination of old psychological concepts, popularized and oversimplified, therefore, misunderstood and misinterpreted’.44 One doctor who did believe in Dianetics was Joseph Winter MD. The brother-in-law of John Campbell was an early convert to Dianetics, claiming it helped his six-year-old son conquer his fear of the dark.45 Winter wrote the introduction to the first edition of Dianetics and became the medical director of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation. But Winter’s introduction no longer appears in Dianetics; he resigned from the board before the year was out, alarmed at Hubbard’s attitude towards the medical profession, to scientific research and his developing belief in clearing engrams from past lives.46 Later, publisher Art Ceppos withdrew Dianetics from sale, when he came to the conclusion it was a scam. He replaced it with Winter’s critique Dianetics: A Doctor’s Report.
Despite hostility from doctors, scientists, psychologists and psychiatrists, Dianetics took off. By June it was on the New York Times bestseller list, staying there until Christmas Eve. In some weeks, according to John Campbell, Astounding Science Fiction was getting over a thousand letters about Dianetics.47 Enthusiasts embraced Dianetic counselling, known as auditing. As Hubbard’s biographer Russell Miller put it, ‘All over the country the same thing was happening: science-fiction fans were buying the book and auditing their friends, who then rushed out to buy the book so they could audit their friends.’48
Helen O’Brien, a pioneering executive in Hubbard’s expanding movement, claimed thousands of Dianetics clubs were formed across the US. ‘People everywhere embraced it as though they had found something which they had hungered for all their lives.’49 Hubbard had tapped into a nation that was ripe for some therapy. Over 16 million Americans served in the armed forces during World War II and many returned from overseas deployments suffering from what we now call post-traumatic stress.
Hubbard was also able to feed into growing anxiety about the Cold War and the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. The year before Dianetics was published, the Soviets tested their first atomic bomb. In 1950, Harry S. Truman sent American troops to war in Korea. There was even paranoia about enemies from within, with Senator Joseph McCarthy rising to national prominence in February that year, with his Lincoln Day speech about communists working inside the State Department.
Hubbard’s solution seemed so simple and cheap. For just US$4, you could buy a book that would unlock the secret to eradicating all neuroses, psychoses and psychosomatic ills. All you needed was a friend who had read Dianetics to audit you and you were away. But this wasn’t just self-help for the readers, it was helping to line Hubbard’s pockets in a way he could never have imagined. By the end of 1950, there were six Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundations across the country,50 running one-month courses that cost US$500 per student. One course in California had 300 participants.51 Auditing cost US$25 an hour, far more than it cost to see a psychotherapist.
The money was flooding in. As Hubbard’s second wife, Sara, recalled, ‘He used to carry huge amounts of cash around in his pocket. I remember going past a Lincoln dealer and admiring one of those big Lincolns they had then. He walked right in there and bought it for me, cash!’52 Sara claimed the business turned over US$1 million in 1950, and not all of it was accounted for. Helen O’Brien told the story in Dianetics in Limbo of one member quitting Hubbard’s first research foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey, over unscrupulous accounting practices. ‘He still retained copies of the bookkeeping records that made him decide to disassociate himself from the Elizabeth foundation, fast,’ she said. ‘A month’s income of US$90,000 is listed, with only US$20,000 accounted for.’53
While dodgy accounting practices were yet to catch up with Hubbard, the lack of scientific evidence to back up his theories was about to come under the spotlight. Given that the goal of Dianetics was to eradicate engrams and produce individuals who were ‘clear’, if there was no evidence of anyone reaching this state, Dianetics was failing to deliver what it promised. Hubbard could vividly describe the abilities of a ‘clear’; for example, ‘full memory exists throughout the lifetime, with the additional bonus that he has photographic recall in color’. But a key question remained unanswered. How could he be so sure of the powers of a ‘clear’, if there was no evidence of anyone attaining this status? The pressure was on Hubbard to publicly present someone who had attained perfect recall through Dianetics.
In August 1950, Hubbard chose the Shrine Auditorium, a 6000-seat theatre in Los Angeles, as the place he would present on stage the ‘World’s First Clear’. The theatre was packed with a mixture of Hubbard devotees, sceptics and reporters. Hubbard introduced to the stage Sonia Bianca, a physics major from Boston who had ‘full and perfect recall of every moment of her life’.54
The world’s first ‘clear’ walked onto the stage to rapturous applause. A nervous Bianca explained to the audience that Dianetics had cleared her sinus problems and a painful itch she had in her eyebrows. Hubbard asked her a few questions before opening it up to the crowd. Not surprisingly, the audience questions were a little trickier than Hubbard’s.
‘What did you have for breakfast on 3 October 1942?’ shouted one wag. ‘What’s on page 122 of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health?’ asked another.55 Sonia Bianca’s purported perfect memory floundered. She couldn’t even remember basic physics formulas she was studying at college. Audience members started to leave, many taking pity on the unfortunate Miss Bianca. Towards the end of the debacle one man noticed that Hubbard had his back to the student and yelled out, ‘What colour necktie is Mr Hubbard wearing?’56 Staring into the darkness of the crowd, Bianca racked her brain, desperate for some kind of cue. She could not remember the colour of her mentor’s tie. Hubbard had humiliated both his first ‘clear’ and himself in front of 6000 people.
Most people would struggle to overcome such a public repudiation of their beliefs and reputation. Not Hubbard; he had an explanation for what went wrong. When he asked Sonia Bianca to step onto the stage ‘now’ he had given her a verbal command that froze her in present time, blocking her memory.57 Hubbard would not make the same mistake again. Thousands more would be designated ‘clear’, but there would be no more public demonstrations of their special powers.
CHAPTER 4
DIANETICS GOES SOUTH
IT WAS IN AMONG Essendon’s weatherboard homes, lock-up shops and m
anufacturing workshops, that Dianetics got its first, unlikely foothold in Australia. D’Arcy Hunt was Hubbard’s pioneering messenger. The Californian had migrated to Melbourne’s northern suburbs in 1951 to marry his sweetheart Dorrie. He would tell anyone who would listen about the marvels of the ‘modern science of mental health’. Hunt’s mission became his profession when he set up consulting rooms in Essendon, as Melbourne’s first professional dianeticist.
While Essendon was one of the sprawling suburbs benefiting from post-war development, in many ways it was stuck in a bygone era. Lloyd’s Ice Works still delivered large blocks of ice to homes that did not have refrigerators.1 The local mayor’s annual Egg Appeal collected tens of thousands of eggs to assist hospitals and charities.2 The Essendon branch of the Housewives Association met regularly in nearby Moonee Ponds.
Still, Essendon in the 1950s was not completely immune from the shock of the new. In that decade, the local airport received its first international passenger flight,3 entrepreneur Frank McEncroe opened up a factory to mass-produce his new takeaway snack sensation, the Chiko roll,4 while 2 km down the road an unusual ambassador for Melbourne’s northern suburbs emerged, in the form of Edna Everage, the housewife superstar of Moonee Ponds.
Into this environment rolled D’Arcy Hunt, pushing Hubbard’s theories about engrams and reactive minds in a close-knit community more interested in going to the football, than going ‘clear’. Fortunately, Hunt was familiar with lost causes. Like Hubbard, he had spent time in the Pacific during the war. But while Scientology’s founder avoided action after his Navy ship was diverted away from the Philippines, Hunt found himself stuck in Manila as Japanese troops overwhelmed the capital.
The Stanford graduate had spent much of the 1930s and ’40s working as a waiter on passenger ships that sailed between Manila, Honolulu and the US mainland.5 In 1942, he found himself in the wrong port at the wrong time, becoming one of the over 5000 American civilians shunted into internment camps in the Philippines.5 Hunt was to be a prisoner of the Japanese for the next three years, one month and 17 days.7
When the Philippines were liberated, Hunt returned home and set up a photographic studio in San Francisco. A friend in Pasadena alerted him to Hubbard’s experiments with processing before Dianetics was even published.8 After the book’s release in 1950, D’Arcy Hunt rushed down to his local bookstore and ordered a copy.9 He embraced Dianetics immediately, holding his first auditing session with a young engineering student. ‘We flipped a coin to see who would lay down on the couch first,’ recalled Hunt, ‘and away we went.’10
Hunt and around 20 other Dianetics enthusiasts formed a group in San Francisco and co-audited each other.11 When Hubbard lectured in Oakland in September 1950 over four consecutive nights, Hunt was among the crowd of devotees and curious onlookers.12 Before long he was supplementing his photographic business with some after-hours auditing.
Almost a year to the day after Hubbard released Dianetics, D’Arcy Hunt flew to Melbourne to marry his fiancée Dorrie.13 He set up a Dianetics group similar to the one he had been a part of in San Francisco. The group met informally in backyards on a Sunday afternoon.14 As the informal sessions grew more popular, Hunt set up shop as a professional dianeticist.15
In November 1951, Don Greenlees, a reporter with The Argus, visited Hunt’s rooms in Essendon, describing him as ‘quiet-spoken, balding 30-odd,’ with ‘a reassuring manner’. D’Arcy Hunt explained that ‘many members of Alcoholics Anonymous attributed their downfall to early compulsions over the milk bottle’, and that ‘phrases such as “drink up it’s good for you” had set up a chain reaction which caused them to drink’.16
D’Arcy Hunt had a talent for recruiting. One Sunday evening he spied Treasure Southen lecturing at the Theosophical Hall in Collins Street. Afterwards, he approached her and asked, ‘Have you read the latest American book on psychology?’17 Grief-stricken after the death of her daughter, Southen had sought solace in theosophy. But Hunt quickly convinced her Dianetics would help her even more. He loaned her his copy and Southen read it three times. ‘I felt this is what we needed,’ she said. ‘It had helped me so much that I felt I wanted it to help others.’18
Southen formed her own Dianetics group, advertising in the local press and holding group audits with around 20 people in her home at Balwyn in East Melbourne. Another group sprang out of her circle, meeting at Ascot Vale,19 while a larger group evolved out of Hunt’s backyard sessions, meeting in the city at the Victoria Railways Institute building in Flinders Street. A two-line advertisement was placed in The Argus spruiking for people interested in Dianetics.20 Soon around 70 or 80 people were turning up to their Friday night meetings.21
The pioneering advocates of Dianetics were a colourful bunch. In Sydney, Edgar Oswald Haes held meetings at the Australian Psychology Centre in Pitt Street. The author of The Release of Psychic Energy, Haes was a man who was not afraid of unfashionable ideas. In the 1940s, he lectured about the harmlessness of masturbation and the importance of the female orgasm, while railing against corporal punishment in schools.22 In 1951, he started advertising Dianetics literature.23 The following year he started lecturing on the new ‘science of the mind’.24
While interest was growing in Australia, things were not running smoothly in the birthplace of Dianetics. Hubbard was not behaving like a man who held the secrets to a happier, saner, more ethical life. His marriage to Sara was a trainwreck and his behaviour towards her was appalling. He beat her, strangled her, and at one stage ruptured the Eustachian tube in her left ear.25 Sara wrote in an affidavit that strangulation was a ‘frequent practice’ of Hubbard’s.26
Hubbard wanted Sara out of his life, telling her, ‘I do not want to be an American husband for I can buy my friends whenever I want them.’27 Divorce was not an option for Hubbard, he was concerned it would harm his reputation. He told Sara if she really loved him, she ‘should kill herself’.28
Sara was not just Hubbard’s wife, she was also the mother of his second daughter. Two months before Dianetics was published, Sara gave birth to a nine-pound redhead they named Alexis Valerie. Hubbard described her as the ‘first dianetic gestation and delivery in history’,29 who was ‘doing at three weeks what she should be doing at three months’.30
At 11 months of age, Alexis was exposed to the full force of her father’s madness when Hubbard kidnapped his infant daughter and took her to Cuba. Concerned about the risks Hubbard’s violent and irrational behaviour posed to her and Alexis, Sara had sought out a psychiatrist. After she documented the physical and emotional abuse she had been through, the psychiatrist advised that ‘Hubbard be committed to a private sanitarium for psychiatric observation and treatment’.31 When Sara confronted her husband with this assessment, Hubbard threatened to kill Alexis. ‘He didn’t want her to be brought up by me,’ Sara said, ‘because I was in league with the doctors.’32
On 24 February 1951, Sara went to the movies, leaving Alexis in the care of John Sanborn, a young staffer at the Los Angeles Dianetics foundation. At 11 pm, Hubbard and two colleagues abducted Alexis, then returned two hours later to kidnap Sara, threatening her that she would never see Alexis again unless she cooperated. Sara was then driven to San Bernardino where Hubbard tried to get her committed, but there were no doctors available at the county hospital in the early hours of the morning.33
Next, they drove to Yuma, Arizona, where a few hours later, a truce was negotiated. Hubbard would release his wife and tell her where Alexis was if she signed a statement saying she had travelled with Hubbard voluntarily. Sara agreed to the demands, and headed back to Los Angeles to be reunited with her daughter. Hubbard headed to the local airport, where he reneged on his deal, arranging for Alexis to be taken out of Los Angeles before Sara returned. A couple was then paid to drive Alexis across the country to New Jersey. Hubbard flew to the East Coast where he picked up Alexis then headed to Cuba.34 Once there he placed her in a crib covered with wire while he binged on rum and rambled into a dictaphone. Ric
hard de Mille, the adopted son of moviemaker Cecil B DeMille (the pair spelled their surnames differently), turned these ramblings into Science of Survival, the follow-up to Dianetics.35
Out of her mind with anxiety, Sara searched for Alexis throughout California for the next six weeks, before filing a writ of habeas corpus, accusing Frank Dessler from the Los Angeles Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation of holding her child.36 Sara’s lawyers accused Hubbard, Dessler and Richard de Mille of conspiring to kidnap her daughter.37
On 23 April 1951, Hubbard received the divorce papers he was so keen to avoid. Sara filed a 13-page complaint in Los Angeles County that included allegations that Hubbard ‘repeatedly subjected plaintiff to systematic torture, including loss of sleep, beatings, and strangulations and scientific torture experiments’.38 Hubbard was accused of drugging his wife, kidnapping their child and forcing Sara to ‘hourly fear of both the life of herself and of her infant daughter’.39 The sensational allegations made news across the world. Brisbane’s Courier-Mail led their coverage with the headline ‘Sanity “Expert” Mad, Claims Wife’.40
At the time, Sara received support from the woman who understood most what she was going through. ‘Ron is not normal,’ wrote Hubbard’s first wife, Polly, in an empathetic letter to Sara. ‘Your charges probably sound fantastic to the average person – but I’ve been through it – the beatings, threats on my life, all the sadistic traits you charge – twelve years of it.’41 Sara would eventually get her daughter back, but not before Hubbard wrote to the FBI accusing her of being a drug addict and a communist.42 A follow-up letter to the Attorney-General two months later claimed Sara and ‘members of the communist party’ had destroyed his ‘half a million dollar operation’.43
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