I read Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health when it first came out in 1950, as did a number of friends and acquaintances. Since we were in college at the time and most of us had taken at least freshman psychology classes, it engendered a fair amount of discussion. It looked at the time as if it might be a promising new approach to psychology, hence the interest.

A couple of acquaintances got into it very deeply, followed when, a few years later, it morphed into Scientology. The idea of styling it as "a new religion" didn't appeal to me, but one person told me that this was primarily a "dodge," because, he claimed, "The Forces of Conventional Psychiatry" were trying to ban or outlaw Dianetics, so Dianeticists were trying to defend it by claiming that it was a religion in order to have First Amendment protection from persecution.

A couple of friends and I played around with the Dianetics part of it for awhile, and I eventually lost interest, especially when they got into such things as "operating Thetans" (being able to leave your body and travel freely through the Cosmos—fun idea, perhaps, but kinda "woo-woo.").

Some years later, I noticed that there was a "Church of Scientology" in the area. It was nothing more than a storefront office, but just to see what these folks had been up to recently, I dropped in. I wound up talking to an eighteen-year-old girl who was wearing a black skirt, jacket, and blouse with a white clerical collar. The kind of garb a female priest—if there ever were such an critter—might wear (I have since seen Pastor Shannon of the nearby Central Lutheran Church wearing such a uniform; she, however, is a genuine ordained minister). The young woman introduced me to her assistant. He was similarly dressed, a stern black suit, black shirt, and white "dog collar" (as Pastor Shannon calls it). He couldn't have been more than about eighteen himself.

After a conversation about "spiritual rehabilitation," I thanked them for their time and departed.

After what I thought could have been a promising beginning, they'd gone completely around the bend.

Josepp, I don't remember anything at all about Rosicrucianism and AMORC (I had a close relative who was into this), and some of the other things you mentioned, as being associated with Dianetics and Scientology. Perhaps this was later, but certainly not in the beginning.

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A brief critique of your article, if I may:   Right from the start, you make it plain that your purpose is to debunk the whole thing, without giving an accurate description of what it is all about. Your tone is negative right from the start, and much of what you describe doesn't seem to bear a great deal of resemblance to the Dianetics that I was acquainted with.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending Dianetics and Scientology. I personally (AND with some personal knowledge to base my opinion on) think it's all a load of codswallop and a great field for charlatans.

But as a presumable somewhat academic analysis of the subject, you make it plain right from the start that your purpose in writing about this subject is to do a hatchet-job.

At the very least, you need lots of footnotes and references, and preferably, a bibliography of material, to support your thesis..

Don Firth

P. S. I was thinking that L. Ron Hubbard was a halfway decent science fiction writer back before he started taking himself too seriously. Then I found out that one of his stories that I particularly liked, "Far Centaurus," was actually written by A. E. Van Vogt.