Here's an early version of chapter 4, "The origins of Scientology's hostility to psychiatry". Surprisingly, Scientology was actually quite conciliatory towards psychiatry until the mid-1950s. It's possible to trace the origins of Hubbard's antipathy to psychiatry to a narrow period — around July-August 1955. What triggered this change of attitude I haven't yet determined. See what you think.

• The Early 1950s: Dianetics
• The Response to Dianetics
• Dianetics versus medicine
• References

The origins of Scientology's intense antipathy to psychiatry in particular and the mental health profession in general are surprisingly difficult to track down. As with virtually every other aspect of Scientology, its views on psychiatry originated with its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. But why was he so vehemently opposed to the mental health profession and what prompted him to take this stance?

There is no sign that Hubbard's views originated in his personal experiences. There is no evidence that he ever underwent psychiatric treatment, though in October 1947 he wrote to the Veterans' Association requesting psychiatric examination and treatment to relieve his prolonged depression and suicidal thoughts ^[8]. There is no record of such an examination or treatment taking place. At any rate, there is nothing in his medical history to suggest a likely origin for his later views on the mental health profession.

The Early 1950s: Dianetics

His book, "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health," opens with an excoriating attack on "the practices of the 'neurosurgeon' and the ice-pick which he thrusts and twists into insane minds" in order to "reduce the victim to mere zombie-ism, destroying most of his personality and ambition and leaving him nothing more than a manageable animal." ^[9] But the book was far from being merely a rant about the failings of existing practices; its main theme was the theory and practice of Hubbard's radical new approach to do-it-yourself psychotherapy. Hubbard was certainly not hostile to psychologists and psychiatrists per se. His theories bore marked similarities to earlier ideas expounded by Freud at the Clark lectures at Worcester, Mass., forty years previously. Indeed, Freud was explicitly credited as an inspiration in some of Hubbard's earliest books, in dedications which have been removed in later editions.

In other respects, too, Hubbard did not display his later hatred for the mental health profession. Until the 1980s the book contained a preface by Joseph A. Winter, M.D., a Michigan physician who advised Hubbard on medical matters related to Dianetics until the two men fell out in 1951. He wrote of Dianetics "portend[ing] a new trend for psychological and psychiatric thought and practice" and proclaimed that it "offers to the medical profession, to psychiatrists, to psycho-analysts, to all who are interested in the advancement of their fellow men, a new theory and technique which makes accessible for therapy diseases and symptoms which hitherto were unusually complex and obscure." ^[10]

Hubbard himself involved psychiatrists in the development of Dianetics, right from the earliest days. The science fiction editor John W. Campbell in 1949 wrote to Dr. Winter informing him of Hubbard's researches: "With cooperation from some institutions, some psychiatrists, he [Hubbard] has worked on all types of cases." When Hubbard's first article on Dianetics was completed it was initially offered for publication to the Journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Psychiatry. Both rejected it on the ground of insufficient clinical evidence of the technique's effectiveness. A presentation given by Dr. Winter to a group of psychiatrists, educators and lay people in Washington, DC met with a similarly disappointing response:

Dianetics was eventually announced in the pages of Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction magazine. The follow-up book was published by Hermitage House, a small publisher of medical and psychiatric textbooks. The first edition of "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health" even had advertisements for psychiatric textbooks on the rear of its dust jacket.

It is particularly striking, given his later statements on the subject, that Hubbard counselled against reviling psychiatrists because of the "primitiveness" of their methods. Two sentences (my italics below) stand out especially in a lengthy footnote in which Hubbard addressed the failings of existing mental health practices:

This and other statements in the book give the strong impression that Hubbard's criticisms of psychiatry were for the purpose of contrasting rather than campaigning; that is, to contrast "the modern science" against the primitive methods of conventional psychotherapy, rather than campaigning outright against said psychotherapy in all its shapes and forms. That was to come later.

The Response to Dianetics

Dianetics strongly polarised opinion when it was launched in June 1950. Hubbard's therapy found most support amongst members of the public, who responded with enthusiasm to its promises. The book sold very well, appearing for many months on the bestseller list of the Los Angeles Times and other major US newspapers. Only two months after the publication of the book, Newsweek reported that over 55,000 copies had been sold and more than 500 Dianetics groups had been established nationwide. As the Los Angeles Daily News put it,

But Dianetics also aroused strong opposition. The FBI received many letters denouncing it as a Communist front, which neither the writers or the Bureau were able to substantiate. ^[14] Although some in the medical-scientific community responded positively to Dianetics, the more general response appears to have been scepticism or outright hostility. The Church of Scientology regards this as having been the opening salvo in the "war" between Scientology and psychiatry. To quote its head, David Miscavige:

It is certainly true to say that the majority of press reviews of Dianetics were unfavourable. Reviewers — primarily medical/scientific specialists, including Hubbard's friend and fellow sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov, a biochemist — attacked Dianetics principally on the basis of its lack of scientific plausibility or empirical evidence. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Isaac Isidor Rabi declared in Scientific American that "This volume probably contains more promises and less evidence per page than has any publication since the invention of printing." ^[16] A New York M.D., Dr. Martin Gumpert, denounced it as "a bold and immodest mixture of complete nonsense and perfectly reasonable common sense, taken from long-acknowledged findings and disguised and distorted by a crazy, newly invented terminology" and castigated "the repeated claim of exactitude and of scientific experimental approach, for which every evidence is lacking." ^[17] The Consumers Union later highlighted the mixture of professional rivalry and medical concern which underlay the strong opposition to Dianetics. Its rapid growth had "challenged the attention of the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and other professional and social welfare organizations," but it was "remarkable that society permits persons without any medical training to treat persons with every kind of mental and physical illness". ^[18]

Dianetics versus medicine

Part of the problem, as the medical and psychiatric professions saw it, was that Dianetics explicitly aimed to cure physical medical conditions, not just confining itself to making people happier or improving their mental health. Hubbard's ally John W. Campbell wrote in a trailer for Dianetics that

Among the "psychosomatic" conditions Dianetics claimed to cure or alleviate were asthma, poor eyesight, color blindness, hearing deficiencies, stuttering, allergies, sinusitis, arthritis, high blood pressure, coronary trouble, dermatitis, ulcers, migraine, conjunctivitis, morning sickness, alcoholism, the common cold and even tuberculosis. In total, Hubbard claimed in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, "70% of Man's listed ailments" could be cured through the use of Dianetics. Conventional medicine, he averred, was "an art, not a science"; Dianetics by contrast was "an organized science of thought built on definite axioms" which "contains a therapeutic technique with which can be treated all inorganic mental ills and all organic psychosomatic ills, with assurance of complete cure in unselected cases".

Hubbard was explicit and definite about his goals in the field of medical healing: "Bluntly, we are out to replace medicine in the next three years." ^[20] In a similar vein, he declared that "We are not even vaguely propitiative toward medicine or psychiatry, and we are overtly intent upon assimilating every function they are now performing." ^[21]

Dianetics and its 1952 successor, Scientology, were initially organised as a substitute for medicine and psychiatry in particular. Claims continued to be made for Dianetics' remarkable healing potential, for example: "Leukaemia is evidently psychosomatic in origin and at least eight cases of leukaemia had been treated successfully with Dianetics after medicine had traditionally [sic] given up. The source of leukaemia has been reported to be an engram containing the phrase 'It turns my blood to water.' " ^[22] In 1953 Hubbard began offering certificates to his Scientology "auditors" which were presented as being the equivalent of medical, specifically psychiatric, qualifications:

He also offered "doctorate" courses leading to a "D. Scn" (Doctor of Scientology) qualification which, he assured his followers, was "a very superior degree ranking with or above psychiatric degrees". ^[24]

At this time, Hubbard usually maintained that he was in dispute only with some of the medical/psychiatric profession. He repeatedly stressed that Dianetics had (despite all appearances to the contrary) found favour with ordinary psychiatrists and mental health practitioners, and that it was only their leaders who were causing problems. For example, in an article which he wrote in a Dianetics magazine in 1951, he claimed:

Needless to say, this never happened; nor were the identities of these "leading mental practitioners" ever revealed.

Hubbard's sweeping medical claims put Scientology into an increasingly awkward position with the medical authorities. Dianeticists and Scientologists had already been prosecuted in several states for practising medicine without a license. As well as declaring Scientology to be a religion in 1954, which improved its legal defensibility, Hubbard began to clarify his position on medical healing. He outlined Scientology's present position towards medical matters: providing spiritual improvement which causes incidental medical benefits, rather than aiming to provide both medical and spiritual benefits from the outset. As he put it:

As for medical doctors,

Entirely reasonable — except that by Hubbard's definition, this included 70% of all human ailments. This continues to be Scientology policy to this day.

Probably in response to continuing legal probes by the medical authorities, Hubbard's view shifted towards outright hostility to the psychiatric profession and its practitioners during the summer of 1955. His shift of opinion can be dated with some precision. His statements up to that summer had been relatively conciliatory towards psychiatry, with repeated statements of opposition to the leadership of mental health organisations and certain practices such as neurosurgery, but with assurances that ordinary mental health practitioners were quietly supportive of Scientology's objectives and that the organisation was not in conflict with them. In March of that year, he had declared:

A few months later, in July, he sent the FBI two more of his many denunciations of supposed communists. They show a highly significant evolution in his views of his critics: for what appears to have been the first time, he linked communists and psychiatrists together as part of an anti-Scientology front:

The attack on the HASI [Hubbard Association of Scientologists International], like the attacks on the 1950 Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation found psychiatry and Communist connected personnel very much in evidence and both active with defamation and very unreasonable — and unsuccessful — attack. ^[30]

In a bulletin issued that September he announced his new reasoning to his followers: