Will Sorg-

In the opening chapter of the worst book I have ever read, Scientologist founder and human airbag L. Ron Hubbard describes his pseudo-scientific text as an adventure that will change the reader. This is true. I was changed by this book. However, this adventure and subsequent change was not like Around The World in 80 Days or 10,000 Leagues Under The Sea. It was more of a Dante’s Inferno style of adventure. A journey into the heart of darkness that brought nothing but despair and pure misery. Here’s why.

Dianetics is a fake psychological practice that was invented by Hubbard in the 50s. It is far too confusing and complicated to explain in this review so I will try to boil it down. According to Hubbard, human beings have two minds: reactive and analytical. The analytical mind is without flaw and is the cause of all good things in humanity. Meanwhile, the reactive mind is a holdover from evolution that causes all of humankind’s problems. Hubbard argues that whenever we experience traumatic events or become unconscious, our reactive mind creates these things called “Engrams” (a term stolen from a different, actual scientist) which record the traumatic events and then manifest that trauma in various ways. Dianetics involves a patient (called preclears) being treated by an unlicensed therapist (called auditors) through a process that boils down to talk therapy and word association games. In the end, these “Engrams” are deleted from the reactive mind after the patient is supposedly able to perfectly re-experience traumatic events from their past. Keep in mind these “Engrams” can be recorded while in the womb and even as an unfertilized egg.

Does this sound stupid? It is far more dumb than you think. “Engrams” are not related to the specific trauma, rather they are related to the words that were said during the trauma. So if someone says “You need to take as much as you can” while you are unconscious in the womb, you will manifest that by becoming a kleptomaniac. Hubbard’s book is a repetitive, hilariously unscientific slog. What few talents he had as a writer are overshadowed by the pure insidiousness of the text. The book was published in 1950, right after WW2, and is clearly preying on people’s desire for mental and physical healing. Hubbard was a snake oil salesman with books instead of potions. He preyed upon people who were rightfully wary of the way 20th-century medicine often abused mentally ill patients and he rather successfully drew people in with promises of an alternative to lobotomies and shock therapy.

It cannot be overstated how idiotic this book is. To begin with, it is over 400 pages long and is filled with plodding descriptions of likely falsified case studies. Hubbard simultaneously trusts his reader far too much and equally seems to believe no one reading it has more than a middle school education. The book is full of strange literary, naval (Hubbard was obsessed with the navy), and cultural references that do nothing but illustrate how well-read Hubbard was. Yet he also goes to great lengths to explain simple concepts, and he explains those concepts multiple times throughout the book. On top of this, the book’s claims are so overconfident that it’s almost funny. The book offers a dangerous argument that 90% of all illnesses –physical and mental– can be cured by Dianetics. At least 7 times in the book he writes “This is not a theory, this is [a] scientific fact” after making claims that Dianetics can cure color blindness, schizophrenia, and even cancer.

So why did I even read this? First off, I find the idea of seriously reviewing the foundational text of one of America’s largest cults for an April Fools joke to be a hilarious idea. Second, as I read the whole book (and I did read it all), I realized that it partially informs the modern landscape of scams. Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was a complete scam artist. He stole ideas from Freud, Crowley, and plenty of other influential people and he used them to cobble together an incomprehensible mess that looks and sounds like an actual scientific book. The resulting dumpster fire of literary evil created the spark of Scientology and led to loads of money for L. Ron and a vast web of suffering for the victims of his cult. Hubbard knows what he’s writing is bullshit. There is a lot of careful editing done over the years to make much of the book impossible to prove or disprove. It’s a labyrinth of doublespeak that works because it preys on people who are willing to try anything that might make them feel better. The book is deliberately manipulative in the way that it fills the reader with inspiring words about the power of the mind, the potential of humanity, and a solution to nearly every problem.

Hubbard’s manipulation that Dianetics is the only true way for humanity to ascend to a better world would only get worse as he pivoted from grifter to straight-up cult leader, but he was always an awful person who only cared about money. He cheated on pretty much every woman he was ever with. He is blatantly racist, homophobic, and misogynistic in the book. He was anti-abortion, anti-psychology, and had a deep preoccupation with pregnancy, barely going a chapter without mentioning abortions or sex during pregnancy. All in all, Hubbard was a complete and utter ghoul who never did a thing unless it benefitted him. His legacy is a cult that uses intimidation tactics, slave labor, and exploiting the real estate market to remain relevant. So while Dianetics and Scientology as a whole have mainly become a vessel for Tom Cruise jokes, it is important to know how quickly scams like Dianetics can get out of control.

Now living in the post-internet age, there seems to be a thousand new scams a minute. We need to treat them seriously, lest we get another L. Ron Hubbard and, by extension, another Scientology.