Дианетика: Современная наука о психическом здоровье

1950 book by L. Ron Hubbard
the book

Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, sometimes abbreviated as DMSMH, is a book by L. Ron Hubbard about Dianetics, a pseudoscientific system that he claimed to have developed from a combination of personal experience, basic principles of Eastern philosophy and the work of Sigmund Freud. The book is considered part of Scientology's canon. It is colloquially referred to by Scientologists as Book One. The book launched the movement, which later defined itself as a religion, in 1950. As of 2013, New Era Publications, the international publishing company of Hubbard's works, sells the book in English and in 50 other languages. In this book, Hubbard wrote that he had isolated the "dynamic principle of existence", which he states as the basic command Survive!, and presents his description of the human mind. He identified the source of human aberration as the "reactive mind", a normally hidden but always conscious area of the mind, and certain traumatic memories (engrams) stored in it. Dianetics describes counseling (or auditing) techniques which Hubbard claimed would get rid of engrams and bring major therapeutic benefits. The work was criticized by scientists and medical professionals, who note the work is pseudoscientific and observe that the claims presented in the book are written in superficially scientific language but without evidence. Despite this, Dianetics proved a major commercial success on its publication, although B. Dalton employees have stated these figures were inflated by Hubbard's Scientologist controlled publisher, who had groups of Scientologists each purchase dozens or even hundreds of copies of Hubbard's books and who sold these back to the same retailers. Adam Clymer, a New York Times executive and journalist, said the newspaper examined the sales patterns of Hubbard's books and uncovered no instances in which vast quantities of books were being sold to single individuals. The Church of Scientology considers the book: Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health as a representation of Hubbard’s concepts of “the human mind, its functions, and the problems related to these functions.” Hubbard presented Dianetics as a “therapeutic technique with which can be treated all inorganic mental ills and all organic psychosomatic ills, with the assurance of complete cure in unselected cases.” In this body of work, Hubbard also attested that human beings are motivated “only” by survival. According to Hubbard, the ideas in Dianetics were developed over twelve years of research, although many of his friends at the time said this claim is false. This advance publicity generated so much interest that in April 1950, Hubbard and Astounding editor John W. Campbell with other interested parties established the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation. Hubbard claimed to have written Dianetics in three weeks. His writing speed was assisted by a special IBM typewriter which accepted paper on a continuous roll and which had dedicated keys for common words like the or but.

Hubbard believed in the ability of Dianetics to cure illnesses, and also claimed that most pathologies had a psychosomatic origin. "Psychosomatic disorders were estimated by Hubbard to include 70 percent of all illnesses and were exemplified by asthma, arthritis, dermatitis, allergies, some coronary difficulties, eye trouble, bursitis, ulcers, sinusitis, migraine headaches etc., while mental disorders were neuroses, psychoses, compulsions, serious depressions, etc." Hubbard later stated that Dianetics had nothing to do with psychosomatic illness: "Dianetics today is a science of ability. It has no traffic with psychosomatic illness or aberration. It does not care a whit about these two things. Dianetics today can be prepared to expect out of an asylum, or off a mount, alike some benefit to mankind." a New York based publisher of psychiatric textbooks whose president, Arthur Ceppos, was also on the Board of Directors of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation. The book became a nationwide bestseller, selling over 150,000 copies within a year. Due to the interest generated, a multitude of "Dianetics clubs" and similar organizations were formed for the purpose of applying Dianetics techniques. Hubbard himself established a nationwide network of Dianetic Research Foundations, offering Dianetics training and processing for a fee. Dianetics blossomed into a national fad and was then denounced by psychologists. The original edition of the book included an introduction by J. A. Winter, M. D., who became the first medical director of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, an appendix on "The Philosophic Method" by Will Durant (reprinted from The Story of Philosophy, 1926), another on "The Scientific Method" by John W. Campbell and a third appendix by Donald H. Rogers. These contributions are omitted from editions of Dianetics published since about the start of the 1980s.

Despite its positive public reception, Dianetics was strongly criticized by scientists and medical professionals for its scientific deficiencies. Dianetics received very negative reviews from the majority of sources. An early review in The New Republic summed up the book 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 warned of medical risks: "it may prove fatal to have put too much trust in the promises of this dangerous book." Frederick L. Schuman, political science professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts became an ardent follower of Dianetics and wrote indignant letters to those who reviewed Dianetics adversely including the New Republic and The New York Times. Schuman wrote a favorable article on Dianetics in the April 1951 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. Dianetics received two favourable reviews from medical doctors. An editorial in Clinical Medicine summarized the book as "a rumination of old psychological concepts,  misunderstood and misinterpreted and at the same time adorned with the halo of the philosopher's stone and of an universal remedy", which had initiated "a new system of quackery of apparently considerable dimensions." According to Consumer Reports, the book over extends scientific and cybernetic metaphors, and lacks the needed case reports, experimental replication and statistical data to back up its bold claims. Both Consumer Reports and Clinical Medicine also warned of the danger that the book would inspire unqualified people to harmfully intervene in others' mental problems. These warnings were echoed by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who contrasted the sophistication of Sigmund Freud's theories with the "oversimplified" and "propagandistic" ideas offered by Dianetics. The latter's extremely mechanistic view of the mind had no need for human values, conscience or any authority other than Hubbard himself. A similar point was made by psychologist Rollo May in The New York Times, arguing that Dianetics unwittingly illustrates the fallacy of trying to understand human nature by invariant mathematical models taken from mechanics. A review by semantics expert S. I. Hayakawa described Dianetics as fictional science, meaning that it borrows several linguistic techniques from science fiction to make fanciful claims seem plausible. Science fiction, he explained, relies on vividly conveying imaginary entities such as Martians and rayguns as though they were commonplace. Hubbard was doing this with his fantastic "discoveries", and the reviewer refers to the possibility that Hubbard might "succeed in concealing the distinction between his facts and his imaginings from himself." The review in The American Journal of Psychiatry made similar observations: "[Hubbard's] previous efforts in the realm of scientific fiction writing have subtly prepared him for that nice ignorance of reality without which he could not have developed this epic. Certain bits of internal evidence such as his insistence on the frequency of abortions, his cruel fathers, his unfaithful mothers, his blundering doctors, his arrogance toward authority, may indicate the author's own systematized paranoid delusions." Science writer Martin Gardner criticized the book's "repetitious, immature style" likening it to the grand pseudoscientific pronouncements of Wilhelm Reich. "Nothing in the book remotely resembles a scientific report", he wrote. More recently, the book has been described by Salon as "a fantastically dull, terribly written, crackpot rant", which covers a lack of credible evidence with mere insistence and The Daily Telegraph called it a "creepy bit of mind mechanics" which would cause rather than cure depression. When Hubbard wrote the book in 1950, homosexuality was considered a pathological illness and in 1951 the DSM I listed it under Sexual Deviation which stance was reflected in passages of Dianetics where homosexuality is considered a mental illness. Besides the homosexual as sexual pervert, Hubbard also includes things such as lesbianism, sexual sadism and all the catalog of Ellis and Krafft Ebing as being actually "quite ill physically". Karl Lashley spent decades looking for the engram which he abandoned in 1950 for non localized memory. This was not the same type of engram described by Hubbard. However, Hubbard derived his ideas and the term "engram", from psychology sources, and biology. Richard Semon coined the term "engram" in 1904 and wrote extensively about it in 1921, decades before the publication of Dianetics.

It is unclear how many editions there have been, but at least 60 printings are said to have been issued by 1988, almost all having been printed by the Church of Scientology and its related organizations. Current editions are published by Bridge Publications and New Era Publications, Scientology owned imprints. Over twenty million copies have been sold according to the cover of the latest paperback books. The following statement is included on the copyright page of all editions: "This book is part of the works of L. Ron Hubbard, who developed Dianetics spiritual healing technology and Scientology applied religious philosophy. It is presented to the reader as a record of observations and research into the nature of mind and spirit, and not a statement of claims made by the author". According to Bridge Publications, 83 million copies of Dianetics were sold in the forty years after publication. The book has been very aggressively marketed, often in ways that are unusual for the book industry, for instance appearing as one of the twelve sponsors of the Goodwill Games under a $4 million agreement between Bridge Publications and Turner Broadcasting System. Bridge Publications also sponsors NASCAR racer and Scientologist Kenton Gray, who races as the "Dianetics Racing Team" and whose No. 27 Ford Taurus is decorated with Dianetics logos. Various sources allege that the book's continued sales have been manipulated by the Church of Scientology and its related organizations ordering followers to buy up new editions to boost sales figures. However, Dianetics was not added to the collection of the Brooklyn Public Library on the basis of a negative review.