STOP! BEFORE YOU OPEN THIS BOOK, CHECK YOUR COMMON SENSE AT THE DOOR!
As a science fiction writer, Hubbard knew about cognitive dissonance, the feeling of discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs. Like when you are trying to make some scientific data fit in with what you know is right and it doesn't quite go together. Hubbard handled it by telling us that if you are having a hard time grasping his information, or if you disagreed with one of his theorems, that you have a misunderstood word. He makes you responsible for your own discomfort and tells you how to fix it. You just have to re-define everything you know and you will be alright.
The problem with Dianetics is, you must negate common sense, medical fact and true intellectual thought in order to accept Dianetic theory. He makes you believe his statements by saying, "All these things are scientific facts, tested and rechecked and tested again. And with them can be produced a clear on whom our racial future depends.", but he provides no documentation. Let's just take a look at a few examples.
This first one stretches the imagination a bit:
"A patient is urgent in her insistence that her father raped her when she was nine and that this is the cause of all her misery. Large numbers of insane patients claim this. And it is perfectly true. Father did rape her, but it happened she was only nine days beyond conception at the time. The pressure and upset of coitus is very uncomfortable to the child and normally can be expected to give the child an engram which will have as its content the sexual act and everything that was said."
Of course to accept this, you have to believe that an embryo 4 days past the zygote stage is capable of intellectual thought and is able to determine sexual activity from rape, as well as biology. Actual science tells us that these concepts are not available to us until several years after birth.
Or there is the case of the male negro who had convulsions when audited on prenatal life:
"The convulsion proved to be twenty engrams nearer birth than the basic which lay on another chain and which was discovered by dream technique. The convulsion was caused by the dramatization of an engram involving the injection of turpentine into the uterus by the mother in an attempted abortion. The main engramic chain consisted of the mother's efforts to abort herself. From engramic content it was gathered that the mother was a prostitute, for as many as twenty experiences of coitus succeeded two of these abortion attempts. . . The basic chain contained many quarrels about money between the mother and her customers. The basic incident. . . was found to lie about twenty days after conception, when the mother first discovered her pregnancy."
Hm. It seems like Hubbard was hung up on abortion. Look at these:
"The basic proved to be a mutual abortion attempt by the mother and father. The mother said she would die if anyone found out.... The father said the baby was probably like her and he didn't want it. Eighteen penetrations of the head, throat and shoulders with a long orange-wood stick - probably in third month. Several similar incidents completed this chain. Coitus followed each attempt at abortions. Another incident proved to be basic without a chain and with innumerable locks: an attempted abortion by a professional abortionist who used some form of needle and scraper."
And this.
"Attempted abortion is very common. And remarkably lacking in success. The mother, every time she injures the child in such a fiendish fashion, is actually penalizing herself. Morning sickness is entirely engramic, so far as can be discovered, since clears have not so far experienced it during their own pregnancies. And the act of vomiting because of pregnancy is via contagion of aberration. Actual illness generally results only when mother has been interfering with the child either by douches or knitting needles or some such thing.... morning sickness evidently gets into a society because of these interferences such as attempted abortion, and, of course injury."
And lastly:
"And in the case of the ulcers, here was baby poked full of holes (Mama is having a terrible time trying to abort him so she can pretend a miscarriage, and she uses assorted household instruments thrust into the
cervix to do it) and some of the holes are through and through his baby's abdomen and stomach : he will
live because he is surrounded by protein and has a food supply and because the sac is like one of these puncture-proof inner tubes that seals up every hole. (Nature has been smart about attempted abortion for a long, long time.)"
Hubbard has come up with the cause and cure of morning sickness. Right. If you really believe that, I have a bridge in San Francisco that I would love to sell you. Also, if you poke holes through a baby's stomach or any of its vital organs, it is going to die. It is not going to live to be audited 20 years down the line. And last, the amniotic sac is not some self-sealing inner tube. If the baby is not well sufficiently developed to be born, it will die without some surgical assistance.
Let me know your thoughts on this. Thanks for dropping by. I hope to see you soon.