26Chapter 22. Hubbard and Dianetics: Merchants of Manufactured Happiness

On September 3, 1950, the New York Herald Tribune Book Review published a critique of a book that its own author claimed represented “a cornerstone for Man comparable to the discovery of fire and surpassing in importance the inventions of the wheel and the bow.”

Thirty-nine years old. American. Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. He preferred to go by his initials—L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986). Former merchant marine sailor. A moderately successful science fiction writer, author of hundreds of short stories and novellas across genres: sci-fi, adventure, Westerns. Now this man was claiming something entirely different. The book was titled Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. What if the single root of all evil had been found? Hubbard declared that he had done precisely that—uncovered the singular source. Of all neuroses. Psychoses. Criminal tendencies. Psychosomatic illnesses. One origin point for infinite human suffering—and now exposed. But the real revelation was yet to come. The grand unveiling: Hubbard claimed to possess a method that could completely cure every disorder. Absolutely every one.

The man assigned to review this book was no ordinary critic. Erich Fromm. 1900–1980. By then, one of the most prominent names in global psychoanalysis. A German Jew. In 1934, he left Germany for good—fleeing the Nazi regime. One of the founders of neo-Freudianism, a movement merging Freud’s ideas with social and cultural theory. Author of already-published works: Escape from Freedom (1941), Man for Himself (1947). His expertise in psychoanalysis? Virtually unrivaled. His authority in mental health? At the time of publication—near absolute. And so this man—with such a name, such a background, such weight—sat down to write his review.

Fromm’s critique of Dianetics was bluntly titled: “For Seekers of Instant Happiness.”

Fromm began by outlining the state of society. Never before, he wrote, had people been so intensely interested in psychology and the art of living as in the mid-20th century. After the horrors of world war, the collapse of long-held values, and the disillusionment with ideologies, millions were searching for answers—about life’s meaning, personal happiness, how to build relationships, how to better themselves. This was natural. Even healthy.

But among the books catering to this need, he identified two distinct categories. Some were wise, serious, grounded in real knowledge—helping readers work on themselves with the understanding that true growth requires time, effort, and brutal honesty. Others pandered to laziness, promising fabricated happiness cheaply and quickly. Dianetics, Fromm wrote, belonged squarely to the latter. Its author, Hubbard, “employs all the clichés of the success formula with a surprising lack of embarrassment.”

What exactly does Hubbard promise? Everything. Absolutely everything. Any mental disorder. Any psychosomatic pain. He claims to have uncovered the root. The single cause of all ailments at once. He calls them “engrams.” Invisible scars. Imprints of past nightmares. They lie trapped in the “reactive mind,” paralyzing the “analytical mind.” Consider this: one mechanism—responsible for psychosis, stomach ulcers, and migraines alike. One cause—for the entire catalog of human afflictions. But with his technique, he says, if you burn away, “clear” the flesh and mind of these engrams—the chain is broken. Before you stands a Clear. Clear. A person freed from sickness. A person who has forgotten neurotic reactions. Intelligence—above average. Memory—flawless. Mental health—impeccable. A perfect machine. Perfect control.

Hubbard’s book, Fromm wrote, draws on “philosophical foundations” of diverse origins: ancient Hindus, early Greeks and Romans (including Lucretius), the works of Francis Bacon, Darwin’s research, and scattered thoughts of Herbert Spencer. But, Fromm continued, the genuine connection between Dianetics and these teachings is close to zero. Dianetics “undoubtedly does not derive from these doctrines.”

Instead, Fromm concluded, “Dianetics” represents something entirely different: a poorly understood and inverted Freudianism, spiced up with new terminology and regression experiments from the era of hypnotism. The human being in Dianetics is not the complex, multidimensional, freedom-seeking entity described in the great Eastern and Western traditions. In Hubbard’s view, man is a machine, a mechanism, an engineered system. Working with him comes down to pressing buttons. “In such an engineering science as Dianetics, we work by pressing buttons,” Hubbard himself described his method. You don’t need to know or understand anything; just apply Hubbard’s theory of engrams.

Fromm delivered a harsh verdict. “Hubbard’s book,” he wrote, “is difficult to seriously consider as a contribution to the science of man. However, it must be taken with full seriousness as a symptom of a dangerous tendency. If it were merely a highly simplified popularization of Freud’s early theories, it would be harmless. But ‘Dianetics’ is an expression of a spirit diametrically opposed to Freud’s teachings.”

Fromm’s review is a document from 1950. At that time, Hubbard was just one of many popular authors in the “self-help” genre. No one yet foresaw what his movement would become a decade later.

1952. Hubbard makes his move. Dianetics is just a sketch. Now they take center stage—“spiritual beings.” Thetans. An endless cycle of reincarnation. And the main shock: capture. Evil alien civilizations enslaved them millions of years ago. The blood runs cold. Are we puppets in a cosmic prison? Hubbard struck. The new doctrine was given a name: “Scientology.” Scientology. The translation hits like a hammer: “the science of knowing.” 1953. The next step. Hubbard registers the Church of Scientology. Formally—a religious organization. In reality? Tax benefits in the U.S. The perfect cover. Money started flowing in rivers. Decades passed. What began as a doctrine grew into something monstrous. An international corporation. Thousands of employees. Tens of thousands of full-time workers. Its own fleet. Its own “educational centers.” Control over a significant portion of property and capital. An empire built on thetans and tax benefits tightened its grip.

Fromm couldn’t have foreseen this in 1950. Yet as his biographer Rainer Funk would later note when publishing the long-lost review in 2005—after it spent half a century in oblivion—Fromm’s insight proved astonishing. Even then, he recognized in Dianetics what would decades later become one of the world’s most controversial religious corporations.

I won’t analyze Scientology as an organization in depth here—that’s a separate subject worthy of its own voluminous studies. Plenty already exist: I’ll direct readers to works like Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear or Alexander Skorodumov’s Anti-Scientology: A Critique of Hubbardism’s Doctrinal Foundations and Technologies. But consider these titles for a moment. Lawsuits. Criminal cases. Internal scandals. Defectors. Shattered families. Financial fraud across multiple countries. What does an empire woven from such facts conceal? Courts have the answer. France and Belgium ruled it a criminal enterprise at the judicial level. Germany denies it religious status. In 2015, Russia liquidated the central “Church of Scientology Moscow” by order of the Moscow City Court.

But our focus isn’t there. What matters is how Scientology and Dianetics occupy a specific niche within the pandemic of madness—and why understanding that niche is crucial.

Hubbard’s niche operates differently than Hellinger’s or Vianna Stibal’s.

Hellinger and Stibal deal in individual services. Clients pay for sessions, attend, receive them, leave. The relationship ends—or resumes if they return.

Hubbard built something else entirely: a totalizing machine. A system that consumes devotees’ lives step by step until nothing remains outside it. How does it begin? With deceptive simplicity. With cheap bait. A free “personality test” at any center—gentle, harmless, like a hand resting lightly on your shoulder. The first course, “Diagnosis,” costs a pittance. A coin drops into the slot; the mechanism clicks softly. Then comes the “Communication” course. Step. Another step. The person’s inside now. Next—advanced levels. “The Bridge.” The Bridge to Total Freedom. Each rung pricier than the last. The scent of others’ money no longer repels. Each demands more time. The pulse adapts to its new rhythm. Each step—another tether cut. Family. Friends. Career. External life thins, withers, sloughs away like dead skin. Meanwhile, the invisible thread pulls tighter. And binds. Irrevocably. To the organization.

At a certain level, devotees learn the “secret doctrine”—the myth of Xenu, an evil galactic dictator who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of alien souls to Earth, incinerated them in volcanic eruptions, and left their scattered “thetans” clinging to living humans as the source of all misery. Until journalists exposed it in the 1980s, believers only accessed this doctrine after years and tens of thousands spent on the “Bridge.” Scientologists deny its existence; court records from numerous lawsuits prove otherwise.

For our topic, this is crucial: Dianetics is the foundation of this pyramid. It is where the journey of the adept begins. And it is Fromm’s review that marks the first serious academic condemnation of this foundation—a review written three years before Scientology itself emerged as an organization.

Now, why is all of this important for our book on the pandemic of madness?

Because Hubbard illustrates yet another mechanism employed by modern pseudoscience in the realm of mental health.

The first mechanism is mystical. Hellinger and Stibal use it. The client is told: “You have a generational program / a blocking belief in your DNA, and we’ll work through it via a connection to the field / the Creator.” Everything points to invisible forces, untestable and unverifiable.

Here’s the second mechanism. Pseudoscience. Hubbard is its primary operator. Notice: he almost never uses the word “spirit.” He doesn’t talk about “energy.” His vocabulary is different. “Engineering science.” “Reactive mind.” “Analytical mind.” “Engrams.” And the punchline—“the sole source of all neuroses.” What is this? Language. But what kind? Mimicry. A mimicry of science. Of technicality. Of modernity. And here’s the detail. The device. The “E-meter.” A handle. A case. Resembling a primitive galvanometer. Presented as a scientific instrument. And what does it do? “Measures engrams.” Think about that. Measures. Engrams. One question: Where’s the evidence?

The difference between mysticism and pseudoscience lies in their aim—their target audience. Mysticism attracts those whose minds are already open to “spiritual” language, those ready to believe. Pseudoscience aims more precisely. Its target is rational individuals, those who rely on logic but lack the training to distinguish real science from its imitation. They turn away from the “spiritual,” scoff at it, and are therefore utterly defenseless against pseudoscientific language. Engineers, financiers, programmers—they are the victims of this category of fraud. A family constellation practitioner? “It’s all superstition,” the engineer will sneer. They won’t go there. But a Scientology center? “It seems like science,” they’ll nod. And step right into the trap.

The third mechanism—we’ll see it in the next chapter—is the authority of social media. There, neither mysticism nor pseudoscience is needed. Charisma and a large following are enough.

All three mechanisms operate on the same foundation: the gaps left by scientific psychiatry—the lack of quality, accessible care, the long waits to see a doctor, distrust of “pills,” fear of diagnosis, and the natural desire for a quick, simple answer to a complex problem.

And here’s another crucial thought that must be voiced outright.

Hubbard, like Hellinger and Stibal, didn’t emerge from nowhere. He arose as a response to a real problem. That problem was the weakness and limitations of scientific psychiatry in his era.

1950. Dianetics is already written. And psychiatry lies in ruins. Hospitals are overflowing. Not with the wounded. Not with acute cases, but with chronic ones. People who don’t leave—because there’s nowhere to send them. They just lie there. For years. Lobotomy? A scientifically recognized treatment. In just a few months, Egas Moniz will receive a Nobel Prize for it. In medicine. For slicing up brains. Insulin comas. Standard procedure. A patient is put into a coma—deliberately, for hours—to snap them out of psychosis. Or fail to. Electroshock. Without anesthesia. The body contorts in an arch. Teeth shatter. This is treatment. And the first antipsychotic—chlorpromazine—hasn’t even been synthesized yet. It’s still two years away. Psychotherapy? Sure. Psychoanalysis. Long. Expensive. With unclear effectiveness. This was the pit it all grew from. This was the alternative on the table.

A person suffering from anxiety, depression, family issues, or psychosomatic problems would go to a psychiatrist—and receive either nothing at all or a lobotomy. There were almost no alternatives.

Into this void stepped Hubbard. He declared: “Come to me. I am science. I cure everything. Quickly. Reliably. Cheaply (at first).” And thousands followed. Not because they were foolish—but because real medicine had nothing to offer them.

This is an important lesson. The pandemic of madness thrives not only on the despair of its victims and the greed of healers. It feeds on a real vacuum—a black hole left behind by scientific medicine: underdeveloped, underfunded, poorly organized, ethically flawed. Who fans these flames? Every psychiatrist who has given up on a patient. Every healthcare system where people languish for months waiting to see a specialist. Every government that turns a blind eye to mental health programs. Every school that remains silent about mental hygiene. Each one of them is complicit.

Our response is not merely to expose fraudsters. Our response is to build genuine psychiatry that is accessible, scientific, ethical, and timely. Only then will the vacuum cease to form. Only then will the market for the countless offerings of “manufactured happiness” vanish.

Erich Fromm lived another thirty years after that review. He died in Switzerland in 1980. He witnessed the rise of Scientology but did not live to see its decline—though that downfall has yet to come. His warning from 1950 remains relevant today. And it will stay relevant as long as humans crave a quick and easy answer to the question of how to be happy.

There is no answer. There is only a path. And this path is not what Hubbard, Stibal, Hellinger, regression therapists, or their thousands of modern imitators offer.

The Path is evidence-based medicine, evidence-based psychotherapy, honest self-reflection, and acknowledging that our inner lives are complex and resistant to engineering optimization. It may sound less flashy than “pushing buttons”—but it actually works.

RED FLAG. If a method requires “levels,” “stages,” and “initiations,” each more expensive than the last; if the full picture of the teaching is revealed only to the “advanced” practitioners; if those who leave are declared enemies—what you’re facing isn’t a school or therapy. It’s a funnel. You either escape funnels immediately or not at all.