[religious brainwash] The Total Freedom Trap Scientology, Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard #8/27

No scientific evidence for these claims has ever been produced.

Once the first engram (or "basic-basic") has been erased, the individual is supposedly "Clear", free from all deficiencies, and possessed of a high IQ. After repeated challenges, Hubbard eventually put a Clear on show in August 1950, at the Shrine Auditorium, in Los Angeles. Despite Hubbard's claims that a Clear would have "a near perfect memory", the woman, a Physics major, was unable to remember a basic physics formula. She could not even recall the colour of Hubbard's tie when his back was turned.

Dianetics sold 150,000 copies before being withdrawn from sale by its publisher. The American Psychological Association cautioned would-be Dianeticists that no scientific evidence for the many claims made in Dianetics had been forthcoming. There can be no doubt that Hubbard had invented both cases and statistics to write the book.

Hubbard's following diminished as people realised that his claims were grossly exaggerated, and with the collapse of the first Dianetic Foundations and Hubbard's second marriage. Sara Hubbard charged that her husband had tortured her with sleep deprivation, drugs and physical attacks. She claimed that he had once strangled her until the eustachian tube to her left ear ruptured, leaving her hearing inpaired. Hubbard fled to Cuba, after seizing their baby daughter, in what proved to be a successful attempt to silence Sara.

With the backing of millionaire Don Purcell, Hubbard was able to return to the United States, where Sara accepted a divorce settlement. She withdrew her earlier claims, in return for their infant daughter, whom she had not seen for several months.

The new Wichita Foundation soon ran into trouble, and Hubbard abandoned it to its creditors, accusing Don Purcell—who had earlier saved him—of accepting $500,000 from the American Medical Association to ruin him. This was far from the last display of paranoia of Hubbard's part.

SCIENTOLOGY

"We've got some new ways to make slaves here."

-L. Ron Hubbard, Philadelphia Doctorate Course lecture 20, 1952.

February 1952 found Hubbard penniless, and stripped of both the rights to Dianetics and most of his following.