Mockingbird's Nest

Sunday, January 2, 2022

The Hidden Tribes of America

A year-long project of More in Common launched in October 2018.

America has never felt so divided. Bitter debates that were once confined to Congressional hearings and cable TV have now found their way into every part of our lives, from our Facebook feeds to the family dinner table. But most Americans are tired of this "us-versus-them" mindset and are eager to find common ground. This is the message we’ve heard from more than 8,000 Americans in one of our country’s largest-ever studies of polarization: We hold dissimilar views on many issues. However, more than three in four Americans also believe that our differences aren’t so great that we can’t work together.

Our research concludes that we have become a set of tribes, with different codes, values, and even facts. In our public debates, it seems that we no longer just disagree. We reject each other’s premises and doubt each other’s motives. We question each other’s character. We block our ears to diverse perspectives. At home, polarization is souring personal relationships, ruining Thanksgiving dinners, and driving families apart.

We are experiencing these divisions in our workplaces, neighborhood groups, even our places of worship. In the media, pundits score points, mock opponents, and talk over each other. On the Internet, social media has become a hotbed of outrage, takedowns, and cruelty—often targeting total strangers.

But this can change. A majority of Americans, whom we’ve called the "Exhausted Majority," are fed up by America’s polarization. They know we have more in common than that which divides us: our belief in freedom, equality, and the pursuit of the American dream. They share a deep sense of gratitude that they are citizens of the United States. They want to move past our differences.

Turning the tide of tribalism is possible―but it won’t be easy. Americans have real differences and real disagreements with each other. We must be able to listen to each other to understand those differences and find common ground. That’s the focus of the Hidden Tribes project: to understand better what is pulling us apart, and find what can bring us back together.

Today's polarization reflects a perfect storm: Unsettling changes in our economy and society have left many Americans feeling like strangers in their own land. Old certainties are gone. The secure job, the growing wage, and the safety of neighborhood life where everyone knew each other—these all feel like relics of a bygone era. It feels as though hard work is no longer rewarded, and the gap between rich and poor widens every year.

Many Americans wonder who and what they can still trust. The institutions that once bound us are disappearing, and we no longer seem to have each other's backs. Everyone appears to have a varying version of world events, and it feels harder than ever to sort fact from fiction. Our news feeds seem to just echo our own views, and when people post alternative opinions they are often attacked by angry mobs. We don't seem to disagree anymore without perceiving another person's views as stupid, wrong or even evil. We're being played off each other; and told to see each other as threats and enemies, not Americans just like us but with separate experiences and views. The loudest and most extreme voices get heard, and others just feel like tuning out altogether.

Nobody wants simply to turn the clocks back, because there was a lot that wasn't right about the world of the past. Today, we seem more fractured and fragmented than anyone can remember. Instead of helping us find solutions to move us all forward, politics is driving us apart.

When people don't understand each other, they can't converse or find common ground. Yet somehow, if we could only press a "reset" button, it feels like things could be different and we could move forward together as a country.

The Hidden Tribes of America survey collected the views of more than 8,000 people, a group of US citizens statistically representative of the population based on census data. We also conducted six hour-long focus groups and 30 one-on-one interviews of at least one hour’s duration with people from across the seven population segments. Survey participants answered hundreds of questions about many of today’s most important issues and their hopes, fears and concerns for the future.

We also aimed to understand why people held the positions they did through a specially designed series of questions that helped us identify people’s core beliefs about the world―questions about their identity and the basic values and beliefs that influence the way people see the world. By focusing on core beliefs, we illuminated the hidden architecture that animates the lives and views of ordinary Americans.

We used an advanced statistical process called hierarchical clustering to identify groups of people with similar core beliefs. This revealed seven groups of Americans―what we call Hidden Tribes―with distinctive views and values. Our breakdown of Americans into groups is tied to how they express their core beliefs, which isn’t necessarily aligned with conventional demographic measures like age, gender, level of education, or ethnic background. The result is a unique portrait of the American public that we believe is both more revealing and more actionable than typical surveys.

Of course, public opinion research only tells a partial story. But the Hidden Tribes research is detailed, the sample is large, and our approach was open-ended. We were determined to let the data tell us about Americans organically, rather than proving pre-baked assumptions. The conclusion? A very different story than the tale of a deeply polarized America, split into two camps locked in a fight, determined to crush the other.

Here's a quick snapshot of each group:

Progressive Activists (8 percent of the population) are deeply concerned with issues concerning equity, fairness, and America's direction today. They tend to be more secular, cosmopolitan, and highly engaged with social media.

Traditional Liberals (11 percent of the population) tend to be cautious, rational, and idealistic. They value tolerance and compromise. They place great faith in institutions.

Passive Liberals (15 percent of the population) tend to feel isolated from their communities. They are insecure in their beliefs and try to avoid political conversations. They have a fatalistic view of politics and feel that the circumstances of their lives are beyond their control.

The Politically Disengaged (26 percent of the population) are untrusting, suspicious about external threats, conspiratorially minded, and pessimistic about progress. They tend to be patriotic yet detached from politics.

Moderates (15 percent of the population) are engaged in their communities, well informed, and civic-minded. Their faith is often an important part of their lives. They shy away from extremism of any sort.

Traditional Conservatives (19 percent of the population) tend to be religious, patriotic, and highly moralistic. They believe deeply in personal responsibility and self-reliance.

Devoted Conservatives (6 percent of the population) are deeply engaged with politics and hold strident, uncompromising views. They feel that America is embattled, and they perceive themselves as the last defenders of traditional values that are under threat.

Progressive Activists and Devoted Conservatives together comprise just 14 percent of the American population—yet it often feels as if our national conversation has become a shouting match between these two groups at the furthest ends of the spectrum. Together with Traditional Conservatives (who share values and tribalism like the Devoted Conservatives, just less intensely), they compose the 33 percent of people in the groups we label the Wings.

Combined, the members of these three tribes comprise just one-third of the population, but they often dominate our national conversation. Tribalism runs deep in their thinking. Their distrust and fear of the opposing side drives many of the people in these groups, and they have especially negative opinions of each other. When people today speak about how Americans seem to hate each other, they're usually talking about the opinions and behaviors of the Wings.

The Wings are also the most unified internally. On many of the most contentious issues—race, immigration, guns, LGBTQI+ rights—the people in these three tribes express high levels of unanimity. Often more than 90 percent of people in one of these groups holds the same view about a controversial issue, and typically, it will be the reverse of whatever the opposing wing believes. In contrast, the remaining two-thirds of Americans at the center show more diversity in their political views, express less certainty about them, and are more open to compromise and change—even on issues that we all tend to consider highly polarizing.

Why do the Wings dominate the conversation? A key reason is that polarization has become a business model. Media executives have realized that they can drive clicks, likes, and views, and make money for themselves and their shareholders, by providing people with the most strident opinions. This means that the most extreme voices―no matter how outlandish―often get the most airtime. In addition, people with the most extreme views are often the most certain of their positions. They are willing to argue with anyone and avoid moderating their opinions or conceding points to the other side. All this can make entertaining television and viral social media content. But it is distorting how we see each other, fracturing our society, and adding to distortions in our political system that give undue weight to the most extreme views.

While the story of the Wings may be one of division and conflict, a very different story is found in the rest of America. In fact, the largest group that we uncovered in our research has so far been largely overlooked. It is a group of Americans we call the Exhausted Majority―our collective term for the four tribes, representing a two-thirds majority of Americans, who aren’t part of the Wings. Although they appear in the middle of our charts and graphs, most members of the Exhausted Majority aren’t political centrists or moderates. On specific issues, their views range across the spectrum. But while they hold a variety of views, the members of the Exhausted Majority are also united in important ways:

They are fed up with the polarization plaguing American government and society
They are often forgotten in the public discourse, overlooked because their voices are seldom heard
They are flexible in their views, willing to endorse different policies according to the precise situation rather than sticking ideologically to a single set of beliefs
They believe we can find common ground

The distinction between the Wings and the Exhausted Majority takes us beyond a simple story of the left and the right. Based on their strong views and values, we believe both Traditional Conservatives and Devoted Conservatives belong in the Wings. On the other side, Progressive Activists belong in the Wings, but Traditional Liberals belong in the Exhausted Majority. They have clear liberal views, but unlike the three Wings tribes, they have a more diverse range of opinions, seem more concerned about the country’s divisions, and are more committed to compromise.

While partisans argue and score political points, members of the Exhausted Majority are so frustrated with the bitter polarization of our politics that many have checked out completely, ceding the floor to more strident voices. This is especially true of Politically Disengaged and Passive Liberals, while Traditional Liberals and Moderates remain engaged. Members of the Exhausted Majority tend to be open to finding middle ground. Furthermore, they aren’t ideologues who dismiss as evil or ignorant the people who don’t share their exact political views. They want to talk and to find a path forward.

The Hidden Tribes survey has collected over 200,000 pieces of information on the most pressing issues that frequently divide Americans, hence, it provides a new perspective on those issues. In short, we’re convinced that the Hidden Tribes and the powerful effect of tribalism can supply critical insights into public attitudes on many of our most controversial issues, like the following:

Immigration. Our research showed genuine tension between people’s desire for America to be open and inclusive and their desire for it to be safe and secure. One reason immigration provokes such heated debates is that opposing groups frame the issue in such dissimilar ways. For the two Conservative tribes, the Traditional Conservatives and the Devoted Conservatives, immigration is frequently framed as an issue of immigrants defying laws, the government losing control of borders, and doubts about immigrants’ loyalty to America. For the two liberal tribes (Progressive Activists and Traditional Liberals), the same immigration issues are perceived through the lens of racism, human rights, refugee protection, and the positive value of a diverse society. The views of the three remaining tribes diverge according to the issue at hand, but the Politically Disengaged are more suspicious of immigrants and more likely to support extreme measures to control borders than the other two tribes.

Racial justice and police brutality. The majority of all segments agree that race-related issues are at least somewhat serious and that racism is at least somewhat common. Furthermore, 60 percent of Americans believe that white supremacists are a growing threat in the United States. However, this broad agreement on the problem of racism does not extend to agreement on its symptoms or solution. For instance, 69 percent of Americans believe that we have become too sensitive to issues of race, and a near-unanimous 85 percent think that "race should not be a factor" in college admissions. Meaningful differences in viewpoint persist between white and black Americans on key questions, especially regarding police brutality towards African Americans. However, another crucially relevant factor is whether a person believes personal responsibility or circumstances are more relevant in shaping outcomes in life—a major fault line that divides conservatives from progressives. Those who attribute more importance to circumstance, a defining feature of Progressives Activists, are 30 percentage points more likely to believe that racism needs to be taken more seriously and that Black Lives Matter has brought attention to important issues.

Sex, gender, and morality. Gender identity, sexism, and sexual harassment are all controversial subjects in America today. While 69 percent of Americans consider sexism in the United States to be at least somewhat serious, nearly as many Americans—59 percent—also think people are too sensitive about matters relating to sexism and gender. The country is evenly divided between the progressive view that sexual harassment is still commonplace, and the conservative position that too many "ordinary behaviors" are now labelled as sexual harassment. And while both same-sex marriage and the acceptance of transgender people have the support of three in five Americans, this does not reflect an enthusiastic embrace of new norms towards sexuality. Indeed, more than half of Americans say that there is "pressure to think a certain way" about gay, lesbian and gender issues. More fundamentally, the country is evenly divided on whether our changes in attitudes towards sex and sexuality are making America "more accepting and tolerant" or whether they are simply causing "America to lose its moral foundation".

Terrorism and Islam. Americans' perceptions of the threat and causes of terrorism reflect the country's polarization. While 86 percent of Progressive Activists think Americans are too worried about terrorism, 84 percent of Devoted Conservatives believe Americans do not take terrorism seriously enough. In both instances, the wing segments are outliers. Progressive Activists are the only segment in which a majority thinks that the threat of terrorism is not that serious—a view they hold at three times the national average. Meanwhile, Devoted Conservatives are an outlier as the only group for whom a majority attributes terrorism to religion rather than to individuals: they are more than twice as likely to say that "some religions teach violence and extremism" rather than that "violent people use religion as a justification for their actions." Further, Devoted Conservatives are quite isolated in their particular fear of Islam: they are alone among the segments and twice as likely as the national average to believe that "Islam is the greatest threat to America".

The Hidden Tribes shed light on our polarization by drawing on established scientific research to understand the basic motivations driving people’s behavior. Social scientists have long studied the underlying psychology of core beliefs and group identities― the fundamental ways we understand the world and align ourselves with others. Our core beliefs influence what we think, what we consider important, and how we act. The Hidden Tribes report is the first time this broad range of insights about core beliefs and tribalism have been the focus of a truly comprehensive national opinion survey. For this reason, we are confident it provides many new insights into the roots of our polarization.

The Hidden Tribes survey asked Americans about their underlying views and ways of seeing the world. The results help to explain why there is such a striking degree of coherence in how a person responds to seemingly unrelated issues: Core beliefs are the foundation of many of our views. Like a city building, our political outlook is built on a handful of pillars―our core beliefs and the groups we align with―that provide scaffolding for the rest of the structure.

Core Belief 1: Group Identity and Tribalism in America. Perhaps the most important aspect of the hidden architecture underlying political behavior is people's group identities. Social scientists have long recognized that people see their own groups as a strong source of self-esteem and a sense of belonging. Consequently, these tribal identities have significant influence over people’s views. This helps explain, for example, the popular social media post showing men in t-shirts that proudly proclaim “I’d rather be a Russian than Democrat.”

Through our questions, we measured several aspects of tribalism, including individuals’ pride in their group and the degree to which they believed their group members had a lot in common. Overall, we found the Wings showed far more tribalism than the middle groups. A strong relationship also exists between people’s pride in their racial group and certain other political opinions. For instance, white people with a strong racial identity are significantly more likely to believe that America needs a strong leader who is willing to break the rules or to decide that Confederate monuments are symbols of Southern pride.

Core Belief 2: Perceived Threat. People diverge in the amount of danger they perceive in the world. Some people see the world as a largely safe place with isolated pockets of violence. Others see the world as threatening, with isolated pockets of tranquility. To test people’s degree of perceived threat, the survey asked them how much they agree with the statement, "The world is becoming a more and more dangerous place." This basic sense of threat versus security is strongly correlated with people’s views on a wide variety of other issues, including immigration and terrorism. Progressive Activists also stand out from other groups as the most secure of any tribe by far. They view threats to their safety as fearmongering by their opponents, not a clear and present danger to their wellbeing. Simultaneously, Progressive Activists hold the most pessimistic views about the country's future.

Core Belief 3: Parenting Style and Authoritarianism. Recent research has found that people’s tendency towards authoritarianism―that is, their support for strong leaders and strict social hierarchy―is linked to their views on parenting style. For example, people who deem it more important for a child to be "well-behaved" than “creative” are more likely to endorse an authoritarian ethic. The Hidden Tribes report confirms those findings. How Americans view parenting closely tracks their views on many political issues. For example, people who endorsed a strict parenting style are more likely to oppose gay marriage, believe that America needs more faith and religion than reason and science, and worry about a decline in family values. These connections with parenting style are shown in the figure below.

Core Belief 4: Moral Foundations. Morality is about more than just equal treatment. The 2012 book The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, which provides important insights into the ways in which morality underlies political behavior, explains how morality is comprised of at least five pillars. These pillars, also called moral foundations, are:

Fairness/Cheating: Relating to proportionality, equality, reciprocity, and rendering justice according to shared rules.
Care/Harm: Protecting the vulnerable and helping those in need.
Authority/Subversion: Submitting to tradition and legitimate authority.
Purity/Disgust: Abhorrence for things that evoke disgust.
Loyalty/Betrayal: Standing with one’s group, family or nation.

We asked subjects a series of questions designed to assess how concerned they were with each of the five moral foundations in their moral judgments. Our results showed strong distinctions according to the various tribes. Progressive Activists and Traditional and Passive Liberals tended to care more about Harm and Fairness than the other foundations, while right-leaning groups such as Traditional and Devoted Conservatives cared about all five foundations.

Subjects' concern about each of the foundations closely tracks their views on other issues. For example, the degree to which people prioritize Loyalty strongly predicts the view that the Confederate flag symbolizes Southern pride, and people who prioritize Authority are most likely to support the Trump administration’s decision to ban travel from several Muslim-majority countries.

Core Belief 5: Personal Agency and Responsibility. People differ in whether they see life outcomes as being shaped more by individuals’ choices or social forces beyond their control. Conservatives tend to emphasize independence, responsibility and self-reliance, while liberals focus more on systemic injustices and collective responsibilities. Another way of conceptualizing this is that people tend to attribute life outcomes either to personal responsibility or to luck and circumstance. Some people believe that individuals should get credit for their successes because they were caused by factors within their control. Others believe that outcomes are mostly the result of external forces. These views have important implications. For example, the more people believe that luck played a role in life, the more likely they are to support Black Lives Matter activists. By contrast, people who believe that personal responsibility plays a bigger role are more than four times more likely to strongly approve of Donald Trump’s performance than those who believe that luck and circumstance did.

What Causes Success in Life?

Tribes differ in their views on the role of personal responsibility in life outcomes

There is far more common ground among Americans than we might imagine, judging from the constant conflict among pundits, politicians, and social media users. This is true even on some of our most debated issues. The Hidden Tribes survey just scratched the surface on those issues.

For example, a full 81 percent of the population―including Devoted Conservatives, who tend to be the most skeptical when it comes to questions of race―agrees that racism continues to be an at least somewhat serious problem in the United States. The fact that the overwhelming majority of people acknowledge that racism is a real problem opens the door for continued conversations about how the country moves forward.

Another key area of agreement is the aspect of immigration policy regarding Dreamers: people brought to the United States illegally as children and given provisional legal status under the DACA program during the Obama administration. Three-quarters of all Americans believe there should be a pathway for these individuals to obtain citizenship through serving in the military or attending college. This exemplifies how the current polarization is leading to gridlock in American politics and preventing us from finding solutions supported by an overwhelming majority.

One issue that Americans from most tribes regularly discuss is how they feel that people have become too quick to take offense and criticize others’ use of language. Four out of five Americans believe "political correctness has gone too far in America"—a issue where most Americans with liberal views agree with Conservatives, again showing America is so much more than two tribes.

The Hidden Tribes study illuminates several new findings regarding America’s past, present, and future.

The American electorate is more complex than the oversimplified story of polarization would make us believe
The reason American society appears to be split 50/50 is that the loudest and most extreme viewpoints monopolize airtime and social media space
The majority of Americans, the Exhausted Majority, are frustrated and fed up with tribalism. They want to return to the mutual good faith and collaborative spirit that characterize a healthy democracy
Being able to discuss our genuine disagreements remains important. At the root of those disagreements are differences in core beliefs―the underlying psychological architecture that governs what we value and how we see the world
While our differences are often rooted in divergent views, that does not mean we cannot find common ground
By acknowledging and respecting the values that animate our beliefs, we can begin to restore a sense of respect and unity
The vast majority of Americans―three out of four―believe our differences are not so great that we cannot come together. Let’s make that a reality

From

Hiddentribes.us

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Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Why did Ronald Hubbard claim to create Dianetics?

This is in response to a question: Why did Scientology founder Ronald Hubbard claim to create the ideas he plagiarized from abreactive therapy and hypnosis which he recombined and renamed to present as Dianetics?

I believe he did this for several reasons.

First, he found hypnosis unpopular with the public and wanted to pretend his technique was not hypnosis.

Second, he didn’t create or own or improve on abreactive therapy and it was already under the province of psychiatry and evaluated thoroughly as a failure that seemed to temporarily improve some patients but in truth hurts them and far more often creates heightened suggestibility and dependence in the patients.

This information was readily available and if he was honest about Dianetics he would have been prohibited from practicing psychiatric treatment without a proper degree and especially practicing techniques that were already discredited before he stole them.

Third, he relied on his own claim of genius for discovering the principles behind Dianetics to give him what he termed altitude aka prestige.

He read books on hypnosis and the idea that a hypnotic operator must have altitude is present through Dianetics and Scientology indoctrination. It’s a fundamental in fact.

“Any time anybody gets enough altitude he can be called a hypnotic operator, and what he says will act as hypnotic suggestion. Hypnotism is a difference in levels of altitude…if the operator can heighten his own altitude with regard to the subject…he doesn’t have to put the subject to sleep. What he says will still react as a hypnotic suggestion….With parity, such as occurs between acquaintances, friends, fellow students and so on, there is no hypnotic suggestion” (Education and Dianetics, 11 November 1950, Research and Discovery, volume 4). Ron Hubbard Source Jon Atack

Here’s a longer excerpt:

ALTITUDE INSTRUCTION

“In altitude teaching, somebody is a ‘great authority.’ He is probably teaching some subject that is far more complex than it should be. He has become defensive down through the years, and this is a sort of protective coating that he puts up, along with the idea that the subject will always be a little better known by him than by anybody else and that there are things to know in this subject which he really wouldn’t let anybody else in on. This is altitude instruction … It keeps people in a state of confusion, and when their minds are slightly confused they are in a hypnotic trance. Anytime anybody gets enough altitude he can be called a hypnotic operator, and what he says will act as hypnotic suggestion. Hypnotism is a difference in levels of altitude. There are ways to create and lower the altitude of the subject, but if the operator can heighten his own altitude with regard to the subject the same way, he doesn’t have to put the subject to sleep. What he says will still react as hypnotic suggestion.” (Hubbard, Research & Discovery, volume 4, p.324)12

"One error, however, must be remarked upon. The examination system employed is not much different from a certain hypnotic technique. One induces a state of confusion in the subject by raising his anxieties of what may happen if he does not pass. One then “teaches” at a mind which is anxious and confused. That mind does not then rationalize, it merely records and makes a pattern. If the pattern is sufficiently strong to be regurgitated verbatim on an examination paper, the student is then given a good grade and passed."

[End Quote]

Ron Hubbard lecture 29 August 1950, “Educational Dianetics.” Source Arnie Lerma

So, Hubbard wanted to establish himself as the authority on Dianetics and Scientology!

He wanted to confuse people and with altitude suggest a stable datum to align them, and take them out of that confusion via a hypnotic implant!

Quotes from Ron Hubbard on the Confusion Technique:

[Quote]

"Now, if it comes to a pass where it’s very important whether or not this person acts or inacts as you wish, in interpersonal relations one of the dirtier tricks is to hang the person up on a maybe and create a confusion. And then create the confusion to the degree that your decision actually is implanted hypnotically.

The way you do this is very simple. When the person advances an argument against your decision, you never confront his argument but confront the premise on which his argument is based.

That is the rule. He says, “But my professor always said that water boiled at 212 degrees.”

You say, “Your professor of what?”

“My professor of physics.”

“What school? How did he know?”

Completely off track! You’re no longer arguing about whether or not water boils at 212 degrees, but you’re arguing about professors. And he will become very annoyed, but he won’t know quite what he is annoyed about. You can do this so adroitly and so artfully that you can actually produce a confusion of the depth of hypnosis. The person simply goes down tone scale to a point where they’re not sure of their own name.

And at that point you say, “Now, you do agree to go out and draw the water out of the well, don’t you?”

“Yes-anything!” And he’ll go out and draw the water out of the well."

[End Quote]

Ron Hubbard Lecture, 20 May 1952 “Decision.”

source Lermanet.com

So, according to Hubbard redirection of attention can confuse someone enough to achieve the depth of hypnosis. But that’s what his having the student always look for something to resolve that isn’t what he’s having trouble with does. He’s utterly confused. Hubbard had more to say on confusion and hypnosis:

“A confusion can be defined as any set of factors or circumstances which do not seem to have any immediate solution. More broadly, a confusion is random motion.”

“Until one selects one datum, one factor, one particular in a confusion of particles, the confusion continues. The one thing selected and used becomes the stable datum for the remainder.“Any body of knowledge, more particularly and exactly, is built fromone datum. That is its stable datum. Invalidate it and the entire body of knowledge falls apart. A stable datum does not have to be the correct one. It is simply the one that keeps things from being in a confusion and on which others are aligned.” – Ron Hubbard, The Scientology Handbook

RON THE HYPNOTIST

Structure/Function: 11 December 1952 page 1

(Taped lecture from the Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures)

“All processes are based upon the original observation that an individual could have implanted in him by hypnosis and removed at will any obsession or aberration, compulsion, desire, inhibition which you could think of – by hypnosis.“

Hypnosis, then, was the wild variable;

sometimes it worked,

sometimes it didn’t work.

It worked on some people; it didn’t work on other people.

Any time you have a variable that is as wild as this, study it.

Well, I had a high certainty already –

I had survival. Got that in 1938 or before that. And uh…"Ron Hubbard

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Monday, December 27, 2021

Dianetics: From Out of the Blue? Jeff Jacobsen

Dianetics: From Out of the Blue?

Jeff Jacobsen

The following article was originally published in The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 2, September/October 1991, pp. 1-5.It was reprinted in the UK Skeptics publication The Skeptic, vol. 6, no. 2.

L. Ron Hubbard, author of the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and founder of the Church of Scientology, was a science-fiction writer before penning the book that would launch his fame. Dianetics is a self-help book published in 1950 which claimed to include new and unique theories on how the mind works. Hubbard claimed that this work was totally unprecedented; "Man had no inkling whatever of Dianetics. None. This was a bolt from the blue." (1) So there would be no doubt as to the originality of his ideas, Hubbard wrote that "dianetics borrowed nothing but was first discovered and organized; only after the organization was completed and a technique evolved was it compared to existing information." (2) According to Hubbard, some philosophers of the past helped provide the foundation of Dianetics, but the remaining research had been done "what the navigator calls, 'off the chart.'" (3)

Dianetics became a New York Times bestseller in 1950, and has since sold many millions of copies.

Was this a totally unique theory of the mind wrought from Hubbard's "many years of exact research and careful testing," (4) or was it a loose composite of already existing theories mixed with novel, unproven ideas? This paper proposes to show that, despite Hubbard's claims of originality, many of the ideas in Dianetics were already existing and even in vogue before Dianetics appeared. Either Hubbard really studied other works before he wrote Dianetics, or he wasted years of his time re-inventing the wheel.

Although there are no reference notes in Dianetics to see what are Hubbard's ideas and what are borrowed, we can quickly eliminate the idea that Dianetics appeared "from the blue" by Hubbard's own statements. In Dianetics itself is the statement that "many schools of mental healing from the Aesculapian to the modern hypnotist were studied after the basic philosophy of dianetics had been postulated." (5) Alfred Korzybski, Emil Kraepelin, Franz Mesmer, Ivan Pavlov, Herbert Spencer, and others are mentioned as resources in Dianetics, so we must assume Hubbard was crediting these people to some degree. He must certainly have known, then, of at least some of the research from his time which will be mentioned in this article. Hubbard in other settings acknowledged Sigmund Freud (especially through Commander "Snake" Thompson), (6) Count Alfred Korzybski, (7) and Aleister Crowley (8) as contributors to his ideas on the human mind. In a speech in 1950, Hubbard stated that he had spent much time in the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital medical library in 1945 during a stay for ulcers, where "I was able to get in a year's study." (9)

In fact, most of the theories and ideas in Dianetics can be found in scientific literature previous to the first publishing of Hubbard's theories. Parts of Dianetics, for example, have striking resemblance to two articles found in Volume 28 (1941) of the Psychoanalytic Review..

Dianetics theory posits the existence of engrams. These are memories of events that occur around us when our analytical mind is unconscious, and they are recorded in a separate area of the mind called the reactive mind. A seemingly unique theory in Dianetics is that these memories begin being stored "in the cells of the zygote--which is to say, with conception." (10) These engrams can cause problems for the person throughout life unless handled through Dianetics auditing.

Dr. J. Sadger, nine years before the introduction of Dianetics in 1950, wrote that several of his patients were not cured of their psychological problems until he had taken them back to their existence as sperm or ovum. He declared that "there exists certainly a memory, although an unconscious one, of embryonic days, which persists throughout life and may continuously determine an action." (11) Sadger spends much time explaining how his patients' memories of the time when they were zygotes or even sperm or ovum had affected their adult behaviors, noting that "an unconscious lasting memory must have remained from these embryonic days." (12) There were "unmistakable dreams" of being a sperm in the father's testicle.

Engrams, those unconscious memories of Dianetics, are said by Hubbard to be stored in the cells of the body and passed on to their clone cells and finally on to the adult being. Hubbard claimed to discover that "patients sometimes have a feeling that they are sperms or ovums... this is called the sperm dream." (13) It was impossible, he claimed, to deny to a pre-clear that he could remember being a sperm. But Sadger wrote about this first, and Hubbard could well have read this in his "year's study" at Oak Knoll Hospital.

Another coincidental discovery of Hubbard and Sadger was that mothers often attempt to abort their child. Sadger states that "so many a fall or other accident of a pregnant woman is nothing else than an attempt at abortion on the part of the unconscious, not to mention those cases where the mother seeks to free herself more or less forcibly from the unwanted child." (14) Hubbard concurs; "Attempted abortion is very common," (15) and in fact "twenty or thirty abortion attempts are not uncommon in the aberee." (16) Again, not an idea "from the blue."

Life in the womb was not very kind, according to one of Sadger's patients: "Perhaps when father performed coitus with mother in her pregnancy I was much shaken and rocked. Shall that have been one reason that I so easily became dizzy and that all my life I have had an aversion even as a child from swings and carousels?" (17) Hubbard, in a similar vein, insists that the mother "should not have coitus forced upon her. For every coital experience is an engram in the child during pregnancy." (18) "Papa becomes passionate and baby has the sensation of being put into a running washing machine." (19)

There are at least three other similarities like the "sperm dreams", commonality of abortion attempts, and fetus discomfort during parental sex. This seems quite a coincidence, but it is not known whether Hubbard read Sadger's article. Suffice it to say that these are major ideas in Dianetics, but they are not new ideas.

The second article under discussion from Psychoanalytic Review deals with the unbearable conditions during birth and the affects of these in later life. Grace W. Pailthorpe, M.D., argued in this 1941 article that patients should be psychoanalyzed more deeply into the period of infancy, or at least to the 'trauma of birth'. Otherwise no lasting therapeutic effect could be expected. Birth has traumatized all of us, she declares, and these unconscious memories drive us in our adulthood. "It is only when deep analysis has finally exposed the unconscious deviations of our vital force" (20) that we can recover and enjoy life.

In Dianetics, the reader is left with the impression that the ideas of birth and pre-birth memories and traumas, multiple abortion attempts, and fetal discomfort in the womb are new discoveries. As can be seen, this is not the case. And there are many other impressions of "new" and "unique" that are incorrect as well.

With Pailthorpe's article, for example, we can also note the dramatic similarities of Dianetics with simple Freudian psychoanalysis. There is in both the return to past times in the patient's life to search for the source of his or her current problems. Once these problematic memories are discovered and treated the problems vanish. In Pailthorpe's article we have a man who was hopelessly traumatized by the events at his birth. He was cruelly kicked out of his "home" in the womb, and his resistance to this was assumed to be the cause of the immediate traumas of the nurse's and mother's attentions (which were "painful to the child's sensitive body" (21)). These traumas caused headaches and social disorders in adult life. Psychoanalysis discovered the causes (birth trauma) and when these were brought to the conscious level with their meaning explained, the headaches and social dysfunctions were alleviated.

Dianetics follows this line of reasoning to a great degree. According to Hubbard, engrams (past traumas) are discovered in the pre-clear's past, and bringing these engrams into consciousness (from the reactive to the analytic mind) alleviates the disorder. Hubbard claims that after auditing people (he had the pre-clear lie on a couch in Freudian imitation), "psycho-somatic illness...by dianetic technique...has been eradicated entirely in every case." (22)

A theory in psychoanalysis known as abreaction is so similar to Dianetics (and preceding it by many years) that it must be mentioned in more detail here. A 1949 article by Nathaniel Thornton, D.Sc., gives a brief overview of abreaction and his views on its value. Abreaction began with Freud and was considered early on to be "one of the very cornerstones of analytic therapy." (23) This is a method of freeing a patient "from the deleterious results of certain pathogenic affects by bringing these affects back into the conscious mind and re-experiencing them in all their original force and intensity." (24) A patient of one of Freud's colleagues, under hypnosis and "with a free expression of emotion" (25) was freed of all her psycho-somatic symptoms using abreactive therapy. Pierre Janet is credited in the article with utilizing abreactive therapy to restore painful memories to consciousness and thus relieving a patient's symptoms. A patient being treated with this method must continually work through such painful memories until the patient "could accept the fact that the original experience no longer loomed up as a threat to him." (26)

Thornton concludes that abreaction is a useful tool simply because "confession is good for the soul", and that talking to someone about one's problems is almost always therapeutic.

"Auditing" in Dianetics is a virtual clone of abreactive therapy. Auditing basically is searching through a person's past until an engram is discovered, then continually reexperiencing the event when the engram (painful memory) was instilled "until the pre-clear is no longer affected" by the memory. (27) Hubbard takes abreaction to an extreme and declares that once a person has removed all his engrams, then Dianetics has done its job and an almost god-like human results. Once again, the similarity of an already existing theory on the mind is presented as a great discovery in Dianetics.

Alfred Korzybski, mentioned in passing in Dianetics, (28) owes a debt to Hubbard for making his theories well-known, according to some former followers of Dianetics. Bent Corydon, a former Mission holder of Hubbard's Church of Scientology, has made a convincing comparison of Dianetics and Korzbyski's writings, demonstrating that there is in essence little difference between many aspects of the two. (29) In support of this comparison, it should be noted that there was a "Korzybski fad" (30) sweeping through the science-fiction community in the 1940's, of which Hubbard was a member, and that Hubbard, as mentioned above, had stated the contribution Korzbyski made in his research.

Corydon also mentions the book The Mneme published in 1923 by Richard Simon, wherein not only the idea of engrams, but the very word itself is used. The word "engram" is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as deriving from Simon's book.

Cybernetics, published in 1948, (31) compares the human mind to the newly developing technology of computers. Dianetics also tells us to "consider the analytical mind as a computing machine." (32) Cybernetics speaks of "affective tone" scales, (33) as does Dianetics in a remarkably similar vein. (34) Cybernetics was a very popular work at the time Hubbard was writing Dianetics.

We have seen that many of the ideas in Dianetics which were claimed to be unique were in fact current in the study of the mind at the time of, or just before, the introduction of Dianetics. It is difficult to see whether Hubbard had studied some of these works during his "many years of exact research," (35) but as mentioned previously he does acknowledge other researchers. At any rate, no book is written in a vacuum, so we may conclude from the evidence that Hubbard was aware of at least some of this research previous to writing his work. Barring acknowledgment somewhere by Hubbard, or a list of articles and works he had read, we can only guess as to the others.

It seems safe to conclude that the theories presented in Dianetics did not arrive "out of the blue" as claimed, but were instead a synthesis of previous, uncredited works. In that case, is there any reason to discount the ideas in Dianetics? There certainly is. There are outlandish, unsubstantiated claims made by Hubbard, including the possibility that cancer may be cured by Dianetic processing, (36) that colds and accidents can be eradicated, (37) IQ improved, (38) life extended, (39) and total recall enjoyed. (40) None of this is proven in any way other than constant mention of previous research. The problem with this research is that there is no tangible evidence of its existence. Hubbard in a lecture stated that "my records are in little notebooks, scribbles, in pencil most of them. Names and addresses are lost... there was a chaotic picture...." (41) A certain Ms. Benton asked Hubbard for his notes to validate his research, but when she saw them, "she finally threw up her hands in horror and started in on the project [validation of research] clean." (42) He was putting this into the hands of valid researchers "whose word can't be disputed" so Dianetics could be legitimized by the scientific professions.

Unfortunately, none of Hubbard's claimed research, nor those of his valid researchers can be found today, if they ever really existed. And if the methods and statistical results of the supposed research are not available, they cannot be checked and duplicated as the scientific method calls for. Anyone can make as many outlandish claims as he wants, but the research must be accessible and reproducible to support those claims if he brandishes scientific validity.

Dianetics is designed as a how-to manual for psychoanalysis. Anyone who reads the book should be able to perform Dianetics auditing and help his fellow man become "clear". "Dianetics is not being released to a profession... it is insufficiently complicated to warrant years of study in some university." (43) It is better to audit someone, said Hubbard, regardless of how well, than to not audit at all.

But this seems a bit reckless. Auditing can produce "tears and wailings," (44) and "a patient...that...bounces about, all unconscious of the action." (45) Regardless of the auditor's abilities, and regardless of how traumatic a session becomes for the pre-clear, "If an auditor...can sit and whistle while Rome burns before him and be prepared to grin about it, then he will do an optimum job." (46) This sounds more like quackery than therapy.

Children often have engrams that are restimulated by their parents. Hubbard states that it may be necessary to remove the children from their parents if this is the case, until the engrams are processed. (47) Here again we have Hubbard making an outlandish proposal of splitting families in order to produce healthier people.

The cells of the zygote, according to Dianetics theory, record sounds during a period of pain (Hubbard often uses a husband beating his pregnant wife as an example, such as "'Take that! Take it, I tell you. You've got to take it!'" (48) From this engram we are to believe that the child grows up to be a thief. Cellular recordings of sounds by the cells can even be in another language unknown to the adult or child and still cause similar problems. All of this, again, has no evidence accompanying it, and without such evidence it may as well be classified as mere science-fiction.

We have in Dianetics a work by a science-fiction writer who claims to have created a totally new and foolproof handbook of the mind with no documentation to prove his claimed research. This book has been actively sold by Hubbard's Church of Scientology for many years, and yet it is simply a synthesis of already published ideas with bizarre, unsubstantiated claims thrown in. The theories in this book, other than those found in previous works by others, have never been scientifically validated, and in fact, one attempt came up dry. (49) There is little scholastic or societal benefit to be derived from this work. S.I. Hayakawa put it well in his review of Dianetics: "The appalling thing revealed by dianetics about our culture is that it takes a 452-page book full of balderdash to get some people to sit down and seriously listen to each other!" (50)

Jeff Jacobsen
P.O. Box 3541
Scottsdale, AZ 85271

Quoted in L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?, by Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1987) p. 262.
L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (Los Angeles: American Saint Hill Organization, 1950), 12th printing, paperback, August 1975, p. 340. (Henceforth Dianetics.)
ibid. p.400.
ibid. p. ix.
ibid. p.122.
Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah (N.Y.: Henry Holt & Co., 1987), pp.230- 231.
L. Ron Hubbard, cassette tape, "Introduction to Dianetics," Dianetics Lecture Series 1. 1950. Bridge Publications, Inc.
Stewart Lamont, Religion, Inc.: The Church of Scientology (London: Harrap, 1986) p.21.
"The History of Dianetics and Scientology" cassette tape.
Dianetics, p.130.
Dr. J. Sadger, "Preliminary Study of the Psychic Life of the Fetus and the Primary Germ." Psychoanalytic Review July 1941 28:3. p.333
ibid. pp.343-4.
Dianetics, p.294.
Sadger, p.336.
Dianetics, p. 156.
Dianetics, p.158.
Sadger, p.352.
Dianetics, p.158.
Dianetics, p.130.
Grace W. Pailthorpe, M.D., "Deflection of Energy, as a Result of Birth Trauma, and It's Bearing Upon Character Formation." Psychoanalytic Review July 1941 28:3 pp. 305-326, p.326.
ibid. p.307.
Dianetics, p.91.
Nathaniel Thornton, D.Sc., "What is the Therapeutic Value of Abreaction?" Psychoanalytic Review 1949 36:411-415. p.411.
ibid.
ibid. p.412.
ibid. p.413.
Dianetics, p.206.
Dianetics, p.62.
Corydon and Hubbard, Jr., pp. 266-269.
Albert I. Berger, "Towards a Science of the Nuclear Mind: Science-fiction Origins of Dianetics", Science Fiction Studies, 1989, vol. 16:123-141. p.135.
Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics; or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1948).
Dianetics, p.43.
Wiener, p.150.
Dianetics, p.323ff.
Dianetics, p.ix.
Dianetics, p.93.
Dianetics, p.92.
Dianetics, pp. 90, 193.
Dianetics, p.170.
Dianetics, p.417.
L. Ron Hubbard, cassette tape, "What Dianetics Can Do," Dianetics Lecture Series 2. 1950. Bridge Publications, Inc.
ibid.
Dianetics, p.168.
Dianetics, p.253.
Dianetics, p.278.
Dianetics, p.179.
Dianetics, pp.154, 155.
Dianetics, p.212.
Jack Fox, Alvin E. Davis, and B. Lebovits, "An Experimental Investigation of Hubbard's Engram Hypothesis (Dianetics)," Psychological Newsletter 1959, 10, 131-134.
S.I. Hayakawa, "From Science-fiction to Fiction-science", Etc.: A Review of General Semantics, 1951 Vol. 8 (4) 280-293. p. 293.

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