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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