or five successive years beyond Excalibur, Ron continued his examination of Survive to effectively determine if more could be derived, extrapolated or discerned. Of special note along this track was his 1940 expedition to North Coast Indian lands off British Columbia, and his examination of mythology as a vehicle for cultural survival, i.e., the myth as a means of perpetuating a tribal identity. He had also grown quite fascinated with those myths apparently rooted in actual events, e.g., the near-universal deluge myth arguably inspired by dim memories from the end of the last Ice Age. Yet in the main, and particularly with the advent of the Second World War, the emphasis lay on practicality. That is, what in the way of a workable therapy could also be drawn from Survive?
![[Picture]](img/Pg14_1.jpg)
The answer was, of course, Dianetics, but the route was a tortuous one and finally led through a good deal more: an exhaustive examination of all psychoanalytic theory, an extensive review of then current neural theory, still more cellular study and a series of extraordinary tests on links between hypnosis and insanity. Yet if we are to only retrace the milestones, then our next step lies in the recovery ward of an Oak Knoll Naval Hospital where then Lieutenant L. Ron Hubbard spent the better part of eight months through 1945.
Specifically at issue was the fate of fifteen former prisoners of Japanese internment camps, who, after near-starvation diets through the course of confinement, were found unable to assimilate protein. Even with intensive testosterone treatment, generally effective in thousands of such cases, these unfortunate fifteen essentially continued to starve. In reply, and after extensive scrutiny of the endocrinological link to protein assimilation, LRH proposed a crucial theory: “If the mind regulated the body and not the body regulated the mind,” he explained, “then the endocrine system would not respond to hormones if there was in existence a mental block.” Whereupon he proceeded with the first formal application of early Dianetics techniques, and so literally saved the lives of those fifteen former prisoners. He also derived a genuinely landmark formulation, i.e., thought took precedence over the physical... Or as he so famously phrased it: “Function monitors structure.”
Not generally remarked upon, however, and especially relevant here, are the larger philosophic implications of that statement. For example, with the advent of the first broadly employed antidepressants in the late 1940s, and succeeding generations of psychotropic drugs through the fifties and sixties, the great bulk of what we term mental therapy became a pharmaceutical matter. Specifically, the equation was this: Given all life may be ultimately defined in physiological terms (structure monitors function) then all thought, feeling and emotion is but a consequence of physiology. And should we find those emotions troublesome, then let us alter the chemistry with drugs. Today, of course, the consequence has grown outlandish, with a greater worldwide expenditure on drugs than on food, clothing and shelter combined. But even considering the bottom-line philosophic equation of this chemical worldview, the conclusion is altogether grim. For given the material view of man as a product of chemical recombination through natural selection, then the most we might hope for is the aim of natural selection: a reasonably successful adaptation to our environment... Which, incidentally, remains the great goal of all twentieth-century mental health and a sixty-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry: Let us become reasonably well adapted before death returns us to a heap of decomposed chemicals.
![[Caption]](img/Pg14ca.jpg)
Presented here is what followed from that central revelation at Oak Knoll: The first pages of Dianetics: The Original Thesis (published today as The Dynamics of Life) and, rather ironically, what amounted to a letter of announcement to the American Psychological Association. Regarding the former, let us add that Original Thesis contains the earliest formulations on Dianetics, but was largely intended for the professional reader. Although not immediately published, mimeographed copies were circulated among colleagues who, in turn, mimeographed or retyped the manuscript and passed it on to others. In this way, and in remarkably short order, the work engendered a considerable response. Editor-author John W. Campbell Jr., for example, would tell of feverishly retyping from page one to meet a secretary retyping from the final page backwards, all through the course of a single night. Meanwhile, and more to the point, Ron would speak of receiving whole mail bags of requests for additional information.
Inevitably, there were several discussions on how best to bring Dianetics to the world, and just as inevitably consensus was divided. Although Ron had originally envisioned Dianetics as a popular therapy, “for the people and of the people,” as he would finally describe his work, neither Campbell nor Michigan physician Dr. Joseph Winter concurred. Rather, and this in the words of Western Electric engineer Donald Rogers, “We tended towards a trickledown approach,” meaning Dianetics would see broadest utilization if first presented to those most logically prepared to appreciate it, i.e., the medical/mental health establishment. If Ron was still not entirely convinced, he nonetheless complied with four letters: one to the American Medical Association, another to the American Psychiatric Association, still another to the Gerontological Society and that which is reprinted here. In concise explanation, he later remarked, “This was the proper thing to do and I did it.” While as for the eventual response: “The AMA simply wrote me, ’Why?’ and the APA replied, ’If it amounts to anything I am sure we will hear of it in a couple of years.’ “
In fact, they heard of it in thirteen months with the publication of what has become the world’s all-time best-selling self-help book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Moreover, and predictably so, both the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association would eventually spend considerable time and energy attempting to appropriate Dianetics for economic gain—and, failing that, try and bury it. But in either case, we are looking at an immensely significant philosophic development; for here, and in no uncertain terms, was a philosophy that ![[Picture]](img/squarry1.jpg)
