Full Text COPYRIGHT Psychology Today Magazine 1988

L.  Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?

"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous," L. Ron Hubbard told a group of his
fellow science fiction writers in 1949. "If a man really wants to make a
million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion." Hubbard was
supposed to have been joking. Five years later he founded the church of
Scientology, which, at its peak, was reportedly bringing in that million
dollars--every week.

L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? (Lyle Stuart, $20) by Bent Corydon and L.
Ron Hubbard Jr. is a fascinating if strident look at the sinister inner
workings of Scientology.  Corydon, once a high-ranking church member, bases
his book largely on his own harrowing experiences and on interviews with other
disillusioned ex-Scientologists.  His purported coauthor, Hubbard's son,
appears only as one of the interviewees.

Scientology had as its foundation Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental
Health, which Hubbard published in 1950.  A strange mixture of Freud and
Buddhism, Dianetics sought to locate traumatic moments or memories of illicit
acts in the "reactive mind" (subconscious) and transfer them to the conscious
mind, where they could be rationally evaluated.  When all of these "overts"
were located, the person reached a state of "clear" and became an "operating
thetan"--living completely in the here and now, able to remember anything that
had happened in his or her many lives, free of all psychosomatic ills, which
Hubbard claimed make up 75 percent of all ailments.  In order to reach this
exalted state, of course, one paid through the nose to be counseled by
Scientology "auditors." Messiah or Madman? is less a coherent account of L.
Ron Hubbard's life than a catalogue of cultish horrors: the bizzare Sea Org, a
fleet of Scientology-run ships where "Ron's" word is law, mischievous children
are locked away in damp cabins and disobedience results in food or sleep
deprivation; the harrassment and framing of those who seek to leave the church
or expose its darker side; and Hubbard himself, bigamist and opium addict,
surrounded by nubile teenage "messengers," plotting to destroy the World
Federation of Mental Health and to bug and burglarize the Internal Revenue
Service.

Corydon conveys a heartfelt belief that Dianetics is a good thing corrupted,
in the end, by Hubbard's megalomania; there are many in the book who agree
with him.  We good readers are clearly supposed to symphatize with the plight
of these purer Scientologists.  Instead we are left to wonder why it took them
so long to wake up and smell the coffee.

The book itself is disjointed, told by too many people in no discernible
order.  Confusing Scientology jargon appears in early chapters, only to be
explained in later ones.  The hysterical tone eventually wears thin.

Although Hubbard died in 1986, his legacy, the church, lives on. Anyone
attracted to the slick television ads that still run for Dianetics would be
well advised to read Messiah or Madman? first.

