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Authors: Janet Reitman
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picked up a loose cobblestone and crushed my skull."At that moment, O'Brien experienced her own earlier death.
The session lasted for three hours, with O'Brien continually reliving the violence and horror of the incident until its "charge," or emotional impact, was nullified. "By the end of it, I was luxuriously comfortable in every fiber, yawning and stretching and taking breaths in full, deep satisfaction that seemed to reach to the soles of my feet." When the sessions ended, she walked down the stairs into her living room, which was decorated with Christmas lights. O'Brien was dazzled. "I was freshly there from another age. For the first time in this lifetime, I knew I was beyond the laws of space and time," she said. "I never was the same again."
Hubbard's affirmations, it seemed, had paid off. No longer a struggling science fiction writer, he was flush with cash, and his Dianetic Research Foundations were thriving across the country. Sara Hubbard would later estimate that the foundations took in over $1 millionin less than a year. The most successful branch stood in Los Angeles, housed in an elegant Spanish-style mansion once occupied by the governor of California. Known as the Casa, for its Mission architecture, the Los Angeles Foundation featured an auditorium big enough for five hundred people, and it was routinely full, according to the science fiction writer A. E. Van Vogt, whom Hubbard had enlisted to run the organization.
But the flourishing was brief. The revenues generated by the Los Angeles branch of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation weren't enough to cover its expenses. Hubbard thought nothing of drawing cashier's checks against the proceeds of the foundation. "The organization spent $500,000 in nine months and went broke," Van Vogt later told the interviewer Charles Platt. By the spring of 1951, Van Vogt would have no choice but to fold the operation to avoid declaring bankruptcy.
Similar things were happening at Dianetic Research Foundations all over the country. One official of the Elizabeth Foundationlater told Helen O'Brien that he'd resigned after watching the foundation take in $90,000 in a single month and account for only $20,000 of it. By the end of 1950, the income of the Elizabeth Foundation, as well as the Dianetic Research Foundations in Chicago, Miami, Washington, D.C., and virtually everywhere else, had dropped so significantly that they were unable to meet their payroll and other costs.
"The tidal wave of popular interest was over in a few months," O'Brien wrote in
Dianetics in Limbo.
"People began to see that although Dianetics worked, in the sense that individuals could cooperate in amateur explorations of buried memories, this only occasionally resulted in improved health and enhanced abilities, in spite of Hubbard's confident predictions." She recalled an empty fishbowl at one of the foundation's reception desks, placed there for people to discard their eyeglasses once Dianetics had "cured" them of nearsightedness. It remained empty. "The only thing I ever saw in it was a cigarette lighter left there by someone who had quit smoking," O'Brien said.
Now struggling to maintain control of a ship that was sinking fast, Hubbard grew intensely paranoid, sniping at foundation officials for minor infractions and accusing his staff of using irregular, non-Hubbard-approved methods, or "Black Dianetics," as he called them. The New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners began an inquiry into the activities of the Elizabeth Foundation, as it was apparently practicing medicine without a license.Feeling persecuted, Hubbard began to believe that some of his students might be spies. His fears worsened when
Look
magazine published a scathing article in December 1950, in which the head of the famous Menninger Clinic, a leading psychiatric hospital, denounced Hubbard as a charlatan and condemned his techniques as potentially harmful.
By then, Dr. Joseph Winter and another key figure, Arthur Ceppos,
The session lasted for three hours, with O'Brien continually reliving the violence and horror of the incident until its "charge," or emotional impact, was nullified. "By the end of it, I was luxuriously comfortable in every fiber, yawning and stretching and taking breaths in full, deep satisfaction that seemed to reach to the soles of my feet." When the sessions ended, she walked down the stairs into her living room, which was decorated with Christmas lights. O'Brien was dazzled. "I was freshly there from another age. For the first time in this lifetime, I knew I was beyond the laws of space and time," she said. "I never was the same again."
Hubbard's affirmations, it seemed, had paid off. No longer a struggling science fiction writer, he was flush with cash, and his Dianetic Research Foundations were thriving across the country. Sara Hubbard would later estimate that the foundations took in over $1 millionin less than a year. The most successful branch stood in Los Angeles, housed in an elegant Spanish-style mansion once occupied by the governor of California. Known as the Casa, for its Mission architecture, the Los Angeles Foundation featured an auditorium big enough for five hundred people, and it was routinely full, according to the science fiction writer A. E. Van Vogt, whom Hubbard had enlisted to run the organization.
But the flourishing was brief. The revenues generated by the Los Angeles branch of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation weren't enough to cover its expenses. Hubbard thought nothing of drawing cashier's checks against the proceeds of the foundation. "The organization spent $500,000 in nine months and went broke," Van Vogt later told the interviewer Charles Platt. By the spring of 1951, Van Vogt would have no choice but to fold the operation to avoid declaring bankruptcy.
Similar things were happening at Dianetic Research Foundations all over the country. One official of the Elizabeth Foundationlater told Helen O'Brien that he'd resigned after watching the foundation take in $90,000 in a single month and account for only $20,000 of it. By the end of 1950, the income of the Elizabeth Foundation, as well as the Dianetic Research Foundations in Chicago, Miami, Washington, D.C., and virtually everywhere else, had dropped so significantly that they were unable to meet their payroll and other costs.
"The tidal wave of popular interest was over in a few months," O'Brien wrote in
Dianetics in Limbo.
"People began to see that although Dianetics worked, in the sense that individuals could cooperate in amateur explorations of buried memories, this only occasionally resulted in improved health and enhanced abilities, in spite of Hubbard's confident predictions." She recalled an empty fishbowl at one of the foundation's reception desks, placed there for people to discard their eyeglasses once Dianetics had "cured" them of nearsightedness. It remained empty. "The only thing I ever saw in it was a cigarette lighter left there by someone who had quit smoking," O'Brien said.
Now struggling to maintain control of a ship that was sinking fast, Hubbard grew intensely paranoid, sniping at foundation officials for minor infractions and accusing his staff of using irregular, non-Hubbard-approved methods, or "Black Dianetics," as he called them. The New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners began an inquiry into the activities of the Elizabeth Foundation, as it was apparently practicing medicine without a license.Feeling persecuted, Hubbard began to believe that some of his students might be spies. His fears worsened when
Look
magazine published a scathing article in December 1950, in which the head of the famous Menninger Clinic, a leading psychiatric hospital, denounced Hubbard as a charlatan and condemned his techniques as potentially harmful.
By then, Dr. Joseph Winter and another key figure, Arthur Ceppos,
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