Read Online Inside Scientology by Janet Reitman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Janet Reitman
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the man who'd published
Dianetics,
had resigned from the foundation; Winter, having concluded that Dianetics might be dangerous in the hands of those not licensed as health-care professionals, was dismayed that most practitioners had absolutely no medical training. In March 1951, Hubbard's most ardent disciple, John Campbell, unhappy with the general disorganization of the Dianetics movement, returned to editing science fiction.
Upset by the defection of these apostles, Hubbard accused Winter and Ceppos of trying to take over the foundation. He also accused Ceppos of being a Communist sympathizer.This was a serious matter, as the increasingly shrill anti-Communist rhetoric of Senator Joseph McCarthy made itself felt throughout the country. At the peak of this frenzy, in 1951, Hubbard wrote a letter to the FBI, denouncing more than a dozen members of his organization as suspected members of the Communist Party.They included leaders of both the Chicago Foundation and the New York Foundation, numerous figures in the Dianetics movement in California, and, most astoundingly, Sara Northrup, Hubbard's own wife.
Hubbard and Sara's marriage had grown increasingly strained after the publication of
Dianetics,
and they had been largely living apart. Both were having affairs, Sara with a handsome young member of the Los Angeles Foundation named Miles Hollister, and Hubbard with a twenty-year-old college student named Barbara Klowden, who'd been hired by the Los Angeles Foundation as a press agent. Klowden, who ultimately became a psychologist, believed that Hubbard suffered from manic depression with paranoiac tendencies. As she said, "Many manics are delightful, productive people with tremendous energy and self-confidence. He was like that in his manic stageâenormously creative, carried away by feelings of omnipotence and talking all the time of grandiose schemes."
At other points, Hubbard became extremely depressed, drinking heavily and sedating himself with drugs like phenobarbital. He had come to believe, as he told Klowden, that Sara had caused his most recent bout of writer's block, having hypnotized him in his sleep and "commanded" him not to write. And Sara wasn't the only one who was against him, he said. Officers of the Elizabeth Foundation had tried to "slip him a mickey" in a glass of milk; he claimed they had also attempted to "insert a fatal hypo[dermic needle] into his eye and heart to try and stop him from ever writing again."
During one of these episodes, Klowden was visiting Hubbard in Palm Springs when he suddenly announced that "something was brewing" in Los Angeles, and he needed to return home. A week later, he knocked on the door of her apartment, disheveled and pale, and announced that he'd discovered Sara and Miles Hollister in bed together. He was afraid they were plotting to have him committed. *
"Please don't ask me anything," Hubbard told her. "I'm in a very bad way."
The next evening, February 24, 1951, Hubbard took his one-year-old daughter, Alexis, from her crib at the Los Angeles Foundation and deposited her at a local nursing agency. A short while later, Richard De Mille, who was now working as Hubbard's personal assistant, arrived at Hubbard's apartment and took Sara by force into Hubbard's waiting Lincoln Continental.
Striking first, Hubbard had decided to declare his wife insane. De Mille sped the Lincoln out of Los Angeles toward San Bernardino as the couple argued venomously about their marriage. For an hour or so, Hubbard searched in vain for a psychiatrist who'd agree to commit his wife in the middle of the night; then he ordered De Mille to drive into the desert.
In Yuma, Arizona, Hubbard agreed to release Sara but had an aide take his infant daughter to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where her father joined her several days later. Then, together with De Mille and baby Alexis, Hubbard flew to Havana, Cuba, at that time a rum-soaked, anything-goes city where Americans were free to enter without
Dianetics,
had resigned from the foundation; Winter, having concluded that Dianetics might be dangerous in the hands of those not licensed as health-care professionals, was dismayed that most practitioners had absolutely no medical training. In March 1951, Hubbard's most ardent disciple, John Campbell, unhappy with the general disorganization of the Dianetics movement, returned to editing science fiction.
Upset by the defection of these apostles, Hubbard accused Winter and Ceppos of trying to take over the foundation. He also accused Ceppos of being a Communist sympathizer.This was a serious matter, as the increasingly shrill anti-Communist rhetoric of Senator Joseph McCarthy made itself felt throughout the country. At the peak of this frenzy, in 1951, Hubbard wrote a letter to the FBI, denouncing more than a dozen members of his organization as suspected members of the Communist Party.They included leaders of both the Chicago Foundation and the New York Foundation, numerous figures in the Dianetics movement in California, and, most astoundingly, Sara Northrup, Hubbard's own wife.
Hubbard and Sara's marriage had grown increasingly strained after the publication of
Dianetics,
and they had been largely living apart. Both were having affairs, Sara with a handsome young member of the Los Angeles Foundation named Miles Hollister, and Hubbard with a twenty-year-old college student named Barbara Klowden, who'd been hired by the Los Angeles Foundation as a press agent. Klowden, who ultimately became a psychologist, believed that Hubbard suffered from manic depression with paranoiac tendencies. As she said, "Many manics are delightful, productive people with tremendous energy and self-confidence. He was like that in his manic stageâenormously creative, carried away by feelings of omnipotence and talking all the time of grandiose schemes."
At other points, Hubbard became extremely depressed, drinking heavily and sedating himself with drugs like phenobarbital. He had come to believe, as he told Klowden, that Sara had caused his most recent bout of writer's block, having hypnotized him in his sleep and "commanded" him not to write. And Sara wasn't the only one who was against him, he said. Officers of the Elizabeth Foundation had tried to "slip him a mickey" in a glass of milk; he claimed they had also attempted to "insert a fatal hypo[dermic needle] into his eye and heart to try and stop him from ever writing again."
During one of these episodes, Klowden was visiting Hubbard in Palm Springs when he suddenly announced that "something was brewing" in Los Angeles, and he needed to return home. A week later, he knocked on the door of her apartment, disheveled and pale, and announced that he'd discovered Sara and Miles Hollister in bed together. He was afraid they were plotting to have him committed. *
"Please don't ask me anything," Hubbard told her. "I'm in a very bad way."
The next evening, February 24, 1951, Hubbard took his one-year-old daughter, Alexis, from her crib at the Los Angeles Foundation and deposited her at a local nursing agency. A short while later, Richard De Mille, who was now working as Hubbard's personal assistant, arrived at Hubbard's apartment and took Sara by force into Hubbard's waiting Lincoln Continental.
Striking first, Hubbard had decided to declare his wife insane. De Mille sped the Lincoln out of Los Angeles toward San Bernardino as the couple argued venomously about their marriage. For an hour or so, Hubbard searched in vain for a psychiatrist who'd agree to commit his wife in the middle of the night; then he ordered De Mille to drive into the desert.
In Yuma, Arizona, Hubbard agreed to release Sara but had an aide take his infant daughter to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where her father joined her several days later. Then, together with De Mille and baby Alexis, Hubbard flew to Havana, Cuba, at that time a rum-soaked, anything-goes city where Americans were free to enter without
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