Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

incidents with such clarity that it was as if he had physically returned to the time and place. After a
couple of sessions, he seemed to be able to go back far enough to actually re-live the astonishing
experience of his birth and at the same time he discovered that the chronic sinusitis that had
plagued him all his life was much improved.
Thereafter, Campbell was the first committed disciple of Dianetics, utterly convinced that L. Ron
Hubbard had made profound discoveries about the workings of the mind and that the fundamental
nature of human life was about to be changed for the better. [Hubbard himself was perhaps as
concerned to make money as he was to help humanity and he had some interesting ideas about
how to do it. Around this time he was invited to address a science-fiction group in Newark hosted
by the writer, Sam Moskowitz. 'Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous,' he told the meeting. 'If a man
really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be to start his own religion.'[2]]
Determined to help Ron propagate his new 'science', in July 1949 Campbell wrote to Dr Joseph
Winter, a general practitioner from St Joseph, Michigan, who had contributed occasional articles on
medical subjects to Astounding: 'L. Ron Hubbard, who happens to be an author, has been doing
some psychological research . . . He's gotten important results. His approach is, actually, based on
some very early work of Freud's, some work of other men, and a lot of original research. He's not a
professional psychoanalyst or psychiatrist, he's basically an engineer. He approached the problem
of psychiatry from the heuristic viewpoint - to get results.'
Campbell described the case of an amputee veteran suffering from severe depression who had
been helped by Hubbard after conventional psychiatry had failed to alleviate his condition.
Psychiatrists had injected sodium pentothal to enable the veteran to re-live his war experience,
taking him through the moment he was hit by a mortar shell to the moment he recovered
consciousness in the aid station, but he continued to be depressed and insist he would be better
off dead. Using Dianetics, Hubbard had also taken the veteran back through the shell burst but
discovered that while he was unconscious medics had said, 'This guy's hopeless, he's better off
dead anyway' and chosen to move other casualties first. This incident, it transpired, was the cause
of his problems.
Winter was intrigued: he had never considered before that an unconscious patient could in any way
be aware of what was going on around him. He wrote to Campbell asking for more information and
back came another long letter elaborating on the theory and concluding: 'With cooperation from
some institutions, some psychiatrists, he [Hubbard] has worked on all types of cases.
Institutionalized schizophrenics, apathies, manics, depressives, perverts, stuttering, neuroses - in
all, nearly 1000 cases. But just a brief sampling of each type; he doesn't have proper statistics in
the usual sense. But he has one statistic. He has cured every patient he worked with. He has
cured ulcers, arthritis, asthma.'
While Winter was avowedly incredulous at the idea that a man with no medical training of any kind
was able to cure one hundred per cent of his patients, he did not share the tendency of his medical
colleagues to dismiss all lay practitioners as dangerous cranks. He had always been fascinated by
the enigmas of human behaviour and believed in a holistic approach to medicine which was
amenable to unconventional hypotheses. He contacted Hubbard, suggested that he present his
findings to the medical profession, and offered to help.
Hubbard quickly replied, promising to forward an 'operator's manual' for Winter's use and thanking
him for his interest. When his manual arrived, Winter made several copies and gave them to
psychiatrist friends in Chicago, but was disappointed by their negative reactions. They were
interested in the ingenuity of Hubbard's ideas, but strongly sceptical of their efficacy. However,