Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

ank and perfect function. Every human brain, he argued, had the potential to operate as this
optimum computer, with untold benefits to the individual and to mankind, not least restoring sanity
to the insane, curing all manner of illnesses and ending wars.
Constraints were presently imposed on the brain by 'aberrations', usually caused by physical or
emotional pain. Since pain was a threat to survival, the basic principle of existence, the sane,
analytical mind sought to avoid it. Evolution had provided the necessary mechanism by means of
what he called the 'reactive mind'. In moments of stress, the 'analytical mind' shut down and the
'reactive mind' took over, storing information in cellular recordings, or 'engrams'.
He provided an example of how an engram was stored. If a child was bitten by a dog at the age of
two, she might not remember the incident in later life but the engram could be stimulated by any
number of sights or sounds, causing her inexplicable distress. It might be a similar noise to that of
the car driving past when the dog attacked, the smell of a dog's fur, or the scrape of skin on
concrete when she was knocked to the ground.
The purpose of Dianetic therapy, he explained, was to gain access to the engrams in the reactive
memory banks and 're-file' them in the analytical mind, where their influence would be eradicated.
To 'unlock' the reactive memory bank it was necessary to locate the earliest engrams, which he
claimed were often pre-natal, sometimes occurring within twenty-four hours of conception! A foetus
might not understand words spoken while it was in the womb, he asserted, but it would be able to
recall them in later life.
Having cleared the reactive mind, the analytical mind would then function, like the optimum
computer, at full efficiency - the individual's IQ would rise dramatically, he would be freed of all
psychological and psychosomatic illnesses and his memory would improve to the point of total
recall.
Dianetics was easy to apply, he asserted, once the axioms and mechanisms had been learned,
and he envisaged the science being practised by 'people of intelligence and good drive' on their
friends and families. 'To date, over two hundred patients have been treated,' he claimed; 'of those
two hundred, two hundred cures have been obtained.'
It was certainly an alluring prospect - a simple science available to ordinary people that invariably
succeeded and claimed amazing results. But Hubbard knew better than to reveal, in a twenty-fivecent
magazine, how to practise his wonderful new science; readers were specifically warned that
the article would not contain sufficient information for them to become Dianetic operators. All the
techniques would be explained, they were told, in a forthcoming book soon to be published by
Hermitage House, price $4.00.
On 9 May 1950, Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard appeared
without fanfare in bookstores across the nation. Hermitage House was not optimistic that it would
be a big seller and set the initial print run at a modest six thousand copies.
The book, dedicated to Will Durant, esteemed author of The Story of Philosophy, displayed none of
the restraint evident in the Astounding article. Indeed, Hubbard introduced his new science with
breathtaking magniloquence. 'The creation of Dianetics', he declared in the opening sentences of
the book, 'is a milestone for Man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions
of the wheel and the arch . . . The hidden source of all psychosomatic ills and human aberration
has been discovered and skills have been developed for their invariable cure.'