Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Significant among the maladies Hubbard claimed he could cure were the complaints that had
figured so prominently in his Veterans Administration file: arthritis, eye trouble, bursitis and ulcers.
He also added to the list the most intractable ailment known to medical science - the common
cold.
Optimism and confidence in the ability of Dianetics to deal with almost all human problems were
the abiding themes of the book. Hubbard's seductive message was simple - a dramatic
breakthrough had occurred in psychotherapy. The techniques were easy to learn, were available to
everyone and, most important of all, always worked!
The first challenge of Dianetics was to get through the book, for the text was abstruse, rambling,
repetitive, studded with confusing neologisms and littered with interminable footnotes, which
Hubbard seemed to think added academic verisimilitude. Fellow science-fiction writer L. Sprague
de Camp frankly admitted he found the book incomprehensible and quoted W.S. Gilbert to explain
why a fiction writer who was fluent, literate and readable should produce such impenetrable nonfiction:
'If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!'[8]
Hubbard's anxiety to invest his work with intellectual authority should have deterred him from laying
bare his own fierce prejudices, but he could not be restrained. The book exposed a deep-rooted
hatred of women, exemplified by a prurient pre-occupation with 'attempted abortions', which he