Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Republic weighed in by describing the book as a 'bold and immodest mixture of complete
nonsense and perfectly reasonable common sense, taken from long acknowledged findings and
disguised and distorted by a crazy, newly invented terminology'.[12]
Following close on the heels of the media pundits came the outraged ranks of the medical
profession. The American Psychological Association, pointing out that Hubbard's 'sweeping
generalizations' were not supported by empirical evidence, called for Dianetics to be limited to
scientific investigation 'in the public interest'.
'If it were not for sympathy for the mental suffering of disturbed people,' Dr Frederick Hacker, a Los
Angeles psychiatrist declared, 'the so-called science of Dianetics could be dismissed for what it is
- a clever scheme to dip into the pockets of the gullible with impunity. The Dianetic auditor is but
another name for the witch doctor, exploiting a real need with phoneymethods.'[13] Many medical
experts sourly pointed out that there was nothing new in Dianetics and that Hubbard was simply
applying new words to common phenomena long known and accepted in psychoanalysis. The
'engram' theory, they explained, was no more than a form of 'abreaction', the psychiatric term for
releasing emotions associated with the suppressed memory of some past event.
In the face of such criticism, Dianeticists rose en masse to defend their founder and his ideas,
bombarding the offending publications with indignant letters. Leading the protest was Frederick L.
Schuman, a distinguished professor of political science from Williamstown, Massachusetts, who
had visited Hubbard in New Jersey and been instantly converted. 'History has become a race
between Dianetics and catastrophe,' he wrote to The New York Times. 'Dianetics will win if enough
people are challenged, in time, to understand it.'[14]
The constant publicity spread the word as effectively as a nationwide advertizing campaign and the
more the medical profession railed against Dianetics, the more people became convinced there
must be something to it. Only two months after the publication of the book, Newsweek reported that
more than fifty-five thousand copies had been sold and five hundred Dianetics groups had been
set up across the United States.[15]
If the cause of all the fuss was in any way bewildered by his sudden change of circumstances, he
was certainly not going to show it. In truth, Hubbard had certainly not anticipated that the book
would ever be a bestseller, but he acted as if it was pre-ordained and slipped effortlessly into the
role of luminary. He was, naturally, much in demand for interviews and he proved to be a natural
interviewee providing reporters with a multitude of picturesque quotes about his colourful life and
exhausting years of research 'in the laboratories of the world'.