Questions for Janet Reitman
Posted: July 8, 2011.
Print: Slate
excerpt:
One thing you have to understand about L. Ron Hubbard: He was a product in many ways of World War II. He was a Navy officer, though it is debatable as to what degree he fought, because he suffered from ulcers and claimed numerous other physical disabilities, and he seemingly came back from the war suffering from some kind of PTSD. His Navy records never revealed that he was exposed to the injuries he claimed. And the Church of Scientology claims that he was sort of undercover, and actually an Intelligence officer, so he had other sets of records. I’ve never seen evidence of this. Nonetheless, he clearly was suffering from something, and had appealed to the navy for psychiatric help. And within a few years, he came up with something to cure himself of his trauma. He called it “Dianetics.”
It was appealing to people because we’re talking about an era where there wasn’t really psychiatry. It was very expensive and only available in a major city like New York, Washington, L.A. Other forms of psychiatry like the lobotomy were frightening. And there were lots of traumatized people.
...And he always merged it with science. Science was a great passion of the mid-20th century, sci-fi was huge, we had just dropped the atom bomb, we were entering the space race—so that was extremely appealing. Religion became extremely popular in the ‘50s, too. That was another way people dealt with their trauma, going to church, which skyrocketed in this period. By casting Dianetics, which is essentially self-help, as something with a spiritual component, which is Scientology, Hubbard tapped into the zeitgeist.
I’m not sure there’s a way to understand the genesis of Scientology apart from understanding that Hubbard was a profoundly disturbed individual and that the church apparently is run basically to make money. Ted Koppel did an intereview with David Miscaviage that, I believe, was pretty telling on this point. When asked whether a poor person could rise through the ranks of the church, Miscaviage basically punted with an extremely unconvincing answer. His whole interview was one rebuttal after another to the numerous charges that have been leveled against the church over the years. It really was pretty pathetic. The guy has absolutely no presence as an intellectual, never mind a person who claims a spiritual warrant of any kind.
The closest thing to any kind of moral high ground that the church seems to claim is an existence long struggle against the medical and phychiatric establishment, which seems to be rooted in some of the psychiatric abuses of first half of the 20th century. Miscaviage was calling out the psychology practices of the Nazi’s as the foundation of Scientology’s challenges to the field.
To the extent the article tries to get us to understand some genuine basis for the church, I think the mission was doomed from the start.
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