Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health - Reception

Reception

See also: Dianetics#Scientific evaluation and criticisms

Although it received an initial positive public response, Dianetics was strongly criticized by scientists and medical professionals for its scientific deficiencies. The American Psychological Association passed a resolution in 1950 stating of Dianetics "the fact that these claims are not supported by empirical evidence of the sort required for the establishment of scientific generalizations."

Despite a couple of favourable reviews from medical doctors, Dianetics has had very hostile reviews from many, or almost all, sources. An early review in The New Republic summed up 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" and warned of medical risks: "it may prove fatal to have put too much trust in the promises of this dangerous book." Frederick L. Schuman, political science professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts became an ardent follower of Dianetics and wrote indignant letters to those who reviewed Dianetics adversely including the New Republic and the New York Times. Professor Schuman wrote a favorable article on Dianetics in the April 1951 issue of Better Homes and Gardens.

Reviewing the book for Scientific American in 1951, physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi criticised the lack of either evidence or qualification, saying it "probably contains more promises and less evidence per page than has any publication since the invention of printing." An editorial in Clinical Medicine summarised the book as "a rumination of old psychological concepts, (...) misunderstood and misinterpreted and at the same time adorned with the halo of the philosopher's stone and of an universal remedy," which had initiated "a new system of quackery of apparently considerable dimensions." According to Consumer Reports, the book over-extends scientific and cybernetic metaphors, and lacks the needed case reports, experimental replication and statistical data to back up its bold claims. Both Consumer Reports and Clinical Medicine also warned of the danger that the book would inspire unqualified people to harmfully intervene in others' mental problems.

These warnings were echoed by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who contrasted the sophistication of Freud's theories with the "oversimplified" and "propagandistic" ideas offered by Dianetics. The latter's extremely mechanistic view of the mind had no need for human values, conscience or any authority other than Hubbard himself. A similar point was made by psychologist Rollo May in the New York Times, arguing that Dianetics unwittingly illustrates the fallacy of trying to understand human nature by invariant mathematical models taken from mechanics.

A review by semantics expert S. I. Hayakawa described Dianetics as an example of fiction-science, meaning that it borrows several linguistic techniques from science fiction to make fanciful claims seem plausible. Science fiction, he explained, relies on vividly conveying imaginary entities such as Martians and rayguns as though they were commonplace. Hubbard was doing this with his fantastic "discoveries," perhaps fooling even himself.

Science writer Martin Gardner criticised the book's "repetitious, immature style" likening it to the grand pseudoscientific pronouncements of Wilhelm Reich. "Nothing in the book remotely resembles a scientific report," he wrote.

Aleksei Shliapov, a columnist at the Russian paper Izvestiia, said about Dianetics, "I think that our politicians should acquaint themselves with this book, since here is, as it were, a technology for how to become popular, how to acquire influence among the masses without having to appear a significant personality."

More recently, the book has been described by Salon.com as "a fantastically dull, terribly written, crackpot rant," which covers a lack of credible evidence with mere insistence and The Daily Telegraph called it a "creepy bit of mind-mechanics" which would cause rather than cure depression.

Hubbard has been considered homophobic because of passages in Dianetics where homosexuality is considered a mental illness. Besides the homosexual as sexual pervert, Hubbard also includes things such as lesbianism, sexual sadism and all the catalog of Ellis and Krafft-Ebing as being actually "quite ill physically."