Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (often abbreviated as DMSMH) is a book by L. Ron Hubbard which sets out self-improvement techniques he developed, called Dianetics. The book is also one of the canonical texts of Scientology. It is colloquially referred to as Book One. Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and the book Scientology helped launch the religion in 1950, and are available in 32 languages.
In the best-selling self-help book, first published in 1950, Hubbard wrote that he had isolated the "dynamic principle of existence," which he states as "Survive," and presents his description of the human mind. He identifies the source of "human aberration" as the "reactive mind," a normally hidden but always conscious area of the mind, and certain cellular recordings ("engrams") stored in it. Dianetics describes counseling (or "auditing") techniques which Hubbard claimed would get rid of engrams and bring major therapeutic benefits.
The book was criticized by scientists and medical professionals, who charge that it presents these claims in superficially scientific language but without evidence. Despite this, the book proved a major commercial success on its publication, although B. Dalton's officials state that these figures were inflated by Hubbard's Scientologist-controlled publisher, who had groups of Scientologists each purchase dozens or even hundreds of copies of Hubbard's books, and who sold these back to the same retailers.
Read more about Dianetics: The Modern Science Of Mental Health: Background, Content, Initial Publication, Reception, Publication History, Role in Scientology, Cover Imagery
Famous quotes containing the words modern, science, mental and/or health:
“We could hardly believe that after so many ordeals, after all the trials of modern skepticism, there was still so much left in our souls to destroy.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled “a contemplative man’s recreation,” introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist’s observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man’s recreation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“see the shaky future grow familiar
in the pinched, indigenous faces
of these thoroughbred mental cases,
twice my age and half my weight.
We are all old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“To get time for civic work, for exercise, for neighborhood projects, reading or meditation, or just plain time to themselves, mothers need to hold out against the fairly recent but surprisingly entrenched myth that “good mothers” are constantly with their children. They will have to speak out at last about the demoralizing effect of spending day after day with small children, no matter how much they love them.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)