The Anderson Report

CHAPTER 6
HUBBARD-THE FOUNDER OF SCIENTOLOGY

Biography.

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, the founder of scientology, was born at Tilden, Nebraska, U.S.A., on the 13th March, 1911, the son of H. R. and Ledora May (nee Waterbury). He claims to be descended from Count de Loup "who entered England with the Norman invasion and became the founder of the English de Wolfe family which emigrated to America in the 17th century." His father's family came to America in the 19th century. His father's mother was a Scot; his maternal grandfather was a cattleman in Montana, on whose ranch Hubbard was raised till he was ten. In his later childhood and adolescence Hubbard travelled extensively in Northern China and India with his father whose duties as a United States naval officer took him to the Orient. His sojourn in the East aroused in him an interest in Eastern philosophies and he learned something of the Buddhist and other teachings from fakirs and yogis whom he met. His early formal education seems to have been sporadic. One of his friends and early tutors is claimed to have been a Commander Thompson, a doctor in the United States Navy, who is said to have been a student of Sigmund Freud in Vienna.

From 1930 to 1932 Hubbard was a student at the George Washington University where he claims to have studied engineering and to have been one of the first men to have studied nuclear physics. He has claimed, or allowed the claim to be made and repeated frequently without denial by him, that he is a graduate of that University in civil engineering, and he uses, and allows to be used in relation to himself, the letters "B.S." and "C.E.", intending to convey the impression that he has so graduated. In fact, he has no such qualification. He claims other academic distinctions also - "many degrees" it is said - but the only "university" degree which is identified is that of Doctor of Philosophy at the Sequoia University, Southern California. The Board caused inquiries to be made as to the identity of this university and was informed by the Australian Consul-General in San Francisco that the Sequoia University was a privately endowed institution which was not accredited, that is, not registered with the Western Association of Schools and colleges, which is the accrediting body for the west coast of America.

This somewhat suspect degree and a self-bestowed doctorate of scientology enable Hubbard to describe himself and be described as "Doctor" Hubbard. Though he writes extensively on medical matters, there is no basis for regarding him as a doctor in the medical sense.

Between 1932 and 1941 he travelled extensively in Central America and developed as a prolific writer of books of fiction, travel, science fiction and fantasy, finding time "to write seven million words of published fact and fiction". In dianetics and scientology it is evident that his output of science fiction has continued unabated. He finds his early reputation as a science fiction writer irksome, and in biographical information disseminated to scientologists his science fiction proclivities are sometimes discreetly omitted.

During World War II he served as an officer in the United States Navy and appears to have been seconded to the Royal Navy for a period.

As early as 1935 he appears to have been formulating some of the "axioms" which later bloomed into 57 scientology and nearly 200 dianetic "self evident truths". It is said that he wrote in 1938 a never-published work called by the code name Excalibur, on the subject of the basic principles of human existence.

Both before and after World War II he studied hypnosis, and, as his writings indicate, he practised it for some time. Out of the hotchpotch of his experiences, his imagination and hypnosis he developed the theories which led to the publication in 1948 of his first book on dianetics, entitled Dianetics, The Original Thesis. His theories found little or no acceptance in orthodox medical or psychological circles, but his extravagant ideas found some targets on the fringe of learning and his writings appealed to some who accepted uncritically and without proof the astonishing claims which he made. In 1950, he wrote his first major book on dianetics, entitled Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. This book he claims to be of 300,000 words, but it is less than two-thirds that size, and his boast is that it was written in three weeks. He claims that it was an instant success, a best seller, which over the years has reached the million copy mark. The nature of dianetics is dealt with later in this Report. A definition of the word has crept into Funk and Wagnall's New Standard Dictionary in these terms, "A system for the analysis, control and development of human thought evolved from a set of co-ordinated axioms which also provide techniques for the treatment of a wide range of mental disorders and organic diseases: the term and doctrines introduced by L. Ron Hubbard, C.E., D.Scn., American engineer".

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Other books on dianetics followed, the next substantial volume being Science of Survival, first published in 1951, which deals extensively with the "dynamics of behaviour" and "dianetics processing".

In about 1951 Hubbard established the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation in California, but he appears to have had disputes with its board of management, largely if not entirely because of his desire to explore advanced theories which he had developed concerning the thetan and its past existence. Accordingly, he severed his association with the Research Foundation in about 1952 and proceeded to found scientology which is the burden of this Report. The development of dianetics into scientology and the continued close association of both of these "sciences" with one another is dealt with later in this report.

The first scientology book appears to have been Scientology: A History of Man, published in manuscript in 1952 under the title of What to Audit and subsequently reprinted several times under the first mentioned title, Scientology: 8-80 also appeared in 1952, Scientology 8-8008 in 1953, Scientology; The Fundamentals of Thought in 1956. Several other small books appeared between 1952 and 1956, one of them being Self Analysis in Scientology in 1954. Since 1956 no substantial definitive book on scientology has come from Hubbard's pen though he has written many hundred of bulletins, letters and directives and dozens of books and booklets on specific aspects of scientology practice. He has further disseminated his ideas by a great number of tape recordings, containing an estimated 30 million words.

In addition to his books, he has produced or inspired the production of several scientology magazines in several countries, e.g., Great Britain, U.S.A., Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, with such titles as Ability, Certainty, Reality, Affinity, Communication. For several years these magazines have provided a very effective means of disseminating Hubbard's teachings amongst his followers and advertising his books, courses and congresses. His bulletins and other communications are frequently reproduced in these magazines. Communication magazine is "The Official Periodical of Dianetics and Scientology in Australia".

After Hubbard withdrew from the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, it experienced certain difficulties, the nature of which did not clearly emerge, but seems to have been at least partly financial. In about 1954, Hubbard "acquired" the Foundation and in 1955 the "Unification" Congress was held to celebrate the occasion. Now that dianetics was once more his own, he wrote a book, Dianetics 1955, described as "The Text Book of Human Communication," which dealt with dianetic techniques. Hubbard, however, had long been impatient with the slowness of dianetic techniques. Further, dianetics claimed to alleviate or cure man's mental and physical ailments. As a "science" claiming to cure illnesses, Hubbard feared that dianetics was likely to be vulnerable to scrutiny by civil authorities. Scientology, which officially did not claim to cure, ran no such risk, so Hubbard felt, and, furthermore, it covered a wider canvas and afforded better and more rapid methods of exploiting the gullible. Hubbard accordingly proceeded actively to promote scientology, ostensibly allowing dianetics to fade into the background. There is, however, a close and continuous link between the two "sciences," and, notwithstanding attempts at the Inquiry to assert the contrary, dianetics, if not in name, at least in reality is still very actively engaged in by scientologists. Many of their processes are virtually indistinguishable in essence. Dianetic and scientology techniques are frequently hypnotic and of a kind which are potentially harmful to mental health.

Hubbard had his headquarters in the U.S.A. for some years but about 1958 he transferred them to England and he now operates from Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex, England.

He has conducted congresses in various countries, visiting Victoria for that purpose in 1959. These congresses are an important source of revenue for Hubbard. A congress held in America in 1958 returned 800 dollars per head from at least 140 people. "The Games Congress," held in America in 1956, was attended by about 450 people.

By frequent and repeated reference to his qualities Hubbard has built up for himself in the eyes of his followers a mighty image. The adulation and obeisance which they offer him is almost unbelievable. Scientology students are specifically taught that he is not God, lest they think he is. He himself insists in The Creation of Human Ability, that preclears must be taught that he is only a man. He poses as a benign father to his scientology family. He stresses that he is always available to his flock. He is very approachable, and he encourages preclears to write directly to him, facilities for such communications being provided at the HASI. Frequently such communications are of a confessional nature, as Hubbard suggests they should be, and on this account his control over his followers becomes stronger.

In appearance he seems to be a solidly built man, perhaps a little over average height with sandy or red hair, thick but receding slightly, and a broad face and ruddy complexion. A larger than life bronze bust of Hubbard stands in the reception office of the Melbourne HASI, little the worse for the damage done by an assault on it by a disturbed scientologist.

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An important requirement by Hubbard is that a weekly report on the processing of each preclear should be forwarded to him at Saint Hill. His condescension in considering each preclear's processing report is stressed as an indication of his magnanimity and the preclear is suitably impressed, not realizing until it is too late that he is very effectively acquiring domination over the awe-struck preclear.

He makes for himself, and allows others to make for him, the most exalted claims, He repeatedly asserts that he has perfected the techniques necessary to audit preclears to clear and beyond, and he complains that it is the fault of auditors who are unable to audit and use the E-meter that preclears have not yet become clear and OT. Jack Horner, the author of Summary of Scientology, writes of Hubbard, "I wish to state that L. Ron Hubbard is, in my opinion, one of the great geniuses of the 20th century, and that his discoveries will make possible a new era of living for Man." Such eulogies are not infrequent and are not discouraged by Hubbard. In the eyes of his followers he is infallible. Their attitude fervently expressed, is, "Ron is right," " What Ron says goes," whatever he says or does. His mighty stature is heightened by permitting, and indeed encouraging, his followers to address him as "Ron". Everyone is on first-name terms with him.

His manor house at Saint Hill is the Mecca of his followers. The optimum state in scientology, that of being operating thetan (or OT), is said to be attainable only through the portals of Saint Hill or, at the very least, through processing by a graduate of Saint Hill.

He resides and presides at the manor house, a Georgian building of perhaps eighteen or so rooms, attended by a domestic staff consisting of a butler, housekeeper, two cleaners, a butler's assistant, tutor for the children, a nanny, and an estate staff which includes a chauffeur and maintenance staff.

He claims to be a man of substantial private means, making no charge, so he says, for the use of Saint Hill by the organization for conducting advanced courses and for experimental and administrative purposes. He claims that he does not benefit financially from the 10 per cent. of all gross takings which the HASI's throughout the world are required to pay as a levy to scientology headquarters. Nor does he benefit financially, so he claims, from the fees which advanced students pay for the courses they attend at Saint Hill. He says that his own means are provided by the proceeds of the sale of property in America and of a yacht.

He married his present wife, Mary Sue, in 1950. She is as enthusiastic about scientology as he is. It is said that when Hubbard works out a new auditing process, she first of all tries it out on him. It is certain that at least on several occasions she has been his auditor. Psychiatric evidence which the Board heard was to the effect that preclears tended to become dependent upon and under the domination of their auditor, because of certain undesirable features of scientology processing techniques. The extent to which Hubbard has become dependent on and under the domination of Mary Sue has not clearly appeared. That she is a person of considerable misdirected ability seems evident. Her contribution to scientology is substantial.

Hubbard is a man of restless energy, with tremendous enthusiasm in everything he undertakes. He is constantly experimenting and speculating, and equally constantly he confuses the two. He has acquired in a frenetic but superficial way a smattering Or knowledge of many subjects. In very many instances, however, his knowledge is fragmentary and inaccurate and sometimes positively incorrect, yet it serves as the foundation for pretentious and completely misleading pronouncements on scientific matters of which he is ignorant. In other instances where he has not even "enough of learning to misquote," he gives full rein to his imagination to produce incomprehensible and absurd results.

All that he writes and says is either accepted by his followers or, at the very least, it is not rejected. They are taught that they are entitled to question his pronouncements, but they are conditioned to the belief that whatever he says is right.

He has revised the calendar by renumbering the years, starting with the year 1950, the year in which he founded dianetics. Thus, "AD 10" means in the tenth year of dianetics and scientology, or 1960 to those who have not "cognited" on his "sciences".

To keep the illusion of greatness and condescension, he purports to establish what in effect is a Hubbardian dynasty by instituting the International Council of Dianetics and Scientology which is "legalized by the legal structure of HCO Ltd and by my will of December 26, 1960" to which (amongst others, including Williams and his wife), are appointed two quite young children, both surnamed Hubbard, as inheriting members for whom various properties may be held in trust.

On his birthday in 1963, in HCO Bull. of the 13th March, he aspired to almost regal dignity in his "Amnesty," which read -

"On my birthday and on achieving my own fourth goal in clearing, and in celebration of the first Eight first goal Clears by 3M, I hereby extend and direct all the organizations, officials and staff of Scientology Organizations to grant all Dianeticists and Scientologists penalized before this date a complete amnesty . . . Any and all offences of any kind before this date, discovered or undiscovered, are fully and completely forgiven. Directed at Saint Hill, on March the thirteenth, 1963, in the 13th year of Dianetics and Scientology.
L. Ron Hubbard".

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His condescension is further evidenced by newsy circulars which he periodically distributes, telling of the busy life he leads, with barely sufficient time for his Pepsi-cola in the afternoon, and how he is improving on the organ which Mary Sue gave him as a present.

Despite his apparent graciousness, he is intolerant of opposition and is autocratic and harsh in his treatment of the dissident. By the imposition of many extra hours of auditing he disciplines the unfortunate who is out of step. He excommunicates the rebellious or threatens that they will be denied further auditing. These threats to an indoctrinated preclear are terrifying.

He is governing director of Hubbard Association of Scientologists International, the operative company of the HASI, over which he exercises complete and autocratic control.

In what passes for research in scientology circles, he is constantly claiming major "breakthroughs," each "discovery" being hailed by him as the ultimate and accompanied by the most extravagant promises (none of which is realized), only to be superseded by his next remarkable "discovery".

Some of his claims are that he has a cure for radiation burns, that he has been up in the Van Allen Belt, that he has been on the planet Venus where he inspected an implant station, and that he has been to Heaven. He even recommends a protein formula for feeding non-breast fed babies, stating that he "picked it up in Roman days".

He has an insensate hostility to psychiatrists and "medical doctors," psycho-analysts, psychologists, and those in other similar professions whose field of study and practice is the human mind. His writings about such professions are quite rabid at times. They are, in his estimation, frauds, charlatans, butchers, and neurotics, and their techniques are, he says, antiquated 19th century practices based on discredited continental procedures and not since developed. By contrast, he offers the pure lily that is scientology.

Hubbard is not concerned with logic as the following passage from Dianetics: MSMH, shows,

"Aristotle's syllogism in which two things equal to the same thing are equal to one another simply does not begin to work in logic . . . It is an abstract truth that two and two equal four. Two what and two what equal four? There is no scale made, no yardstick or caliper or microscope manufactured which would justify the actuality, for instance, that two apples plus two apples equal four apples. Two apples and two apples are four apples now if they are the same apples. They would not equal four other apples by any growth or manufacturing process ever imagined".
On his own admission he is not a philosopher. In Scientology, issue 15H, copyright 1953, he wrote,
"I am not, and never will pretend to be, a philosopher. The task of a philosopher is to go off and philosophise. Philosophers normally philosophise all the years of their lives, and in the books of philosophers all the absurdities and wisdom can be found. My entrance into this field of better minds was a forced one; I had a feeling that man ought to progress. It was with astonishment that I discovered that man, for all his prate of science, psychotherapy, all his yap of mysticism and philosophy in general, did not even vaguely know how to improve himself".

However Hubbard may appear to his devoted followers, the Board can form no other view than that Hubbard is a fraud and scientology fraudulent. In forming these conclusions, the Board has considered both the oral evidence and the great volume of Hubbard's own writings; the following pages of this Report will reveal that the conclusions at which the Board has arrived in relation to Hubbard are based almost entirely upon his own writings.

One further appraisal of Hubbard, based on his writings, has been made. Expert psychiatric opinion is that the many books, pamphlets. articles. bulletins, and the like which bear Hubbard's name indicate in their author symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia of long standing with delusions of grandeur. This aspect is more fully dealt with later in this Chapter.

At an early stage of the Inquiry, Hubbard indicated that he did not intend to come from England to give evidence before the Inquiry, being, as he said, quite satisfied with the way Williams was handling the matter. Later, an application was made to the Victorian Government and to the Board that Hubbard's expenses be paid to enable him to give evidence. Such application was made, knowing it would be refused - as it was. It was made for the purpose of providing a basis of criticism of the report of this Board, which Hubbard knew by that time must be hostile to him and to his "science". Hubbard had no intention of attending the Inquiry. His dilemma was that if he were to repudiate his writings his deceit would be confessed; and unless he repudiated them he stood condemned by their content. The Board has been conscious of the fact that Hubbard did not attend and give evidence but the decision not to attend lay with him, as also did the decision in the closing days of the Inquiry to withdraw the legal representation of the HASI before the Board.

The falsity of Hubbard's claims concerning himself and his "science" will be examined later in this Report.

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Hubbard's Morbid Preoccupation with Perversion.

Much of Hubbard's writings show a morbid preoccupation with matters relating to abnormal behaviour of women, sex, rape, abortions, and similar topics. Especially in his books on dianetics, which are still recommended reading without which it is said one cannot succeed in scientology, he shows a prurient and distinctly unhealthy attachment to abortions, rape, perversion, and similar matters. This attachment, however, is by no means limited to his dianetic writings; there are several such references in his scientology writings also.

In Dianetics: MSMH and elsewhere, Hubbard declares that the engram and only the engram causes aberration and psychosomatic illness. An engram is a moment of "unconsciousness" containing physical pain or painful emotion. Most engrams were prenatal, so Hubbard taught, and he goes to fanciful and quite ridiculous lengths to illustrate how a prenatal engram is caused. There is no medical or other rational justification for his wild theories, and most of them are quite contrary to medical knowledge and to reason. Their ridiculous nature is perhaps best illustrated by using his own words, for to paraphrase his writings on this subject may give to them a suggestion of rationality which they certainly do not possess.

In Dianetics: MSMH he writes,

"Mama sneezes, baby gets knocked 'unconscious'. Mama runs lightly and blithely into a table and baby gets its head stoved in. Mama has constipation and baby, in the anxious effort, gets squashed. Papa becomes passionate and baby has the sensation of being put in a running washing machine. Mama gets hysterical, baby gets an engram. Papa hits Mama, baby gets an engram, Junior bounces on Mama's lap, baby gets an engram. And so it goes.

People have scores of prenatal engrams when they are normal. They can have more than two hundred. And each one is aberrative. Each contains pain and 'unconsciousness'.

Engrams received as a zygote are potentially the most aberrative, being wholly reactive. Those received as an embryo are intensely aberrative. Those received as the foetus are enough to send people to institutions all by themselves."

In the same book he writes:
"The prenatal child can, of course, experience terror. When the parents or the professional abortionist start after it and thrust it full of holes, it knows fear and pain . . . however . . . Being surrounded by amniotic fluid and dependent for nutrition on its mother, being in a state of growth and easily reformed physically, it can repair an enormous amount of damage and does."
The Board heard expert medical evidence to the effect that the foetus could not know fear and that, if thrust full of holes, it most certainly would not survive.

The following ridiculous statement appears in the same book:

"A large proportion of allegedly feeble-minded children are actually attempted abortion cases, whose engrams place them in rear paralysis or regressive palsy and which command them not to grow but to be where they are forever.

However many billions America spends yearly on institutions for the insane and jails for the criminals are spent primarily because of attempted abortions done by some sex-blocked mother to whom children are a curse, not a blessing of God . . .

The case of the child who, as this is read, is not yet born but upon whom abortion has been attempted, is not hopeless. If he is treated with decency after he is born and if he is not restimulated by witnessing quarrels he will wax. and grow fat until he is eight and can be cleared, at which time he will probably be much startled to learn the truth. But that statement and any antagonism included in it will vanish with the finishing of the clear and his love of his parents will be greater than before".

The chapter from which the above extracts are taken concludes:
"All these things are scientific facts, tested and rechecked and tested again. And with them can be produced a clear on whom our racial future depends."
All this, of course, is untrue and is nonsense. The Board heard evidence from an impressive body of expert medical witnesses which completely negatived Hubbard's pretentious nonsense, including the passages quoted and many others in Dianetics: MSMH. No good purpose would he served in painstakingly dealing separately with every incorrect statement of Hubbard and illustrating precisely how it was wrong. Such procedure would be too flattering to Hubbard's writings, which are largely self-condemnatory, and if they are to be commented upon, deserve no more comment than is sufficient to condemn them for the dangerous nonsense that they are.

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In Dianetics: MSMH Hubbard writes:

"And in the case of the ulcers, here was baby poked full of holes (Mama is having a terrible time trying to abort him so she can pretend a miscarriage, and she uses assorted household instruments thrust into the cervix to do it) and some of the holes are through and through his baby's abdomen and stomach : he will live because he is surrounded by protein and has a food supply and because the sac is like one of these puncture-proof inner tubes that seals up every hole. (Nature has been smart about attempted abortion for a long, long time.) . . . Grandma lives next door and she comes over unexpectedly, shortly after the latest effort to make baby meet oblivion. Grandma may have been an attempted abortionist in her day but now she is old and highly moral."
In this book Hubbard tells of other cases:
"A standard class of prenatal engram has as its content the worry of the parents that the child will be feeble-minded if not now aborted in earnest. This adds an emotional overload to such engrams and it adds, as importantly, an aberrative condition in the now grown patient that he is 'not right,' 'all wrong,' 'feeble-minded,' and so forth. The difficulty of aborting a child is nearly always underestimated: the means used are often novel or bizarre: the worry because the child has not come out of the womb after the abortion attempt is acute, and the concern that he is now damaged beyond repair all combine to make severely aberrative engrams."
Again:
"Fathers, for instance, suspicious of paternity, sometimes claim while trouncing and upsetting mothers that they will kill the child if it isn't like Father. This is a very unhappy type of token to say nothing of being, usually, a bad engram; it can go to the extent of remodelling structure, of making noses long or hair assent; it may compel an aberree into a profession he does not admire and all out of the engramic command that he must be like the parent."
And again:
"It is very noisy in the womb. A person may think he has sonic and yet hear no 'womb' sounds, which means that he does not have sonic but only 'dub-in'. Intestinal squeaks and groans, flowing water, belches, flatulation and other body activities of the mother produce a continual sound. It is also very tight in later prenatal life. In a high blood pressure case, it is extremely horrible in the womb. When mother takes quinine a high ringing noise may come into being in the foetal ears as well as her own - a ringing which will carry through a person's whole life.

Mother gets morning sickness, has hiccoughs, and gets colds, coughs and sneezes. This is prenatal life.

The only reason anybody 'wanted' to 'return to the womb' was because somebody hit mother and yelled 'Come back here!' so the person does."

And again Hubbard writes:
"The standard attempted abortion case nearly always has an infanthood and childhood full of Mama assuring him that he cannot remember anything when he was a baby. She doesn't want him to recall how handy she was, if unsuccessful, in her efforts with various instruments .... In the normal course of work the auditor will have his hands full of Mama screaming objections about her grown son's or daughter's entering into therapy because of what they might find out: Mama has been known, by auditors, to go into a complete nervous collapse at the thought of her child's recalling prenatal incidents. Not all of this, by the way, is based on attempted abortion. Mama often has had a couple of more men than Papa that Papa never knew about; and Mama would very often rather condemn her child to illness or insanity or merely unhappiness than let a child pursue the course of the preclear."
The interpretation which Hubbard seeks to put upon the mother's objection to her child's undergoing auditing is that she fears that her guilty secrets will be revealed; this is in line with his frequent assertion made in his pamphlet, Why some fight scientology (see Chapter 26) and elsewhere that families and friends of preclears oppose their interest in scientology because they have some shameful secret which they fear will be revealed to the preclear.

Again, in Dianetics: MSMH, Hubbard writes,

"Engrams, particularly in the prenatal area, are in chains"
and he lists a number of such chains which include coitus chain, father; coitus chain, lover; constipation chain; contraceptive chain; attempted abortion chain;

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masturbation chain. He explains that these chains are series of incidents of similar types, and the burden of his writing is that the unborn child records and remembers them, being able to distinguish each particular kind of event. It would seem, from Hubbard's notes, that the child can distinguish between the father and the lover because the father is either drunk or sober and the lover is always more enthusiastic.

In the same book, he writes;

"It may be that a patient is urgent in her insistence that her father raped her when she was nine and that this is the cause of all her misery. Large numbers of insane patients claim this. And it is perfectly true. Father did rape her, but it happened she was only nine days beyond conception at the time. The pressure and upset of coitus is very uncomfortable to the child and normally can be expected to give the child an engram which will have as its content the sexual act and everything that was said."
The Board heard expert medical evidence that an embryo nine days old, hardly visible to the eye, does not possess an ear, is not capable of being aware of anything and has no nervous system or brain capable of recording anything or of having an understanding, intelligent or otherwise, of anything said or done. Further, Hubbard's assertion that the embryo records and understands what has been said involves the embryo being capable of intelligent understanding of language which the child, after birth, would not attain to for several months or even years.

In Scientology, issue 28-G, 1954, Hubbard gives three case histories selected at random. In the first;

"The basic consisted of a severe quarrel between his mother and father with several abdominal blows being received by the mother. The mother was protesting that it would make her sick all of her life. At the same time the mother was coughing from a throat blow. The father was insisting that he was master in his own home and that people had to do what he told them. This quarrel occurred at about four and a half months after conception and resulted in the temporary paralysis of the preclear's right side."
The second case was of an eighteen-year-old girl in a condition of apathy "bordering upon a break and worsening."
"The basic proved to be a mutual abortion attempt by the mother and father. The mother said she would die if anyone found out.... The father said the baby was probably like her and he didn't want it. Eighteen penetrations of the head, throat and shoulders with a long orange-wood stick - probably in third month. Several similar incidents completed this chain. Coitus followed each attempt at abortions. Another incident proved to be basic without a chain and with innumerable locks: an attempted abortion by a professional abortionist who used some form of needle and scraper."
The third case related to a male negro who had convulsions when audited on prenatal life.
"The convulsion proved to be twenty engrams nearer birth than the basic which lay on another chain and which was discovered by dream technique. The convulsion was caused by the dramatization of an engram involving the injection of turpentine into the uterus by the mother in an attempted abortion. The main engramic chain consisted of the mother's efforts to abort herself. From engramic content it was gathered that the mother was a prostitute, for as many as twenty experiences of coitus succeeded two of these abortion attempts. . . The basic chain contained many quarrels about money between the mother and her customers. . . The basic incident. . . was found to lie about twenty days after conception, when the mother first discovered her pregnancy."
This man's IQ was stated to be "about eighty-five"; the auditor's was not stated.

Hubbard is particularly concerned to show that the act of sexual intercourse while the woman is pregnant is likely to cause an engram to the unborn child, and he considers that intercourse only a few days after conception could have a highly aberrative effect on the barely existing embryo. Hubbard's theories involve the embryo at that early stage being aware of and registering in an aberrative way conversation between the parties to an act of intercourse. On several occasions he actually sets out the conversation between the parties; not infrequently the conversation is between the mother and her paramour and the topic of conversation is in one case at least the conveniently absent husband.

In Dianetics: MSMH, Hubbard writes,

"Attempted abortion is very common. And remarkably lacking in success. The mother, every time she injures the child in such a fiendish fashion, is actually penalizing herself. Morning sickness is entirely engramic, so far as can be discovered, since clears have not so far experienced it during their own pregnancies. And the act of vomiting because of pregnancy is via contagion of aberration. Actual illness generally results only when mother has been interfering with the child either by douches or knitting needles or some such thing.... Morning sickness evidently gets into a society because of these interferences such as attempted abortion, and, of course injury."
Comment would be superfluous.

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