Hubbard Autobiography: Commander Thompson (1972)

COMMANDER THOMPSON¹
I travelled with Commander Thompson from Seattle, Washington through the Panama Canal to Washington, D. C. when I was about twelve and knew him during all that time that I was in Washington and later. Commander Thompson was the first man to study with Sigmund Freud from the U. S. Government and had just returned from his studies, bringing psychoanalysis back to the United States Navy. He was a tall, rangy, eccentric individual. His friends called him “Snake” and his enemies called him “Crazy”. He had lots of both. He lived a life to very much please himself in spite of being a Naval officer and would read until he fell asleep, falling sideways over onto his bunk and get up and go about his duties when it pleased him, regardless of Navy schedules. Through his friendship I attended many lectures given at Naval hospitals and generally became conversant with psychoanalysis as it had been exported from Austria by Freud. All the various schools which sprung up later, such as Horney, seem a far cry from Freud’s original work and it has seemed to me that there are no psychoanalysts who practice Freudian Psychoanalysis. Commander Thompson wrote innumerable monographs on all manner of observations in various parts of the world which he had visited, and all of them dealing with ethnology. He was a very fine man and I was very fortunate to have known him.