Lecture: History of Dianetics (1) (1954)

I spent a year in a hospital at the end of that and–no other reason than cussedness. By taking off one collar ornament, I found out I could very easily be mistaken for a medical doctor. I even set it up so that as I would speak to the librarian, a marine or two would come by and say, “How are you, doctor?” And that gave me access to the medical libraries of the hospital. And gave me access as well to all of their experimental data which was in progress at that time.

So I studied for a year in the field of biochemistry: antibiotics and glands of one kind or another; endocrine system, alarm reactions, testosterone, pituitary fluid, oh, all kinds of odds and ends. Messed up an awful lot of experiments for the people because I would take the guy that I had the experimental record on–look at all these men working for me. Look at the–all these laboratories and so forth–working, working away.

And I’d get one of their boys whose case I knew about, and I’d take him down on the park bench. Knowing a little bit about psychoanalysis, we would plow out a few psychic traumas–you know, Straightwire–plow them out. And then we would find out that the glandular fluids being administered to him would now bite; they would now work quite according to the records. You know, they’d test him afterwards without knowing I’d done anything.

Young doctor there saw me on a–doing this one day with an old marine and (I even got something out of this marine)–and he saw me and he said to me, “You know, that fellow is a part of our experimental series.”

And I said, “No!”

And he said, “Our records have been behaving strangely lately. But,” he says, “you’re only doing something in the field of psychotherapy, so we needn’t worry.”¹

Notes