A Doctor's Report on Dianetics
ISBN 0-517-56421-1 | |
A Doctor's Report on Dianetics: Theory and Therapy is a
The book was first published in hardcover by the Julian Press Julian Messner, in 1951, and published again in 1987, by Crown Publishing Group. The work was the first book published that was professionally critical of L. Ron Hubbard.[1]
About the author
Joseph Augustus Winter, an American medical doctor and "
Main points
According to a 1951 article in Time magazine, in A Doctor's Report on Dianetics "Winter tries to filter Hubbard's strange mixture and pick out the scraps fit for human consumption".[2] Winter wrote that auditing could be a useful technique for psychiatrists to use during psychoanalysis and agreed with Hubbard's conceptualization of prenatal "engrams" that traumatic memories can be formed and stored during the prenatal stage, but Winter was skeptical about "sperm dreams", stating they were likely imagined and not true memories.[4]
Winter also objected to patients recalling deaths from previous
Winter also rebuked Hubbard's "Guk" program, which was a combination of vitamins and glutamic acid that was meant to make Dianetics subjects "run better".[1][2][8]
Critical reception
The Princeton Theological Seminary called it an important new book on psychotherapy, in Pastoral Psychology.[9]
Martin Gardner analyzes the book extensively in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.[4] Gardner wrote that the "most revealing" material in A Doctor's Report on Dianetics, were the records of the author's own auditing sessions, which showed that the auditor effectively relied on loaded questions to produce from the client responses validating the Dianetic theory, while ignoring those that did not. Gardner chastised the technique for obscuring the real roots of psychological and psychosomatic troubles.[4]
Pitirim Sorokin wrote in The Ways and Power of Love that though Winter wrote an enthusiastic introduction to Hubbard's Dianetics, his own book exposed some of Hubbard's more "charlatanish" claims.[6]
The book was also reviewed in
The book is referenced in Rodney Stark's The Future of Religion,[12] and in Frank Gerbode's Beyond Psychology.[13]
References
- ^ ISBN 0-8184-0499-X.
- ^ a b c d e f Staff (September 3, 1951). "Departure in Dianetics". Time. Archived from the original on November 14, 2007.
- ^ a b Cooper, Paulette (1971). The Scandal of Scientology. Tower Publications. pp. Chapter 1.
- ^ ISBN 0-486-20394-8.
- ^ "A Doctor's Report on Dianetics". The Fredericksburg News. November 22, 1951.
- ^ ISBN 1-890151-86-6.
- ^ JSTOR 3709904. Archived from the original(PDF) on September 28, 2007.
- ^ JSTOR 1418860.
- ISSN 0031-2789.
- .
- ^ .
- ISBN 978-0-520-05731-9.
- ISBN 1-887927-00-X.
External links
- 1987 edition of book available on Open Library
- Review: The American Journal of Psychology, January 1952
- Review: The American Journal of Psychiatry, July 1952