In 1950 L. Ron Hubbard published his seminal work Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and started lecturing to audiences about Dianetics technique. The related organizations fell into debt and filed for bankruptcy, during which he lost the rights to Dianetics and his book. Hubbard introduced the "electropsychometer" (or E-meter). Having lost Dianetics, he invented Scientology and Operating Thetan, a level above the Clear state he said Dianetics could achieve. Hubbard decided Scientology was religious in nature and reorganized his Scientology companies into religious organizations. During this time period, Hubbard's [second] wife Sara gave birth to a daughter, Hubbard started showing signs of mental problems, including kidnapping his daughter, after which Sara divorced him, claiming abuse. Hubbard then married Mary Sue with whom he eventually had four more children.
Origins of Dianetics in science-fiction "supermen" and false medical claims
Hubbard wrote in January 1949 that he was working on a "book of psychology" about "the cause and cure of nervous tension", which he was going to call The Dark Sword, Excalibur or Science of the Mind.
Inspired by science-fiction of his friend Robert Heinlein, Hubbard announced plans to write a book which would claim to "make supermen". On March 8, 1949, Hubbard wrote to Robert A. Heinlein from Savannah, Georgia; In that letter, Hubbard connected his upcoming book to Heinlein's earlier work Coventry, in which a utopian government has the technology to psychologically "cure" criminals of violent personality traits, turning them into psionic supermen called "nul-A's". He wrote to Heinlein:
Hubbard announced to the public that there existed a superhuman condition which he called the state of "Clear". He claimed people in that state would have a perfectly functioning mind with an improved IQ and photographic memory. The "Clear" would be cured of physical ailments ranging from poor eyesight to the common cold, which Hubbard asserted were purely psychosomatic.
In a 1949 letter to Forrest Ackerman, Hubbard promises his upcoming work will give Ackerman the power to "rape women without their knowing it, communicate suicide messages to your enemies as they sleep, sell the Arroyo Seco Parkway to the mayor for cash, evolve the best way of protecting or destroying communism". Hubbard admits he has "not decided whether to destroy the Catholic church or merely start a new one." Hubbard discussed returning to the concepts of his 1938 unpublished manuscript Excalibur, writing: "Don’t know why I suddenly got the nerve to go into this again and let it loose. It’s probably either a great love or an enormous hatred of humanity.[...] I would now and then decide [to] use it and start right in to apply and I would lose my nerve. But lo! courage rose and the book is going out before it sinks again."
To promote his upcoming book, Hubbard enlisted his longtime-editor John W. Campbell, who had a long-standing fascination with fringe psychologies and psychic powers ("psionics"). Campbell invited Hubbard and Sara to move into a cottage at Bay Head, New Jersey, not far from his own home at Plainfield. Campbell, in turn, recruited an acquaintance, medical doctor Joseph Winter, to help promote the book. Campbell wrote Winter to extoll Hubbard, claiming that Hubbard had worked with nearly 1000 cases and cured every single one, healing "Institutionalized schizophrenics, apathies, manics, depressives, perverts, stuttering, neuroses—in all.. ulcers, arthritis, [and] asthma."
Journalist Charlie Nairn, who filmed an interview with Hubbard in 1968, claimed that in a prior off-camera meeting, Hubbard acknowledged that 'it started out purely as a way to make money' but 'he became fascinated by catching people, especially clever people' (Nairn's words). Nairn recalled: "I remember him specifically talking about two medical doctors, [who got involved in Dianetics] as if they should have known better. I remember a sense of triumph from him over this idea – as if he felt some of his victims were maybe brighter than he was – but that they were needy, gullible – that he understood the human animal and its ‘needs’ – exploitable needs – backwards."
The birth of Hubbard's second daughter Alexis Valerie, delivered by Winter on March 8, 1950, came in the middle of the preparations to launch Dianetics.
In an editorial, Campbell said: "Its power is almost unbelievable; it proves the mind not only can but does rule the body completely; following the sharply defined basic laws set forth, physical ills such as ulcers, asthma and arthritis can be cured, as can all other psychosomatic ills."