Dianetics

Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health is L. Ron Hubbard’s self-help booklet, proverbial to Scientology and one of the most sold self-help books out there. How much of this is because of his followers buying lots of books we’ll leave it at your discretion.

Very briefly, the book proposes the idea that everyone has unconsciously a physical pain or painful emotions that must be repressed in order to achieve self-fulfillment. The rest of the book gives you tips to do it.

Considering LRH and his followers’ status, the best is to remember the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment.

Tropes used in Dianetics include:

• Arc Words: Survive!
• Author Tract
• Cure Your Gays
• Doorstopper: Yes, it’s a long book.
• Flame Bait
• Footnote Fever: Lots of them, explaining terminology. It quickly reaches Viewers are Morons territory.
• He Also Did: Though nowadays he’s mainly known for the Church of Happyology and Dianetics, before this book he was known as a very popular science fiction writer.
• Orwellian Retcon: Hubbard re-edited the book several times as the years passed. The book you can find today is very different from the original published in 1950.
• Viewers are Morons: A lot of things explained in the footnotes are very obvious. On the other hands, some footnotes really don’t explain anything (e.g., when he’s talking about the Lorentz-Fitzgerald-Einstein equation, the footnote only says they’re equations developed by Lorentz, Fitzgerald and Einstein, without telling you what they’re about).