Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [27]
In Philadelphia, meanwhile, Helen O'Brien and her husband, John, had opened a branch of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists. By 1953, similar groups had formed in other cities, including London, where Hubbard began to spend an increasing amount of time. All of these organizations were bleeding money.
Perhaps it was time to try a different approach. They should create a company, independent of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists, but fed by the HAS, Hubbard suggested in a letter to O'Brien, dated April 10, 1953. This new organization, a "clinic" of sorts, would see clients and pay the HAS a percentage of its proceeds, which would go to cover costs. All they'd need to make "real money," he noted, was ten or fifteen preclears a week, who might easily be convinced to pay upwards of $500 for twenty-four hours of auditing. Shrewdly, Hubbard anticipated that the more they charged, the more popular they might become. Hubbard told O'Brien that he'd seen it happen. "Charge enough and we'd be swamped."
The failure of Dianetics, as Hubbard saw it, had been its democracy: he'd written a book and sold it to the people, and they had taken the techniques and done with them what they wanted. Even Hubbard's onetime lieutenant, A. E. Van Vogt, now had his own Dianetics practice in Los Angeles. Hubbard received none of the profits from this and other similar ventures; neither did he get any credit for coming up with the ideas. He wanted both. Now he could ensure that he got them by turning Scientology into a business. Perhaps the best way to do that was also to make it into a religion.
"Perhaps we could call it a Spiritual Guidance Center," he suggested to O'Brien. Hubbard described installing attractive desks, outfitting the staff in uniform, and hanging diplomas on the wall. With that, they could "knock psychotherapy into history," he said. A "religious charter" would be necessary to make it stick. "But I'm sure I could make it stick." After all, they were treating the spirit of a person, he said. "And brother, that's religion, not mental science."
The more he thought about it, Hubbard told O'Brien in his April 1953 letter, the more "the religion angle," as he put it, seemed to make sense. "It's a matter of practical business."
This reframing from the "mental science" of Dianetics to the religion of Scientology was a typically canny move by Hubbard, which picked up on the national mood. In 1950, more than half of the American population were members of one or another Christian congregation; by the end of the decade, that number had reached 69 percent. "Churches were by far the most trusted institution in American life [in the 1950s]—ahead of schools, radio and newspapers, and the government itself," the historian Stephen Whitfield noted in his book on 1950s America, The Culture of the Cold War. It was probably not lost on L. Ron Hubbard that the most popular therapist and self-help guru in America, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, was also a minister. In an age of increasing anxiety and paranoia, faith was seen as a route to sound mental health. Peale's best-selling book, The Power of Positive Thinking, was published in 1952, the same year Hubbard announced the advent of Scientology; it would remain on bestseller lists for years. Cloaking Scientology in religious garb was practical on numerous levels. Certainly it would make the organization seem more respectable—"in my opinion, we couldn't get worse public opinion than what we have had, or less customers with what we've got to sell," Hubbard noted in his letter—it would also allow auditors to sidestep the rules regarding certification for psychological counseling. As practitioners of "mental science," Dianetics and Scientology auditors had been scrutinized