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The din created by dianetics must certainly have reached the ears of most psychiatrists by this time, and there are many who seem to be seriously disturbed by the appeal which it has for large numbers of unhappy people and by its fantastic claims of therapeutic effectiveness. Shall we take it seriously despite the rank odor of charlatanry which clings to every word and sentence of its founder, or are we to ignore it as one of those periodic deliria which afflict human beings in troubled times? Certainly, were it not for the terrible shadow which the cloud over Hiroshima casts on these unhappy days, it would seem as though the Roaring Twenties were imminently to be replaced by the Febrile Fifties, for there is much about dianetics which is reminiscent of the movement called Technocracy. Technocracy lived its brief and hectic life in the era of flagpole sitting and marathon dancing. Like dianetics, it had a large appeal for those to whom the decisive divorce of science from magic must be a source of everlasting regret, and as paradoxically as the latter, it was clothed in the respectable language of science. Nevertheless, I believe we must make some attempt to understand the meaning of any pseudoscientific movement with such appeal, even though the most casual examination of its hypothetical structure must inevitably lead the serious scientist to dismiss it as pure 'gobbledygook'.
Briefly stated, dianetics postulates the existence of a 'reactive mind' and an 'analytical mind'. The former operates exclusively in a stimulus-response way to physical pain and painful emotion, while the latter corresponds, more or less, to the conscious and rational mind. The 'recording' of painful stimuli, literally and verbatim, (reviewer's italics) begins at the very moment of conception, and continues throughout intra- and extra-uterine life, producing 'engrams', which are 'the only source of aberrations and psychosomatic illness', and can only be removed by dianetic therapy. In