Author with first edition

Dianetics took the U.S. by storm in 1950 — witnessed by capacity lecture audiences, national headlines and top bestseller lists.

L Ron Hubbard’s friends and associates were aghast at the responses from the bastions of healing. On the one hand there were hundreds of case histories with rave testimonials from those who had studied and used Dianetics and thousands of letters from people wanting to know more. On the other hand were the few “experts,” who had resorted to 220 volts of electricity to cure problems of the mind, who had never studied the subject of Dianetics but, nonetheless, didn’t want it.

And so the decision was made. L. Ron Hubbard would go directly to the public with a handbook, detailing his discoveries and the techniques he had developed. Never before had there been such a text on the mind, a work expressly written for the man on the street.

“There is something new coming up in April called Dianetics," wrote national newspaper and magazine columnist Walter Winchell on January 31, 1950. “A new science which works with the invariability of physical science in the field of the human mind. From all indications, it will prove to be as revolutionary for humanity as the first caveman’s discovery and utilisation of fire.”

Winchell’s prediction proved correct.

Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was published on May 9, 1950. The response was instantaneous and overwhelming. Almost overnight the book became a bestseller, with 25,000 letters and telegrams of congratulation that would pour in to the publisher from not only the United States, but then also Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. The book hit The New York Times bestseller list, where it remained week after week, month after month. Dianetics was then published abroad — first in the United Kingdom and Italy — forever changing L. Ron Hubbard’s life and, as we shall see, the lives of millions.

The publication of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health ushered in a new era of hope for mankind, and with it a new phase of L. Ron Hubbard’s life. The first indication that he was to be a public figure came immediately after the release of Dianetics. Although Mr. Hubbard had originally planned yet another expedition following the completion of his book, so great was the popular response to his work that he had to change those plans. Thus, instead of exploring islands off Greece, he soon found himself lecturing on Dianetics to packed halls across America. It was also at this time that the first Hubbard Dianetics Research Foundation was formed in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and people began arriving in droves from North and South America and Europe to study the new techniques and find out more about the subject.