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"Brain-washing" is Hubbard's great attempt to third-party rabid anti-Communists and the psychiatric community to make the Communists look bad, and especially to make the mental health field, psychiatrists and psychologists, look bad, but also and mainly to make room for Dianetics as a legitimate player in the field of mental health. Major themes include anti-Communist and anti-psychiatric rants (cleverly hidden as being pro-Communist through the fictional "psychopolitical" author), and plans to take over the world through "psychopolitics" (Scientology). Reading between the lines of "Brain-Washing" and taking a hard look at the terminology Hubbard uses can pay big dividends for the astute critic.
Hubbard seemed to be pandering to the McCarthyists in his vapid rendering of Communism's supposed sinister purposes and infiltration of American Society. Hubbard plays on the fears of the day: McCarthism and predjudice against insanity, while building the foundations of hatred against psychiatry that were to be a central thesis in Scientology. Hubbard here gives form to the necessary enemy; this is hate week in Orwell's "1984."
Hubbard's dreams of setting up a totalitarian state with himself as sole dictator are visible in the text, as is the brutality which Hubbard would dearly love to visit upon the populace under his control. The reader almost needs a rag at times to wipe off Hubbard's drool over his palpable lust for power.
Hubbard's disdain for Man can be seen everywhere in the text, as in:
"If you would have obedience you must have no compromise with humanity. If you would have obedience you must make it clearly understood that you have no mercy. Man is an Animal. He understood, in the final analysis, only those things which a brute understands." -- page 29.Here can be seen Hubbard's disgust with humanity, and in many other places he resorts to comparing people to animals.
Numerous comparisons can be drawn between Hubbard's ideas expressed in the booklet and the way Scientology was and is run. Lines about not eating, sleep deprivation and references to slaves bear a chilling resemblance to the Sea Org and the RPF, while evidence of Hubbard's hatred of psychiatrists is throughout the text. On page 46 is an interesting look into the possible reason Hubbard denied treatment of people who took drugs or were insane or treated by psychiatrists. Hubbard may well have been worried that the tactics he dreamed up would be used against his own organization, and the paranoia these thoughts may have engendered led to to ban treating the insane, despite his claims to be able to cure anybody of anything.
Much of the fuming spittle in the booklet reminds one of disjointed reasoning along the lines of "rocks are heavy; the sky is blue. Thus, Man is an animal." Some may go further and say that the reasoning is even more like "rocks are blue; the sky is heavy. Thus, Psychopolitics is effective." In any case, Hubbard's writing style is about as convincing as the average grade 4 or 5 student's first essay -- and has about as many flaws in technique and style.
Many of Hubbard's neologisms and Scientological usages are to be found in the text, including "thinkingness", "implantation", "mental image picture", "Dianetics", "beingness", etc. despite the fact that Hubbard tried to hide his authorship of the booklet.
The language appears to be a bizarre attempt to generate a "feel" like that of a Russian "psychopolitician", with rather odd results. Hubbard has a penchant for strage and at times disconcerting usage. As an example, effect is too often resorted to as a verb, as in "...this might require many decades to effect" (bring about) and "When this has been effected", (done). Unfortunately for Hubbard, the use of words like "saccharine" and many Scientological terms ruined the effect he strived for.
Several Scientological ideas are expressed in the text, as the dynamics on pages 25-26, "In the animal the first loyalty is to himself...The second loyalty is to his family unit...The next loyalty is to his friends and social envoronment...The next is to his State", which neatly covers dynamics one, two, three, and four. The conditions are hinted at in the use of "Emergency condition" on page 55, and other places.
"Trans-orbital leucotomy" is used in a couple places, along with references to brain surgery and that good Dianetics stand-by, the trans-orbital leucotomy. These show Hubbard's obsession with psychiatric operations, and make for good comparison with Dianetics, which is mentioned in the text in a few places as well. Dianetics terms mentioned include "Mental image picture", "Chain", "incident", "Implantation", "Restimulation", "Command content", and many others. Anti-psychiatric rants reminiscent of Cory Brennan's best on ars are to be found in many places. But this time, there's a twist; Hubbard is posing as a "psych" himself -- or rather, one of the oft-repeated "psychopolitical operatives" who uses psychiatry on dupes to gain absolute control of the masses, a recurrent and tiresome theme. Chapter VII, anatomy of stimulus-response mechanisms of man is a detailed look into Dianetics -- or, more properly, what is sometimes called "black Dianetics", the use of so-called "reverse processes" to implant incidents with controlling command content for some ulteriour motive.
It may be useful to alter the text to get at Hubbard's meaning, as has been done in the Anderson Report and Corydon's "L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?" Changing "Psychopolitics" to "Scientology", "psychopolitical operative" to "Scientologist", "Russian" and "Communist" to "Scientological", "dupes" to "raw-meat", and both "State" and "Russian State" to "Cleared Planet" all of which may shed some light on what Hubbard's goals with his Scientology cult were.
Many more parallels to Dianetics and Scientology remain to be discovered in Hubbard's "Brain-Washing". Of note is an 11-page chapter in Bent Corydon's "L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman" devoted entirely to exploring this slim 64 page booklet and covering its origins and eventual expression and application within Scientology. Ron Hubbard Jr., Hubbard's son, had this to say about "Brain-Washing": "If you want to see how Dad worked things Org[anization]-wise, especially from the mid-sixties on, you just have to read the Brainwashing Manual." I agree.
Hubbard is busy inventing new terminology: "psychopolitics", "psychopolitical operative", "psychopolitician" (all variously spelt with an initial upper or lower case "P") and tries to make the words stick through constant repetition. The text is repetitive, boring, dull, cheapened with pulp- fiction ploys and an immature cliche-ridden writing style that are the familiar marks of Hubbard's oeuvre. Nevertheless, "Brain-washing" is an essential read for the critic. "Brain-washing" gives the patient reader a glimpse into the very soul of Hubbard's paranoia and megalomania, while also furnishing the basic tenets of Scientology and the Sea Org. For example, Chapter VIII, Degradation, Shock and Endurance, lays out the raison d'etre for the RPF, and its modus operandi. "Brain-washing" truly is Hubbard's "Fundamentals of Thought."