In 1945, left partially blind with injured optic nerves and lame from hip and back injuries, Mr. Hubbard was hospitalised at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. Among the 5,000 Navy and Marine Corps patients at Oak Knoll were hundreds of former American prisoners liberated from Japanese camps on South Pacific islands. Many were in terrible condition from starvation and other causes, unable to assimilate protein.

In an attempt to resolve this problem, Navy physicians were administering the male hormone, testosterone. This medical treatment, however, was not getting effective results on all patients, and Mr. Hubbard utilised the opportunity to not only help his fellow servicemen, but to test a theory he had developed in application.

“All I was trying to establish,” he wrote, “was whether or not the mind regulated the body or the body regulated the mind. Therefore, if on some of these patients hormones did not work and on some of them they did, there might be a mental reason. If those patients on whom it did not work had a severe mental block, then it was obvious that regardless of the amount of hormone or medical treatment the person received, he would not get well. If the mind was capable of putting this much restraint upon the physical body then obviously the fact that was commonly held to be true, that structure monitors function, would be false. I set out to prove this.... I was not interested in endocrinology but in resolving whether or not function monitored structure or structure monitored function.”

In case after case, he found that by utilising techniques he had developed, previously unresponsive patients immediately improved with medical treatment once the mental blocks were removed.

In fact, function did monitor structure. As Mr. Hubbard noted at the time, “Thought was boss.”

This was a revolutionary concept, cutting across misconceptions that had plagued Eastern philosophy and science for centuries.

With peace restored at war’s end, Mr. Hubbard immediately set out to further test the workability of his breakthroughs. This was intensive research. For subjects he selected people from all walks of life — in Hollywood, where he worked with actors and writers; in Savannah, Georgia, where he helped deeply disturbed inmates in a mental hospital; and in Washington, D.C., New York City, New Jersey, Pasadena, Los Angeles and Seattle. In all, he personally helped over 400 individuals before 1950, with spectacular results. And he used the same procedures to overcome the injuries and wounds he himself had received, fully recovering his health by 1949.

Returning to Washington, D.C., Mr. Hubbard compiled his sixteen years of investigation into the human condition, writing the manuscript Dianetics: The Original Thesis (today published under the title The Dynamics of Life), a paper outlining the principles he was using. He did not offer it for publication. He gave a copy or two to some friends, and they promptly duplicated it and sent it to their friends who, in turn, made copies and sent it to others. In this way, passed hand to hand, Dianetics on its own became known the world over. Word spread that he had made a revolutionary breakthrough.

L. Ron Hubbard had found the source of human aberration and had developed a technique of the mind that worked. Dianetics was born.

Shortly thereafter, he found himself literally deluged with letters requesting more information on the application of his breakthroughs. Hoping to make his discoveries available to the broad public, and at the insistence of those working with him at the time, he offered his findings to the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association. The response was most enlightening. Not only did the health care establishment claim no interest in his work, they declined to even examine his results.