Blog: Science Vs. Pseudoscience: A Brief History of How Scientology's E-Meter Came Into Existence – Part 2 - 2020-03-19

Science Vs. Pseudoscience: A Brief History of How Scientology's E-Meter Came Into Existence – Part 2 March 19, 2020, Jeffrey Augustine, Scientology Money Project

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Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt

Having established the scientific and psychological background of the psychogalvanometer in our previous article, in this installment we weave together several strands as we inexorably head toward the moment in which the paths of L. Ron Hubbard and the e-meter collided.

As a prelude to that collision, we find the fingerprints of L. Ron Hubbard all over the psychiatric literature at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital. During the many months Hubbard spent malingering there in the latter half of 1945, he pretended to be a medical doctor. This allowed him access to the medical library where he devoted his extensive free time to consuming psychiatric texts. He read Wundt, Freud, and even the very current works on systematic trauma reduction by William Sargant. Hubbard was very busy educating himself.