# L. Ron Hubbard pleads for psychiatric treatment

From "The Enemies of Scientology: Recent Press Releases by L. Ron Hubbard", Freedom magazine, issue 1, 1968:

> `This furore over the world against Scientology is stirred up by small psychiatric controlled groups. It cannot help but result in world-wide demands to investigate the inhuman brutality they use in their institutions. Their 19th century methods must end. They act like the mad scientists in a bad old-time movie. The true medical doctor is ashamed to be associated with them. The psychiatric idea of man is a Godless, soulless piece of meat. They demand their rights to butcher at will. They mock every Christian sentiment. According to them, everyone is helplessly mad and anyone who opposes them is especially so. Yet where are their cures? They only have victims. They torture and kill out of sight in their institutions.`

What a difference 21 years makes! On 15 October 1947, as the following letter shows, L. Ron Hubbard wrote to the Veterans' Administration to request psychiatric help to overcome his mental illness, which sounds (from what he says) like depression or similar. There is no record of his actually having undergone psychiatric treatment; it may have been a missed opportunity.

Image of Hubbard's 15 Oct 1947 appeal for psychiatric treatment

Transcript of Hubbard's 15 Oct 1947 appeal for psychiatric treatment

Last updated 6 Dec 1996