SCI
page 2 / 14
For much of the 1920s and 1930s, Hubbard lived in Washington D.C., and he would later claim to have interacted with multiple psychiatrists in the city. Hubbard described encounters in 1923 and 1930 with navy psychiatrist Joseph Thompson. Thompson was controversial within the American psychiatric community for his support of lay analysis, the practice of psychoanalysis by those without medical degrees. Hubbard also recalled interacting with William Alanson White, supervisor of the D.C. psychiatric hospital St. Elizabeths. According to Hubbard, both White and Thompson had regarded his athleticism and lack of interest in psychology as signs of a good prognosis. Hubbard later claimed to have been trained by both Thompson and White. Hubbard also discussed his interactions at Chestnut Lodge, a D.C.-area facility specializing in schizophrenia, repeatedly complaining that their staff misdiagnosed an unnamed individual with the condition:
There's a place by the name of Walnut Lodge... They don't see anything humorous in that, by the way... They sent three people to see me and every one of them was under treatment—and this was their staff! But anyway, very good people there, I'm sure... Didn't happen to meet any. Have some fine patients though! Anyway, they treat only schizophrenia. And so they take only schizophrenics. Now how do they get only schizophrenics? Well, anybody sent to Walnut Lodge is a classified schizophrenic. And they take somebody who is a dementia praecox unclassified or a more modern definition, a mania-depressive and they take him from Saint Elizabeths and they take him over to Walnut Lodge and he goes onto the books as a schizophrenic. Why? Because Walnut Lodge takes only schizophrenics.
==== Pre-war fiction ====
In 1933, Hubbard renewed a relationship with a fellow glider pilot, Margaret "Polly" Grubb and the two were quickly married on April 13.
The following year, she gave birth to a son who was named Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, Jr., later nicknamed "Nibs". A second child, Katherine May, was born two years later. The Hubbards lived for a while in Laytonsville, Maryland, but were chronically short of money. In the spring of 1936, they moved to Bremerton, Washington. They lived there for a time with Hubbard's aunts and grandmother before finding a place of their own at nearby South Colby. According to one of his friends at the time, Robert MacDonald Ford, the Hubbards were "in fairly dire straits for money" but sustained themselves on the income from Hubbard's writing.
Hubbard began a writing career and tried to write for mainstream publications. Hubbard soon found his niche in the pulp fiction magazines, becoming a prolific and prominent writer in the medium. From 1934 until 1940, Hubbard produced hundreds of short stories and novels. Hubbard is remembered for his "prodigious output" across a variety of genres, including adventure fiction, aviation, travel, mysteries, westerns, romance, and science fiction. His first full-length novel, Buckskin Brigades, was published in 1937. The novel told the story of "Yellow Hair", a white man adopted into the Blackfeet tribe, with promotional material claiming the author had been a "bloodbrother" of the Blackfeet. The New York Times Book Review praised the book, writing "Mr. Hubbard has reversed a time-honored formula and has given a thriller to which, at the end of every chapter or so, another paleface bites the dust."
On New Year's Day, 1938, Hubbard reportedly underwent a dental procedure and reacted to the anesthetic gas used in the procedure. According to his account, this triggered a revelatory near-death experience. Allegedly inspired by this experience, Hubbard composed a manuscript, which was never published, with working titles of The One Command and Excalibur. Hubbard sent telegrams to several book publishers, but nobody bought the manuscript. Hubbard wrote to his wife:
Sooner or later Excalibur will be published... I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all books are destroyed. That goal is the real goal as far as I am concerned.
Hubbard found greater success after being taken under the supervision of editor John W. Campbell, who published many of Hubbard's short stories and serialized novelettes in his magazines Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction. Hubbard's novel Final Blackout told the story of a British lieutenant who rises to become dictator of the United Kingdom. In July 1940, Campbell magazine Unknown published a psychological horror by Hubbard titled Fear about an ethnologist who becomes paranoid that demons are out to get him—the work was well-received, drawing praise from Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and others. In November and December 1940, Unknown serialized Hubbard's novel Typewriter in the Sky about a pulp fiction writer whose friend becomes trapped inside one of his stories.
==== Military career ====
In 1941, Hubbard applied to join the United States Navy. His application was accepted, and he was commissioned as a lieutenant junior grade in the United States Naval Reserve on July 19, 1941. By November, he was posted to New York for training as an intelligence officer. The day after Pearl Harbor, Hubbard was posted to the Philippines and departed the US bound for Australia. But while in Australia awaiting transport to the Philippines, Hubbard was suddenly ordered back to the United States after being accused by the US Naval Attaché to Australia of sending blockade-runner Don Isidro "three thousand miles out of her way".