Cassandra > Recent Status Updates

Ahem. From page 66: “Discharge the reactive engram bank and the schizophrenic faces reality at last, the manic-depressive sets forth to accomplish things, the neurotic stops clinging to books which tell him how much he needs his neuroses and begins to live, the woman stops snapping at her children and the dipsomaniac can drink when he likes and stop.” 😐

If this was my book and not borrowed from the library, I’d be doing lots of underlining and adding a few “!!!” in the margins. As it is, I find myself taking notes.

Dizzying. And this is not an original observation but I cannot believe how much heavy lifting the passive voice is doing throughout. So many phenomena supposedly clearly demonstrated (when? by whom?)! And so many amazing sentences like “Later, there are experiments and proofs for these things and they can be measured with the precision so dear to the heart of the physical scientist.”
🌋

I can see how Dianetics might have appealed to a reader in 1950 who was preoccupied by the question of how humans could be so smart —pasteurizing milk and splitting the atom or whatever—but so evil and stupid at the same time—blowing up atom bombs and constantly starting wars. That plus what I assume was an ambient anxiety about mental health treatments at the time (lobotomies etc)...I kinda get it. Almost.

...I have only read the front and back matter and Important Note—haven’t even started the Synopsis yet—and I’m already agitated and tired. I suspect this is going to be a slog.