About L. Ron Hubbard

An Introduction to Scientology provides a personal glimpse into the larger story of L. Ron Hubbard, a man who lived at least twenty lives in the space of one.

Born 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska, Ron's long and adventurous road of discovery began at an early age. Under the tutelage of his mother, a thoroughly educated woman, he was reading well beyond his years: Shakespeare, Greek philosophy and an array of later classics. Yet his early years were far from bookish and with his family's move to Helena, Montana, he was soon breaking broncos with the best of the local wranglers.

As an inquisitive youth in what was then still a rough and tumble American West, he was also soon befriending indigenous Blackfoot Indians — learning tribal lore and legend from a local medicine man and so achieving that very rare status of Blood Brother. By the age of thirteen, he had further distinguished himself as the nation's youngest Eagle Scout, and so represented American scouting to then United States President Calvin Coolidge.

Yet what most distinguished the young L. Ron Hubbard was an insatiable curiosity coupled with an innate desire to better the human condition. Recognizing exactly those qualities, no less than a student of Sigmund Freud's and the only American naval officer to study psychoanalysis in Vienna, Commander Joseph C. Thompson, introduced the young L. Ron Hubbard to Freudian theory.

Although genuinely fascinated with the possibilities of plumbing the human mind, Ron was left with many unanswered questions.

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