Joseph A. Winter

A Doctor's Report on Dianetics

Cover of the first edition
Author	Joseph A. Winter
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Dianetics
Publisher	Julian Messner Crown Publishing Group
Publication date	1951, 1987
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
ISBN

A Doctor's Report on Dianetics: Theory and Therapy is a non-fiction book analyzing Dianetics. The book was authored by physician Joseph Augustus Winter, with an introduction by German Gestalt Therapy research psychiatrist Frederick Perls.

The book was first published in hardcover by the Julian Press Julian Messner, in 1951, and published again in 1987, by Crown Publishing Group. The work was the first book published that was professionally critical of L. Ron Hubbard.

Joseph Augustus Winter, an American medical doctor and "psychosomatacist", had previously served on the board of directors and as the medical director of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetic Research Foundation. He also wrote the 1950 original introduction to Hubbard's Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Winter resigned from the HDRF foundation in October 1950, stating "there was a difference between the ideals inherent within the dianetics hypothesis and the actions of the Foundation". He also felt that Dianetic techniques were potentially dangerous if performed without medical training and disapproved of the lack of scientific evidence supporting Hubbard's claims. Prior to their falling out, Winter had stated that the Dianetic technique of auditing had cured his six-year-old son of fears of ghosts and the dark.

According to a 1951 article in Time magazine, in A Doctor's Report on Dianetics "Winter tries to filter Hubbard's strange mixture and pick out the scraps fit for human consumption". Winter wrote that auditing could be a useful technique for psychiatrists to use during psychoanalysis and agreed with Hubbard's conceptualization of prenatal "engrams", that traumatic memories can be formed and stored during the prenatal stage, but Winter was skeptical about "sperm dreams", stating they were likely imagined and not true memories.