“Splashing the Volcano”: ‘Dianetics’ in the Age of Reaganomics

By K.E. Roberts / September 29, 2026 From the cover of Dianetics, 2007 edition Anyone who was watching TV in the late 1980s remembers the commercial: probing personal questions appear in white text on a black screen as a Tangerine Dream-esque synth riff pulsates in the background. ”How can you increase your mind’s potential?”; “Why is it so hard to just ‘be yourself’”; “Do you have to live with pain?” With each question, a page number appears in red on the bottom right. Then, the music climaxes abruptly in a shattering chord! An animated volcano erupts, spewing rocks and orange-yellow magma into the purple night sky! The blazing volcano seamlessly becomes the front cover of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics. A voiceover tells us that we can buy the book “wherever paperbacks are sold,” and then concludes, with “Dianetics” spelled out in big white block letters: “A fresh look at today’s problems.” The commercials were part of an “unprecedented” multi-million dollar marketing blitz that started…

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