I just want to say this thread is absolutely incredible. For years I doubted the existence of "Snake Thompson" but here it is, in print. Thanks for this, I'm glad somebody spent the time!
Soderqvist1: I am glad that you appreciated my little essay!
I have even found Consuelo Seoane’ s own book “Beyond the Ranges” from 1960 on Amazon. Com!
Beyond the Ranges
Beyond the Ranges by Colonel Consuelo Andrew Seoane, U.S. Army, as told to Robert L. Niemann, is a classic book on the craft of intelligence, recounting the long career of the author as a distinguished intelligence officer in the U.S. Army. His experience and opinions based upon that experience in this book were assessed by Military Review: "Seoane is an astute and independent observer of men and events." From 1909-1911 Seoane and Commander Joseph "Snake" Thompson, U.S.
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Ranges-Colonel-Consuelo-Andrew/dp/0831500697
Soderqvist1: There is more on Thompson here, Clara Thompson was psychoanalyzed by Commander Thompson!
http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?t=5880&page=2
Soderqvist1: I only make short quotes from links and let the reader review the link if he find it interesting to do so. I have read his widow Rhoda Low Seoane’ s book “The Longest War” from 1968 and I have written a new much bigger essay I will post here, but let’s us summarize what has been established earlier. Thompson was a spy in the Far East and even Vice President in the Psychoanalytic Society in Washington, etc, and Nibs Hubbard’s statement; “Dr. Snake Thompson, a psychiatrist in the Navy that my father knew via my grandfather. He named many, many sources for Scientology at various times throughout these early years.” and Robert Vaughn Young’s statement that he had found the Passenger List with Ron and his mother together with Thompson on it. But we don’t know what happened on that ship except Hubbard’s meager utterance in his diary in Russell Miller’s Bare-Faced Messiah; “If obviously pushed upon,' he wrote, 'I supposed I could write a couple of thousands [sic] words on that trip . . . But I spare you.'”
Soderqvist1: So one wonder about what he had in mind with; “couple of thousands Words on that Trip” Maybe it is this? ;
COMMANDER THOMPSON
I traveled with Commander Thompson from Seattle, Washington through the Panama Canal to Washington, D. C. when I was about twelve and knew him during all that time that I was in Washington and later. Commander Thompson was the first man to study with Sigmund Freud from the U. S. Government and had just returned from his studies, bringing psychoanalysis back to the United States Navy. Through his friendship I attended many lectures given at Naval hospitals and generally became conversant with psychoanalysis as it had been exported from Austria by Freud.
http://carolineletkeman.org/sp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1439&Itemid=240
Lecture: The Story of Dianetics and Scientology
Anyway; at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, where they have all the books on everything, he started shoving my nose into an education in the field of the mind. Now, that's a very unusual thing to do, to take a twelve-year-old boy and start doing something with the mind. But he really got me interested in the subject But actually Commander Thompson had a very open mind on this, and he used to tell me, „Well, if it's not true for you, it's not true.“ And I found out that he got this from a fellow named Gautama Siddhartha.
http://carolineletkeman.org/sp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1432&Itemid=240
Lecture: Dianetics The Modern Miracle
I was just a kid and Commander Thompson didn't have any boy of his own, and he and I just got along fine.
http://carolineletkeman.org/sp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=727&Itemid=240
Uttermost East and The Longest war by Rhoda Low Seoane
Rhoda Seoane has woven through this book a most graphic account, dealing with the Boxer Uprising, Putnam Weale, her late husband, Colonel Seoane, and his friends, Commander Joseph ["Snake"] Thompson and Brigadier-General Henry J. Reilly, active in the U.S. Naval and Military Services
http://www.tomfolio.com/bookdetailssu.asp?b=830&m=220
Uttermost East and the Longest War
1968. Hardcover The trials and travels of the author's husband, Colonel Consuelo Seoane, who with Joseph Thompson, successfully performed espionage all over Japan and Okinawa; Written by the widow of Consuelo Seoane who was one of only two officers who successfully performed espionage in Japan and China in the first decade of this century, immediately following the Boxer Rebellion and the Russian Japanese war.
http://www.antiqbook.com/boox/ind/12953.shtml
Chapter 6 Spying In Japan
Page 94: There was that day in Washington when “Snake” Thompson that unusual and astute personality, stood before Seoane once again. “Seoane” he began in his customary direct manner. “I am scheduled to give a talk to a group of medical officers at the naval hospital close by on the subject of psychiatry, which I have been following at St. Elizabeth’s. Won’t you come over and join the group at three a clock tomorrow?” Seoane accepted with pleasure and said he would be there. The next day Seoane was among the group of medical officers present, and admired both Thompson’s fluency of speech and his manner of presenting the subject without notes. After their lecture was concluded, Seoane joined him and they talked about their former work in Japan.
Page 97: The Colonel’s dark eyes glowed with interest as he continued to recount how “snake” – as he liked to be called – because of his interest in snakes and coleoptera, or hard-shelled beetles, never spoke to a superior in rank as a subordinate, for he always felt himself the other’s mental match. For alertness of mind and quickness in action, there were few his equal and none his superior.“One day in Formosa I said to him, ‘Snake, what would you do if a card player confronted you with a pistol?’” “ ‘I would have it out of his grasp before he realized what was happening,’ was his quick answer.
“Thompson never consumed any alcohol, neither did he smoke. His knowledge of whatever subject he might be interested in was so detailed and his mind as sharp as a razor’s edge, he would have been a most able cross-examiner in court. I formed this opinion during our five hundred-mile trek together.”
Page 98. Snake knew that he had been selected for a task, which none other had been able to qualify for, and he was fluent in Japanese, he wanted to apply full use of his wits to his country’s service. He selected Seoane as his essential companion because of his understanding of topography and a general military knowledge. One day they received a courtesy call from a Japanese natural history professor. Thompson showed the professor’s card to Consuelo and said with grimace that our new caller has undoubtedly been sent by the police to inquire into our knowledge of natural history. “I will dispatch him, giving him an inferiority complex regarding his particular profession”. After this all such visits terminated.
Page 99: “Snake” do you remember the time you were at sea when you placed a crawling snake in a bathtub, making a humorous story for the chip’s officer”? Page 100: “his reply was merely the familiar twisted smile I know so well”. Consuelo Seoane’ s features relaxed and his lips parted, forming that brilliant smile, once seen never forgotten.
Commander Joseph Thompson had spent a tour of two years in the naval Hospital at Yokohama, refreshing his knowledge of Japanese, which he has learned as a boy in Japan, where his father had been a missionary. Later he was detached from Yokohama to become part of the American Naval contingent engaged in the Boxer Uprising.
Page 101: “Thompson had an unusual temperament, I learned subsequently that when in Washington he would go to the Congressional Library for diversion, in order to read Sanskrit, an Indo-European language.”¨
Symbolism in The Sumerian Written Language Joe Tom Sunguam 1924
In antiquity there was a group of people living in Eastern Persia who to-day are called the Sumerians. It is believed that they were of Ural-Altaic stock and it is known that they spoke an agglutinative language. At a period which the consensus of archeological evidence places at about 6,000 years B.C. these people entered the lower stretches of the valley of the Euphrates, where they built cities and entered upon some of the earliest pages of human history.
http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=PSAR.011.0263A
Sun, J.T. (1923). Symbolism in the Chinese Written Language. Psychoanalytical. Rev., 10:183-189.
The study of Chinese writing affords an opportunity to gather facts bearing upon the question of symbolism in primitive word formation that is absolutely unparalleled in any other linguistic field. Ultimate justice to the subject can only be done by a highly trained Sinologue and one who is well versed in the lore of psychoanalysis. Chinese script as found to-day is rather complicated. Each character may stand for a single word or, as is almost invariably the case, for several words having quite different meanings.
http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=PSAR.010.0183A
Soderqvist1: Joe Tom Sun from Guam is Thompson’s Penname. There is photography on Commander Thompson on page 113. There he is unearthing skeletal remains of a prehistoric race on Island of Guam 1922. It belong to Consuelo Seoane, it is a memento he retained of his staunch friendship. Consuelo are saying about Thompson there that; “He had fundamental a kind nature”
The Journal of the Polynesian Society 1923 Movements of Anthropologists.
Reports from Commander J. C. Thompson and Hans G. Hornbostel, representing the Bishop Museum, indicate successful outcome of the explorations in Guam and the southern Marianne Islands. Much information has been obtained about the culture of the vanished Chamorros, a flourishing race at the time of Magellan's visit in 1521. Under the direction of M. F. Malcolm, assisted by the Governor of Saipan, the remarkable ruins on the Japanese Island of Tinian, visited by Anson (1749), Mortimer (1791) and Freycinet (1817), are being studied with a view to enlarging the knowledge of migration routes and inter-relations of Pacific peoples.—Science, quoted in American Anthropologist.
http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/docum...lume_32,_No._127/Notes_and_queries,_p_184-186
Lecture 23 September 1950 Further Introduction to Dianetics
L. Ron Hubbard wrote: Man has been thinking for a very long time about man. I was in the Orient when I was young. Of course, I was a harum-scarum kid; I wasn’t thinking about deep philosophic problems; but I had a lot of friends. One such friend was Commander “Snake” Thompson. He was a very interesting man. He signed his name Thompson by drawing a snake over the top of the T. He was quite unique. He is still very well known by repute in the navy today, but he has been dead, I regret to say, these many years.
He had studied under Sigmund Freud, and he found me a very wide-eyed and wide-eared boy. He had just come from Vienna, and his mouth and mind were full of associative words, libido theories, conversion, and all the rest of it.
He had been out into the Polynesian group, and had dug up ancient skeletons of a race nobody had ever suspected existed before. He had served as an intelligence officer in Japan during the First World War. This man had a tremendous influence upon me.
http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?p=347924#347924
Rhoda Low Seoane Page 117: Snake 1922, on the Island of Guam, dug up one of the tombs of a previous people, whishing to determine what the anatomy showed. On that island are a number of gravestones marking the burial spot of previous people. The present-day inhabitants of this Island know absolute nothing as to who these prior inhabitants were, or in what period they lived there. Nevertheless, these marking stones are regarded with veneration and consequently, no one is allowed to molest them. The inhabitant became so aroused by Thompson’s unusual act that the Governor of Guam transmitted their complaints to Washington.” At this juncture the colonel paused, then said with a slight smile, “Soon afterward Thompson found himself in
Hawaii .” A sudden breeze blew across the porch as a ripple of laughter floated the air.
Lecture: Mechanics of the mind By L. Ron Hubbard
I have followed that, however, fragmentarily. It just sort of dubs in to the career that I have been following to this degree that - I didn't realize this until one day I looked at a map, and in the field of expeditions, explorations, I always favoured certain quarters of the world, always went there and, when there, did certain things. It fits Commander Thompson's record. Amusing. It just suddenly struck me one day, that I hadn't ever realized it. Nothing would do at a certain place I went but what I would dig up one of the old, ancient tribal burial grounds. Never realized the significance of this until one day - I hadn't known this, you see - I was standing in the Bishop Museum in
Hawaii and saw there the exhibit of Commander Thompson on some of the men he had dug up in a tribal burying grounds.
http://carolineletkeman.org/sp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1564&Itemid=240
Introduction Technical Bulletins Volume I —L. Ron Hubbard
In the Twenties I was fortunate enough to know Commander Thompson of the Medical Corps of the United States Navy. He was a colourful man, poised, pollished, greatly travelled, curious in half a hundred sciences.
http://carolineletkeman.org/sp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1441&Itemid=240
Lecture 6 April 1954: Universes By L. Ron Hubbard
Well, I got quite interested when I was twelve, mostly because I was interested in Commander Thompson. And the years went along and I knew Thompson again here and there, and I read books that he sent me and so forth.
http://carolineletkeman.org/sp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1568&Itemid=240
Soderqvist1: Then Consuelo Seoane goes on to Thompson and his cats!
112 - 113: I received a letter from him indicating he had made San Francisco his home and had apparently become interested in Rising Siamese cats. He obviously loved these cats as he said he would not sell them, but would send them as gifts to friends, who he felt would give them good home. I was naturally flattered, and pleased that my old friend wanted to send me one of his cats across the continent, but as my taste in this matter did not coincide with his, I declined his thoughtful offer with thanks”
“I remember now, as we sit here in Merrifield, the first day on which Thompson learned me how to pick up a snake in my hand, I recall how the experience amused me”. “It was not long ago that I saw a notice of his death in the Service Journal, I was deeply mowed as I realized I had lost a staunch friend”.
I suppose a lot more people have heard of "Snake" Thompson because of LRH's embellishments than would otherwise have done (he'd most likely be a forgotten figure today if it wasn't for Ron), so there's something to be said for him after all.
