Hahaha! No prob. You are very welcome!

*Laughs* Hey, contact me at skepticalmissionarrykid at gmail dot com
Sometime, when I come into L.A., I’d like to meet.

I’m sure you enjoyed Going Clear. I can’t wait to see it on cable, and that’s after seeing it at the ArcLight. I understand you got to see it in the Dome, you lucky dog.

Thank you! 8 months later. Sorry about that!

Oh my god I just saw this. Sorry for the 8 months of lag time. Thanks for the birthday wishes! LOL

Would you say that he was ‘mentally well’?

My pleasure. The broader debate concerns the actual ‘workability’ of the ‘tech’. When Blue Sky went to the publisher, he insisted on removing a chapter that suggested that Hub’s life and times were irrelevant to the scientific analysis of the ‘tech’. I pointed out that Freud had made up about half of his case studies in The Interpretation of Dreams (and we no longer dare mention Cyril Burt on inherited intelligence!).

It isn’t whether the fabulisms about the Hub bring down bad publicity, as Mike’s site suggests, but to what extent the claims of scn are true. I tend towards Nibs’ idea that the tech works not as his father said, but as his father intended.

I’ve said it often enough – the claims are false. There were no clears back in 1950, nor were there any after McMaster was ordered to attest in the sixties. There are none now, either. There are also no OTs, no Communication, Problems or any other type of releases. The tech doesn’t lead to ‘success in any walk of life’ – often as not it leads to catastrophe, bankruptcy and ill health. It does follow the usual hypnotic formula – using repetition, perceptual fixation and mimicry it brings about a ‘reverie’ state, an obedient, euphoria which becomes addictive. I’ve mentioned ludic loops in another comment. I’m currently fascinated by the ability to entrain a routine into an individual. Chinese School, anyone?

Hubbard said that if you want to control someone you introvert them, and scn does exactly that. It does not lead to super-IQ, total resistance to disease, the cure of all ills or a love of humanity. The only attempt made by Hub to scientifically assess his procedures is reported in part in Science of Survival (he says that pain-drug-hypnosis was used to implant an engram, the content of which was not recovered using dianetics). He realized that scientific assessment would undermine his fanciful claims (leukemia is caused by an engram containing the phrase ‘it turns my blood to water’, for instance). If there is anyone out there who really wants to check this stuff out, they should set up the standard testing systems used for psychotherapy and see how it performs. And if it doesn’t, there is an end to the debate!

Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is an excellent book. You might take a look at his The Doctor and the Soul, too. It is very important to understand the hypnotic nature of scn. But we seem to be phobic of understanding the simple reality – the ‘reactive mind’ was ‘discovered’ through hypnosis (as Hubbard sometimes admits). In fact, it was discovered long before Hubbard. He simply chose some of the notions of hypnosis – such as ‘reverie’ – and included them in his reworded system (reference Propaganda by Redefinition of Words!). Singer and Lalich’s Cults in Our Midst or Steve Hassan’s Freedom of Mind give vital information about our susceptibility. Neuroscience has ventured into the territory of ludic loops – where behaviour becomes compulsive – which explains a lot about our inability to quit addictions (such as auditing). As a comparative religion text, I recommend The Common Experience by Cohen and Phipps. On persuasion, Cialdini’s Influence remains a classic. Focus on past trauma is occasionally helpful – as Grinker and Spiegel found, it can help those who have been severely traumatised (in their case, airmen who had been caught in a burning plane, for instance), but more recent work with ‘debriefing’ people immediately after an incident has tended to show that this actually fixes the trauma, rather than relieving it. Hubbard said something similar when he lost Dianetics (he sold it for a dollar to Don Purcell) and had to find something else to sell. So ‘straight wire’ was born. Usually, it is better to use your ludic loops and entrain a new behaviour – which is the objective of cognitive behavioural therapy. Best of all is understanding what happened and being clever enough to stop doing it… no hypnosis required! Of all psychological theories, the most important, and best researched, is cognitive dissonance, which shows that the stronger the evidence the greater our ability to resist it. The first book published on the subject, When Prophecy Fails, from 1954, was a study of a scientologist who had predicted the arrival of an alien Noah’s Ark to rescue her followers…

Thank you for that, Jon.

He kept diaries on his two Chinese holidays, and there is nothing there that would lead to any suspicion of abuse. He actually seems to have been over-indulged by his grandfather – Lafe Waterbury – who was the head of his household while he was growing up. His aunts even washed his mom’s mouth out with soap, when she was too severe with him. I think it is more likely that he failed to bond with either of his parents (his dad was a drinker) and had too great an expectation placed upon him by his granddad. Sun Myung Moon and Rajneesh were also brought up by indulgent grandparents…