Yep me too! 🤐
Especially after Tony’s talk with he and his family. It’s neat that he’s kept himself grounded with his family around him and that he has maintained being a good PERSON behind the persona that is for entertainment.

Plus it’s easy to armchair quarterback but I’ve got much respect for someone willing to put himself out there to realize a dream. This guy has barely made it yet has been committed to doing REAL charity since before he was known at all – that’s pretty amazing in my book!

He didn’t just call it that. He far more often denied it, but in several very early references from the forties to the early fifties (which Jon Atack, Arnaldo Lerma and Jachs were kind enough to point out) he described in detail how he applied hypnosis to people and how it was the origin of Dianetics and Scientology auditing. By examining things like the book Hypnotism Comes of Age (which he recommended in a reference) it is completely clear he applied hundreds of hypnotic techniques that he plagiarized along with lies to erase the serial numbers i.e. make it look like he hadn’t plagiarized them but instead they were his own ideas from legitimate research which of course never occurred, at least not in the manner he described.

I have assembled a large number of Hubbard quotes that support the idea he used hypnosis as the basis of much of Scientology including all auditing, the TRs, word clearing, certain conditions formulas and much more.

Additionally the affirmations and separate study of books on hypnosis supports this. He often took entire books on hypnosis and put every method in them in Scientology doctrine.

By the way I don’t advocate hypnosis as a therapy at all myself. And if mind control implies something outside influence or persuasion than that is something to be examined itself. Mind control to me is just a synonym for intentional persuasion, it can be generally ineffective or very subtle or only work some of the time on some people. It can be called undue influence or a number of names. The point is human beings can influence each other and some of the time some people get influenced by the actions taken in hypnosis or conversational hypnosis or mystical manipulation using methods that originated in hypnosis.

Here’s a blog post I put up with information on experiments done to show via Stroop effect reduction that hypnosis produces a scientifically verifiable and measurable and repeatable result.

http://mbnest.blogspot.com/2015/06/hypnotism-science-or-pseudoscience-not.html

There has been work done to scientifically validate that hypnosis isn’t a put on. The Stroop effect in particular has been used to show hypnosis does something play acting wouldn’t.

That’s the idea that I am denying – that ‘hypnotism can have coercive power.

My claim is the opposite – that things like stage hypnosis and hypnotherapy are utterly ineffective – that they are a kind of relaxed collaboration between the subject and the suggestions of the hypnotist.

That ‘contract’ can be broken at any time, when the subject no longer wants to play. This is too fragile a relationship to be characterised as ‘mind control’, or to achieve any therapeutic effect.

To my mind, ‘Hypnosis’ as a paradigm is as questionable as ‘the Manchurian candidate’. The concepts that surround it are all valid – they just don’t fit together in the way suggested by either of those concepts.

My formulation of ‘hypnotic’ effects involves induced dissociation (beginning with the TRs) distraction and a form of sensory deprivation that works by unchanging sensory input (the staring contests) &/or mind-numbing repetition (“touch that wall… thank you”).

It’s a formulation that is unique to the situation, and it does resemble what is generally thought of as ‘hypnosis’, so it’s only confusing to call it that, even if that’s what Hubbard saw it as.

I think something unavoidable is that Hubbard and some other predators try to use hypnosis and so study it, in his case extensively and he plagiarized hundreds of hypnotic techniques, so to understand what he was trying you have to say he was trying to hypnotize people and to any degree the techniques worked acknowledge it.

I don’t see things as paradigms that contradict each other, though they do.

I look at it like each interpretation of a subject is like a language and just because German has words for concepts that are not in English doesn’t make the concepts true or false. Freud and Jung disagreed and went different ways. One idea from Freud being useful in describing something doesn’t mean his other ideas are true or that Jung’s ideas are wrong.

In the history of many subjects people come up with ideas that are supported by evidence and many other ideas that are disproven and falsified. I mean an individual does that.

Einstein came up with relativity and special relativity, two ideas that are accepted by many in the standard model. But he also believed many false ideas like the steady state idea.

If hypnosis occurs then that is worth acknowledging. It might not produce the results intended but it is something attempted by Hubbard in his design of Dianetics and Scientology.

I am not proposing the strawman argument of a Manchurian candidate that can be produced one hundred percent of the time by one hundred percent of people with one hundred percent of people by flashing some lights and tying someone down Clockwork Orange style.

If you believe that suggestions can affect minds or influence. If someone cross references ideas from cognitive dissonance theory and Cialdini’s book Influence among others on rhetoric a pattern of correspondence is obvious. In one subject the potential influence of a method is acknowledged while the method has a use in the other.

It’s similar to a modern chemist saying nothing in alchemy is true because the philosopher’s stone isn’t genuine. Obviously alchemy had many false claims, but if an alchemist conducted an experiment and determined adding compounds X and Y produces substance Z and in chemistry adding compounds X and Y produces substance Z then they both are correct.

Hubbard plagiarized hundreds of techniques from hypnosis. If they on occasion influenced some people in the way he intended due to reasons defined in psychology then it is important to be accurate and honest about his intentions, methods and results.

Plenty of scientists, engineers and others have used Newtonian physics to successfully practice their professions. The fact that his ideas have been disproven and falsified doesn’t erase the almost right and often good enough to work nature of his ideas.

You are in my opinion using a strawman argument. The vast majority of literature I have seen on hypnosis doesn’t propose the absolute unstoppable inexorable control you are describing. To my knowledge Margaret Singer, Daniel Shaw, Milton Erickson, Jon Atack, Robert Jay Lifton and many, many others that have addressed hypnosis or influence have not said “hypnosis is mind control by unstoppable implants.”

It’s just not a usual claim. There might be some individuals and groups that propose that, but they aren’t everyone.

Taking that extraordinary and unusual claim and saying it is the entire subject is misrepresenting it.

If you acknowledge a suggestibility can be induced then it follows that some degree of persuasion is possible. If you don’t then that is something.