This is in response to your question about why Hubbard plagiarized the ideas from abreactive therapy and hypnosis which he recombined and renamed to present Dianetics.

I believe he did this for several reasons.

First, he found hypnosis unpopular with the public and wanted to pretend his technique was not hypnosis.

Second, he didn’t create or own or improve on abreactive therapy and it was already under the province of psychiatry and evaluated thoroughly as a failure that seemed to temporarily improve some patients but in truth hurts them and far more often creates heightened suggestibility and dependence in the patients.

This information was readily available and if he was honest about Dianetics he would have been prohibited from practicing psychiatric treatment without a proper degree and especially practicing techniques that were already discredited before he stole them.

Third, he relied on his own claim of genius for discovering the principles behind Dianetics to give him what he termed altitude aka prestige.

He read books on hypnosis and the idea that a hypnotic operator must have altitude is present through Dianetics and Scientology indoctrination. It’s a fundamental in fact.

“Any time anybody gets enough altitude he can be called a hypnotic operator, and what he says will act as hypnotic suggestion. Hypnotism is a difference in levels of altitude…if the operator can heighten his own altitude with regard to the subject…he doesn’t have to put the subject to sleep. What he says will still react as a hypnotic suggestion….With parity, such as occurs between acquaintances, friends, fellow students and so on, there is no hypnotic suggestion” (Education and Dianetics, 11 November 1950, Research and Discovery, volume 4). Ron Hubbard Source Jon Atack

Here’s a longer excerpt:

Any time anybody gets enough altitude he can be called a hypnotic operator, and what he says will act as hypnotic suggestion. Hypnotism is a difference in levels of altitude. There are ways to create and lower the altitude of the subject, but if the operator can heighten his own altitude with regard to the subject the same way, he doesn’t have to put the subject to sleep. What he says will still react as hypnotic suggestion.” (my italics; Education and Dianetics, 11 November 1950, Research and Discovery Series, volume 4, 1st edition, pp.324-5) source Jon Atack

Here’s a longer excerpt:

ALTITUDE INSTRUCTION
“In altitude teaching, somebody is a ‘great authority.’ He is probably teaching some subject that is far more complex than it should be. He has become defensive down through the years, and this is a sort of protective coating that he puts up, along with the idea that the subject will always be a little better known by him than by anybody else and that there are things to know in this subject which he really wouldn’t let anybody else in on. This is altitude instruction … It keeps people in a state of confusion, and when their minds are slightly confused they are in a hypnotic trance. Anytime anybody gets enough altitude he can be called a hypnotic operator, and what he says will act as hypnotic suggestion. Hypnotism is a difference in levels of altitude. There are ways to create and lower the altitude of the subject, but if the operator can heighten his own altitude with regard to the subject the same way, he doesn’t have to put the subject to sleep. What he says will still react as hypnotic suggestion.” (Hubbard, Research & Discovery, volume 4, p.324)12
One error, however, must be remarked upon. The examination system employed is not much different from a certain hypnotic technique. One induces a state of confusion in the subject by raising his anxieties of what may happen if he does not pass. One then “teaches” at a mind which is anxious and confused. That mind does not then rationalize, it merely records and makes a pattern. If the pattern is sufficiently strong to be regurgitated verbatim on an examination paper, the student is then given a good grade and passed.

[End Quote]

Ron Hubbard lecture 29 August 1950, “Educational Dianetics.” Source Arnie Lerma

So, Hubbard wanted to establish himself as the authority on Dianetics and Scientology!

He wanted to confuse people and with altitude suggest a stable datum to align them, and take them out of that confusion via a hypnotic implant!

Quotes from Ron Hubbard on the Confusion Technique:
[Quote]
Now, if it comes to a pass where it’s very important whether or not this person acts or inacts as you wish, in interpersonal relations one of the dirtier tricks is to hang the person up on a maybe and create a confusion. And then create the confusion to the degree that your decision actually is implanted hypnotically.

The way you do this is very simple. When the person advances an argument against your decision, you never confront his argument but confront the premise on which his argument is based.

That is the rule. He says, “But my professor always said that water boiled at 212 degrees.”
You say, “Your professor of what?”
“My professor of physics.”

“What school? How did he know?”

Completely off track! You’re no longer arguing about whether or not water boils at 212 degrees, but you’re arguing about professors. And he will become very annoyed, but he won’t know quite what he is annoyed about. You can do this so adroitly and so artfully that you can actually produce a confusion of the depth of hypnosis. The person simply goes down tone scale to a point where they’re not sure of their own name.

And at that point you say, “Now, you do agree to go out and draw the water out of the well, don’t you?”

“Yes-anything!” And he’ll go out and draw the water out of the well.
[End Quote]
Ron Hubbard Lecture, 20 May 1952 “Decision.”
source Lermanet.com

So, according to Hubbard redirection of attention can confuse someone enough to achieve the depth of hypnosis. But that’s what his having the student always look for something to resolve that isn’t what he’s having trouble with does. He’s utterly confused. Hubbard had more to say on confusion and hypnosis:

“A confusion can be defined as any set of factors or circumstances which do not seem to have any immediate solution. More broadly, a confusion is random motion.”
“Until one selects one datum, one factor, one particular in a confusion of particles, the confusion continues. The one thing selected and used becomes the stable datum for the remainder.“Any body of knowledge, more particularly and exactly, is built fromone datum. That is its stable datum. Invalidate it and the entire body of knowledge falls apart. A stable datum does not have to be the correct one. It is simply the one that keeps things from being in a confusion and on which others are aligned.” – Ron Hubbard, The Scientology Handbook

RON THE HYPNOTIST
Structure/Function: 11 December 1952 page 1

“All processes are based upon the original observation

that an individual could have implanted in him by hypnosis

and removed at will any obsession or aberration,

compulsion, desire, inhibition which you could think of – by hypnosis.“

Hypnosis, then, was the wild variable;

sometimes it worked,

sometimes it didn’t work.

It worked on some people; it didn’t work on other people.

Any time you have a variable that is as wild as this, study it.

Well, I had a high certainty already –

I had survival. Got that in 1938 or before that. And uh…Ron Hubbard

You are an angel to print this all out for me to read so easily.

It’s proof positive of Hubbard’s having lifted his procedures from others’ works.

Which is fine but then why claim to have invented it himself?

To answer my own question, I’m thinking possibly because he wanted to patent the procedures. Ok, I can understand that.

But then what I REALLY don’t get are his over the top claims of the benefits and results of Dianetic auditing.

From Wikipedia

Hubbard initially described Dianetics as a branch of psychology.[11][12][13] Jon Atack writes that the original Dianetic techniques can be derived almost entirely from Sigmund Freud’s lectures.[14] Hubbard created the “Freudian Foundation of America” and offered graduate auditors certificates which included that of “Freudian Psychoanalyst”.[15][16] Hubbard was influenced in creating Dianetics by many psychologists such as William Sargant’s work on abreaction therapy,[17] Carl Jung, Roy Grinker and John Spiegel’s writing on hypnosis and hypnoanalysis, Nandor Fodor, Otto Rank, and others.[18][19][20][21

From Wikipedia

Abreaction therapies Edit
In Scientology, Dianetics is a form of abreaction that science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard borrowed from the United States Navy[11] when he spent three months in a San Diego hospital in 1943 with the complaints of an ulcer and malaria.[12] Hubbard later wrote, in his autobiography My Philosophy, that he had observed abreactive therapy in the hospital, though in later life he claimed to have made the discovery on his own after being wounded in battle and given up as untreatable.[13][citation needed]

See also
References Edit
Introduction to Studies on Hysteria
Salman Akhtar, ed. (2009). Comprehensive dictionary of psychoanalysis. London: Karnac Books. ISBN 9781855758605. Retrieved April 27, 2013.
S Freud, On Psychopathology (PFL 10) p. 72-3
Akhtar, Salman (2009). Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac Books. p. 1. ISBN 9781855758605.
Weiner, Irving; Craighead, W. Edward (2010). The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 10. ISBN 9780470170243.
Watkins, John; Barabasz, Arreed (2012). Advanced Hypnotherapy: Hypnodynamic Techniques. New York: Routledge. p. 57. ISBN 9780415956277.
Collected Works of C.G. Jung, volume 4, Freud and Psychoanalysis: Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis, Jung-Loy Correspondence (1914).
Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946) p. 572
S Freud, On Psychopathology (PFL 10) p. 309
J Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (London 2005) p. 55
Sands, D. E.; Hill, D. (March 1945). “War Psychiatry in the Merchant Navy”. Proc. R. Soc. Med. 38 (5): 217–26. PMC 2181173. PMID 19993044.
L. Ron Hubbard — Messiah? Or Madman?, Chapter Two
A Piece of Blue Sky, Chapter Two, Page Five

People knew from the early fifties that Dianetics was abreactive therapy and hypnosis.

Here is an article by Jeff Jacobsen.

Dianetics: From Out of the Blue?
Jeff Jacobsen

The following article was originally published in The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 2, September/October 1991, pp. 1-5.It was reprinted in the UK Skeptics publication The Skeptic, vol. 6, no. 2.

L. Ron Hubbard, author of the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and founder of the Church of Scientology, was a science-fiction writer before penning the book that would launch his fame. Dianetics is a self-help book published in 1950 which claimed to include new and unique theories on how the mind works. Hubbard claimed that this work was totally unprecedented; “Man had no inkling whatever of Dianetics. None. This was a bolt from the blue.” (1) So there would be no doubt as to the originality of his ideas, Hubbard wrote that “dianetics borrowed nothing but was first discovered and organized; only after the organization was completed and a technique evolved was it compared to existing information.” (2) According to Hubbard, some philosophers of the past helped provide the foundation of Dianetics, but the remaining research had been done “what the navigator calls, ‘off the chart.'” (3)

Dianetics became a New York Times bestseller in 1950, and has since sold many millions of copies.

Was this a totally unique theory of the mind wrought from Hubbard’s “many years of exact research and careful testing,” (4) or was it a loose composite of already existing theories mixed with novel, unproven ideas? This paper proposes to show that, despite Hubbard’s claims of originality, many of the ideas in Dianetics were already existing and even in vogue before Dianetics appeared. Either Hubbard really studied other works before he wrote Dianetics, or he wasted years of his time re-inventing the wheel.

Although there are no reference notes in Dianetics to see what are Hubbard’s ideas and what are borrowed, we can quickly eliminate the idea that Dianetics appeared “from the blue” by Hubbard’s own statements. In Dianetics itself is the statement that “many schools of mental healing from the Aesculapian to the modern hypnotist were studied after the basic philosophy of dianetics had been postulated.” (5) Alfred Korzybski, Emil Kraepelin, Franz Mesmer, Ivan Pavlov, Herbert Spencer, and others are mentioned as resources in Dianetics, so we must assume Hubbard was crediting these people to some degree. He must certainly have known, then, of at least some of the research from his time which will be mentioned in this article. Hubbard in other settings acknowledged Sigmund Freud (especially through Commander “Snake” Thompson), (6) Count Alfred Korzybski, (7) and Aleister Crowley (8) as contributors to his ideas on the human mind. In a speech in 1950, Hubbard stated that he had spent much time in the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital medical library in 1945 during a stay for ulcers, where “I was able to get in a year’s study.” (9)

In fact, most of the theories and ideas in Dianetics can be found in scientific literature previous to the first publishing of Hubbard’s theories. Parts of Dianetics, for example, have striking resemblance to two articles found in Volume 28 (1941) of the Psychoanalytic Review..

Dianetics theory posits the existence of engrams. These are memories of events that occur around us when our analytical mind is unconscious, and they are recorded in a separate area of the mind called the reactive mind. A seemingly unique theory in Dianetics is that these memories begin being stored “in the cells of the zygote–which is to say, with conception.” (10) These engrams can cause problems for the person throughout life unless handled through Dianetics auditing.

Dr. J. Sadger, nine years before the introduction of Dianetics in 1950, wrote that several of his patients were not cured of their psychological problems until he had taken them back to their existence as sperm or ovum. He declared that “there exists certainly a memory, although an unconscious one, of embryonic days, which persists throughout life and may continuously determine an action.” (11) Sadger spends much time explaining how his patients’ memories of the time when they were zygotes or even sperm or ovum had affected their adult behaviors, noting that “an unconscious lasting memory must have remained from these embryonic days.” (12) There were “unmistakable dreams” of being a sperm in the father’s testicle.

Engrams, those unconscious memories of Dianetics, are said by Hubbard to be stored in the cells of the body and passed on to their clone cells and finally on to the adult being. Hubbard claimed to discover that “patients sometimes have a feeling that they are sperms or ovums… this is called the sperm dream.” (13) It was impossible, he claimed, to deny to a pre-clear that he could remember being a sperm. But Sadger wrote about this first, and Hubbard could well have read this in his “year’s study” at Oak Knoll Hospital.

Another coincidental discovery of Hubbard and Sadger was that mothers often attempt to abort their child. Sadger states that “so many a fall or other accident of a pregnant woman is nothing else than an attempt at abortion on the part of the unconscious, not to mention those cases where the mother seeks to free herself more or less forcibly from the unwanted child.” (14) Hubbard concurs; “Attempted abortion is very common,” (15) and in fact “twenty or thirty abortion attempts are not uncommon in the aberee.” (16) Again, not an idea “from the blue.”

Life in the womb was not very kind, according to one of Sadger’s patients: “Perhaps when father performed coitus with mother in her pregnancy I was much shaken and rocked. Shall that have been one reason that I so easily became dizzy and that all my life I have had an aversion even as a child from swings and carousels?” (17) Hubbard, in a similar vein, insists that the mother “should not have coitus forced upon her. For every coital experience is an engram in the child during pregnancy.” (18) “Papa becomes passionate and baby has the sensation of being put into a running washing machine.” (19)

There are at least three other similarities like the “sperm dreams”, commonality of abortion attempts, and fetus discomfort during parental sex. This seems quite a coincidence, but it is not known whether Hubbard read Sadger’s article. Suffice it to say that these are major ideas in Dianetics, but they are not new ideas.

The second article under discussion from Psychoanalytic Review deals with the unbearable conditions during birth and the affects of these in later life. Grace W. Pailthorpe, M.D., argued in this 1941 article that patients should be psychoanalyzed more deeply into the period of infancy, or at least to the ‘trauma of birth’. Otherwise no lasting therapeutic effect could be expected. Birth has traumatized all of us, she declares, and these unconscious memories drive us in our adulthood. “It is only when deep analysis has finally exposed the unconscious deviations of our vital force” (20) that we can recover and enjoy life.

In Dianetics, the reader is left with the impression that the ideas of birth and pre-birth memories and traumas, multiple abortion attempts, and fetal discomfort in the womb are new discoveries. As can be seen, this is not the case. And there are many other impressions of “new” and “unique” that are incorrect as well.

With Pailthorpe’s article, for example, we can also note the dramatic similarities of Dianetics with simple Freudian psychoanalysis. There is in both the return to past times in the patient’s life to search for the source of his or her current problems. Once these problematic memories are discovered and treated the problems vanish. In Pailthorpe’s article we have a man who was hopelessly traumatized by the events at his birth. He was cruelly kicked out of his “home” in the womb, and his resistance to this was assumed to be the cause of the immediate traumas of the nurse’s and mother’s attentions (which were “painful to the child’s sensitive body” (21)). These traumas caused headaches and social disorders in adult life. Psychoanalysis discovered the causes (birth trauma) and when these were brought to the conscious level with their meaning explained, the headaches and social dysfunctions were alleviated.

Dianetics follows this line of reasoning to a great degree. According to Hubbard, engrams (past traumas) are discovered in the pre-clear’s past, and bringing these engrams into consciousness (from the reactive to the analytic mind) alleviates the disorder. Hubbard claims that after auditing people (he had the pre-clear lie on a couch in Freudian imitation), “psycho-somatic illness…by dianetic technique…has been eradicated entirely in every case.” (22)

A theory in psychoanalysis known as abreaction is so similar to Dianetics (and preceding it by many years) that it must be mentioned in more detail here. A 1949 article by Nathaniel Thornton, D.Sc., gives a brief overview of abreaction and his views on its value. Abreaction began with Freud and was considered early on to be “one of the very cornerstones of analytic therapy.” (23) This is a method of freeing a patient “from the deleterious results of certain pathogenic affects by bringing these affects back into the conscious mind and re-experiencing them in all their original force and intensity.” (24) A patient of one of Freud’s colleagues, under hypnosis and “with a free expression of emotion” (25) was freed of all her psycho-somatic symptoms using abreactive therapy. Pierre Janet is credited in the article with utilizing abreactive therapy to restore painful memories to consciousness and thus relieving a patient’s symptoms. A patient being treated with this method must continually work through such painful memories until the patient “could accept the fact that the original experience no longer loomed up as a threat to him.” (26)

Thornton concludes that abreaction is a useful tool simply because “confession is good for the soul”, and that talking to someone about one’s problems is almost always therapeutic.

“Auditing” in Dianetics is a virtual clone of abreactive therapy. Auditing basically is searching through a person’s past until an engram is discovered, then continually reexperiencing the event when the engram (painful memory) was instilled “until the pre-clear is no longer affected” by the memory. (27) Hubbard takes abreaction to an extreme and declares that once a person has removed all his engrams, then Dianetics has done its job and an almost god-like human results. Once again, the similarity of an already existing theory on the mind is presented as a great discovery in Dianetics.

Alfred Korzybski, mentioned in passing in Dianetics, (28) owes a debt to Hubbard for making his theories well-known, according to some former followers of Dianetics. Bent Corydon, a former Mission holder of Hubbard’s Church of Scientology, has made a convincing comparison of Dianetics and Korzbyski’s writings, demonstrating that there is in essence little difference between many aspects of the two. (29) In support of this comparison, it should be noted that there was a “Korzybski fad” (30) sweeping through the science-fiction community in the 1940’s, of which Hubbard was a member, and that Hubbard, as mentioned above, had stated the contribution Korzbyski made in his research.

Corydon also mentions the book The Mneme published in 1923 by Richard Simon, wherein not only the idea of engrams, but the very word itself is used. The word “engram” is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as deriving from Simon’s book.

Cybernetics, published in 1948, (31) compares the human mind to the newly developing technology of computers. Dianetics also tells us to “consider the analytical mind as a computing machine.” (32) Cybernetics speaks of “affective tone” scales, (33) as does Dianetics in a remarkably similar vein. (34) Cybernetics was a very popular work at the time Hubbard was writing Dianetics.

We have seen that many of the ideas in Dianetics which were claimed to be unique were in fact current in the study of the mind at the time of, or just before, the introduction of Dianetics. It is difficult to see whether Hubbard had studied some of these works during his “many years of exact research,” (35) but as mentioned previously he does acknowledge other researchers. At any rate, no book is written in a vacuum, so we may conclude from the evidence that Hubbard was aware of at least some of this research previous to writing his work. Barring acknowledgment somewhere by Hubbard, or a list of articles and works he had read, we can only guess as to the others.

It seems safe to conclude that the theories presented in Dianetics did not arrive “out of the blue” as claimed, but were instead a synthesis of previous, uncredited works. In that case, is there any reason to discount the ideas in Dianetics? There certainly is. There are outlandish, unsubstantiated claims made by Hubbard, including the possibility that cancer may be cured by Dianetic processing, (36) that colds and accidents can be eradicated, (37) IQ improved, (38) life extended, (39) and total recall enjoyed. (40) None of this is proven in any way other than constant mention of previous research. The problem with this research is that there is no tangible evidence of its existence. Hubbard in a lecture stated that “my records are in little notebooks, scribbles, in pencil most of them. Names and addresses are lost… there was a chaotic picture….” (41) A certain Ms. Benton asked Hubbard for his notes to validate his research, but when she saw them, “she finally threw up her hands in horror and started in on the project [validation of research] clean.” (42) He was putting this into the hands of valid researchers “whose word can’t be disputed” so Dianetics could be legitimized by the scientific professions.

Unfortunately, none of Hubbard’s claimed research, nor those of his valid researchers can be found today, if they ever really existed. And if the methods and statistical results of the supposed research are not available, they cannot be checked and duplicated as the scientific method calls for. Anyone can make as many outlandish claims as he wants, but the research must be accessible and reproducible to support those claims if he brandishes scientific validity.

Dianetics is designed as a how-to manual for psychoanalysis. Anyone who reads the book should be able to perform Dianetics auditing and help his fellow man become “clear”. “Dianetics is not being released to a profession… it is insufficiently complicated to warrant years of study in some university.” (43) It is better to audit someone, said Hubbard, regardless of how well, than to not audit at all.

But this seems a bit reckless. Auditing can produce “tears and wailings,” (44) and “a patient…that…bounces about, all unconscious of the action.” (45) Regardless of the auditor’s abilities, and regardless of how traumatic a session becomes for the pre-clear, “If an auditor…can sit and whistle while Rome burns before him and be prepared to grin about it, then he will do an optimum job.” (46) This sounds more like quackery than therapy.

Children often have engrams that are restimulated by their parents. Hubbard states that it may be necessary to remove the children from their parents if this is the case, until the engrams are processed. (47) Here again we have Hubbard making an outlandish proposal of splitting families in order to produce healthier people.

The cells of the zygote, according to Dianetics theory, record sounds during a period of pain (Hubbard often uses a husband beating his pregnant wife as an example, such as “‘Take that! Take it, I tell you. You’ve got to take it!'” (48) From this engram we are to believe that the child grows up to be a thief. Cellular recordings of sounds by the cells can even be in another language unknown to the adult or child and still cause similar problems. All of this, again, has no evidence accompanying it, and without such evidence it may as well be classified as mere science-fiction.

We have in Dianetics a work by a science-fiction writer who claims to have created a totally new and foolproof handbook of the mind with no documentation to prove his claimed research. This book has been actively sold by Hubbard’s Church of Scientology for many years, and yet it is simply a synthesis of already published ideas with bizarre, unsubstantiated claims thrown in. The theories in this book, other than those found in previous works by others, have never been scientifically validated, and in fact, one attempt came up dry. (49) There is little scholastic or societal benefit to be derived from this work. S.I. Hayakawa put it well in his review of Dianetics: “The appalling thing revealed by dianetics about our culture is that it takes a 452-page book full of balderdash to get some people to sit down and seriously listen to each other!” (50)

Copyright © 1990 by Jeff Jacobsen. For permission to reprint this article, contact:

Jeff Jacobsen
P.O. Box 3541
Scottsdale, AZ 85271

Quoted in L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?, by Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1987) p. 262.
L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (Los Angeles: American Saint Hill Organization, 1950), 12th printing, paperback, August 1975, p. 340. (Henceforth Dianetics.)
ibid. p.400.
ibid. p. ix.
ibid. p.122.
Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah (N.Y.: Henry Holt & Co., 1987), pp.230- 231.
L. Ron Hubbard, cassette tape, “Introduction to Dianetics,” Dianetics Lecture Series 1. 1950. Bridge Publications, Inc.
Stewart Lamont, Religion, Inc.: The Church of Scientology (London: Harrap, 1986) p.21.
“The History of Dianetics and Scientology” cassette tape.
Dianetics, p.130.
Dr. J. Sadger, “Preliminary Study of the Psychic Life of the Fetus and the Primary Germ.” Psychoanalytic Review July 1941 28:3. p.333
ibid. pp.343-4.
Dianetics, p.294.
Sadger, p.336.
Dianetics, p. 156.
Dianetics, p.158.
Sadger, p.352.
Dianetics, p.158.
Dianetics, p.130.
Grace W. Pailthorpe, M.D., “Deflection of Energy, as a Result of Birth Trauma, and It’s Bearing Upon Character Formation.” Psychoanalytic Review July 1941 28:3 pp. 305-326, p.326.
ibid. p.307.
Dianetics, p.91.
Nathaniel Thornton, D.Sc., “What is the Therapeutic Value of Abreaction?” Psychoanalytic Review 1949 36:411-415. p.411.
ibid.
ibid. p.412.
ibid. p.413.
Dianetics, p.206.
Dianetics, p.62.
Corydon and Hubbard, Jr., pp. 266-269.
Albert I. Berger, “Towards a Science of the Nuclear Mind: Science-fiction Origins of Dianetics”, Science Fiction Studies, 1989, vol. 16:123-141. p.135.
Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics; or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1948).
Dianetics, p.43.
Wiener, p.150.
Dianetics, p.323ff.
Dianetics, p.ix.
Dianetics, p.93.
Dianetics, p.92.
Dianetics, pp. 90, 193.
Dianetics, p.170.
Dianetics, p.417.
L. Ron Hubbard, cassette tape, “What Dianetics Can Do,” Dianetics Lecture Series 2. 1950. Bridge Publications, Inc.
ibid.
Dianetics, p.168.
Dianetics, p.253.
Dianetics, p.278.
Dianetics, p.179.
Dianetics, pp.154, 155.
Dianetics, p.212.
Jack Fox, Alvin E. Davis, and B. Lebovits, “An Experimental Investigation of Hubbard’s Engram Hypothesis (Dianetics),” Psychological Newsletter 1959, 10, 131-134.
S.I. Hayakawa, “From Science-fiction to Fiction-science”, Etc.: A Review of General Semantics, 1951 Vol. 8 (4) 280-293. p. 293.

Mockingbird, in addition to my recent response to what you’ve shared above, I’d like to single out 2 of your shared truths, plain truths; namely that 1) some people are naturally obedient, and 2) that others are, if not naturally obedient, at the same time quite obedient out of their fear for the consequences of being disobedient!

Relating back to my personal experience with this ex-SO member, (who I found out later, in her 70s had been offloaded after more than 40 years of service due to health issues), and given that, as gentle and kind as she was, I knew her to be as well quite perceptive and intelligent and self motivated and as such not necessarily a “naturally” obedient person, I would like/love/infinitely prefer for her reasons for calling Debbie Cooke’s email “entheta and enemy line” to have been because she had a VERY real fear of having her life ALTOGETHER destroyed by Miscavige should she NOT disavow ANYTHING written or said not in full agreement and compliance with “Command Intention”.

I have to thank you very much, Mockingbird.

You supplied the very obvious missing data with which I was not thinking.

KNOWN and experienced at the time:
She was a kind, caring, gentle and highly trained, intelligent and thoughtful person. Very patient and non-jusdgemtal, and excellent EO!

UNKNOWN at the time:
After spending nearly 50 years in the Sea Org, in her early 70s she had been booted out due to a health condition. You see, I knew that she had left the Sea Org but I didn’t know WHY.

ALSO UNKNOWN at the time:
What life in the Sea Org for its rank and file members was really LIKE. I had almost NO clue! In fact, I was SO ignorant about Sea Org life that (deep breath) as a public, all the time I was in (27 years) I thought THEY (the Sea Org members) had it easy, and that it was the Class V org staff that had it very hard! I swear, this is what I believed!

The above two “unknowns” were not being factored in when this ex-SO dissed LRH’s tech, so of course I was shocked.

But I see it now, I’m pretty sure. I’m pretty sure that she was in fear – total fear! There was so much about Sea Org life that she was witholding from me, things she could NEVER tell me about how she had lived for nearly all of her adult life.

Thanks again, Mockingbird 🙂

Meaty stuff! I’m going to set aside some time to delve into this. Particularly “abreactive therapy”. I’m not familiar with it, but I’m intrigued at the assertion that Hubbard created his processes out of it. I will be pursuing this and will get back to you here on the blog about it. Thanks, Mockingbird.

You’re welcome, Mockingbird! Being able to express my continuing puzzlement and particular experiences and reactions to my own cult experiences has been therapeutic!
Reading what others who’ve left the cult have shared as regards their own unique experiences has and continues to be enormously therapeutic. Along this line, please free at any time to quote on your blog and use my handle Aquamarine or Aqua anything I’ve shared here 🙂

Well, if you really want to dig into the subject of influence, we have a wealth of materials.

The book Influence by Robert Cialdini is a great start.

The book Age Of Propaganda by social psychologists (both professors of psychology) Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson is very good.

I wrote a series on this.

https://mbnest.blogspot.com/2017/09/scientology-and-age-of-propaganda.html

We also have the classic A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance Theory by Leon Festinger.

https://mbnest.blogspot.com/2017/09/scientology-and-cognitive-dissonance.html

Ultimately, I go back to the eight criteria for thought reform.

Lifton knew that sometimes the ideology is effectively the guru, sometimes the founder is, and sometimes the current leader is.
Dr. Robert J. Lifton’s Eight Criteria for Thought Reform

Milieu Control. This involves the control of information and communication both within the environment and, ultimately, within the individual, resulting in a significant degree of isolation from society at large.
Mystical Manipulation. There is manipulation of experiences that appear spontaneous but in fact were planned and orchestrated by the group or its leaders in order to demonstrate divine authority or spiritual advancement or some special gift or talent that will then allow the leader to reinterpret events, scripture, and experiences as he or she wishes.
Demand for Purity. The world is viewed as black and white and the members are constantly exhorted to conform to the ideology of the group and strive for perfection. The induction of guilt and/or shame is a powerful control device used here.
Confession. Sins, as defined by the group, are to be confessed either to a personal monitor or publicly to the group. There is no confidentiality; members’ “sins,” “attitudes,” and “faults” are discussed and exploited by the leaders.
Sacred Science. The group’s doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute. Truth is not to be found outside the group. The leader, as the spokesperson for God or for all humanity, is likewise above criticism.
Loading the Language. The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand. This jargon consists of thought-terminating cliches, which serve to alter members’ thought processes to conform to the group’s way of thinking.
Doctrine over person. Member’s personal experiences are subordinated to the sacred science and any contrary experiences must be denied or reinterpreted to fit the ideology of the group.
Dispensing of existence. The group has the prerogative to decide who has the right to exist and who does not. This is usually not literal but means that those in the outside world are not saved, unenlightened, unconscious and they must be converted to the group’s ideology. If they do not join the group or are critical of the group, then they must be rejected by the members. Thus, the outside world loses all credibility. In conjunction, should any member leave the group, he or she must be rejected also. (Lifton, 1989)

If we look at sacred science and doctrine over person who has the final authority to n the mind of the individual follower determines where the truth and ultimately power comes from.

https://mbnest.blogspot.com/2015/06/dr-robert-j-liftons-criteria-for.html

Our ability to believe is nothing new, hundreds of thousands of people have killed and died for Christ, Mohammed, various countries and kings, are all these things genuine and worth following? It is hard to believe they all have had sufficient evidence to support the loyalty displayed.

And we use terms like totally dedicated but we don’t see the internal mental and emotional processes, you don’t even know your own as you can’t observe them.

In reality I think we see ourselves and others as fitting in categories but in truth we have a wide variety of emotions and behaviors and they are not always what we think they are.

People who are sure they are brave run from a fight and people who are considered cowards protect themselves and others bravely and some people do both at different times. The point is that real people are complicated and not easily placed in stereotypes.

I remember economics professor Richard Wolff saying that if psychology has taught us anything, it is that people are complicated and full of contradictions.

I believe it is to some degree our natural state. We might want to be around other people but also to not experience some things that happen when we are around other people, for example.

This is amazing exacerbated in my opinion by the techniques used in Scientology.

Here is a quote from the book Cults In Our Midst by Margaret Singer.

“The more complicated and filled with contradictions the new system is and the more difficult it is to learn, the more effective the conversion process will be.” (page 67) Cults In Our Midst by Margaret Singer

Scientology has thousands of terms that are direct opposites to their original English meaning, by design to create double think and denial and confusion via contradiction.

The loaded language and hundreds of hypnotic techniques made far, far, far more complex to learn than necessary make it almost impossible to learn.

The complexity in the form of contradictory statements, multiple contradictory definitions for terms, Orwellian reversals, many thousands of neologisms and many techniques to learn combine to make Scientology overwhelmingly complex and exceedingly difficult to learn, so the conversion process is extremely effective on people who it is practiced on to a significant degree.

Just as the earlier abreactive therapy that was plagiarized from to create Dianetics, Scientology itself also reduces the independent and critical thinking of subjects and creates dependence on the authority.

Abreactive therapy when practiced as a hypnotic technique, like Dianetics and Scientology, created heightened suggestibility and dependence in subjects and gave the practitioners unrestrained command of the subjects.

Scientology follows this on some of the subjects, certainly not all and to varying degrees on the people it does influence.

I want to thank you for this.

This is a great example of the different reactions that Scientologists had to the Debbie Cook email.

If you give me permission I would like to quote you at my blog, with or without using the name Aquamarine, it’s your preference.

I think it shows that some people are loyal to different people and ideas.

Some people are loyal to Ronald Hubbard and some are loyal to David Miscavige. Some people have expressed loyalty to Hubbard and his doctrine but obeyed Miscavige because he has power and could cut off their bridge or access to their family members with n Scientology and take away almost everything in their life if they are staff or Sea Org members who have been deep in Scientology for many years.

Some people are by nature believed to be generally obedience and research by people like Stanley Milgram on obedience and Adam Grant on Givers and Takers (and Matchers) has produced a hypothesis that a significant portion of people (perhaps 60%) are generally obedient to authority and conform to group norms most of the time.

Both have several books available and published research in the field of psychology to examine.

The degree of obedience in Scientology is extremely high and it is what Robert Jay Lifton would call a fundamentalist belief system. You are meant to obey it as literally as possible within the interpretation of the leaders.

The question is, who do you consider the legitimate leader? Ronald Hubbard, David Miscavige or yourself?

In some fundamentalist belief systems a Guru is the authority, in some the current leader is, in some the doctrine is treated as the authority and the individual follower has to interpret it.