The undisclosed dangers in
Scientology's initiatory techniques
(FACTNet)
Scientology's control techniques
are derived from a collection of sources--some benign, others not. Some of the
more benign techniques are plagiarized without recognition from a mish-mash
of pop psychology and other psychological and psychiatric schools.
After an individual is hooked by a bait and
switch come-on, Scientology uses exercises that covertly put the receiver in
hypnotic trance. The purpose of covert trance induction is to increase the
subject's suggestibility and to control the subject's resources. These
techniques are derived from traditional hypnosis and from cult rituals used
to produce fanatical loyalty from the inititation rites of past secret
societies.
These coercive control
techniques alone could explain the many reports of psychosis and suicide in
Scientology, but Hubbard went far beyond traditional techniques. He studied
and wrote a book on brainwashing, and secretly boasted that his methods could
turn people into "willing slaves."
Hubbard combined these new control techniques with the bizarre occult
cosmology of his satanic and secret society past, high pressure sales
techniques, traditional deception (con man) techniques, and advanced
sociological and psychological stress techniques. (For more details on how
Scientology uses trance and brainwashing see the Internet report called
"Coercive Persuasion and Scientology".)
Hubbard boldly experimented with first
generation Russian and Korean brainwashing processes on unknowing members
under a cloak of "religion." His innovative experimentation helped produce a
second generation of thought reform and mind control techniques. These new
methods are considerably more dangerous than their first generation
predecessors. While developing what Scientology calls its secret L-12
initiation, Hubbard allegedly said that if the initiators performed this rite
incorrectly you might as well build a pine box for the individual receiving
it.
These second generation thought
reform programs are commonly called "coercive persuasion" in the courts. In
United States v. Lee 455 U.S. 252, 257-258 (1982), the California Supreme
Court found that:
"when a
person is subjected to coercive persuasion without his knowledge or consent...
he may develop serious and sometimes irreversible physical and psychiatric
disorders, up to and including schizophrenia, self-mutilation, and
suicide."
The goal of
all coercive persuasion programs is to produce target compliance and control
of the target's resources by holding the target at a point of maximum
psychological stress, without inducing psychosis. Unfortunately, the second
generation coercive programs have increased the chance of error because their
targets tend to be less well monitored, and the advanced techniques used to
induce stress are more powerful and less predictable in their effects upon
individuals.
In coercive persuasion
programs, the main attack is done through frequent and intense attempts to
cause a person to reevaluate the most central aspects of their experience of
self and their prior conduct in NEGATIVE ways. Efforts are designed to
destabilize and undermine the subject's basic consciousness, reality
awareness, world view, emotional control, and defense mechanisms. These
tactics are engineered to induce the individual to reinterpret his or her life
history and to adopt a new (often irrational) version of causality.
On Scientology's secret initiations, the
individual is told (while under the suggestibility of hypnotic trance and
stress) that he or she is really not one individual but a composite of
hundreds, possibly thousands, or even tens of thousands of alien beings
(called "body thetans" or "BTs.") These beings are trapped in his or her
body as the result of a galactic war that occurred 76 million years ago (OT
3, and OT 5.) Individuals subjected to these initiation techniques are told
(while vulnerable) that these alien beings are fighting for control of the
individual's body and identity, that these alien beings can make them act
insane or become terminally ill, and that only Scientology has the technology
to safely "remove" these alien beings from their bodies.
Members spend years of their lives of
exposure to these secret levels, talking to their various body parts, trying
to get these alien beings out of their bodies. They are repeatedly told that
they could go insane and die if they do anything procedurally wrong while
trying to remove these other beings.
In these secret initiation levels, to more effectively attack the person's
core concepts of self, Hubbard's methods trick the person in trance into
believing he is not who he always thought he was. To fragment the individual's
personality and integrity on order to facilitate better initiate control,
Hubbard induces a hypnotic state of multiple personality similar to an
artificial schizophrenia. Many observers report Scientologists switching
"personalities" dramatically and abruptly.
It is no wonder people could become psychotic or suicidal when tricked into
deeply believing and acting upon this alien being story when their
suggestibility is at its highest and their defenses at their lowest.