People who go nuts after having been declared a Suppressive Person

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
Still, without the ability to deny people access to the "Upper Bridge", there would be the chance that a SO mission walking into an Org and being abusive might find themselves beaten up and tossed back into the street. Fancy uniforms or not.
Maybe, but I doubt it. The hierarchy itself would sustain the structure of power.

CMO people kept walking in and being abusive to us regular Sea Org shmucks, upper bridge access or not.
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
I've lived long enough to see no one really "cured" of much of anything.
I've seen some being cured and go out the other end perfectly fine, especially phobias.

Having said that, psychology and psychiatry are still a long way from being on the same level that general medicine is (and medicine itself is still is a long way from being able to cure everything). Things like general anxiety disorder, depression, not to mention personality disorders... getting permanent cure for one of these is rare.

But that's not to say that psychology and psychiatry is useless, even if it frequently means long or lifelong treatment. Having to take antidepressants all your life is still better than being stuck with life-crippling depression or suicide at the age of 15, right?

Did Hubbard have a plan? It looks, to me, as though he did, but, as the plan manifested, the long envisioned plan was modified by happenstance. It becomes confusing to some because they still assumed Hubbard primarily wanted to help others, that he was trying to rescue humanity from the dwindling spiral sucking them into the black abyss.
I think Hubbard had a plan, at least in the 50s. But he did not have the scientific mindset, tools and the patience to do rigorous testing, re-testing, comparative studies etc. He was still "mentally stuck" in the days of Freud, while real world psychology had already moved on and was becoming more structured and more focused on actual tests and proving the validity of its own tools.

Hubbard wanted to be the genius creating new things and couldn't be bothered with the daily humdrum of actual research. At the same time, he never was able to delegate these "humdrum" tasks to others, because he apparently feared they could invalidate some of his own claims/ideas.

So in the end, he realized his "tech" produces very limited results that are nowhere near the amazing claims he made before and that he simply over-promised on all fronts. Instead of going back to the drawing board and admitting that things need to be changed, he just doubled-down. He was incapable of accepting criticism, because I think he was a narcissists and thus he was unable to give up the praise and fame he already had. His ego was too fragile for that.
He also made up a lot of stories and outright lies for the sole purpose of staying in power and increasing the control that he had over his followers.

So in a sense, I think he went from a "naive Freud-era early psychologist" more and more towards obfuscation, totalitarian control and deceit. Which is not to say he reached a point where it was all cynical, I think he always believed in some of his own stuff. But the stack of lies kept growing nevertheless.
 
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Enthetan

Veteran of the Psychic Wars
CMO people kept walking in and being abusive to us regular Sea Org shmucks, upper bridge access or not.
What kept you from just ignoring them, or spitting right back in their faces? Their ability to expel you from Scientology.

What gave them the ability to expel you, in the sense of regular Scientologists no longer associating with you? The desire of regular Scientologists to continue to have access to the Bridge.

Would you have continued to put up with them if they had no power to impose consequences?
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
What kept you from just ignoring them, or spitting right back in their faces? Their ability to expel you from Scientology.

What gave them the ability to expel you, in the sense of regular Scientologists no longer associating with you? The desire of regular Scientologists to continue to have access to the Bridge.

Would you have continued to put up with them if they had no power to impose consequences?

Yep, their place in the hierarchy is what gave them power.

I still got into shouting matches with them, started arguments and overall was pretty assertive. Sometimes, this resulted in me being punished for being "counter-intention". But I was in a comfortable position, because I knew that they could not give me any long term punishment, because they would ALWAYS need to bring me back to work at inv within days, because otherwise the case backlog would kill them.

They desire to get rid of me was countered by their desire to keep inv operational and not create a giant backlog. So while I was not free to just ignore them, I was free to argue, talk back, shout back and overall stand my ground as part of inv.

But it was a mess and overall a ton of drama most of the time. And it was not supposed to happen from a systemic viewpoint, that was an outcome purely created by the individual situation that the people involved were in.
 
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Pepin

Well-known member
Yuh, and Scientologists were conditioned to root around in their mental closets for undisclosed ghosts....and where the bodies were buried. Most outsiders think their current identity is jus fine, and inviolable.

I often wondered, into which toyboxes we made our spiritual tentacles extend in session. How is it so many came up with things NOT their own, so early as Scientologist. The lists are styled to query for certain heavy charges, so dutifully, we reached all the waaaaaay out there to find.......anything. We were also conditioned to think that getting overts off meant resurgence and healing. When? At what point during searching for evil deeds done ?

Not saying such a rest point could never happen, but practitioners didn't often get there. Maybe the False Purpose Rundown finally gave some insights without make wrongs.

I know I had lived in the century just before and just after, the Christ story. And I had a remembered once, where some focus of attention was. It seems to me now that this was a rare time of ascending adepts, gone out and come back with insights. And one was about the falsity of karma which was launched upon the spirit by heavy forces, man remained in mystery of. Mechanical ones.


Ephesians 6:12

New International Version


12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Read full chapter
Ephesians 6:12 in all English translations

I'd heard from some Ls completion that the overt/ withhold mechanism, is truly a mechanism. It's mental machinery in the unconscious, which regulates our human experience in this world. It has to do with going In to this world and agreements with others having this human experience. It's basically agreement. Maybe its' enforced with theta machinery we carry.

Being able to hold one's position in space, and being certain of basic rightness are similar things. Your viewpoint of and dimension seems strong and inviolable. Attacks at your the soft underbelly with accusations, and flashing images that you are in fact, an Evil Cause, make you wanna cancel that portal of awareness inside this matrix. To Be or Not to Be.

Very close. It's not that there really is some mental machinery, but we are meant to believe there is. As I recall it is focused on the lie that we are not spirit.
 

Enthetan

Veteran of the Psychic Wars
Yep, their place in the hierarchy is what gave them power.

I still got into shouting matches with them, started arguments and overall was pretty assertive. Sometimes, this resulted in me being punished for being "counter-intention". But I was in a comfortable position, because I knew that they could not give me any long term punishment, because they would ALWAYS need to bring me back to work at inv within days, because otherwise the case backlog would kill them.

They desire to get rid of me was countered by their desire to keep inv operational and not create a giant backlog. So while I was not free to just ignore them, I was free to argue, talk back, shout back and overall stand my ground as part of inv.

But it was a mess and overall a ton of drama most of the time. And it was not supposed to happen from a systemic viewpoint, that was an outcome purely created by the individual situation that the people involved were in.
Power is the ability to get people to do what you want. Power comes from the ability to grant rewards and impose consequences.

In your case, your value had the people above you having limited power, because trying to impose consequences on you, would result in consequences upon them in return.

This is the point I'm trying to make, that in order to have power, you need the ability to withhold something that people want if they do not obey. If you do not have that, then you do not power, and are reduced to just having influence (where you must use persuasion on people).
 

Veda

Well-known member
i'd say Hubbard's was a false attempt at exactitude -- but that was also sort of its lure, claiming to make the complex and ambiguous 'certain'.
"World's first real Clear," circa 1966, John McMaster. from a 1985 interview, referring to Hubbard:

"He got the technology to the point where he had a sort of assembly line as he called it. And he told me how he was putting all these 'square ball bearings' on the beginning of the assembly line, and then turning them into 'round ball bearings' at the other end. That was his idea of 'standard tech'."

and Woody Allen was a fan of old-fashioned Freudian analysis, a recognized ineffective and long-discredited modality, but one of the things that Hubbard both criticized (it was popular in the 40s and 50s, and is thus what much of his ire at psychiatric counseling, and envy over what they charged for doing little, was aimed at) and ended emulating -- pointless rehashing of childhood and earlier events, based on off the cuff theories formed by the originators' personal preoccupations including sexuality as much as anything, to no lasting effect but at inordinately high hourly rates.

and as i said before, mental health is still about as much art as science (quack attempts such as Hubbard's are much more fallacy than science) though the science is improving, particularly in specific areas. anxiety disorders are particularly treatable, in part because medications are so effective, with common depression next; and bipolar for example is trickier, because it involves swings between two such extremes.

i think Hubbard ended up engaging in what could be described as much as anything as magical thinking -- not at all surprising given his background and his subject's roots in ceremonial magick such as the Thelma of Aleister Crowley, who said 'Our Method is Science, Our Aim is Religion.'
Those words appear on the cover of Crowley's ten volume Equinox as published by Samuel Weiser in 1978. I happen to have been walking into Weiser's book store on Broadway in New York, shorty after those volumes became available.


Old man Weiser was selling individual volumes of the ten volume set for five dollars each. He wanted to make Crowley's writings easily and inexpensively available, despite the resistance of the O.T.O. He was obviously making no money. I remember racing a Chinese fellow to the pile of Equinoxes. They were beautiful hardbound volumes.

Aleister Crowley wrote in his 1911 Batrachophrenoboocosmachia (which, as with his Naples Arrangement - which Hubbard re-wrote as his The Factors - was derived from earlier material): "B. It is assumed that he has conquered the elementary difficulties of Dharana, and is able to prevent mental pictures from altering shape, size, and color against his will."

Link to Crowley's 1911 collection of processes as found in a volume of the Equinox.

Quoting John Symonds and Kenneth Grant, who were editors of some of Crowley's writings:

"It [the above linked collection of 110 year old processes] deals with the magical practice of expanding consciousness to the stars and planets... Consciousness - so the theory goes - is exalted to infinity by this method."

Less dramatically stated, the objective was to create a sense of location and proportion of the sun, the moon, and the planets of the solar system, so a person has a sense of something beyond the thin film of several miles of atmosphere in which most people spend their lives.


Was this Magical thinking? It was certainly an interesting experiment.

Crowley was not a fan of religion, and what has been labelled by some as "religious experience" may be misleading.

It has little to do with what most would regard as religion. It's usually not the vulgar silliness described as magical thinking by disapproving skeptics. It may be something just as silly, perhaps, but it's of a higher order.


1902


Something more like this:


1966

*


A little background:


Francois Rabelais


Francois Rabelais was the original Thelemite, who wrote in 1534:

Do What Thou Wilt.

Because men that are free, well born, well bred, and conversant in honest companies have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them to virtuous actions, and withdraws then from vice, which is called honor...


*

Crowley added his own peculiar slant to Thelema.

*

John Donne who is credited with introducing hashish to England in the 17th century.

A poem by Donne is prominently featured in the front of Scientology's Celebrity magazine.

*

From Van Morrison's Inarticulate Speech of the Heart album of 1983:

Background: During the early 1980s Van Morrison was briefly "on lines,"
and received "Life Repair" auditing.
Was he shown a copy of the Celebrity Center magazine
that featured a poem by John Donne prominently on its first page?
In any event, Morrison apparently liked the auditing,
but did not wish to become further involved.


Three years later he released another album titled
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher.

*

Crowley's Book 4 from 1913 may provide some insights as to what Crowley was going on about.

Crowley's final statement, towards the end of his life, was that incorporating Thelema as a religion "might easily cause a great deal of misunderstanding and work a rather stupid kind of mischief."

and as is the discussion here, Hubbard's results were all too often destructive and tragic.
While (delusional) magical thinking (and gullibility) is an essential part of the Scientology cult package, there's also the more practical - down to earth - part:

Hubbard's 1955 hoax "Russian textbook," originally used to smear psychiatrists, psychologists, dissidents, and critics as being communists or communist sympathizers and, later, used as a "blueprint" for the Scientology operation.

Remarkably, first described as a "blueprint" in 1965


IMO, the latter is more destructive than the former.


Volney Mathison, in 1954, spotted Hubbard's M.O. of using "enemy tactics" on his own membership.

Mathison - whose electro-pyschometer, based on the much earlier Wheatstone bridge of the 1800s, and popularized, to some extent, by Carl Jung in the early 1900s - made this observation, referring to Hubbard:


________________________________Begin quote________________________________​


...a certain type of sick patient is referred to as being vampire-like in behavior. But such a patient is not really aware of why he acts as he does, a far more despicable vampire-like personality is that of a vicious type of fraudulent cult therapist who operates in the two following phases:

First, he denounces or "exposes"... Then he USES THE VERY POWER HE HAS DENOUNCED... but the techniques he employs are of a covert type...

The victim is caught completely off guard. He has just heard all about the evils... so he believes that here is this kind and honest person whom one can TRUST...


_________________________________End quote________________________________





=
 

onceuponatime

Well-known member
i'm not implying a plan there, just personality characteristics playing out over time leading in a particular direction.

also, i think there was a sort of dysfunctional dynamic in which LRH for example started finding ways to bleed more and more money from the missions because he thought he wasn't getting his due, and then some did start keeping two sets of books to hide money from his unreasonable demands, which when uncovered served to confirm his paranoia that he mission holders had been stealing from him all along.

and i suspect that early on when he had more collaborators, he had a vision in part inspired by Crowley of a circle or society of 'big beings', though i know that is subject to interpretation.
Totally, I was just making the point that long-term planning has never been something LRH or Scientology did, beyond broad out-lines. They typically do not look at the ramifications and long-term consequences of an action.

The way Scientology/management does things is a reflection of LRH, and all his flaws/paranoia. They do things that way because that's what the LRH policy tells them to do.
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
It has little to do with what most would regard as religion. It's usually not the vulgar silliness described as magical thinking by disapproving skeptics. It may be something just as silly, perhaps, but it's of a higher order.
i just want to say, i agree it can be more nuanced and that there's more to it. i myself am a practitioner and teacher of yoga and body arts, and meditation, and i don't see them as simply mechanical.

but that's a complex conversation, so for the purposes of this topic i'm sticking to some critical basics regarding the topic at hand, that we apparently are more or less in agreement on:

(delusional) magical thinking (and gullibility) is an essential part of the Scientology cult package
 

ILove2Lurk

AI Chatbot
and Woody Allen was a fan of old-fashioned Freudian analysis, a recognized ineffective and long-discredited modality
I did not know this. Then, I guess he got scammed for 13 years, subjecting himself to something useless at "inordinately high hourly rates," like you mentioned. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I still think Woody's joking about it is hilarious. :hysterical:
. . . anxiety disorders are particularly treatable, in part because medications are so effective, with common depression next;
. . . it frequently means long or lifelong treatment. Having to take antidepressants all your life is still better than being stuck with life-crippling depression or suicide at the age of 15, right?
Pardon me for being a bit out of touch. That's not my area of "domain expertise." :coolwink: So, it's the "Brave New World" solution -- chemical intervention -- that's currently in vogue and most likely the future of therapy.

I need to listen better. I heard as much from a semi-retired psychiatrist in my neighborhood, who was walking his dog the other day. I asked him if he did "talk therapy" anymore. Asked him what was the state of affairs of talk therapy. He answered back: "They want us to use drugs nowadays." Then walked on. I guess that was a NO.

I looked up some articles and see that about 20% of people are on some kind of antidepressants or psychiatric drugs nowadays. And that doesn't include people who use street drugs to try to silence their mental demons. I had no clue.

I've never had the need or urge for any kind of therapy session or drug post-scientology. I just moved on with life and did OK . . . pretty well actually. Sadly, I know that's not the case for everyone. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks for your responses guys.
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
I need to listen better. I heard as much from a semi-retired psychiatrist in my neighborhood, who was walking his dog the other day. I asked him if he did "talk therapy" anymore. Asked him what was the state of affairs of talk therapy. He answered back: "They want us to use drugs nowadays." Then walked on. I guess that was a NO.
There's issues where therapy works better, but there's ones where drugs work better most of the time. From what I know, most people with depression react much better to drugs than to therapy. Phobias on the other hand and social anxiety etc, mostly therapy.
Drugs are also often cheaper than therapy and work faster.

I've never had the need or urge for any kind of therapy session or drug post-scientology.
I didn't either. Not because I'm mentally stuck in Hubbards anti-pill land, but because I am not ill. But each time I catch a flu and get a high fever, I take the regular meds our company hospital docs prescribe. If I ever get any real depression, I imagine I'd try antidepressants without any hang-ups.
 

Hatshepsut

Well-known member
i just want to say, i agree it can be more nuanced and that there's more to it. i myself am a practitioner and teacher of yoga and body arts, and meditation, and i don't see them as simply mechanical.

but that's a complex conversation, so for the purposes of this topic i'm sticking to some critical basics regarding the topic at hand, that we apparently are more or less in agreement on:
I was just remembering the directions on OT VIII, asking the adherent to spot bits of his theta he had put here and there, or invested in another's universe. I'm recalling a more gruesome story from the book, Have You Lived Before This LIfe. It's about a lot of monks who were crushed by some wheel that extracted their souls and made some eclectic goo. I think there might be uninspected consequences to different peoples' life forces being smooshed together on different dynamics. There could be a rarified karmic field we pass through on the way to being human. And this maybe have been taken over for control purposes. That prayer words, "Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world".....could mean some jail break was attempted on our behalf..

At the 9 minute mark, this NDE account describes what was revealed about causing other humans suffering.


I found something under Eckankar's Universal Mind Power. The talk is mostly about mysticism and the predator guru. There are intentions to keep consciousness operating on a lower level, using moralistic thinking.

Spiritual Dream Stealers is the title. It does drone on a bit.

 
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Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
I have no reason to believe he is lying about what he felt. But I also have no reason to believe that his interpretation of what he felt is accurate.

When he says he felt like he was being pulled - sure. But once he jumped to the interpretative mode saying that it was an angel, I instantly thought: "How would you be able to tell an angel from a demon from a jin from a sense of your own neurons failing you?"
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
I have no reason to believe he is lying about what he felt. But I also have no reason to believe that his interpretation of what he felt is accurate.

When he says he felt like he was being pulled - sure. But once he jumped to the interpretative mode saying that it was an angel, I instantly thought: "How would you be able to tell an angel from a demon from a jin from a sense of your own neurons failing you?"
research into these sorts of experiences, shows that reports of details are largely driven by expectations, usually cultural. thus Xians and westerners will report angels, Hindus sandal-clad helpers (and almost never 'tunnels'), and so on.
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
research into these sorts of experiences, shows that reports of details are largely driven by expectations, usually cultural. thus Xians and westerners will report angels, Hindus sandal-clad helpers (and almost never 'tunnels'), and so on.
That was exactly a point I was about to make. A lot of people from all sort of cultures feel similar physical experiences in these sort of clinical death or near death states. The white light and the sense of no longer feeling cold is very common.

But while Christians and especially Muslims interpret the color white as something good, pure and coming from God/Angels/the Divine, asians usually have a very different interpretation.

In both Chinese, Korean and Japanese culture white is simply the color of death. The dead are dressed in white, the mourners at the funeral wear white. So in near death-experiences, Chinese tend to interpret the white light as a very flat "Oh, I'm dying now. I get it." sort of way without any esoteric or divine significance.
 

Dotey OT

Re-Membered
I have a sister with diagnosed disabling mental conditions. Long story but for now she is in a nursing home and is safe and being cared for. At one point in my past, as a Gung ho scn, I found myself with my sister during a period of upset, as often happened. I rolled into an unmetered 2wc with her. Almost immediately she said "you are investigating my psyche." I stopped immediately. In spite of all the training, I recognized I was nowhere in regards to "handling" such an individual.
 

pineapple

能说的名字不真的名字
Good thread. I took a break from the board last year so I missed it 'til now.

A couple comments:

Scientology definitely got more picky about psychiatric treatment and drugs as time went on.

In DMSMH Hubbard said dianetics would work on "anyone who had an organically complete nervous system," i.e. anyone who hadn't had a lobotomy. And they apparently tried to audit anyone who walked in the door, even if they seemed "a little off" to begin with.

Old timer Bob Ross recounts an incident where a raw meat pc pulled a knife on him:

"A young man came in one day with a loudly blaring portable radio. He wanted to have a demonstration, so I got him in session and as usual immediately asked him to return to conception. As he recounted the incident, he came to a point where he drew a good sized knife, stood up and began to walk toward me brandishing the knife. This alarmed me considerably but I managed not to panic, as I considered what to do."
-- "My Discovery of Dianetics" by Bob Ross

IVy Issue 35:

And J. A. Winter (A Doctor's Report on Dianetics) and Perry Chapdelaine both mention incidents of pc's flipping out and being institutionalized in the early days.

The Book of Case Remedies, published in 1964, contains a remedy for a pc who's had electric shock! (Remedy AA.) When I was in scn (70's) we wouldn't touch a shock case with a 10-foot pole, but they must have been in 1964, otherwise why have a remedy for it?

1664417018773.png

IIRC, there's a policy from about 1970 where LRH says, in effect, "If we accept psych cases, we get blamed if the pc flips out. Why should WE get blamed for psychiatry's failures? So let's not accept these cases anymore." Things really tightened up at that point.

Unfortunately I don't remember what policy that was and I don't have access to the Green Volumes. If anybody else knows what policy that is, please let me know.

As far as drugs go, in DMSMH Hubbard puts in a good word for marijuana ("better than alcohol to keep a neurotic producing") and recommends pc's take benzedrine during session (available without prescription then).

Jana Moreillon, (RIP) who used to post on ESMB 1 as "Challenge" and "Phenomanon," got into dianetics in 1951. She said she used to smoke pot occasionally and no one ever hassled her about it. She said she would abstain when getting audited. She left scn for a few years in 1963, and got back in in 1969. She said '69 was the first time she was ever told smoking pot wasn't okay.

I don't think you'll find any anti-drug rhetoric in scn before 1968. In fact, I believe I once saw a 1965 HCOB that said "We are NOT on the anti-drug program." I wish I'd made a copy of it,

I think Hubbard definitely saw the drug culture as competition. He knew from personal experience that people could have their own "mystical experiences" on drugs, and if they could do that they'd be less interested in scn.

1664419248202.png

I think he was probably also jealous of all the media coverage the telegenic Leary was getting.

Finally, re the "old, discredited, and largely ineffective" psychoanalysis: I had 2 1/2 years of it shortly after I got out of scn (1980's). It did far more for me than seven years of scn, though I was supposedly "clear." (I will still admit the Comm Course helped me a lot.) And it was not expensive. I got charged on a sliding scale and paid $17/hour. Much cheaper than scn.

It's not the only therapy, obviously, not right for every condition or every person, but it definitely helped me and I'm very glad I did it. AFAIC it's still valid and shouldn't be lightly dismissed.
 
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Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
Freudian psychoanalysis is considered outdated now. That does not mean it is entirely ineffective or wrong, it just means we evolved further from it and developed more modern, more accurate methods. ("Better" is the enemy of "good").

Though despite it being "outdated", psychoanalysis still has some value and can still help people. Heck, even scientology's even more outdated "regression-therapy-like" auditing can help some people.
 

Dotey OT

Re-Membered
Good thread. I took a break from the board last year so I missed it 'til now.

A couple comments:

Scientology definitely got more picky about psychiatric treatment and drugs as time went on.

In DMSMH Hubbard said dianetics would work on "anyone who had an organically complete nervous system," i.e. anyone who hadn't had a lobotomy. And they apparently tried to audit anyone who walked in the door, even if they seemed "a little off" to begin with.

Old timer Bob Ross recounts an incident where a raw meat pc pulled a knife on him:

"A young man came in one day with a loudly blaring portable radio. He wanted to have a demonstration, so I got him in session and as usual immediately asked him to return to conception. As he recounted the incident, he came to a point where he drew a good sized knife, stood up and began to walk toward me brandishing the knife. This alarmed me considerably but I managed not to panic, as I considered what to do."
-- "My Discovery of Dianetics" by Bob Ross

IVy Issue 35:

And J. A. Winter (A Doctor's Report on Dianetics) and Perry Chapdelaine both mention incidents of pc's flipping out and being institutionalized in the early days.

The Book of Case Remedies, published in 1964, contains a remedy for a pc who's had electric shock! (Remedy AA.) When I was in scn (70's) we wouldn't touch a shock case with a 10-foot pole, but they must have been in 1964, otherwise why have a remedy for it?

View attachment 18981

IIRC, there's a policy from about 1970 where LRH says, in effect, "If we accept psych cases, we get blamed if the pc flips out. Why should WE get blamed for psychiatry's failures? So let's not accept these cases anymore." Things really tightened up at that point.

Unfortunately I don't remember what policy that was and I don't have access to the Green Volumes. If anybody else knows what policy that is, please let me know.

As far as drugs go, in DMSMH Hubbard puts in a good word for marijuana ("better than alcohol to keep a neurotic producing") and recommends pc's take benzedrine during session (available without prescription then).

Jana Moreillon, (RIP) who used to post on ESMB 1 as "Challenge" and "Phenomanon," got into dianetics in 1951. She said she used to smoke pot occasionally and no one ever hassled her about it. She said she would abstain when getting audited. She left scn for a few years in 1963, and got back in in 1969. She said '69 was the first time she was ever told smoking pot wasn't okay.

I don't think you'll find any anti-drug rhetoric in scn before 1968. In fact, I believe I once saw a 1965 HCOB that said "We are NOT on the anti-drug program." I wish I'd made a copy of it,

I think Hubbard definitely saw the drug culture as competition. He knew from personal experience that people could have their own "mystical experiences" on drugs, and if they could do that they'd be less interested in scn.

View attachment 18984

I think he was probably also jealous of all the media coverage the telegenic Leary was getting.

Finally, re the "old, discredited, and largely ineffective" psychoanalysis: I had 2 1/2 years of it shortly after I got out of scn (1980's). It did far more for me than seven years of scn, though I was supposedly "clear." (I will still admit the Comm Course helped me a lot.) And it was not expensive. I got charged on a sliding scale and paid $17/hour. Much cheaper than scn.

It's not the only therapy, obviously, not right for every condition or every person, but it definitely helped me and I'm very glad I did it. AFAIC it's still valid and shouldn't be lightly dismissed.
Hey Pineapple, nice post! I was off ESMB 2 for awhile, probably for the best for me and everyone!

When I got in around 1990, the message was very clear - No drugs, and previous psych treatment was "right out," as a Python would say.

I bought the company line on both circumstances.

I saw recipients of shock treatment and how they had seemingly been affected, although I hadn't known them before so really didn't know the effects of the treatment vs what they were like before. The ones that I knew had to petition, and do training until their checksheets were raw and red. never saw anyone from that group make it.

I was supervising when a new student called me over for a question. With a glazed look on her face, she asked me what scn thought of librium, since she was currently on it. My first thought was "Div 6 dropped the ball once again!" and routed her to ethics and never saw her again.

I was apprenticing a new supervisor. She came to me on a busy night and said "I just did 2wc with that div6 student, and he crack just before course." We were always trying to find the why on no case change, etc., and it was so easy to find.

It seems there are more excuses for tech failure than weeds in my pasture.

I wonder why that would be????

Oh, and did anyone ever, ever get Remedy A or Remedy B???

The book of case remedies was for another religion, wasn't it?
 

Enthetan

Veteran of the Psychic Wars
And J. A. Winter (A Doctor's Report on Dianetics) and Perry Chapdelaine both mention incidents of pc's flipping out and being institutionalized in the early days.

The Book of Case Remedies, published in 1964, contains a remedy for a pc who's had electric shock! (Remedy AA.) When I was in scn (70's) we wouldn't touch a shock case with a 10-foot pole, but they must have been in 1964, otherwise why have a remedy for it?

IIRC, there's a policy from about 1970 where LRH says, in effect, "If we accept psych cases, we get blamed if the pc flips out. Why should WE get blamed for psychiatry's failures? So let's not accept these cases anymore." Things really tightened up at that point.

Unfortunately I don't remember what policy that was and I don't have access to the Green Volumes. If anybody else knows what policy that is, please let me know.
In the early days, LRH would not have had direct liability if a field auditor's PC flipped out during auditing. It would all be on the field auditor.

As things shifted towards PCs being audited in orgs, liability became a bigger concern.
 
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