Appendix K
Christopher Evans, a non-Scientologist, wrote in his Cults of Unreason (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973): "Vast improvements in personality, intellectual ability and general human effectiveness can be brought about by sharpening up the individual's talent for communication, and thus introductory Scientology courses concentrate heavily in this area.... From a psychological point of view it must be admitted that exercises aimed at inducing introverted individuals to become more `outgoing' could be of real value. For many a lonely, shy and mildly neurotic individual the introductory Communication Course might work wonders, and no doubt has done."
Evans speculated that Scientology might in time become an established "respectable" religion. I will quote him here also, since, again, he was nowhere near being a Scientologist himself but rather a bemused chronicler of "man's attempt to fit technology to a religion-like belief":
"Scientology, even in its present confused state, seems to offer a real and, to a certain type of person, entirely plausible alternative to either psychoanalysis or orthodox religion.... There is nothing that the unsettled souls of our society require more desperately than the personal, unqualified, unjudging attention of another human being.... The point I am making is that despite all its faults, Scientology is making a serious bid to become one of the significant religious movements of this decade, perhaps of this century."