'THE DAY Thou gavest, Lord, has ended. The darkness falls at Thy Behest.' The three hymn singers gathered round the small organ in the spacious split-level lounge of the New England house on a Sunday evening were singing lustily. Through the open windows the voices drifted down to a small lake surrounded by trees where their daughter had played as a child. Now in her thirties, she was seated at a harpsichord, while her father played the organ and her mother led the singing in which I joined. It was September 1984. The music-loving family lived in the fashionable village of Weston, Mass., a few miles south-west of Boston. Their name - Clark. Six months earlier, the father of this family was described on Radio Station WXKS by Heber Jentzsch in the following terms: 'He was talking in a court process and basically he was asked, "Well, how do you feel about the worship of Satan?" and basically he indicated that was therapeutic. And then they said, "What about the worship of God?" and he indicated that was destructive.' The quiet-voiced man with the greying beard who was playing hymns at the organ and singing was Dr John G. Clark Jr., M.D., private psychiatric practitioner and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, Boston. It was hard to reconcile the softly spoken sixty-year-old man I met with the picture I had been given by the Scientologists. Indeed, I was carrying a briefing file on Dr Clark's 'crimes' which the Church of Scientology had supplied. They ranged from writing for the American *Atheist* magazine, to being involved in 'deprogramming' (the controversial technique to break an individual's involvement in religious cults). Further crimes were giving diagnoses without having met the patient and of 'genocide' in his attempt to destroy a religion. On investigating these charges, I found that none was well founded.
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Certainly Dr Clark has been active in many of the key lawsuits against the Church of Scientology and even gave expert psychiatric evidence at the Justice Latey hearing in England in 1984 which resulted in the judge attacking Scientology publicly. Dr Clark is also one of the moving spirits behind the American Family Foundation, an anti-cult organization which is based in nearby Riverside, Mass., and which exists as a charity to disseminate information on cults and assist families with members involved in them. Despite his modest manner he is a determined and stubborn opponent of Scientology on whom the Church of Scientology has played many dirty tricks, including raking through the dustbins at his home, where he also has his consulting rooms, in an attempt to gain confidential material. In 1985 he counter-attacked by suing the Church of Scientology for $35 million for attempts to destroy him both professionally and personally. If the John G. Clark file which I was handed was authentic, there is no doubt that Dr Clark should not continue to command respect as a witness against Scientology, so before we hear his testimony, let us look at its contents.
First, the article in the American *Atheist* of May 1977. It was not submitted by Dr Clark. It *was* written by him and analyses the destructive influence of cults upon mental health, but was sent to the *Atheist* magazine by Scientologists, who then proceeded to use the connection as criticism of Dr Clark.
Second, is the charge of being involved with deprogramming. When I was in Los Angeles, I had been shown a video taken by Ted Patrick (alias 'Black Lightning') which had been subpoenaed in a court action against Patrick. It showed him forcibly restraining two young cultists, one a Scientologist, who had attempted to leave the room in which they were being 'deprogrammed' (a euphemism for roughly interrogated and brain-washed). It was not a pretty sight and Patrick has served jail sentences for his zealous efforts on behalf of parents which have included kidnap and assault. Whatever the shortcomings of many of the new religious movements, such as the Unification Church (the Moonies), Hare Krishna or Scientology, the use of such methods cannot be justified in any way whatsoever. However, the American Family Foundation do not practise 'deprogramming', as Dr Clark and the director, Dr Michael Langone, both told me. The photograph of Dr Clark sitting beside Ted Patrick at an informal Senate hearing in 1979 sponsored by Senator Robert Dole (which Scientologists show as proof of a liaison) was possible because Dr Clark was allocated that seat. He had no other dealings with Patrick.
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The Satanism charge against Clark is based on remarks he made during cross-examination in the District Court Concord, New Hampshire, on 23 July 1980, during a lawsuit brought by Donald Kieffer against his former cult, the Moonies. It was the Scientologists themselves who supplied me with the transcript, but as in so many other cases of documentary 'evidence' they produce, it does not always bear the interpretation they put on it.
Cross-examining Dr Clark, the Moonies' attorney, Jean-Claude Sakellarios, asked him if he believed that there is a devil. Dr Clark's testimony runs:
Dr Clark: To people who are responding to that image in a vivid sort of way, the devil is a reality...the problem here is that I'm trying to deal with what people do, what their behaviour is, and to a degree relate whatever of their thought processes that may be expressed, to relate them to their behaviour. And if they wish to have a belief about the devil but they still don't sacrifice chickens to the devil, then anybody can believe in the devil.Counsel: That's healthy?
Dr Clark: For some people it is perfectly healthy. There are all kinds of beliefs. I am not interested in people's beliefs unless they are made into acts that are egregious...
Counsel: Do you think that believing in God is helpful?
Dr Clark: I'm certain that it is helpful, but it's also been very very damaging for some people. It's how it is used. People then take the belief in God and take it all the way to him in human sacrifice. I would consider that, from my point of view, was bad behaviour. And its relationship to belief is interesting, but it's the behaviour that in court and open society is important.
The actual answer by Dr Clark does not bear the interpretation put on it by Heber Jentzsch. I was therefore somewhat wary of three affidavits by an attorney who had been involved in a lawsuit in which Clark testified, a law student who had heard his testimony and a Scientologist mother of a youth whose father was seeking to prise him from the Church of Scientology. Few direct quotes are made in these affidavits from court transcripts, but Dr Clark is accused variously of being unfamiliar with the practice and doctrines of cults about which he testifies, yet of saying they would mutilate minds.
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Dr Clark's response to these accusations is that he has examined hundreds of cultists and has often been asked hypothetical questions, such as whether it is possible to be harmed over a long period of time, but that he has always been careful to give evidence within the bounds of an opinion.
Far more damaging is the other charge made by the Scientologists - that Clark is willing to give diagnoses without seeing patients and that he uses the very fact of cult membership as evidence of mental illness. In support of this, the Church of Scientology has circulated to every country where Dr Clark's opinions are quoted, a letter from the Complaints Committee of the Massachusetts Medical Board replying to allegations that Dr Clark had diagnosed a Hare Krishna devotee, Edward Shapiro, simply on the basis of his membership of the cult. The letter, signed by the chairman, George J. Annas J.D., states: 'the basis upon which this "diagnosis" was made seems inadequate, as mere membership of a religious organization can never, standing alone, be a sufficient basis for a diagnosis of mental illness'. Dr Clark points out that the Board investigated the complaint and decided to take no further action.
Other activities of the Church of Scientology against Clark were to try to cause trouble for him at the Massachusetts General Hospital where he enjoys consultant status, by implying to the Board that he was using the hospital's name in connection with his anti-cult activities and research. Dr Clark laughs this one off, pointing out that he enjoys the confidence of the administration of the MGH.
In Germany, the Scientologists tried to bring an action against Clark under the International Convention for the Prevention of Genocide because he was spreading theories that more than half the members of new religions were mentally ill, and was acting in a similar way to Nazi psychiatrists when they were engaged in annihilating religious minorities. The strong statements contained in their Press release linking Clark to the worst excesses of deprogramming were but one shot in a continuing campaign. Dr Clark alleges that he has received phone threats, false complaints filed about him as a physician and scurrilous rumours about affairs with female patients. There had been private investigators assigned to him, personnel records from a health centre where he worked were stolen and leaflets were handed out at MGH stating falsely that Clark believed in electro-shock therapy and that he had connections with the Nazi party. A reward of $25,000 was offered for information which would lead to a criminal conviction of Dr Clark.
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The last straw for Clark came in 1985 when the Church of Scientology placed an advert in the *Boston Herald* of Tuesday, 19 February, headed 'Have your rights been violated by Dr John G. Clark?' It went on to suggest anti-religious activities and professional malpractice and asked respondents to contact the local Church of Scientology at 448 Beacon Street, Boston. Dr John Clark had had enough. He began a massive lawsuit for $35 million in damages against Hubbard, alleging defamation, invasion of privacy, malicious prosecution and finally conspiracy 'to silence plaintiff; to inflict severe professional, personal and emotional injury on plaintiff and if possible to destroy him completely.'
On hearing of the suit, the swashbuckling Heber Jentzsch responded in characteristic style. 'Dr Clark, 'he said, 'is obviously suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and should avail himself of immediate electro-shock treatment so that [he] may demonstrate to the world the efficacy of such.' He repeated the charges that Dr Clark was engaged in a conspiracy against religion and hinted that he was involved with the CIA in this process. Since he had not visited a Church of Scientology, said Jentzsch, his scientific enquiry must be based upon clairvoyance.
Although Clark has not done research within the Church of Scientology, his involvement dates from the mid-seventies when he was called to testify in several cases involving cult members. He now feels he has seen enough of the casualties of the movement to be able to state categorically that Scientology harms the mind. Apart from that clinical stance, he goes further, charging a true lack of any tested scientific viewpoint for Hubbard's theories. But his moral indignation is aroused because 'from beginning to end they do not take responsibility for damage to individuals or their families'. His criticism comes under two heads: BEHAVIOUR and INTENT. 'Their intent is to bring in money. They push an individual who is about to take a course, or in it, to the point where they can't do without them. And they get a lot of money. They believe that their ideas are the only true ones that anybody should pay any attention to. Thus they act in an antagonistic way toward any who don't share their beliefs and act as if these people do not have rights.' But Clark adds that it is not simply money that Scientology craves - it is *control*: 'The testimonies of those inside who say their life has been changed For the better are not scientific evidence. I have seen people who have taken several years after exposure to get back peace of mind. There are many things that we would regard as anti-family - easy marriages and easy divorces. They work sometimes
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eighteen to twenty hours a day and there is strict control. They are told to look as if they are enjoying it, so it's impossible just looking in to know what's going on inside these people. Talking is not the only thing that goes on in auditing. There's the atmosphere. The whole setup. The magic of assertions. The *intention* of the auditing is to change the way that the mind works. It's quite different from psychiatric intention, which is to return to the best capacity of which the mind is capable. Over and over again in history people have found out how to influence others. In the twentieth century there are so many therapies that the religious and spiritual aspect which came about from pushing the mind came to be seen as religion rather than than psychotherapy. One of the problems that came from that is that the pressure used on people for spiritual and therapeutic purposes can harm some. The celebrities are treated in a different way - the Ethics people don't come down on them. Their experience is that everything is OK. It's well known that the celebrities feed very well indeed. But when those who have to slave get into trouble they are really punished and hurt in so many ways, all the way to being locked up in chains. There's an underlying cruelty in the whole thing.'
I put it to Dr Clark that some of the 'slaves' I had seen seemed very happy, but he was undaunted. 'Even in the pre-Civil War days, slaves had their tasks, their place in the culture and they were not miserable by any means. It's the same with Scientology, which is a kind of slavery.' I suggested that apologists for the Sea Org would see it as a kind of monasticism and the authority of the Church of Scientology as akin to the control exerted by a hierarchical church over its monks and nuns. But Dr Clark was having none of that. 'The Roman Catholic Church at some of its worst times did play a lot of these sorts of games but today there is no such pressure. It's made harder to get in and there is a link with the family. I don't think the Roman Catholic Church is capable of hating families who have differences with the practice of the Church in the way that Scientology is.'
Dr Clark then made a theological point which placed Scientology accurately within the religious spectrum. He called it gnostic - like many of the cults which existed around the time of Christ, peddling their brand of 'gnosis' or knowledge by which the follower could escape the handicap of this world. One of the catch-phrases of these groups was '*soma sema*'(a Greek pun meaning the body is a tomb). It resulted in disassociation of soul from the body, the latter being rejected as excess earthly baggage. Taken to its extreme, this theology meant that it did not matter what the body did by way of immoral
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acts: the 'soul' was 'saved' nonetheless. Dr Clark offered a partial explanation for the glaring discrepancies between Scientology theory and practice when he said, 'The gnostic does not care whether their mind survives.'
Dr Clark agrees that it is too easy to say that Scientology is not a religion at all but a con-game for making money and that its track-record disqualified it from being treated as a religion. It is more like a religion gone wrong - a monster which has been created out of the deep waters of the mind into which various psychotherapies have been learned to fish with great success. Being 'born again' can now be achieved in a church or on a psychotherapist's couch. Dr Clark puts it thus: 'With the process of re-inventing these means of transforming comes a moment of inventing, a moment of genius. The inventor maybe says let me do this to help the family, health or some other. But because he has this power he must defend it and that leads to the "perfect and special power" over which I think that the cult leaders make their mistake - and I would have to apply that to Scientology and its leader.'
The irony about the battle between the psychiatrists and the Scientologists is that almost identical terms are used by each group about the other. The psychiatric lobby see the Church of Scientology as perverted religion. Scientology views them as persecutors of religion. The psychiatrists view auditing as a form of brain-washing, while the Church of Scientology says it is the American Family Foundation run by Dr Clark which is practising brain-washing by deprogramming members of new religious movements. Scientology proclaims that it is 'clearing the planet', a noble and humanist goal, while its critics see it as a destructive cult which breaks up families. Both groups cannot be right.
Certainly there is much that is on target about the criticism of psychiatry by the Church of Scientology. When Hubbard attacked 'brutal assaults on the brain' in the Dianetics era, he was undoubtedly ahead of his time. Nowadays the Church of Scientology gains public support for its campaigns on mental health issues such as ECT and the use of such drugs as Mandrax to treat psychoses. There were also the excesses of many freaky psychiatrists in the USA who regarded the possession of a couch as a licence to inflict all kinds of weird therapy including sex and nude romps. Hiding such perversion behind the cloak of medicine was rightly condemned. There was also legislation such as the Alaska Mental Health Act (introduced into the United
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States Congress in 1955) which effectively removed the civil rights of any person who might be diagnosed as mentally ill and put psychiatrists into the position of secret policemen were this power to be abused. Scientologists call it the 'Siberia Bill' and claim Hubbard was instrumental in blocking it, incurring the enmity of psychiatrists. Subsequent champions of 'alternative psychiatry', such as Thomas Szasz (not a Scientologist), were able to argue that the growth of psychiatry was itself a source of much mental illness, the diseases emerging to fit the symptoms which had been invented by the psychiatrists.
Hubbard's case against the psychiatrists was summed up by him in an edition of *Freedom* magazine in 1970 (which now runs regular pieces by Szasz). He wrote: 'The psychiatrist, psychologist and their clerk, the sociologist, point out how bad things are getting and demand even more money. The patients who live get crazier and the State itself becomes imperilled and yet no psychiatrist or psychologist or their mental-health cliques ever pay back a penny of their unearned fees.'
Scientology saw itself as a radical alternative to psychiatry (Jentzsch's 'clash of two ideas') in which the Establishment was backing the enemy. Evidence that the CIA was toying with mind-control programmes in the fifties, later code-named MKULTRA, was uncovered by Hubbard who made the most of this as propaganda. This is presented as the reason government agencies have opposed Scientology. The excesses of the deprogrammers in kidnapping young cultists and subjecting them to interrogation sessions to 'break' their allegiance to their religion were further evidence of the Great Beast of psychiatry devouring their religion.
Another rebel psychiatrist who saw dangers from his own profession is Dr Lee Coleman who practises in Berkeley, CA. In a booklet, *Psychiatry the Faithbreaker*, he argues that the testimony of Dr Clark and other anti-cultists has encouraged opposition to new religious movements which amounts almost to persecution and denial of human rights. 'The anti-cult movement is asking Society to do the very thing it claims "cults" are doing. It asks Society to turn over independent-thinking to gurus. But in this case the gurus are psychiatrists. I see no difference between the outlandish claim that Jim Jones [the founder of a notorious cult whose followers committed mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana in 1977] could cure cancer and the equally outlandish claim that a psychiatrist can tell an unwashed brain from a washed one. As long as we persist in elevating psychiatrists to
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the position of god-like wisdom we will be guilty of the same mistake made by those who turn over their independent thinking to someone else.' Dr Coleman compares the unquestioning way in which cultists swallow dogma from their guru to the way in which he was taught to accept everything Freud had said as gospel and concludes: 'Whatever events led up to the deaths of all those people in Jonestown, I am convinced that a major factor was this willingness of the congregation to turn over its decisions to one person.'
Although Dr Coleman's booklet is circulated and commended by Scientology, it is easy to that see that by this criterion of 'guru-centricity', Hubbard's minions stand convicted themselves. All the 'tech' was produced by Ron who wrote the policy, laid down how it should be run and, as we have seen, is still ubiquitous, if not omnipresent, in photographs and slogans on the walls of every org. His taped voice is played to inductees. Scientology is the conception, realization and organization of one man.
Most of the anti-cultists' activity is directed against the Unification Church, or Moonies. Most of the brain-washing literature draws extensively on Moonie methods with which we are not concerned here. It is also fair to add that generalizations about cult methods will not always do justice to the particular situation within a new religious movement. Even the anti-cultists acknowledge that alongside the destructive cults there are 'benign' ones. But despite differences of doctrine and style between the cults, there are common effects in the area which has come to be known as brain-washing and it is worth looking at some of these.
My guide was Dr Michael Langone, a psychologist who is Director of Research at the American Family Foundation in Weston, Mass. The AFF occupies a spacious basement of a wooden office block in the centre of this small village. Here the AFF produces its magazine *The Cult Observer*, which is a pastiche of cuttings of stories involving cults which had been published in newspapers. An extensive library and files on subscribers and supporters occupy other rooms. Dr Langone showed me into his tiny, windowless office and displayed the array of literature which the AFF has produced to help families, counsellors and those professionally involved with cults. The most concise of these booklets is *Destructive Cultism: Questions and Answers*, which is aimed mainly at parents of cult members. It states: 'Destructive cults can frighten a convert's family, deprive the convert of his autonomy and financial assets, interfere with his psychological development and impede the adjustment of
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those members who leave the group to return to mainline society.'
Dr Langone is not an advocate of 'deprogramming' because of the negative image which some practitioners have given it, but says he has seen too many young people who have benefited from it to condemn all forms of deprogramming. 'I prefer "re-evaluation counselling" to describe those converts who come out voluntarily and reserve deprogramming for the rescue/detention process. It might take many days of marathon sessions of talking to help someone reawaken their old personality, think critically and reconsider their cult involvement.' He conceded that one third of cultists leave voluntarily, another third after counselling and that the failure rate in deprogramming is high (one third), so the other methods are more likely to be effective anyway. Dr Langone rejects the charge that the AFF cannot tell an unwashed brain from a washed one. 'You can't deprogram someone who isn't programmed. The brain-washing is real but it's not all Korean War stuff. It's more complex than that and often takes place over years.'
It is here that the cult differs from a religious philosophy. The motives which make someone susceptible to a cult and the inducements which are offered to the convert are the desires and aspirations of the average person. The selling methods used are those of many products and organizations - and there is nothing wrong or remarkable in that. Some critics act as if the very act of wanting to interest someone in a new religion is suspicious in itself. If it were, totalitarianism would indeed have arrived, as the Scientologists claim. But the significant departure point is the factor of mind control. From the AFF studies it is possible to point to several ways in which the cult differs from simple religious philosophy.
In 'Religious Totalism: Gentle and Ungentle Persuasion under the First Amendment' (*Southern California Law Review*, November 1977) Richard Delgado argues that it is possible to draw a line between the cults and other acceptable forms of recruitment and proselytizing. 'The first is that religious cults expose their indoctrinees to a greater variety of classic mind-control techniques than other groups do, and apply these with greater intensity. Jesuit and other training institutions may isolate the seminarian from the rest of the world at various stages of the training period but the training does not involve physiological depletion nor does the order deceive the candidate concerning the duties required of members...the second answer concerns the end-state, or result, of religious mind control....The legislative and judicial findings, first-person accounts by ex-cult
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members, case studies by psychiatrists and psychologists dispel any possibility of equating the effects of cult brain-washing with those of other groups and institutions. Television commercials may induce ennui and torpor but they rarely cause mental breakdowns; Jesuit training rarely results in broken bones, scabies or suicide.'
Delgado's study and those of the AFF psychiatrists and psychologists may seem too general to be precisely applied to any one cult. Equally the Scientologists could argue that these studies are perhaps applicable to the Moonies but not to them. They could, but they do not. Their position is that all the studies are misconceived and malicious persecution. Instead of arguing 'yes, that maybe is true but it doesn't apply to us', the Church of Scientology prefers to mount an all-out attack on the health professionals. It does not discuss the evidence but escalates the battle into an all-out war between the cults and their critics. The question then becomes one of the credibility of the psychiatric testimony, not whether it applies to Scientology. There follows a summary of the ways in which psychiatrists of the AFF describe the process of mind control practised by the cults in general. (I have added examples which may demonstrate their relevance to Scientology in particular.)
(1) Unending personalized attention by cult members in the initial phase *overload* the recruit's information processing capacity. This neutralizes his *critical thinking* during the courses, which attain a spurious sense of profundity and importance. The repetition of the drills time after time has a wearing down effect. Like soldiers being drilled the independent mind is depressed to the point where the recruit repeats what he is ordered to do unquestioningly.
(2) *Isolation* (residential courses or the ultimate isolation of ship-board life) gradually supplant the former life with the reality of life inside the cult.
(3) Traditional sources of *knowledge* are either *despised* or not present (the dictionaries to be found in every org course-room define words the Hubbard way. No reference material is permitted other than that written by Hubbard.) The org-speak is an alphabet soup of initials, jargon and pseudo-technical expressions. This heightens the impression that a science is being taught and that it is esoteric and unavailable to the bungling ignoramuses in the outside world.
(4) The long hours of courses and the *debilitating effect* of a beans and rice *diet and fatigue* cannot but play a part too in the weakening of independent thought. Constant pressure is kept up and breaks are strictly regulated.
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(5) All this is reinforced by an authoritarian system and *punishment and reward*. The recruit's idea of how he is doing is not the criterion of success. Always there is the course supervisor whose approval must be sought. This regimentation teaches obedience from the beginning.
(6) The *esprit de corps* of the org is important also. *Group pressure*, especially the atmosphere of excitement that they are about to change the world, helps sweep the recruit onward. Joining the staff is regarded as proof of loyalty and seriousness of intent. Once the step of joining the staff is taken, the former world is rapidly left behind. Waking hours belong to the org, which furnishes friends, bosses and sources of information.
(7) Most powerful are perhaps *dissociative processes*. Auditing is the 'sacrament' of Scientology, the open sesame to advancement spiritually and within the hierarchy of the church. The non-staff member will have pressure put on him to take more and more courses, if necessary borrowing money to do so. The staff member can have more auditing without paying, but each hour on the E-Meter cans sharpens the sword of Damocles hovering above him should he leave and have to pay a freeloader bill. Auditing itself completes the process. The traumatic episodes in the recruit's past are teased out and put in front of him. The quick-fire questioning of the auditor forces the recruit through the process on the basis that Hubbard has outlined, i.e., if in the hothouse atmosphere of auditing he is told that a particular incident is from a past life, then that is the basis on which he deals with it - implicitly accepting the Scientology system.
The AFF sum up the manipulative factors used by cults under these heads: DENIGRATION OF CRITICAL THINKING; GROUP PRESSURE; DISSOCIATION; GUILT INDUCTION; REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. Taken together and promoted all day long, they constitute a powerful control process.
Another factor in cult techniques was identified by Conway and Siegelmann in *Snapping: America's Sudden Epidemic of Personality Change*, published in 1978. Crudely, their theory was that the conversion methods of the cults led to a point where the information overload, the peer pressure, the isolation, guilt, inadequacy, and all the rest, became impossible to resist. 'Snapping' took place and thereafter the recruit was deeply involved. It was as if the recruit's mind opened at this moment like a clenched oyster revealing the soft and vulnerable inner self into which the cult thrust its sour pearl of wisdom. Evangelical crusades employ the same technique but once 'Christ' is received the evangelist does not invoke an organizational
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control system to ensure adherence to him, which makes the difference between this and a cult. The technique was adapted by pop singer P.J. Proby from a southern Baptist preacher he had watched and he was able to 'work an audience' to the brink of hysteria. 'Snapping' within the cults is a more private, low-key affair. Conway and Siegelmann were among those who suffered lawsuits from the Church of Scientology for the application of their theory to Scientology.
The ordinary course-rooms I visited in Britain and America were not buzzing with any such hysterical enthusiasm, but Religious Studies researcher Sarah Hogge during her sojourn at Saint Hill recorded several such sessions. At the beginning of every day's study a passage by Hubbard is read aloud. Here is the transcript of a session in which the supervisor was 'Charles'.
C: So take a seat...good. I have got a bit of LRH to read to you. It's from one of the Study Tapes, number 5, called "Evaluation of Information". OK?..."Now of course some of the teachers I had on the subject of anti-submarine warfare were busy teaching me how to build. How to build, if you please. There was a war going on. I didn't have any time to build anything. I tried to explain it to them...that's one of the things they taught me, and boy was I able to catch up on my sleep [*laughter*] because I just knew...that out there in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with my hands full of Jap submarines I was not gonna have to build one of these things. I was merely gonna have to know how to use it and, if necessary, repair it ...I figured out that in the middle of action...that's all I would need to know about that equipment, so I had myself a nice sleep." [*laughter*]C: OK [*laughter*], that's to give you an idea what you're gonna use the data for, rather than get stuck in an encyclopaedia for hours looking up something like physics which is not what we teach you here. OK?
Note the smiling endorsement of Ron's exploits as a war hero which, of course, are false.
After 'Scripture', the supervisor always asks if the class is ready to start. The following exercise is then performed, running through the 'tone-scale', which gets everyone laughing and generally hyped up. In this transcript the supervisor was still Charles:
C: So are you ready to start? [*very brightly but only a few
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reply*] Good. OK. So I want you to answer me in apathy.OK? Are you ready to start?
All: Yeah [*general groans*].
C: Good, Now answer me in grief. OK. Are you ready to start?
All: [*crying and wailing noises*]
C: Good. Now answer me in despair. Are you ready to start?
All: [*sighs*]
C: Good. Now answer me in fear, Are you ready to start?
All: [*wails of terror*]
C: Good. Now answer me in covert hostility. Are you ready to start?
All: Yeah [*in suspicious, so what's-it-to-you voices*]
C: Good. Now answer me in hate. Are you ready to start?
All: Yes [*shouts of anger*]
C: Good. Now answer me in pain. Are you ready to start?
All: Yes [*with gritted teeth*]
C: Good. Now answer me in boredom. Are you ready to start?
All: Yeah [*apathetic*]
C: Good. Now answer me in mild interest. Are you ready to start?
All: Yeah [*intonation rising*]
C: Good. Now answer me in strong interest [*the supervisors voice becomes very enthusiastic*]. Are you ready to start?
All: Yes.
C: Now answer me in cheerfulness. Are you ready to start?
All: Yes [*enthusiastic*]
C: Good. Now answer me with enthusiasm. Are you ready to start?
All: YES [*shouted*]
C: Good. Now answer me in exhilaration. Are you ready to start?
All: YES [*shouted ecstatically*]
C: Good. Start.
Note the constant repetition of commands which is a feature of auditing, as we saw earlier, and all the other drills which must be carried out to the letter as Hubbard wrote them, right down to the responses of 'OK'. It is a strange study system which needs to work the students into a frenzy before they can put their intellectual powers to work, but, on the other hand, if the process is seen as manipulation of the emotions then it is perfectly clear what is going on. At the end of
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the afternoon there is another muster, at which students are encouraged to share their 'wins' with the others. In the following extract, the supervisor was called Pauline.
P: Who's on target? [*All hands go up.*] Who's likely to make their target by the end of the day? [*All hands go up.*] Who'd have made their target if they hadn't been doing something else like drilling? [*All hands go up.*] OK, that's good. [*Everyone claps.*] Who'd like to share a win? [*All hands go up.*] Who's going to start the bail rolling?German Girl: I got the vision today that we're really gonna make it and that we're really gonna clear this planet and when we've done that we're gonna go on to other planets. It doesn't matter if people go on outside dropping the atom bomb. We're in here and we're up there and we'll carry on with this study. We'll really do something to save this planet that really feels good. [*Mass applause.*]
French Lady: I'm right at the end of my Dianetics book and it gives me a much clearer insight into the auditing I got before and so it's very very good to see how it all worked...I've been happy right from the start of the training. [*Everyone claps.*]
American Lady: I really enjoyed doing TRs today. I find it so much easier to look up these words. It's great. [*Laughter.*] I had some great wins today. [*Mass applause.*]
The whole atmosphere is one of mild hysteria. Zeal is rewarded. Staff are encouraged to inform on any ethics breaches by other Scientologists. Staff Scientologists received rewards of $400 to $1,000 for information leading to the return of the 'scriptures' stolen by Robin Scott.
Time and time again one comes across amazing contradictions within Scientology. There are those who want to 'clear the planet' and establish their new kingdom of heaven. There are the paramilitary uniforms and the interrogations by Ethics and Finance Police. There are the ordinary troops, some of whom are totally unaware of the terror-tactics employed by the shock troops. There are the symbolic echoes of occultism in the symbols and the interests of the founder. And there is the founder himself - paranoid and schizophrenic, yet a leader who could mesmerize and charm followers into fanatical devotion. The same question might be asked of Hubbard that many have asked about Hitler - was he mad or bad?
Attorney Michael Flynn is fond of using the Hitler analogy to
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[2nd set of plates: 8 pages; 14 photos]
13 *Above*: The Church of Scientology complex at 4833 Fountain Avenue, Los Angeles, formerly the Mount Sinai Cedars of Lebanon Hospital
14 *Below*: Mrs Shirley Young (*left*) and Mrs Susan Jones, my guides in Los Angeles
15 *Above*: Dr John G. Clark, psychiatrist and Assistant Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School
16 *Right*: Michael Flynn, the Boston attorney who has been involved in numerous cases of litigation against the Church of Scientology
17 *Left*: David Mayo, former senior aide to Hubbard, and now heading the breakaway movement of the Church of New Civilization in Santa Barbara
18 *Below:* Heber Jentzsch, President of the Church of Scientology International
19 *Above*: Church of Scientology Finance Police unloading surveillance equipment
20 *Left*: A security guard patrolling outside the Los Angeles HQ of the Church of Scientology
21 *Above*: Golden Era Studios at Gilman Springs, situated across the Highway
22 *Below*: Heber Jentzsch and the make up supervisor at the Golden Era Studios
23 *Above right*: Aerial view of the mock-up clipper-ship built at Gilman Springs, Southern California
24 *Below right*: The swimming-pool and clipper-ship at Gilman Springs
25 *Above*: The author photographed aboard the clipper-ship at Gilman Springs
26 *Below*: Most official photographs of Hubbard published by the Church of Scientology show him in the golden days of the *Apollo* voyages or earlier. This one, taken from a television documentary, in 1973, shows the 'Commodore' to be deteriorating rapidly
[end of 2nd set of plates]
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describe Hubbard. He cites the 'Suppressive Person' doctrine as a common device of dictators throughout history to eliminate their opponents. Flynn asserts that Hubbard's intentions were malevolent from the start and money and power were his objectives. As quoted earlier, Flynn says: 'The whole thing begins and ends in the mind and intentions of Ron Hubbard.' But was that mind diseased when it conceived the vision of Scientology?
Hubbard's estranged son by his first wife Margaret, Ronald DeWolf (alias 'Nibs' Hubbard), believes that it was. He has several times alleged that Hubbard, the great anti-narcotic campaigner, was himself a frequent drug user and even fed DeWolf phenobarbital in his bubble-gum to make him into a 'moon-child', prompted by his occult interests. DeWolf says his mother told him about his father's interest in the 1930s in PDH - which stands for Pain, Drugs, Hypnosis. Ron's use of it coupled with black magic was an effective form of brain-washing which he incorporated into his early Scientology materials. 'You'll see PDH throughout early Scientology literature,' DeWolf told Dennis Wheeler of the Santa Rosa *News-Herald* in 1982, describing the early days of Scientology as satyricon on tour, an orgy of black magic, drugs and the abuse of women followers. DeWolf, now in his early fifties, was a participant in this as Executive Secretary of the Church of Scientology. He has inherited his father's red hair and jokingly refers to himself in those days as 'the great red godlet'. His wife persuaded him to quit the church in 1959 and he has been estranged From his father since that time. To avoid Church of Scientology 'harassment' he changed his name in 1972.
In June 1983 he gave an interview to *Penthouse* magazine in which he detailed further charges of sado-masochism, black magic and fraud against his father. The credibility of DeWolf's testimony was undermined by a videotape made in November 1972 of an interview with Scientology official Arthur J. Maren in which DeWolf confessed that all the damning statements he had made previously about his father [in the sixties] were completely untrue. Asked several times whether he had been asked or forced to make this retraction, DeWolf asserted each time that he had contacted the Church of Scientology himself 'out of the blue' to make the recantation. When *Penthouse* published their article in June 1983, the Church of Scientology was in a strong position to demand a right of reply and in January 1984 the magazine duly ran an extended article by Heber Jentzsch puffing the merits of Hubbard. It would
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therefore be unwise to base any final assessment of Hubbard's mental state during the formative years of Scientology upon DeWolf's evidence.
There is, however, another testimony from one of those close to Hubbard: the divorce petition filed by his second wife, Sara Northrup, on 23 April 1951 in Los Angeles County Superior Court charges Hubbard with bigamy and torture. The original was inexplicably missing from the courthouse records but astute reporters from the *St Petersburg Times* tracked down a copy. In it she alleged that Hubbard presented himself as a bachelor when they married on 10 August 1946 in Chestertown Maryland, but that he was not divorced from his first wife, Margaret Grubb Hubbard, of Bremertown, Washington, until a year later. She claimed that Hubbard had conducted drug experiments on her and had even counselled her to commit suicide as he feared a divorce would harm his reputation. Margaret Hubbard died an alcoholic in 1963 but Sara remarried and has slipped into obscurity. That is a pity since she could now confirm whether or not the recantation she 'signed' on 11 June 1951 is genuine. In it she states: 'I have not at any time believed otherwise than that L. Ron Hubbard was a fine and brilliant man...I have begun to realize that what I have done may have injured the science of Dianetics, which in my studied opinion may be the only hope of sanity in future generations.' The *St Petersburg Times* comments: 'The statement bears the subtle marks of L. Ron Hubbard's handiwork. The stilted language is similar to his writing style and the recantation includes a sentence with the word "enturbulating" which is not to be found in a dictionary but sometimes appears in Hubbard's writings.' If Mrs Hubbard II is alive, she probably regards discretion as the better part of valour since she would be regarded as 'Fair Game' with a vengeance.
Mrs Hubbard III (Mary Sue Whipp) did not fare much better. When she became a liability to LRH's personal security after the Guardians' indictment, she was forced into isolation from her husband. Love and loyalty did not seem to extend to Mary Sue from either Hubbard or his lieutenants who are said to have treated her contemptuously. In his will they got nearly all his money, not her.
Hubbard's psychotic behaviour from the earliest years of Scientology does not depend only upon the tormented members of his immediate family. Ironically some of the evidence for Hubbard's psychotic personality was supplied to me by the Church of Scientology in a large dossier compiled to rebut DeWolf's allegations in the *Penthouse* interview, and is in LRH's own writing. DeWolf had made
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some rather lurid claims about Hubbard teaching hypnosis to a British politician (revealed later as the late Tom Driberg, a notorious homosexual) so that he could seduce boys, and that they had both been in the pay of the Russians who had supplied the money to buy Saint Hill Manor. In rebuttal of this allegation, and to prove that Hubbard was a loyal American, the dossier contains letters which Hubbard wrote to the FBI in March 1951 tipping them off about alleged Communist infiltrators within the Dianetics movement. Some, like Richard Halpern of New York, were 'only very faintly suspected due to small objections to our having loyalty oaths'. (Hubbard had insisted that all the HDRF employees should take an oath of loyalty to the US Government, forswear Communism and that copies of their fingerprints should be sent to the FBI. It was a gesture which would have gladdened Senator McCarthy's heart.) But one other suspect listed in the letters is worth noting. It is Hubbard's own wife: 'Sara Northrup (Hubbard)...Had been friendly with many Communists. Currently intimate with them but evidently under coercion. Drug addiction set in, Fall 1950. Nothing of this known to me until a few weeks ago. Separation papers being filed and divorce applied for.' For caddish acts that takes some beating.
The early 1950s often found Hubbard writing to the FBI about plots against him. One reads as follows: 'About 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning my apartment was entered. I was knocked out, had a needle thrust in my heart to give it a jet of air to produce a coronary thrombosis and was given an electric shock with a 110 volt current. All this is very blurred to me. I had no witnesses.' He talked of Communist inspired plots to infiltrate Scientology by slipping LSD to members. By 1955 the FBI were wearying of this deranged informant and one letter has the notation 'appears mental' scrawled across it.
In 1947 Hubbard applied for psychiatric treatment himself, a fact which may come as a surprise to those who see him as the scourge of psychiatry. In a letter dated 14 October 1947 to the Veterans' Administration from his Hollywood address, he wrote: 'Gentlemen, This is a request for treatment. After trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in civil life, I am utterly unable to approach anything like my own competence. My last physician informed me that it might be very helpful if I were to be examined and perhaps treated psychiatrically or even by a psychoanalyst. Toward the end of my service I avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected.' Hubbard goes on to tell of depression and suicidal
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tendencies and concludes 'Would you please help me? Sincerely, Ron Hubbard.' The letter was one of the documents seized in the 1977 FBI raid and it is not known whether Hubbard received treatment.
Whether or not the letter is a sick attempt to con the Veterans' Administration into upping his disability pension is not clear. However, within a few years Hubbard had developed his intense hatred for psychiatry. The explanation for this change of attitude may lie in the power struggle. In the early years of Dianetics, Hubbard attempted to win over the medical profession with Dr Joe Winter's help, but Hubbard's style put them off and in 1951 the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners had initiated an injunction against the Elizabeth Foundation of the Dianetics movement for conducting a school of medicine without a licence. Wallis 1 (pp. 73-4) concludes: 'It was almost certainly as a result of the publicity given to this action that creditors of the Foundation began to demand settlement, leading to the reorganization and centralization of the Foundation at Wichita. Possibly as a result of this response from the established therapeutic professions, Hubbard has since demonstrated a marked antagonism to medical practitioners, and to psychiatrists in particular.'
The vehemence and black propaganda which were the hallmarks of Hubbard's paranoia were directed particularly at mental health organizations, which were high on the Scientology list of 'enemies'. He was convinced that a mysterious organization referred to as the 'Tenyaka Memorial' was co-ordinating attacks on Scientology worldwide and that the UK-based World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH) and the National Association for Mental Health (NAMH) were behind it. A number of the FBI documents deal with the hunt for the Tenyaka Memorial organization. The 'central handler', according to Hubbard in a memo of 6 May 1971 marked 'Secret', was the secretary of the NAMH, Mary Appleby. 'It is she who writes and phones her contacts to start attacks on Scientology,' said Hubbard and went on to suggest that these attacks were the work of a Nazi network of drug companies, banks and psychiatrists, aimed at conquering the world. One Guardians' Office directive against the WFMH dated 27 March 1974 - sent from Saint Hill to the US - reads. 'Now the secretariat is in Jamaica and I would like a mission sent to finish off the files and make quite sure we have cleared them out. As it is closest to your area, could you please select
1 *The Road to Total Freedom*
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missionaries with a decent cover etc so we can finish them off. What I am after is any files on Scientology, Dianetics, LRH etc that the WFMH has.'
Yet another irony about Hubbard's antipathy to psychiatry is that many of the ideas upon which Scientology is based seem close to classic Freudianism, i.e. trauma experienced in childhood which gives rise to 'engrams'. Indeed, the debt was acknowledged by Hubbard himself in *Certainty* (a critique of psychoanalysis), p. 4, published in 1962. 'The discovery of the engram is entirely the property of Dianetics. Methods of its erasure are owned entirely by Dianetics but both of these were pointed to by early Freudian analysis and hypnotism.' Wallis records that Hubbard was a skilled practitioner of hypnosis, although in DMSMH he distinguishes between returning and reliving in Dianetics from regression and revivification in hypnosis. However, the process of auditing is arguably para-hypnosis and auditors are enjoined to add a 'canceller' at the end of a session that any suggestion given by them during the suggestion will be nullified. What is unique to Scientology is the blend of the Freudian with the occultist framework, the pseudo-scientific terminology, and the Eastern idea of reincarnation.
There is no doubt that Hubbard's mind was fertile. His lengthy list of published work in science fiction is a testimony to that. Between the years 1930-50 he is purported to have written fifteen million words under some twenty pen-names. They may not have been works of outstanding merit but they sold. Where his genius lay was his ability to see a gap in the rising tide of new religions and psychotherapies and to write a system which could be floated in that market. From the foregoing it must be evident that it was mad genius. What flowed from it later, demonstrated that this genius was bad as well as mad.
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