‘Never believe a hypnotist’ – an investigation of L. Ron Hubbard’s statements about hypnosis and its relationship to his Dianetics.
2014 redraft of the original 1995 paper There have been many assertions that cult groups utilize hypnotic techniques. A good example is Persinger, Carrey & Suess in TM and Cult Mania, where the relatively straightforward techniques of Transcendental Meditation are analysed to show their hypnotic content. However, there has been little analysis of such groups’
Possible origins for Dianetics and Scientology
My starting point is the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary definition of plagiarism, viz “the taking and using as one’s own of the thoughts, writings, or inventions of another.” Hubbard’s plagiarism was extensive. He took ideas from earlier authors without proper acknowledgment; repudiated his initial, partial acknowledgment of other authors; and many times took ideas from
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Response to Benjamin Zeller’s review: The Cult of Trump? What “Cult Rhetoric” Actually Reveals
Students are frequently disciplined these days for cut-and-pasting paragraphs from the Internet rather than properly responding to their tutors’ questions. A similar habit is found among academics who speak about “brainwashing” and “cults”. Rather than reading and reviewing Steven Hassan’s new book, Professor Zeller has cut-and-pasted ideas that have been floated repeatedly over the last several decades.
His Magickal Career
“One fellow, Aleister Crowley, picked up a level of religious worship which is very interesting – oh boy! The Press played hockey with his head for his whole life-time. The Great Beast – 666. He just had another level of religious worship. Yes, sir, you’re free to worship everything under the Constitution so long as it’s Christian.”
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Professor Alan Scheflin’s Social Influence Model (SIM)
– as approved by Professor Scheflin. Taken from Jon Atack’s Opening Our Minds, avoiding abusive relationships and authoritarian groups (Trentvalley ltd, Colchester, 2021) with permission from the author. Law Professor Alan W. Scheflin coined the phrase The Myth of the Unmalleable Mind which is the basic belief that we are in control of our own
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Did Jolly West program the Manson Family or was it Scientology?
Charles Manson and his ‘Family’ will always stir up fascination, because of the horrifying brutality of the slayings in Los Angeles in 1969, and the mythology that has been so dexterously spun around them. Manson was the pied piper who brainwashed runaway girls in his orgiastic, drug-crazed sex cult and then loosed them on a
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