scientology & celebrities

I'm sure it's been said before, but it's funny $'s antipathy for psychiatry when it's basically a dumbed down Freudianism.

ya i was thinking about that. i think psychiatry is basically the competition in a way.

yeah there's a revealing moment where haggis is like, ya im in therapy now and i wish i'd started it 30 years ago

A couple of years ago I went through a thing where I read a lot about Scientology. This story stuck with me: http://www.lisamcpherson.org/. I mean obv it's only one side but I read through the whole thing including pages of hospital records and it's pretty fucked up. Clearwater, FL kinda creepy imo.

When I was in 6th or 7th grade, my best friend convinced me to steal a copy of Dianetics from the local library. We set it on fire in the woods outside Merriweather Post. He was really upset about Scientology! Looking back, this would have been around the time of the Noah Lottick suicide.

Two of our friends never received this New Yorker issue in the mail. Their theory is that their mailman is a Scientologist. Along the same lines, I wouldn't put it past an organization known to buy thousands of copies of Dianetics to boost sales to scour newstands and whatnot for copies of this issue and, er, clear them.

Two of our friends never received this New Yorker issue in the mail. Their theory is that their mailman is a Scientologist.

I think Scientologists are smart enough to have realized that the article is online in its entirety.

Suppressive Packages

That sounds like an anti-diarrheal suppository.

Friend in LA whose NYer sub just lapsed went to tons of newsstands in Hollywood and Santa Monica and couldn't find one. She suspected a buyout.

I'd just as soon suspect a sellout, though. It's kind of a big deal. Almost as big as the snorg girl.

ya i was thinking about that. i think psychiatry is basically the competition in a way.

^^^this is exactly where it comes from. In the 50s, psychiatry was very much in vogue, and especially in sci-fi circles Freud/psychotherapy/psychiatric ideas were HUGE. A cursory survey of sci-fi authors from the time (Sturgeon, Bester, etc) will show the culture was loaded with a fascination for these ideas/approaches and their implications. It was something a lot of smart, successful but still unsatisfied people were turning to, and that was L. Ron's target audience - unhappy people with money and a drive for self-improvement.

Also, the kind of old-school method acting taught in that Beverly Hills class has roots in Freudian psychology as well.

From the article:

"Dianetics, Hubbard said, was a “precision science.” He offered his findings to the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association but was spurned; he subsequently portrayed psychiatry and psychology as demonic competitors. He once wrote that if psychiatrists “had the power to torture and kill everyone they would do so.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright#ixzz1E3L0UNec

Miscavige! Seems like a weird guy, right?

Miscavige immediately brought to mind the Alby Grant character in 'Big Love'.

yeah, seems like given his power in the organization, he would be this removed, pope-like presence, but the stories of him beating on people are just O_o

new yorker should reprint the feature every issue. that's how you save the magazine industry.

xp Shakey: ...and this is why psychic powers are considered SF and not fantasy. (OK, that's largely Ray Palmer's fault.) As an aside, there was a woman in the early Sixties who managed to get published simply because she had become the guru to a couple of SF bigwigs. She got an Ace Double half and a couple of stories in F&SF (all reportedly quite dire) published before fading away. Can't remember who she is--she did become a minor name in the psychic community later, though.

You are talking about Jane Roberts i think? I'm not sure about her earlier history but she had some influence on Richard Bach and knew Rod Serling.

BTW she is possibly another case, like LRH, where fictional writings got converted into a guru career. Apparently her earlier SF writings (which I have not read) are reflected in her later work as a channeler of this Seth character that you can read about in the link above.

isn't that the What the Bleep do We Know woman?

Finally finished the article. Was a little perplexed at first that the only evidence against it was testimony from ex members, but then by the end, where it was like "LRH has mutant healing powers? BOOM! No he doesn't. Some other idiotic claim? POW! Wrong!" was classy.

xpost. Jane Roberts died in '84 so she can't have been involved with What The Bleep, but her "create your own reality" schtick is not a million miles away.

xxp that would be ramtha

http://www.theawl.com/2011/02/meet-the-heroes-of-early-scientology-reporting%E2%80%94plus-a-visit-to-the-celebrity-centre

My brain keeps misreading the initials LRH as HPL for some reason, which makes me think I wish I lived in a world where H P Lovecraft had been the weirdo pulp writer to found a religion. Now that would be entertaining.

"So what does this e-meter do?"

"It takes no notice of you. Ever."

I became fascinated with Scientology living in Los Feliz in the 90s. I came home to my apartment building one night and there were a pair of protesters outside my building with picket signs that said "Your neighbor is a religious bigot" with stock photos of Nazis on them. I didn't know what it meant but they looked loco and I didn't want to ask them what was up.

The next morning I had a note under my door that was apparently given to all the residents. It said something like "I'm the religious bigot in question - I wrote a piece in the LA Times criticizing the city for using taxpayer money to rename a street after L. Ron Hubbard. Sorry for the hassle, and I can assure you I don't discriminate against anyone based on religion - this is a common tactic of Scientologists" etc. etc.

I thought it was so bizarre, and after asking around, I went to Amok Books on Vermont looking for a book that had been recommended (Jon Atack's "A Piece of Blue Sky" (which is mentioned in the article - it's like an expanded, even more fascinating version of the article - highly recommended). The cashier said they didn't have it, and I shopped around and bought some "Murder Can Be Fun" 'zines and a few other things. At that point, the cashier pulls a copy of the Atack book out and says "sorry, man, we do have it - it's just that if I leave them on the shelves, the Scientologists come in and buy them all just to take them off the shelves, and though I'm happy for the cash I'd rather people read the truth about them..."

I got totally obsessed and did all the tours (always giving fake names and addresses!) - watched the amazing industrial films at the Sunset & Vermont center (with names like "Man the Unfathomable"). The BEST of the tours is the "L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition" at Hollywood and Ivar - they have animatronic Battlefield Earth figures and TONS of abject lies throughout the exhibit - I think they claim at some point that Hubbard was nominated for an Oscar.

The key to that tour is that it was given by this super hot blonde girl from Redondo Beach who showed me around and took me into the Narconon exhibit, where they discuss drug dependency. They show an awesome "Reefer Madness"-esque drug scare film with Kirstie Alley where someone smokes a joint and jumps out a window. The hot tourguide sat me down and said "I used to smoke tons of pot and drink tons of beers in Redondo, then I went to a Narconon meeting. And in the middle of the first meeting, pot smoke starting seeping out of my pores into the air, floating above me like a cloud. That's when I knew I was getting clear."

Oh - and something very sad that the New Yorker article doesn't mention: LRH's son Quentin, who killed himself at age 22 (he was apparently homosexual and struggling with it): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Hubbard

Jon Atack's "A Piece of Blue Sky" (which is mentioned in the article - it's like an expanded, even more fascinating version of the article

can't recommend this book enough

"Bare-Faced Messiah" is pretty good, too, though a bit old now.

Bugger me, the whole of BF Messiah is online: http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfmconte.htm

I read "Bare Faced Messiah" years ago and much of it seemed sensationalized and too far-fetched, but since then I've discovered it might well be true after all!

She Got Shakes,

Does the church own Skylight Books?

POBS is online to read too http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/atack/contents.htm

cool!

The key to that tour is that it was given by this super hot blonde girl from Redondo Beach who showed me around and took me into the Narconon exhibit

Pictures or it didn't happen.

Roffle.

album cover is amazing

omg

Back cover.

Pictures or it didn't happen.

which ilx cell can we send in to infiltrate and gather hot scientologist pix?

Just reading that article now, finally. This bit kind of jumped out at me:

The Church of Scientology had recently gained tax-exempt status as a religious institution, making donations, as well as the cost of auditing, tax-deductible. (Church members had lodged more than two thousand lawsuits against the Internal Revenue Service, ensnaring the agency in litigation. As part of the settlement, the church agreed to drop its legal campaign.)

Am I reading this right to infer that they *got* tax-exempt status by harrasing the court system!?

Clearwater, FL kinda creepy imo.

― ENBB, Tuesday, February 15, 2011 4:15 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

It is a little creepy downtown, but Clearwater Beach is A+. You have to pass through downtown and through that massive Scientology compound to get to the beach. You can tell the Scientologists from others by their dress; they all wear the same outfits.

Also, Keith Richards came up with the riff for "Satisfaction" while staying in a Clearwater hotel room, so it has got that going for it.

RE: Scientologist babes, I was just watching The Parking Garage Seinfeld episode, and this woman Jerry keeps checking out and is later throws them out of her car because of something George did is a Scientologist.

Farrakhan likes them.

He praised Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Farrakhan extolled the virtues of Scientology and its auditing process, which is considered spiritual counseling by its members.

"L. Ron Hubbard is so exceedingly valuable to every Caucasian person on this Earth," Farrakhan said.

"L. Ron Hubbard himself was and is trying to civilize white people and make them better human beings and take away from them their reactive minds. … Mr. Hubbard recognized that his people have to be civilized," Farrakhan said to a cheering crowd.

i mean there's no doubt in my mind that the auditing process can be beneficial to people (analyzing the unconscious mind is very beneficial to our emotional lives, imo) but why do they have to be so damn creepy?

Farrakhan clearly hasn't heard Hubbard's discography

I'm just hoping that this all ends in Charlie Sheen joining the Nation of Islam.

From bowling shirts to bow-ties.