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Jon Atack: Escaping the trap Scientology sets for the mind

Free to shine

Shiny & Free
Here is a wonderful article written by Jon Atack, per the title. Very helpful for those trying to understand just what happened to them emotionally.

http://tonyortega.org/2014/08/09/jon-atack-escaping-the-trap-scientology-sets-for-the-mind/


I recently read Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul. Frankl survived both Dachau and Auschwitz and managed to make something thoroughly positive of these utterly negative experiences. He has this to say of the numbness that overwhelms those who have no control over their lives, and it is similar to the emotional dissociation that I have encountered in some former Sea Org members. After the initial reaction that life is no longer worth living, Frankl observes: “After some weeks or days this stage is usually succeeded by the second phase, a profound apathy. This apathy is a kind of self-defense mechanism of the psyche. Everything that formerly excited or embittered the inmate, that aroused his indignation or drove him to despair, everything he is forced to watch or to take part in, now rebounds from a kind of armor he has put on. What has taken place is psychic adjustment to the strange environment; the events in the environment reach the consciousness only in blurred form. Affective life is tuned down to a lower level….Interests are restricted to the most immediate, most urgent needs. All thinking seems to be concentrated upon a single point: to survive the particular day.”
 

Sindy

Crusader
Hubbard knew well enough that the “stimulus-response” mind is hypnotic, and he knew how to pack it full of command suggestions (did you ever wonder why auditing has “commands,” and not “questions”?).

:ohmy: No, I never did. I should have. Yikes. (Mother f%#ker).
 
Wow - what an essay - I have experienced that same lack of emotions in my life, and the same rages. This is an eye opening - revelatory piece. If you haven't read it - do so.

As an example of the emotional shut down that Scientology engenders , I experienced this: When my father passed away, I was ho hum about the news. My brothers asked me to fly to Albuquerque to pick up his ashes, and his 5th wheel truck and trailer, and drive it back to our home town. Several times along the way I strongly felt I should get to the closest air line and fly back to LA and get back to work. Several times I also felt his influence that I should go onward. It is what it is. I felt his presence. We did make it to my home town and we had a service for him. Throughout the service, I felt distant, wanting to get back to LA. Then it was my chance to say some words on his behalf and after saying a platitude or two, the dam burst, and all of the pent up emotion burst out of me. "There wasn't a dry eye in the house" is trite, but that was pretty much what happened

So, Jon - thank you for a well written article.

Mimsey
 
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