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This is a fascinating and disturbing movie. First you have
a brilliant writer, Lancaster Dodd, who has convinced himself
that he has an effective and sane method to help people
with their hang-ups and started a little cult named The
Cause. Second, there are those who are convinced that the
method has really helped them and are grouped around the
founder and The Cause they now belief in. Third, there is
a shell-shocked, PTSD'd alcoholic, who wiggled his way into
The Cause, only to get temporary relief without a real solution
to his problems. And lastly there are some less gullible
characters who see through the founder for the charlatan
he is. Put them all together in tight spaces like a ship
or a house and you'll get some revealing and disturbing
interactions.
The main story line is about the psycho-sexually messed
up WWII veteran, Freddie, who is lured by false promises
into a cult, which leader, instead of really helping the
poor guy, puts him through cruel exercises to break his
spirit. Freddie becomes a test case and guinea pig to prove
that Dodd's techniques are effective. Though there is an
element of genuine friendship between the two characters
(their relationship being the second important layer of
the movie), the attempted brain-washing of Freddie reveals
how perverted Dodd actually is. For example, after having
to endure a come-on by Dodd's seductive daughter Elizabeth,
Freddie has to sit for some grueling sessions with Elizabeth's
husband and Dodd, who are trying to condition Freddie into
completely dissociating himself from his feelings. The third
layer of the movie is The Cause and the skewered psycho-social
dynamics between a cult leader, his family and dependent
followers, all allegedly modeled on Scientology and its
founder L. Ron Hubbard.
Without wanting to give away too much about the story,
in the end we see Freddie breaking away from the cult and
finding some solace in the bed of a British country girl
on whom he uses some of the techniques he had learned from
Dodd. He is seemingly applying the techniques in a non-serious
playful way, though I can see the possibility that he could
be seen as having become a cynical manipulator himself.
After reading about Scientology, the most enlightening
information I found was in an Australian report about Scientology,
the Anderson Report, especially its section about
hypnosis. There the investigators make it clear that the
main technique of Scientology, named Training Routines (many
of which appear in the movie), are nothing but dangerous
hypnotic techniques which are known in the scientific community
as command or authoritative hypnosis, which are very different
from the hypnotic techniques used in medical settings, named
passive hypnosis. As the Anderson Report makes clear:
"In the practice of medicine the type of hypnosis
generally used is passive; the patient is allowed to, and
helped to, go into hypnosis entirely voluntarily, and the
hypnotist plays a completely passive role. This technique
is quite the reverse of authoritative or command hypnosis,
where the hypnotist assumes positive authoritative control
over the patient who, though he may or may not be aware
of what techniques the practitioner is practising on him,
is nevertheless under the domination of the hypnotist pursuant
to positive commands."
Hubbard was well trained in these manipulative techniques,
used them in his psycho-therapeutic practice Dianetics,
though renamed all its aspects, then denied it was command
hypnosis and had the nerve (or good foresight) to warn his
followers and everybody else against hypnosis. The crucial
difference between medical hypnosis and Hubbard-style hypnosis
is in the manner they evaluate the hallucinations which
form because of lowered resistance to both subconscious
contents and subtle suggestions. Scientology will take these
sometimes very disturbing fantasies for real and will ask
for more, with the effect that the hallucinations persist
in the client/patient as unsettling realities which need
to be treated with … more hypnosis. In medical settings
the hallucinations are not taken as realities and patients
will not be burdened with these as if they were real.
The hallucinations which are important to Scientologists
are the ones of out-of-body experiences (OBE), past life
memories and instances of physical and sexual abuse. Of
course Scientologists and others will make the case that
such experiences and memories are rooted in reality and
they might only concede that they are maybe tainted with
some wishful thinking, though otherwise such memories are
crucial to dig up for curative processing. BTW, psycho-analysts
will take the fantasies as fantasies, but will interpret
them as indications of other possibly real, but suppressed
memories. What makes the Scientology mix so disturbing is
the morbid fascination of Hubbard with abortion and sexual
perversions of which instances are apparently quite numerous
throughout his works, both in his fiction and non-fiction.
After reading his books such memes will then become suitable
seeds to be developed in the Training Routines with the
effect of people reporting much more abuses then really
occurred, which is now called false memory syndrome, and
providing the rationale for more treatment ending in a slavish
dependence on the system.
In principle it would be quite hard to refute that some
of these experiences could have been genuine and that not
all of them were merely hallucinations. I am not siding
here with the good old materialist who would argue a
priori that all of such experiences have to be false.
I would only concede their possibility with the caveats
that a) specific claims generated by past life regressions
and OBEs will have to be evaluated in the most critical
way by demanding the highest standards of proof, and b)
point out that what people experience through free association,
hypnosis and psycho-active drugs is so close to the logic
of fantasy-production in dreams that they should certainly
not be taken at face value like Scientology does.
This line of critique of Scientology should therefore not
be taken as assuming or concluding that certain occult experiences
are impossible, only that a plethora of imagined occult
experiences can be induced by psychological techniques and
chemical means and that there are quite some charlatans
around exploiting this and that there are many more taking
it all in as candy. It looks to me that Hubbard came up
with his fantastic cosmology through a mixture of self-hypnosis
and drugs and then tried to discover (in case he believed
his own fantasies) or produce (in case he knew what he was
doing) in his followers confirmatory evidence.
Much more can be said, like possible parallels with Blavatsky,
but I hope with the above to have provided some clarification
for the multiple levels of disturbance the movie can provoke.
I'll leave the discussion with a great quote made by someone
who investigated the alleged connection between the scientific
discipline of General Semantics, about which Hubbard had
some knowledge, and Scientology:
"The lure of the pseudoscientific vocabulary and promises
of dianetics cannot but condemn thousands who are beginning
to emerge from scientific illiteracy to a continuation of
their susceptibility to word-magic and semantic hash."
- S. I. Hayakawa, "Dianetics: From Science-fiction
to Fiction-science."
P.S.: Wiki has a good entry
on how much The Master is modeled on Scientology.
Another key
passage from the Anderson Report:
"It is the firm conclusion of this Board that most
scientology and dianetic techniques are those of authoritative
hypnosis and as such are dangerous. Hubbard and his adherents
strongly protest that his techniques are neither hypnotic
nor dangerous. However, the scientific evidence which the
Board heard from several expert witnesses of the highest
repute and possessed of the highest qualifications in their
professions of medicine, psychology, and other sciences
- and which was virtually unchallenged - leads to the inescapable
conclusion that it is only in name that there is any difference
between authoritative hypnosis and most of the techniques
of scientology. Many scientology techniques are in fact
hypnotic techniques, and Hubbard has not changed their nature
by changing their names."
Govert Schuller
Naperville, November 2012
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