- The Bridge to Insanity
- "I thought it meant what I wanted it to mean." Lori Taverna
"Per my observation, the threat of being denied doing OT VIII after they had paid for it and been promised it, has been the number one cause of OT VII completions going psychotic. I know of 6 such instances." Pierre Ethier (9)
"There are quite a few full blown psychos in the organization of Scientology ..." Ernie Hartwell
"Not surprisingly, it takes increased force to maintain such increased levels of delusion, to ignore the vacuousness of claimed results and the ordinariness of superbeing "OTs." Social Control in Scientology
"I witnessed several Flag public being detained against their will after they were locked in a room after going type III [psychotic break]. The main concern was not the well being of the person but the fear of a PR flap and the knowledge that the senior execs from Int[ernational] would give horrible punishment to all those who had had a prior involvement in that pc's case. For that reason, many staff were ready to break any laws to subdue the now crazy public person. I can recall without effort 5 specific cases where I was a witness to public attempting to flee but being brutally prevented from doing so." Pierre Ethier (11)
"They'll pick you up and they'll raise you so high you feel like you're on top of the world and, then, they'll drop you and they'll let you feel like a bottomless pit". David Ray
A-F[]
- --
- "[A] lady in 1961/62 from Applecross, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia. R26 - 1 shot clear process experimental, were the guinea pigs. She cracked on the course and use to wipe excrement on herself, etc. She was held for about six weeks in the top of a warehouse, in as toilet - (she went nuts) other people on the same course had problems. One man died of a heart attack. A business man, ended up in a psychiatric ward. Another, regressed to about five and would cry and talk like a child and become violent and throw things. The lady, the one who cracked, myself and Rowan Grassi (good scientologists) were told by Tony Dunlevy, who was the one in charge (CEO) - to take her after she was cleaned up, by Mrs. Ilene Wimbush, who owned a nursing home, to the psychiatric facility, where her husband, a scientologist met us and admitted her to the psychiatric hospital." 1
- --
- "A particular friend came over to [my sister's] house - she had just received her NOTS auditing - and she came in and she said how wonderful she was feeling, that she went to a restaurant, she was eating a hamburger, and all of a sudden the hamburger started screaming at her, and then the walls started screaming. And then she said tears came out of her eyes because she felt so sorry for the other people in the restaurant because they didn't know what she knew." Lori Taverna
- --, sister of LaVenda van Schaick (q.v.)
- "The result of David's death has never really been — David was doing some different things for the operation of the Guardian's Office in Las Vegas. And at the time that the police found him, he was found with a .45 and a suicide note. He had written a letter to my parents; he was married to my sister. And the last letter he had written was how wonderful Scientology was, and he was doing a little mission and — anyway, the result of David's death put my sister under psychiatric care and things have been basically the same since then." The Clearwater Commission
- van Ettinger
- "Hans van Ettinger ... went totally nuts when he came back from FLAG Landbase [2003] after doing FPRD on 2D, CLEAR paid over 700,000 Guilders to Scientology, He is a Masters of Science....started shouting 24 hours a day." 1
Brainwashing[]
Scientology, like other cults, regiments its members' lives and controls their access to information. Its introductory processes include hypnosis. As the "raw meat" (Hubbard's description of prospective members), you are unaware of the fact that you are being manipulated and programmed.
"[In the Sea Org] every day-is the same as every other day, which I have now found is a very destructive thing." Lori Taverna
G-L[]
- Geary, Dodie
- "A woman named Dorothy Geary was driven into a psychotic episode". Affidavit of Stacy Brooks Young 2
- Geary, Robert
- "The scary thing was that those kinds of exercises [Training Routines] were making me emotionless," said Geary. "It was like I didn't have a mind of my own." 1 2
- de Hosipied, Gile
- "Gile de Hosipied, full memory loss on OT-8, she is a baroness from Heemstede. Her man is mad about it. going on for years already." 1
- Johnston, Mary
- "As a result of her involvement with [Scientology], she became withdrawn from her family and friends. She tried to recruit people into [S]cientology but was unsuccessful in most cases. She had many rows with her boyfriend in which she "screamed, shouted, ranted and raved". Her short-term memory started to be affected." Irish Times article
M-R[]
- Peterson, Janie
- "[W]hen I would complain about that I'd be having problems, I was told that it was the next level. And then I was told that, you know, well, particularly, I would go clear ... that this would take care of all the problems and that somewhere along the line it would get taken care of. So, I believed this to be true at the time. After I went clear and then I did above clear, which is what they call OT Levels ... there's a certain level that you reach that for me was very damaging as far as my dependency upon Scientology. After I took that particular level, I believed that I needed more and more auditing to take care of the problem. It was not a problem that I had entered Scientology to handle ... I went in for various reasons. As I went higher and higher, I began to forget about the reasons why I came in and I became almost consumed with handling this one certain area. ... at that point I was so indoctrinated into Scientology that I felt that if I left Scientology that I would die." The Clearwater Commission
OT and NOTs[]
OT -- Operating Thetan (levels I-VIII)
NOTs -- New Era Dianetics for Operating Thetans
"[W]ell, I audited many people on this NED for OTs, and they had been OT for ten years, some of them. And the relief was "This is why I was crazy all these years because [level] 3 was never complete. That's why I've been insane all these years." They came in desperation. Some of the preclears, or people on auditing, said, "If this doesn't work, I don't want to live anymore." They said, "I'm tired of holding up this image of being an OT in Scientology, having illness, having irrational feelings." They came more that "This is the last hope." I didn't see any miracles when I was auditing here. The people I audited were, as I said, in desperation, wanting it to work. I felt that people who were getting wins -- it was almost like the Emperor's New Clothes, like, if you didn't get --everyone was saying how wonderful it was. If you didn't say it, there was something wrong with you. Because it says in the technology of OT 3 that if you don't have these body thetans - I.don't know if you've discussed OT 3 - but if you don't have this type of thing, there's something wrong with you and you're really in bad shape. So, people tend to say, "Oh, yes, I see them, too." Lori Taverna
S-Z[]
- Taverna, Lori
- Lori was a dedicated Scientologist who became increasingly concerned about the lack of humanity and logical consistency in Scientology. Due to her monetary value as a highly-trained NOTS auditor, she was not allowed to leave the Sea Org at Flag Land Base, and was driven into a mental and physical breakdown. 1 2
- Whitfield, Hana (surname also Eltringham)
- "I then began a long recovery, searching for answers as to why I joined Scientology and gave it twenty years of my life only to end up suicidal and in chronic ill health." Affidavit
TRs[]
TR -- Training Routine
"In 1971, 1 went to the Professional Supervisors' School in Los Angeles, and I did the course in two weeks. And then, I saw a telex from Ron Hubbard which said all people doing training had to do a training drill called TR 0, which is a communication drill where you sit and confront another person. You don't speak, you don't move; you don't do anything like that. Now, he added in his telex that you're not allowed to blink. ... You had to sit in a chair, confront another person, and not blink your eyes for a two-hour period. It was timed on a clock. So, I stayed there for three months, and I did this drill seven days a week, from eight in the morning till eleven at night. Students accumulated there for many months because no one was passing this. Duress was placed on-the students.. There was a Commanding Officer who walked around with a nightstick and he would bang it on the table and say, !'You're going to pass today." A lot of students went psychotic. Some students fainted during this. Many students had no more white left in their eyes; it almost looked like they were bleeding." Lori Taverna