I don't know about you at all, but from your posting, I'd have to assume you don't have much experience within Scientology. And you are curious. All good things.
The idea that some parts of Scientology are superior to non-Scientology technology is understandable, since Hubbard said so time after time. Perhaps he was correct some of the time.
Unless the "tech" is tested in a non-Scientology environment, how would we know?
Well, it was and we do know.
Thanks for actually answering my question with something other than sarcastic bullshit. I hadn't realised that it *had* been tested aside from dianetic therapy with the specific hypothesis being that it could produce a measurable increase in IQ (result: it did, but the increase was within the margin of error, so for all intents and purposes, it didn't).
It wasn't actually Hubbard's bombast that led me to consider the superiority thing, but Carl Jung's experiments in processing facilitated by an unamplified Wheatstone bridge. Although he later abandoned this area, he emphasised that this was because the state of electronics at the time did not provide for easy reads. Matheson improved the instrument, but it's doubtful whether in a world devoid of dianetics, he would so have done. Hubbard (probably) discovered the meaning of the various e-meter deflections. I continue to believe that the e-meter, as an instrument, is useful in all manner of talking cures, whether you go the Jungian, Hubbardian, or Freudian-Lacanian route. Which of the three, if any, is a white-taped route out of the cave of insanity, but that's not the instrument's fault.
The reason I'm asking this question, however, is partly because a friend of mine has been going to the
Monterey Centre in Frisco for psychotherapy. While their main site doesn't use the word dianetics, I think they're affiliated with CA-DA, their therapist is ex-Scn, and they use the Auditor's Code
word-for-word. Sky says she's had good experiences and they have good reviews on Yelp, but I'd rather she didn't invest in ineffective psychotherapy, if indeed it IS ineffective.
Hubbard Management "Tech": Yes it was implemented in the real world by non-Scientologists. Allstate. Read about it
here. The result of Hubbard's Managment "Tech" is, inevitably, a nightmare.
Hubbard Study "Tech": Unfortunately, I don't have a link for this. Around 2007, the IAS sponsored an "independent" test of Hubbard Study "Tech" in a non-Scientology school. Non-Scientology teachers were carefully trained in the "tech" and non-Scientology students were carefully tested before, during and after implementing the "tech". All carefully monitored by independent, non-Scientology, researchers. It was a disaster for Scientology. Since everyone involved was under bond not to talk about it ever, the results were buried.
Hubbard Drug Rehabilitation "Tech": In the same time period, another "independent" research project was funded by the IAS to prove Hubbard Drug Rehabilitation "Tech" was "superior". Same results and same complete suppression of the findings.
That's one you did not need to include. Anybody the least bit knowledgeable on the subject, whether now or in the 1960's, knows that non-polar drugs like dronabinol and methadone are separate and distinct from water-soluble ones like cocaine and lysergide (aka Delysid). While the possibility of "sweating out" cannabis metabolites is superficially plausible, any remaining credibility goes out the window when it's mentioned that Narconon can be administered indefinitely, because even the metabolites of cannabis are cleared out within months. The niacin is also complete hokum.
Dianetics: Back when Dianetics was all the rage, some Dianeticists created an independent test to prove Hubbard's Engram theory. They
tried and failed.
I think the wrong question was being asked there. It's of little importance whether engrams exist as described; the public-health implications of a therapy remain whether it's based on provable fact or utter bunkum. If healers in some backward culture claimed that lung infections were caused by demons, that these demons used coughs and sneezes to propagate, and that they could be exorcised with a ritual that included eating blue bread mould, the rate of bronchitis would decrease in spite of the scientific inaccuracy. Much of Freud's theories are contradicted by neurological research, but just try seeing a Lacanian shrink. The auditing processes invented by Lacan and
heavily indebted to Freud
work. Well, aside from autism, which is getting to be a problem in some European countries, because the "other option" to Lacan is the far more heavy-handed psychiatry. In America, instead, behaviourism "won", which is great for behaviourists and good for science, but not so good for everyone else.
So, the real question is, does dianetic "therapy" produce specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely improvements in quality of life? That question has not yet been answered in any meaningful way.
I doubt treatment outcomes are any better than those following the Freudian model. Dianetics is, at its heart, a talking cure, and you'd expect results roughly on the level of its equivalents. To get traction as a quasi-mainstream model, seriously aberrated cases would have to be referred to pharmacological treatment, Hubbard be damned, and the question of what to do with pre-natal or whole-track "engrams" would have to be answered and stand up to scrutiny to the satisfaction of the establishment, again, Hubbard be damned.
The one conclusive way to expose dianetics as a sham therapy would be to compare its treatment outcomes with those of psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, Rogerian, Adlerian, etc. For the record, I doubt it's a total sham, but the thetan certainly does not jump across lifetimes and the mythical Dianetic Clear is just that.
And so on.
If someone wants to go to the trouble to actually TEST any of Hubbard's "tech" to find out if it is "superior", well that's fine. But don't you realize that True Believers have been attempting exactly that for over 60 years without any luck?
The odds of some bit actually being superior are not very good. If it were, I think someone would have proven that by now. And they haven't.
But don't let that stop you. It could happen.
In my opinion, there is one fatal flaw that permeates all of Hubbard's "tech". I know there are lots of flaws, but this one seems to me to be the common, generic flaw to it all.
Hubbard created all his "tech" as absolute and comprehensive. This was it, complete and perfect. Of course, then he had to come back and add/delete/modify it but then the "tech" was absolute and comprehensive - don't question it just follow it.
Remember, though, that my question implied "picking and choosing" from LRH's tech, including the clear implication that it was absolute and comprehensive. For example, one might like the idea of managing by statistics, but disdain imposition of the ethics conditions. One might even like the Ethics Conditions, use them as the cornerstone of his first-dynamic belief system, and teach their use to others, but be philosophically opposed to assigning other people conditions. I know someone like that
who isn't even a Scientologist! He literally assigns himself one of the conditions every Monday depending on how he's been doing at work, and then does the appropriate steps. That is the sum total of his involvement with Scn.
Take the condition formulas, for example. These conditions are the ONLY conditions you can or ever will be in. You will ALWAYS be in exactly one of his conditions. Then these formulas are the exact and ONLY method of moving "up" to the "next condition". Period. Do not question it, just "follow the formulas". Even when I was a True Believer, in the Sea Org, I understood at a unconscious level that this "Conditions Formulas" really didn't match reality and one just had to pretend.
Take the Tone Scale, for example. These "tones" are the ONLY emotions you can or ever will experience. You will ALWAYS be in one of these specific emotions and no other. When you experience another emotion you MUST move through all the intervening tone levels. Do not question this, it just IS that way. When, in reality, you experience other, unlisted emotions, or more than one emotion, or DON'T "move through all intervening tones", well, you must be wrong.
I'm not sure if one has to move through all intervening tones per LRH, but my personal observations have been that tones do not occur out of order. It goes resentment, anger, hate, pain, or the other way around, possibly skipping over one or two rungs on the way there, but not pain, resentment, hate, anger. I also agree that you can "match and lead" someone up (or down!) the tone scale, so it isn't totally useless.
Hubbard's "solutions" all had to be exact, specific, one-size-fits-all, just follow these steps, formulas. He knew it all and had "mapped" out all the solutions.
And, from what I know, his only testing was himself -- what was true for Hubbard was true. If you're not Hubbard, well, make yourself match Hubbard, then his "tech" is perfect.