Voicing the opinions of Past members

[Gib]

My problem was that I had an older brother who I looked up to and had implicit faith in, and if he said scientology was a good thing then I simply accepted it, and that's what happened. He was taken in and I followed.

My involvement only lasted ten years and compared to many here I got away without being too badly burned financially, emotionally or psychologically.

When I first got involved, back in 1987, I once asked my reg, and I only had one reg, or contact in the scientology org at the time, nobody else regged me, it was very standard you might say at the time per HCO PL's, for there was no IAS, Ideal Org, WTH, CCHR regging at the time, but I asked How do we know Hubbard is telling the truth? Her reply was He never lied to us before.

I believed her for 25 years until I started searching the internet in 2012. And I have done a lot of research to undo all the lies.

 

[programmer_guy]

I answered her PM questions to me.

Thank you so much for your help programmer_guy!

Just outta curiousity:

1. is this for an undergrad or postgrad paper?

2. is this for sociology or psychology?

 

[sarah.glenmore]

Just outta curiousity:

1. is this for an undergrad or postgrad paper?

2. is this for sociology or psychology?

Hi programmer_guy,

The paper I am working on now is for an undergrad paper. It is for a research writing course with a focus on sociology.

Sarah

 

[JustSheila]

The survey looks legit to me, covers the basic Sociology research strata. It's quite short, only takes a few minutes.

My guess is that Sarah is attempting to confirm the research of other sociologists who believe a good number of those who join cults had difficulty in interpersonal relationships prior to joining and the cult system offered a way of resolving the social issues.

Sarah, if I can make a suggestion - since some of us were in for many years and some of those years were young adult development years, have you thought of incorporating Erikson's stages of psychosocial development against your survey information?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson's_stages_of_psychosocial_development

I thought that MIGHT be your concept, but if not, your survey information aside Erikson's stages could be interesting and add some meat to your paper. Just a thought.

 

[Anonycat]

AnonLover did a great survey for exes.

CofS Exit Survey

 

[programmer_guy]

The survey looks legit to me, covers the basic Sociology research strata. It's quite short, only takes a few minutes.

My guess is that Sarah is attempting to confirm the research of other sociologists who believe a good number of those who join cults had difficulty in interpersonal relationships prior to joining and the cult system offered a way of resolving the social issues.

Sarah, if I can make a suggestion - since some of us were in for many years and some of those years were young adult development years, have you thought of incorporating Erikson's stages of psychosocial development against your survey information?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson's_stages_of_psychosocial_development

I thought that MIGHT be your concept, but if not, your survey information aside Erikson's stages could be interesting and add some meat to your paper. Just a thought.

It is almost the end of the school year.
I doubt that she has anymore time to add-to/change her survey and then get her paper done by deadline.

 

[JustSheila]

It is almost the end of the school year.
I doubt that she has anymore time to add-to/change her survey and then get her paper done by deadline.

True dat.

 

[Cat's Squirrel]

If Sarah's still got some more time, there's another angle she could explore; are people, or some people, who join cults looking for a father figure? Here's a post of mine on the topic;

http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthre...ive-on-cults&p=1115795&viewfull=1#post1115795

 

[dchoiceisalwaysrs]

..SNIP.....

thinking to myself 'this is complete bollocks, he hasn't a clue what he's talking about' but I just put it to one side and went on swallowing everything else he said.

If I had believed in myself and questioned what was going on around me a little more, perhaps I wouldn't have wasted so much time searching for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I would guess this is quite common. I am sure there must be studies available showing the roots and mechanisms involved. But,, putting those aside and just getting opinions from those who underwent the experience about their cultification and their personal understanding of how we/they see the forces or factors involved in that cultification might provide some good insight.

I understand it would be anecdotal, but it could still be of value. In fact IIRC there are some threads here on ESMB discussing, how we got in and why, why we stayed in, and what got us out, which would add to any new inputs.

Where is our librarian, as I don't have much success at using the cardfile/search feature here.

 

[ThetanExterior]

The survey doesn't differentiate between different types of scientologists - public, staff, sea org.

It could be said that the above three categories determine how deeply a person immersed themselves in scientology therefore their experiences in the cult and getting out will be different depending on how committed to the cult the person was.

For that reason it seems to me that the results of the survey will be skewed and not particularly useful in reflecting the scientology experience.

 

[dchoiceisalwaysrs]

The survey doesn't differentiate between different types of scientologists - public, staff, sea org.

It could be said that the above three categories determine how deeply a person immersed themselves in scientology therefore their experiences in the cult and getting out will be different depending on how committed to the cult the person was.

For that reason it seems to me that the results of the survey will be skewed and not particularly useful in reflecting the scientology experience.

That does have some merit. However, I think it is not likely that Sarah has the time nor the resources to spend millions on survey/polling by large polster organizations like the NY times did in predicting the recent election outcome.
With all their resources yielding a prediction which favoured HC winning by a 30 to 60% favor, maybe sarah doesn't need to worry about a certain degree of scewing.

I will be very interested in what she comes up with.