What benefits, if any, do ex-Scientologists say they got from Scientology?

 

What benefits, if any, do ex-Scientologists say they got from Scientology?

This is a very difficult question to answer for a few reasons.

We have the fact that the benefits that people may believe in may frankly not be true. Some people swear that a certain diet or prayer or yoga or just about anything gives any benefit imaginable.

Scientific evidence for many of these claims is frankly lacking. For example, faith healers are happy to present testimonies from people but they withhold their alleged healing powers from the children dying of cancer in hospitals and many other people who can really use the techniques they claim to use.

So, in my opinion the fact that you can find some people who claim that any practice produces any imaginable benefit does not mean that in reality the benefit actually occurs.

Next to this we have a couple other issues. It is extremely difficult to survey all or most or even a significant percentage of ex cult members because they are often reluctant to discuss their past.

Some ex cult members are avoiding the cult, some are confused about what happened, some are trying to move on and entirely leave the cult in the past, some retain beliefs from the cult doctrine and not certain if criticism of the group or ideology is moral. Some know that if you admit to having been in a cult you won't be listened to and will be condemned and insulted ruthlessly.

Many people have prejudices about cults and cult members and they are certain they know all about cults despite actually knowing very little, often not enough to fill a pamphlet.

And a final barrier to this effort is the line between cult members and ex members is a spectrum, not a clear delineation. It's not like pregnancy.

Often people retain some beliefs and effects of cult indoctrination years or even decades after separating from the group. Many people are kicked out for a variety of reasons, but still believe the ideology, sometimes shedding only a small portion of the indoctrination, sometimes gradually shedding more, rarely entirely dropping all or nearly all the ideas.

This may be particularly true if the group has intense and extensive indoctrination that uses, for example, multiple methods of hypnotic induction and extensive doctrine with contradictions in the doctrine it provides. Scientology is filled with thousands of terms, many of which are intertwined with each other and describe opposites of their true meaning to confuse the members and Scientology has extensive indoctrination and uses perhaps hundreds of hypnotic techniques that are almost always covertly employed and used as an insidious attempt to secretly mentally enslave people.

Now, all that being said I can tell you that I have read accounts from probably a couple hundred ex Scientologists and Scientologists regarding what they got from Scientology.

Probably the most universal thing they have claimed to gain was awareness that Scientology founder Ronald Hubbard was a monstrous and evil human being and pathological liar and con man.

The “Hubbard lied to and conned us” statement is not universal by any means but is very common. On a guess, I would say at least forty percent of people who identify as ex Scientologists say this, out of the ones I have seen. The idea that he used rhetoric, or hypnosis, or mind control, or brainwashing and various other techniques is expressed by a very significant portion of ex Scientologists, but in my experience not quite as high.

I should note that in my limited experience, there seems to be a correspondence between ex Scientologists believing that Hubbard used efforts at mind control and hypnosis and the degree of education that the individual has on these subjects.

In other words people who leave Scientology and read nothing on these topics and therefore have no basis to evaluate the ideas tend to reject them but people who read extensively on psychology and hypnosis and cults and their methods tend to spot these things in their own experiences in Scientology, especially if they spent many years, over five or ten, in Scientology and if they were deep in Scientology then they have a very high chance of recognizing these things in Scientology.

Notably people who left Scientology or other cults and studied cults for years like Jon Atack, Chris Shelton, Alexandra Stein, Daniel Shaw, Steve Hassan and numerous others recognize the techniques used in Scientology, because they understand them. I of course am one of these people.

The vast majority of people who I have seen remark on leaving Scientology have said that Scientology was a harmful fraud and doesn't produce the promised results.

A smaller group of ex Scientologists claim to have gained some benefits like confidence or learning words or learning how to work at a particular task or job they did in the cult but not anything miraculous.

I must mention that in my experience a vanishingly small group, probably under ten or even five percent of people who are ex Scientologists claim extraordinary results, even though most of these people confess that Hubbard and David Miscavige are lying con men and the promises of the OT levels and clear are not true or remotely true, they say that they got some benefits from Scientology or Dianetics auditing or indoctrination that are benefits you might want from counseling like improved mental health or overcoming trauma or better emotional states.

The claims of this group are sort of vague in general and they tend to be unclear, certainly in scientific terms, and they have no scientific evidence for the claimed gains they have.

A very tiny fraction, maybe one or two percent on a guess, claim further gains, meaning things that move from the conventional goals you might have in education or therapy, whether they are easily attained or not, if you had never heard of Scientology to the extraordinary and even miraculous.

We have ex Scientologists who are certain that Scientology cured cancer or other diseases and assisted in healing. We have people who are certain they have witnessed or attained psychic powers of some sort. Some believe they were out of their bodies and they were shown that they are immortal spirits separate from their bodies thanks to these experiences, which are well explained as dissociation in psychology and a type of hallucination that has been induced many thousands of times with hypnosis, drugs, meditation, and sensory deprivation equipment, no miraculous technology required.

This belief is particularly resilient and the phenomenon and persistence of this belief is explored by Daniel Shaw in his book Traumatic Narcissism in psychoanalytic terms, his specialty.

Some of this again exceedingly small percentage, one or two percent on a guess, believe in telekinesis, remote viewing, precognition and various other abilities as benefits, even if only momentarily, from Scientology.

A large, large number of people have asked Scientologists if they are able to move even a paper clip after decades of doing Scientology courses at the highest levels and I have heard of and witnessed probably hundreds who admit they cannot demonstrate any of these abilities, despite the fact that the doctrine claims they should have these abilities. Many people when deciding whether or not to leave proceed to ask the most experienced people they know to move a coin or small object and have the people one for one admit they cannot do it. So, the vast preponderance of evidence supports the claim that these alleged benefits never occur, no one can present them.

It is also worth noting that a tiny, tiny amount of ex Scientologists gravitate to conspiracy theories and become members of Q anon and support Alex Jones and a significant portion of ex Scientologists (though not a majority) are Trump supporters and some believe in the “democrats are alien shape shifting paedophiles” and antisemitism conspiracy theories and I have even run into holocaust denial a couple of times in the ex Scientologists and realized that many holocaust deniers hide their holocaust denial and use the same terms over and over to signal to each other such as calling themselves free thinkers and sharing the same quotes and memes. Again, I must emphasize that this is probably less than five percent of ex Scientologists, so if you think that they ALL are holocaust deniers you are not getting my message at all.

The main thing to remember is that most ex Scientologists believe that they were lied to and scammed and not helped or helped very little in my experience and that you might find twenty who believe this for every person who feels Scientology significantly helped them and a tinier fraction believe in the methods as truly beneficial and their political views align with the paranoid and conspiracy theory embracing ideology in Scientology, with under one percent fully embracing these ideas. Almost everyone who leaves Scientology and looks at criticism of it realizes that Hubbard was a relentless liar and con man and David Miscavige is as well, even if they believe in the methods to any degree.

I hope this answer is helpful.

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