The Big Empty part 1 The Double Bind

 The Big Empty

This is the first post in a series on the state a person may find themselves in after leaving a cult. It's in part my own personal experience and in part the result of reading several books on cults and seeing the biographies of ex cult members and their remarks about life after the cult. I recommend that all the posts in this series be read in order from first to last as several build on points made in the earlier posts.

Note: here is a link to my blog archive by topic which has almost all my older posts at the blog sorted into categories for your convenience.

• Blog Archive by Topic

For many people being in an abusive or neglectful relationship or childhood or being in a cult carries a particular pattern.

The person is told that they must be or do two or more things and no matter which they do, they are wrong.

A very simple example from my own childhood is straightforward and rather mild.

At maybe twelve years old or so I was told to clear the dinner dishes after dinner. So, I put the dishes in the sink.

The next day I was told that I was wrong because I didn't leave the dishes on the floor for the dog to lick off.

So, that night I put the dishes on the floor and left them for the dog.

The next day I was told that someone stepped on and broke a dish, so I shouldn't have left it on the floor.

I simply said, "It does not matter what I do, you have decided that I am wrong no matter what you do or say or what I do or say, the game is I am always wrong."

My response wasn't appreciated. 

But when someone gives you a double bind and they mean it, they see you as fundamentally wrong no matter what happens. 

A double bind, if that is a new term to you, is “a psychological predicament in which a person receives from a single source conflicting messages that allow no appropriate response to be made,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

We have many double binds in abusive relationships and cults. Kids get them all the time. They are told they are stupid and worthless and losers and get blamed for things out of their control by abusive parents.

Often in abusive relationships they may just be a way to try and bully and humiliate and break down a person, so the abuser feels powerful and the abuse is barely hidden or not hidden.

But in cults double binds get disguised quite often because they are part of a more developed technique.

In Scientology, for example, Ronald Hubbard intentionally included confusing and contradictory language and messages because he studied methods of persuasion including psychology, hypnosis, rhetoric and methods used by other cults.

He intended to overwhelm and confuse his victims then provide a relief from the confusion and discomfort he caused in the form of one thing they could consistently count on: his own authority. 

He was quite clear about this and it was intentional.

How can I be so certain? He told us in his own words!

Quotes from  Ron Hubbard on the Confusion Technique:
[Quote]
Now, if it comes to a pass where it's very important whether or not this person acts or inacts as you wish, in interpersonal relations one of the dirtier tricks is to hang the person up on a maybe and create a confusion. And then create the confusion to the degree that your decision actually is implanted hypnotically.
The way you do this is very simple. When the person advances an argument against your decision, you never confront his argument but confront the premise on which his argument is based. That is the rule. He says, "But my professor always said that water boiled at 212 degrees."
You say, "Your professor of what?"
"My professor of physics."
"What school? How did he know?" Completely off track! You're no longer arguing about whether or not water boils at 212 degrees, but you're arguing about professors. And he will become very annoyed, but he won't know quite what he is annoyed about. You can do this so adroitly and so artfully that you can actually produce a confusion of the depth of hypnosis. The person simply goes down tone scale to a point where they're not sure of their own name.
And at that point you say, "Now, you do agree to go out and draw the water out of the well, don't you?"
"Yes-anything!" And he'll go out and draw the water out of the well.
[End Quote]
 Ron Hubbard Lecture, 20 May 1952 "Decision."
source Lermanet.com

Also, even earlier, in 1950:
[Quote]
One error, however, must be remarked upon. The examination system employed is not much different from a certain hypnotic technique. One induces a state of confusion in the subject by raising his anxieties of what may happen if he does not pass. One then "teaches" at a mind which is anxious and confused. That mind does not then rationalize, it merely records and makes a pattern. If the pattern is sufficiently strong to be regurgitated verbatim on an examination paper, the student is then given a good grade and passed.
[End Quote]
 Ron Hubbard lecture 29 August 1950, "Educational Dianetics."
 source Lermanet.com

let's look at some of the things Hubbard said:

"If you can produce enough chaos — it says in a textbook on this subject — if you can produce enough chaos you can assume the total management of a psyche — if you can produce enough chaos.

The way you hypnotize people is to misalign them in their own control and realign them under your control, which necessitates a certain amount of chaos, don’t you see?

Now, the way to win through all of this is simply to let the guy have his stable data, if they are stable data and if they aren’t, let him have some more that are stable data and he’ll win and you’ll win.

In other words, you can take any sphere — any sphere which is relatively chaotic and throw almost any stable datum into it with enough of a statement and you will get an alignment of data on that stable datum. You see this clearly?

The whole society is liable to seize upon some stupid stable datum and thereafter this becomes a custom of some sort and you have the whole field of morals and mores and so forth stretching out before your view."

Hubbard, L. R. (1955, 23 August). Axiom 53: The Axiom Of The Stable Datum. Academy Lecture Series/Conquest of Chaos,   (CofC-2). Lecture conducted from Washington, DC.

"Another way to hypnotize somebody would be to put him in the middle of chaos, everything going in all directions, everybody shooting at him and suddenly throw him a stable datum, and make it a successful stable datum so that it’s all called off once — the moment he grabs this. And this gives you the entire formula of brainwashing: interrogate, question, lights, pain, upset, accusation, duress, fear, privation and we throw him the stable datum. We say, “If you’ll just adopt ‘Ughism’ which is the most wonderful thing in the world, all this will cease,” and finally the fellow says, “All right, I’m an ‘Ugh.’ ” Immediately you stop torturing him and pat him on the head and he’s all set.Ever after he would believe that the moment he deserted “Ughism,” he would be drowned in chaos and that “Ughism” alone was the thing which kept the world stable; and he would sell his life or his grandmother to keep “Ughism” going. And there we have to do with the whole subject of loyalty, except — except that we haven’t dealt with loyalty at all on an analytical level but the whole subject of loyalty is a reactive subject we have dealt with. "

Author: Hubbard, L. R.
Document date: 1955, 21 September, 1955, 21 September
Document title: Postulates 1,2,3,4 In Processing - New Understanding of Axiom 36, Postulates 1,2,3,4 In Processing - New Understanding of Axiom 36

ALTITUDE INSTRUCTION

“In altitude teaching, somebody is a ‘great authority.’ He is probably teaching some subject that is far more complex than it should be. He has become defensive down through the years, and this is a sort of protective coating that he puts up, along with the idea that the subject will always be a little better known by him than by anybody else and that there are things to know in this subject which he really wouldn’t let anybody else in on. This is altitude instruction … It keeps people in a state of confusion, and when their minds are slightly confused they are in a hypnotic trance. Anytime anybody gets enough altitude he can be called a hypnotic operator, and what he says will act as hypnotic suggestion. Hypnotism is a difference in levels of altitude. There are ways to create and lower the altitude of the subject, but if the operator can heighten his own altitude with regard to the subject the same way, he doesn’t have to put the subject to sleep. What he says will still react as hypnotic suggestion.” (Hubbard, Research & Discovery, volume 4, p.324)12 source Jon Atack

From a tape on the Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures in 1952 entitled Structure/Function we get this:

RON THE HYPNOTIST

Structure/Function: 11 December 1952 page 1

"All processes are based upon the original observation

that an individual could have implanted in him by hypnosis

and removed at will any obsession or aberration,

compulsion, desire, inhibition which you could think of – by hypnosis.“ 

"Hypnosis, then, was the wild variable;

sometimes it worked,

sometimes it didn’t work.

It worked on some people; it didn’t work on other people.

Any time you have a variable that is as wild as this, study it.

Well, I had a high certainty already –

I had survival. Got that in 1938 or before that. And uh…"Ron Hubbard

From the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course lectures we have a couple extremely relevant quotes. The tapes are listed by their number:

SHSBC-402

Of course, we go on a tradition "if you learn anything about man that will help him,

you help him with it." ...

"If you learn anything about man that you can manipulate him 

You're going to manipulate men, 

you've got to change their definitions

and change their goals

and enslave them and do this and do that. 

SHSBC-447

Now, brainwashing simply is the trick of mixing up certainties. 

All you have to do if you want to know and develop the entire field

of brainwashing as developed by Pavlov,

is simply to make somebody ..... into a confused or hypnotic state in which he can believe anything. Ron Hubbard

Complimenting this is a quote from Philadelphia Doctorate Course  lecture tape numbered 39 from 1952 - known as the games maker tape or lecture

"Now here’s a process that has to do with the making of games, and all this process adds  up to, is you just address to those factors which I just gave you, oh, run and change postulates and any creative process that you can think of and shift postulates around, you get a whole process." End quote

THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them.

• Lecture: "Off the Time Track" (June 1952) as quoted in Journal of Scientology issue 18-G, reprinted in Technical Volumes of Dianetics & Scientology Vol. 1, p. 418. Ron Hubbard

Conclusion:

Hubbard plainly defined "postulates" broadly as decisions, conclusions and this can be called beliefs. Changing postulates in a person is changing their beliefs. 

So, he called brainwashing the trick of mixing up certainties. Putting a person into a confused state in which he would believe anything was how he phrased it. He said if you can manipulate men you WILL, not leaving any exceptions for himself ! And he said you will change their definitions and their goals which were their certainties and you will enslave them ! 

He said he started with hypnosis which could "implant or remove any inhibition, compulsion, aberration or desire you could think of BUT it has the wild variable that it works on the some people but not others and it works sometimes but not others." So, he was trying to see who it worked on and when and likely how to get it to work as often as possible on as many people as possible. He wanted people in Scientology to shift around the certainties, the postulates, the decisions and beliefs of people to change their definitions and goals, to definitions he wanted them to believe and goals that benefited Hubbard.This all aligns with the "game" he wanted. 

Hubbard made statements in his affirmations (private self-hypnosis commands intended for himself and no one else)  that I call the Rosetta Stone of Scientology because they help ex Scientologists decipher the information in Scientology.

I have them posted at Mockingbird's Nest as 

A Psychiatric View With Comments On The Admissions By Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (1947)

I will put a few excerpts here to highlight Hubbard's intention regarding hypnosis and in general. To understand Scientology I absolutely recommend reading the post in full. These excerpts are just for this post on his intentions.

LRH is obviously L Ron Hubbard

LRH:Your psychology is good. You worked to darken your own children. This failure, with them, was only apparent. The evident lack of effectiveness was "ordered." The same psychology works perfectly on everyone else. You use it with great confidence. 

LRH: Material things are yours for the asking. Men are your slaves. Elemental spirits are your slaves. You are power among powers, light in the darkness, beauty in all. 

LRH : Your psychology is advanced and true and wonderful. It hypnotizes people. It predicts their emotions, for you are their ruler. 

LRH: No matter what lies you may tell others they have no physical effect on you of any kind.

LRH: Lord help women when you begin to fondle them. You are master of their bodies, master of their souls as you may consciously wish. You have no karma to pay for these acts. 

LRH: You can tell all the romantic tales you wish. You will remember them, you do remember them. But you know which ones were lies. You are so logical you will tell nothing which cannot be believed. 

LRH: You use the minds of men. They do not use your mind or affect it in any way. 

So, Hubbard in his private affirmations clearly described his "psychology" as such that it "hypnotizes" people and that men are his slaves and regarding women that he was master of their bodies and souls. He described himself as being able to lie and be both believed and he was immune to physical effects from his lies. He described himself as the ruler of people who uses the minds of men but they do not use or affect his mind. 

Imagine having these goals and using self-hypnosis commands repeatedly for years to bring these things into your mind. 

In 

• Scientology Was Ron Hubbard's Private Game

I described how Hubbard in a taped lecture from The Philadelphia Doctorate Course Lectures, tape number 39 in the series, described how to make a game and more precisely how he would go on to make Dianetics and Scientology and use them to enslave people.

So, you may wonder how double binds are used exactly in Scientology. You could look long and hard at the various tapes, policies, bulletins, books and so on released in Scientology and the accompanying events in history for particular context and meaning. And it in my opinion would be beneficial, but for the sake of brevity here I will just show a few examples of contradictions that are to some degree intended to leave one confused and vulnerable to manipulation.

The Big Empty