h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As people probably won't click on my Personal Space from this article, I suppose here would be a good place to mention that the author of the piece (me) is about to start training as a psychiatrist.

I don't have anything against Scientologists personally, and am yet to be inducted into the secret, CIA-backed campaign to discredit the religion. I just find it a very interesting, yet very strange set of beliefs to hold.

Matt

Good luck with your training. If I had understood myself better when I was younger I might have entered psychiatry.

Belief is a fascinating topic. I think we all have beliefs whether scientific or religious.

Other than baiting church members I have little direct knowledge of Scientology. An ex-colleague, who suffered what he called schizophrenia, but now probably has a more fashional name, had become tangled up with Scientology for more than a year of his life. He had risen quite high in the church and had been trained to convert people to the church using what he described as techniques akin to brain-washing. I'm not sure if his mental condition saved him from a life in the church or whether it was the realisation that after the conversion process, recruits could no longer talk entirely rationally about their thoughts.

It occurs to me that as well as offering all the usual benfits of a religion, Scientology has quite a steep belief "step" for enterants to climb before they get in. It is a church of conversion (rather than one that indoctrinates the very young) and maybe the conversion process is so effective at maintaining people in the church because of a process like cognitive dissonance, which stops them from thinking about how they got in.

Strangely my ex-colleague said that even though he had become disillusioned by the way the church recruited new members and the damage it appeared to do to people, he still had trouble un-believing some of the teachings.