Scientology, the vast psychotherapy cult founded by science
fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, offers members an alleged state of high
mental development known as clear. A recent advertisement
urged: "Go Clear -- For the first time in your life you will be truly
yourself. On the Clearing Course you will smoothly achieve the stable
State of Clear with: Good Memory, Raised I.Q., Strong Will Power,
Magnetic Personality, Amazing Vitality, Creative Imagination." For
years, going clear has been the prime goal for Scientologists and for
members of Hubbard's earlier Dianetics movement. Outsiders may doubt
that Scientology actually can create clears, as clear persons are
called, but Clear News, a Scientology newspaper, reported that
a total of 16,849 people had reached this marvelous state by the
middle of 1979.
Perhaps Scientology's claims are true, and these legions really have attained a supernormal level of mental functioning and emotional health. But there are good reasons for doubting the testimonials of even 16,849 Scientologists. First, other techniques based on tested principles of behavioral science cannot produce a state like clear. Second, controlled, scientific studies verifying the characteristics claimed for clears have not flooded the standard journals. Third, although Scientologists have created a vigorous religious movement, they have not taken charge of major secular institutions as true supermen and superwomen could. Fourth, reports by independent observers (including one of us) who have interacted with clears do not convey the impression that clears are markedly superior people. Of course, alternate explanations exist for each of these four points, but they render plausible the view that the claims for clear are false and raise the question of how thousands of individuals could be seriously mistaken about their own abilities.
This chapter offers an analysis explaining how people might agree they had indeed gone clear without a significant real change in their objective abilities or even in their subjective state. Although inspired by six months' participant observation inside the cult and by a large body of literature by and about Hubbard's movement, this chapter is theoretical rather than ethnographic. Our central thesis is that clear is not a state of personal development at all, but a social status conferring honor within the cult's status system and demanding certain kinds of behavior from the person labeled clear. Such externally demonstrable qualities as good memory and high IQ may have nothing to do with it. Although our theory of clear is designed to explain acceptance of this status within Scientology, it might be adapted to explain a variety of similar statuses of alleged personal perfection, such as salvation in fundamentalist Christianity and satori in Zen.
Hubbard first described clear in an article in the May 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. He began by discussing "the optimum brain," modeled on "the optimum computing machine." Hinting that his readers might personally acquire an optimum brain, he said, "modified by viewpoint and educational data, it should be always right, its answers never wrong" (Hubbard, 1950a:46). A calculator can give wrong answers if, for example, a constant five is added to every computation because of false programming. To restore the calculator's mathematical perfection, we need only clear the five. To restore perfect functioning to any intact human brain, we need only clear false programming acquired in the owner's past experiences. The task of Dianetics, as Hubbard called his early techniques, was to develop the right procedures for successful clearing. In the bible of his cult, Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health, Hubbard's (1950b:30) claims for clear were extremely optimistic.
A clear can be tested for any and all psychoses, neuroses, compulsions and repressions (all aberrations) and can be examined for any autogenic (self-generated) diseases referred to as psycho-somatic ills. These tests confirm the clear to be entirely without such ills or aberrations. Additional tests of his intelligence indicate to [sic] it to be high above the current norm. Observation of his activity demonstrates that he pursues existence with vigor and satisfaction.
The sense perceptions of a clear are said to be more vivid and precise than those of a preclear, a neophyte still working to go clear. The clear is unrepressed.
A clear does not have any "mental voices"! He does not think vocally. He thinks without articulation of his thoughts and his thoughts are not in voice terms.... Clears do not get colds.... A clear ... has complete recall of everything which has ever happened to him or anything he has ever studied. He does mental computations, such as those of chess, for example, which a normal would do in half an hour, in ten or fifteen seconds.... The dianetic clear is to a current normal individual as the current normal is to the severely insane. (Hubbard, 1950b:38,101,107,179,15)
In 1950, Hubbard thought that clears might be produced in short order; yet the movement now says that the first member did not go clear until early 1966 (Hubbard, 1968b:111). Apparently, it took this long for Hubbard to develop the social mechanisms to establish and defend clear status. He developed innumerable rules, procedures, and doctrines over these years; but our theory conceptualizes them in terms of four main interdependent strategies: (1) prohibition of independent creation and evaluation of clears, (2) development of a hierarchy of statuses below clear, (3) isolation of the preclear at the crucial stage in upward progress, (4) development of a hierarchy of statuses above clear. Running throughout these is the theme of costs and rewards -- for the committed Scientologist, failing to achieve clear is extremely costly, but the apparently ever-increasing rewards to be gained rising through the ranks cannot be obtained outside the Scientology organization. We will examine the strategies, in turn, as Scientology employed them in the 1970s.
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