Notice: Fredric Rice may have removed segments of the replies given to questions if they contained copyrighted materials. After a very short while, Scientology "experts" refused to answer questions and started cut-and-pasting copyrighted cult propaganda. Additionally I removed URLs in some of the replies, and left them in others. And it's also important to note that eventually the unfortunate "Greg Churilov" cultist was ejected from askme.com for his typical Scientological behavior.

1uglyhombre asked this question on 5/8/2000:

Thank you all for the answers so far. Yes I am working on a thesis for "Abnormal Psychology" and it has been far more work than I thought it would be. I have been working on Scientology for over a year, and nearly every day I've applied at least one hour. The more I learn, the more I discover how much more I need to learn.

My thesis concerns how mental illness can be "passed on" from a leader to a group of followers affectively, and to what extend genetics plays in "preparing" a person to "accept" that illness as their own. My hypothesis is that some people are born with less tolerance to affective mental illness and thus take on a leader's mental illnesses, while most people who are not genetically prone will not do so.

If I make myself too much of a pest here, please let me know. I've done most of my research elsewhere, but I see this forum as an excellent opportunity to "fill in the holes."

And now a question (smiling). Is there a web site that contains a rough number on how many Scientologists out of a population of Scientologists will go what they call "PTS3?" That is, given 100 Scientologists, how many will be driven insane or otherwise show signs of mental illness. I actually have a lot of data on this, but it comes from a source I am not too confident in.

Thank you for your time.

honorarykid gave this response on 5/9/2000:

I don't know that anyone would have any statistics on this point, and the raw data would seem to only be available from the CoS. I suspect they would not be willing to share that data with you.

In my five years of opposing the political misdeeds of Scientology, I have heard of several Scientologists going (pardon the medical terminology, here) "nuts" with a variety of symptoms.

Jarius Godeka was a sad, pathetic wretch who walked into the Portland org a few years back and started shooting. He wounded four, but one of those four was permanently paralyzed.

Lisa McPherson of course went psychotic within weeks of attesting to being "Cleared." The rest of her story is well-known.

There was a Scientologist au-pair in one of the low countries in Europe (Denmark?) who suddenly killed the two children she was watching.

A Scientologist guy in Southern California was arrested after being pulled over and a load of bomb-making materials were found in his van. It sounded like he was not altogether in his right mind.

There have been some suicides and the like, one of which led to some Scientologists being convicted in France for fraudulent practices.

If we used Scientology type selectiveness in examining these cases, we might be tempted to conclude that Scientology drove these people crazy.

But as satisfying as such a conclusion might be to some of us, I would urge everyone to avoid immediately assuming that Scientology indoctrination was the only factor or the causal factor.

It's possible, of course, but it's also possible that it is not a factor or only a minor factor. Scientology might simply attract people that have a higher tendency to do these kinds of things, or maybe Scientologists do these things in the same proportions as the rest of the population.

The sociological impacts of Scientology indoctrination appears to be harmful, according to trained psychologists and psychiatrists such as Margaret Singer and James Lifton, but there is a lot to debate, and lot that we do not yet understand. We do not have a true scientific understanding of the risks of Scientology hypnosis.

Of course, any organization claiming to be the most ethical group on the planet, would probably share their PTS Type III data with researchers, and endeavor to understand if their processes were causing undue stress on their own members. That Scientology and the CoS would likely be hostile to anyone researching this issue, says a lot about their true ethics (or lack thereof).

I think there is plenty to oppose in Scientology, without needing to believe that Scientology drives it's own members crazy. I think there is much to rightly oppose, just from observing its "healthy" members, and their operant inculcation into a totalitarian, Orwellian mindset.

Further facts about this criminal empire may be found at Operation Clambake and FACTNet.

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