Blog: Congruence - 2014-09-06
Congruence September 6, 2014,
Excerpt from upcoming book Clear and Beyond:
The fundamental two-way communication process that all scientology methodology derives its workability from existed before L. Ron Hubbard ever wrote a word on the subject of the mind. All of its components were developed, far beyond the degree of sophistication that scientology ever treated them, while Hubbard was still engaged in black magik rituals in Pasadena. They were perhaps best explained and demonstrated in Rogerian client-centered therapy. It would behoove scientologists to study of it. The best place to start would be On Becoming a Person by Carl R. Rogers (Houghton Mifflin, 1961).
What made Hubbard popular initially with publication of Dianetics was his simplifying and codifying critical principles of client-centered therapy thus potentially opening the process of self-actualization to far more people. Hubbard himself has acknowledged that Dianetics' fad-like initial appeal rested largely on the promise of taking therapy out of the hands of professionals and putting it into the living rooms of lay people. Much of that particular appeal was lost as dianetics and its progeny scientology became more mass-production oriented, expensive, exclusive, and cult-like. Not surprisingly, those negative developments can be traced to dianetics' and scientology's attempts to short-cut vital client-centered therapy principles in the first place.