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us 08
---
title: "Understanding Scientology — us-08"
source: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-08.html
retrieved: 2026-06-28
---
Understanding Scientology, by Margery
Wakefield
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Chapter 8
## The Language of Scientology -- ARC, SPs, PTPs and BTs
The language of the totalist environment is characterized by
the thought-terminating cliche. The most far-reaching and complex of
human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive,
definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed.
These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. In
thought reform, for instance, the phrase "bourgeois mentality" is used
to encompass and critically dismiss ordinarily troublesome concerns like
the quest for individual expression, the exploration of alternative
ideas, and the search of perspective and balance ... (loaded language
is) the "language of non-thought."
-- Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, by
Robert Jay Lifton
Two Scientologists meet on the street.
"How're you doing?" one asks the other.
"Well, to tell you the truth, I've been a bit out ruds because of a
PTP with my second dynamic because of some bypassed charge having to do
with my MEST at her apartment. When I moved in I gave her an R-factor
and I thought we were in ARC about it, but lately she seems to have gone
a bit PTS so I recommended she see the MAA at the AO to blow some charge
and get her ethics in. He gave her a review to F/N and VGIs but she did
a roller coaster, so I think there's an SP somewhere on her lines. I
tried to audit her myself but she had a dirty needle and BIs and was
acting really 1.1 so I finally sent her to Qual to spot the entheta on
her lines. Other than that, everything's fine..."
There is not a Scientologist anywhere to whom this paragraph would
not make perfect sense. Like a secret code, the language of Scientology
helps members to identify and bond with each other, and creates an
invisible but effective boundary between the cult and the world
"outside."
There are many cults which use the loaded language described by
Lifton -- the language of non-thought -- but there is probably no other
cult in which the manipulation of the cult member through language is
achieved as completely or with as much sophistication as in Scientology.
As anyone in the advertising world knows, if you want to control a
person's behavior, you must first control their thought. Hubbard did
this in Scientology through the prolific propaganda in written
bulletins, tapes and films to which members are constantly exposed.
But a more subtle form of thought control was achieved by Hubbard
through the creation of a new language -- "Scientologese" -- used and
understood only within the cult.
How is thought restricted by the language in Scientology? In several
ways. Many of the new words are formed by changing the part of speech of
an existing word, usually from a verb or adjective into a noun. The
nouns used in Scientology have black and white, concrete meanings; there
are no shades of grey in the Scientology vocabulary.
Scientology makes extensive use of acronyms and abbreviations, but
modifiers are almost nonexistent; one could probably exist for ten years
in Scientology without ever using an adverb or adjective.
Most nouns in Scientology have only one meaning; gone are the
variegated definitions and idiomatic uses of regular English nouns. Many
of the terms in Scientology have come from the computer and engineering
fields and have precise definitions which leave little to the
imagination. When common English words are given a new meaning in
Scientology, the older and multiple meanings have been dropped in favor
of a single, concrete Scientology meaning.
Hubbard was fond of transforming verbs -- words of action -- into
more static nouns. Examples:
"Assist" -- which means to help, becomes "an assist," one of the
auditing processes of Scientology, e.g., "Would you like me to give you
an assist?"
The verb "to be" is turned into a noun in the Scientology word
"beingness." Similarly transformed are "doingness," "havingness,"
"knowingness," "rightness," "wrongness," "livingness," and "isness."
The "between lives implant," a noun, comes from the English verb "to
implant."
The verb "to confront" becomes a noun, "confront," e.g., "Doing
training routines will increase a person's confront."
The verb "to motivate" becomes a noun in "motivator," e.g., "Bill
pulled in a motivator when he had his accident."
"To postulate" becomes a noun in the Scientology word "postulate,"
e.g., "I have a postulate that I will win the lottery."
Even the word "clear" in Scientology has been transformed into a
noun from the adjective of the same name.
Other Scientology nouns deriving from English verbs and adjectives
are: "basic," "fall," "rise," "secondary," "overt," "overrun,"
"randomity," "processing," "read," "release," "review," and "static."
As an example of how thought is restricted in these
English-to-Scientologese transformations, the word "clear" in English