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---
title: "Understanding Scientology — us-a2"
source: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-a2.html
retrieved: 2026-06-28
---
Understanding Scientology, by Margery
Wakefield
- Previous
## A New Face of Evil
## Essays by Bob Penny
Scientology represents itself publicly as a dedicated group of
people trying to do something effective to improve the world. It may
seem to be just another self-help or community action group, or perhaps
just another bunch of nuts. None of these images is accurate.
Scientology is an unusual and dangerous kind of money-making
machine. It represents L. Ron Hubbard's best efforts to find a
social niche where his machine's uniquely predatory activities could be
hidden from public view. That is why this money-making enterprise was
set up as a "religion." Scientology has also tried to elude governmental
jurisdictions by operating at sea and more recently on an Indian
reservation in Oklahoma. The operation is divided into compartments so
that even loyal members will not know the nature of activities carried
out elsewhere in the organization. Much that was revealed in the June,
1990 Los Angeles Times, for example, was a shock to many
Scientologists who truly knew nothing about the deceptive, coercive and
illegal activities which are and always have been an integral part of
their "church."
For whatever reasons, many people in our world are desperate to
believe in something. Common sense can easily take a back seat to
hopeful desire and wishful thinking; there is nothing new about a fool
and his money being parted. That is not news.
What is new, is the emergence of large-scale organizations,
using modern social science and business management methods, at least
partially hidden from public accountability, designed to systematically
exploit the weaknesses of troubled people and profit from them
financially.
The prevalence of psychics, "channeling," and countless other "New
Age" scams suggests that Americans have a large budget for fraud and are
quite willing to spend money on unrequited hope. So this is not just a
question of money. The problem, rather, is that Scientology is
actively harmful to its participants, their families, and to the
society at large.
To achieve large-scale recruitment and exploitation, and to enable
continuance of such activity, the cult must avoid a public outcry.
The victims must be silenced. The new
wholesale-exploitation organizations accomplish this by manipulating
their victims (with what has been called "mind control") so they acquire
complicity in their own exploitation and become supportive of the
exploiter.
At first glance this may sound unlikely or outrageous. But recall
that battered women are notoriously loyal to their abusers, and often
cling desperately to the hope that everything will change and come out
for the best. A primary task of battered woman shelters and support
groups is to break through this denial and help the woman face the fact
that the abuser is in fact doing what he is doing. From there, recovery
is possible.
The same psychological mechanisms that create loyalty in a battered
woman, deliberately instilled, can make a cult victim loyal to the cult.
Psychological manipulation at that level has evolved in recent decades,
based on postWar research in social psychology, communist experiments in
coercive "re-education," plus America's good old "Elmer Gantry"
tradition. Your typical college freshman hasn't got a chance. With the
victim thus made into a smiling captive, his exploitation can continue
indefinitely.
The result of this transformation is a person psychologically unable
to face basic facts of his or her own life. To evade unwanted truth, the
person must seek refuge ever more deeply and exclusively in the
exploitive group -- the only place where the shared lies and actual
degradation will go unquestioned.
To preserve this vampirish relationship, fortunes are squandered,
careers destroyed, educations abandoned, families torn apart, medical or
psychological help neglected -- and the person deprived of the true
rewards of life which are his or her just due.
There is no automatic or foolproof way out of this trap. The diverse
life experience which ordinarily leads us from one situation to another
is shut off or devalued in the one-dimensional cult environment.
"Psychological kidnapping" is not yet recognized as a crime by our
legal system; it is instead the desperate parent who spirits away an
adult child who may be judged guilty of a crime. The person imprisoned
by "psychological kidnapping" -- like the battered woman -- may remain
imprisoned for life.
This is harmful.
Not a familiar situation to most Americans -- like AIDS or child
abuse, it is not pleasant to look at. We would rather not see such
things or admit that our peaceful world contains them. But today,
Scientology is running ads (for Dianetics) on nationwide TV and
full-page public relations ads in USA Today. Derivative front
groups such as Sterling Management are recruiting for Scientology with a