From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri 02 Apr 2004 - 03:19:47 GMT
Keith:
How does a psychogalvonometer result in an endorphin release itself? I
thought this was a more or less passive device for measuring skin
responses during a given procedure such as auditing in the case of
Scientology. Maybe the auditing methods themselves might help produce a
release of endorphins. I dunno.
During his experiments studying the "feeling-toned complexes" Jung used
the psychogalvanometer as an index of hitting upon a complex. He also
used reaction time to stimulus words. A delay in reaction time or a
certain skin reponse were supposed to be cues that a complex related
"resistance" was triggered. His association method used a word
association test which might have been borrowed from Francis Galton.
Bair's recent biography of Jung gets into some of this word association
method stuff.
In Jung's time the use of the psychogalvonometer may have been more
cutting edge or hight tech than it is today, where functional MRI or PET
scans are state of the art and I'd assume the EEG to be quite a step
beyond skin response itself. I see nothing sinister in Jung's use of
this galvanic measuring technique or the word association method. I'm
not sure if endorphins were released when Jung conducted his
experiments. If so, I wonder if the experimenter-subject rapport had
more to do with it than the galvonometer itself. If Jung tapped into
so-called feeling toned complexes via stimilus words, this might cause
something internal for the subject which could be very crudely indexed
by the galvonometer. Too bad Jung didn't have access to the neuroimaging
technology of our time when conducting hs word association experiments.
Unfortunately he'd probably have needed a heck of a lot more funding to
use these modern techniques of psychological research.
I'm not familiar with Hubbard's techniques for using the
psychogalvonmeter as a measuring tool or what sort of process is
involved in auditing. Whatever it is, it should not reflect negatively
by retrospective association on Jung's use of a similar device roughly a
century ago. Nonetheless, I wonder if it's something in the audting
process that would trigger endorphins, if such is the case, instead of a
relatively passive and innocuous measuring device that has probably been
superceded by the EEG, PET and fMRI.
Does Scientology auditing use word association methods?
attached mail follows:
There are dozens of these accounts on the Usenet group
alt.religion.scientology if anyone ever wants to do a scientific paper on
the subject. Keith Henson
From: name deleted @yahoo 21 March 2004
(posted with permission of author)
Subject: Endorphins and emeters
To: alerma@bellatlantic.net
I would just like to confirm what you have
hypothesized about emeters and endorphins. I was
"into" scientology when I was 19 or 20 years old for
about 6 months, and paid $2,500 for auditing and a
course in "confront." (I quit scientology after 6
monts because I didn't like it, the threats, the
weirdness, etc. And Hubbard, in his picture, to me it
looked like he was smirking derisively after a
while!)I didn't get much out of the confront course,
but after about 15 hours of auditing I got a rather
large "rush" which felt just like when I had been
injected with a morphine based pain killer in the
hospital some months before, durring my recouperation
from a knee surgery. That was about 25 years ago now.
But the thing is, I told them I felt like I was
floating, but not "exterior". They told me that I was
partially exterior. Interestingly, when they had their
little public recruitment speeches, lauding scientolgy
(and such) I recall a claim that drugs make one go
"exterior." Apparently, they have overlooked the
possibility that the emeter doesn't make you go
"exterior" but only releases a drug into your body;
endorphins. I would further hypothesize that the
"processes" concocted by hubbard were designed not to
enlighten or "clear" a person, but to keep the
individual on the emeter until an endorphin rush was
attained (along with providing some hocus-pocus effect
to favorably impress the "PC"). And I further
hypothesize that the processes were designed to elicit
and synchronize an endorphin rush with a proper
"finishing point" for the process. Diabolical! But how
would hubbard have figured this out? Which I am
confident he did. Have you looked into this?
Sincerely,
(name deleted)
http://www.lermanet.com/sources.htm
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For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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