Re: Cult memes and endorphins

From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Fri 02 Apr 2004 - 05:14:09 GMT

  • Next message: Scott Chase: "Re: Cult memes and endorphins"

    At 10:19 PM 01/04/04 -0500, you wrote:
    >Keith:
    >
    >How does a psychogalvonometer result in an endorphin release itself?

    There are people (Arnie Lerma and a few others) who think that the small electrical current that runs through the cans the victim grips cause endorphin release. I doubt it myself

    >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.

    The auditing process focuses intense attention on the subject with intense emotional interactions. Anyone who has come off a speaker's platform higher than a kite after giving a speech and being the focus of attention knows the feeling of endorphin dump.

    snip

    >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.

    Hubbard stole stuff from all over. This is the first time though that I had any idea that Jung used something similar.

    >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superceded by the EEG, PET and fMRI.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?

    Not that I know about. They use long check lists for some "processes."

    Keith Henson

    =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri 02 Apr 2004 - 05:23:20 GMT