Is Scientology Really the Worst Cult Ever? A myth Resurfaces

The myth that Scientology is the worst cult ever has recently resurfaced in the form of an interview given by one of the people who was instrumental in starting this myth in the first place. In an interview with Rush PR News, one of the authors of the book, Snapping, Jim Siegelman, made the pronouncement that:

Siegelman and his wife have studied cults for over 20 years. He contends that Scientology has the worst long term effects. “People who come out of this group report to us very high levels of amnesia, memory loss, of insomnia, of disorientation, of hallucinations and delusions, of perceptions of bewildering psychic experiences that will plague them…for up to 12 years after they leave the group.”

In the way of background, Conway has a PhD in Communications and Siegelman has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Harvard. Neither have mental health degrees. But I am not contesting this with an argument from authority. Here are the substantive problems I have with their assertions:

Just what is this assertion based on? Conway & Siegelman conducted a study nearly 30 years ago, using a convenience sample of former cult members. This study was never published in any peer reviewed journal; it was published in a popular science magazine Science Digest and later in their book Snapping. Besides being nearly 30 years old, the sampling methods of this study, as well as the author's lack of valid assessment measures for mental health problems claimed, precludes any such conclusion being made.

Although they describe the survey study as "sweeping" in their book, the study actually consisted of 353 (out of 1000 invited to participate) participants who were all former members of cults, recruited into the study mostly from anti-cult organizations, deprogrammers, therapists and the like. The sample consisted of ex-members from 48 different cults. Only 33 were Ex-Scientologists. They report they got more detailed information from 98 participants, so the number of ex-Scns in that group would have been even smaller.

But there are even more fundamental problems with this study. The sample was drawn from people who had been in contact with organizations that fought cults or people who were in therapy for their cult experience, who would likely be more dissatisfied and perhaps suffering more than those who did not contact such organizations or seek help.

73% of the participants were deprogrammed out of their cults, but 75% of the sample of ex-Scientologists had walked out on their own and later contacted anti-cult organizations.
How were the symptoms assessed for? By the self-report of the respondents. That is not to discount self-reports entirely, but the fact is that we do not know if any of the symptoms reported reached diagnosable levels. For instance, many people might describe themselves as feeling "depressed" but that doesn't mean that they suffer from clinical depression. A recognized assessment such as the Beck Depression Inventory would need to be used in order to determine that.

Perhaps the most ludicrous assertion is that people who were in Scientology suffered from "amnesia". Tell that to people like Margery Wakefield, John Duignan, and the many other ex-Scientologists who have written and videoed very detailed accounts of their time in Scientology and those details were often being told of events that had transpired 20-30 years ago. Here is a 16 part YouTube series of Duignan's detailed recollections over the past 22 years and he is not unusual at all. Duignan's account is particularly interesting, though, because in his book he reports that he had a history of problems with dissociation before he ever got involved in Scientology and he reported classic symptoms of dissociation while he was in. If anyone would be amnestic, according to dissociative disorders theories, he would, and yet this did not seem to impact his ability to recall with great detail his experience, as the YouTube videos and his book illustrate.

While nobody's memory is perfect and all such accounts are fallible, one thing the many people who have come forward with detailed accounts (many more than were in the aforementioned study) are not is amnestic. Apparently, Conway and Siegelman are not aware of all the literature that has accumulated throughout the 90s and 2000s, that discredits the myth that people who suffer from trauma have amnesia. Trauma is usually very well remembered, although another problem with this is that not everyone in cults suffered from events that could be classified as "trauma" per the DSM definition of PTSD. People in cults might very well be like what has been discovered in recent studies about people who suffered the milder forms of sexual abuse as children: at the time they experienced the events, they did not feel upset or traumatized. It was only after the experiences when they came to have a different understanding of them, that they then, in retrospect felt traumatized. Some children do not understand that they were being subject to abuse at the time it happened, but later come to fully realize the horror of what was done to them. Many people in groups considered to be cults, might actually feel euphoric at the time they are having the experiences but later after they get out, view the experiences as abusive. But that's another topic.

What was the basis for their conclusion that ex-Scientologists suffer from amnesia? Here is a quote from Snapping that gives us some clue as to how they came to this:

A woman emerged from the Church of Scientology with near-total amnesia: "I woke up in horror and realized that I had been shut off, sleeping mentally, for six and a half years, since the first day of doing the cult exercises." (p. 192)

Near total amnesia? There is no way to know if this person had been speaking metaphorically and there is no report that her memory was ever tested. This is a rather typical report of an ex-member who has read about certain symptoms ex-cult members reportedly suffer from and then describes the experience as being "mentally asleep". Does that mean she couldn't remember if asked to tell about her experiences? This is highly doubtful given that this same person supposedly just responded to their detailed survey about her experiences in the group. If she really blanked out 6 and a half years, that would be highly unusual if not unheard of and would fly in the face of all we now now about memory and trauma. I have known literally thousands of people who have been in Scientology and not once have I ever met anyone with "near total" or even partial amnesia for their experiences (amnesia being the inability to recall experiences, even when cued -- it does not mean the normal kinds of gaps we all have in our experiences or forgetting of details). Was there normal forgetting? Of course. Nobody has perfect recall of everything that goes on in any experience because the mind is not a video recorder.

Another point to keep in mind is that at that time (early 80s), ex-cult members in contact with anti-cult organizations seemed to be feeding off one another, each one telling a horror story that was worse than the next. The social demand characteristics were high, to say the least.
Also, with regard to ex-Scientologists self-reporting the most symptoms that is not surprising. When Scientologists have Scientology/Dianetic auditing, they are trained to report symptoms (pains, sensations, emotions, and attitudes) in detail to their auditor so perhaps the ex-Scientologists were trained to be more acutely aware of symptoms and reporting them than people from other groups.

They then go on to report the results of several later studies. None showed Scientology as being the worst, but they had similar reports of a variety of symptoms. However what they neglect to mention is that this studies were also done on samples of people who had been in contact with anti-cult organizations, a disproportionate number who had been deprogrammed. The studies of Marc Galanter, Eileen Barker, and others which did not use such samples, did not have all these symptoms. Galanter's studies did report negative symptoms but they reported that they had these symptoms before getting involved in the UC, so we cannot say that the symptoms were caused by the UC. Ditto for Eileen Barker's studies, where only a minority of leavers reported any kind of severe symptoms after leaving.

On the Neuroskeptic blog, on another topic, an excellent analogy is provided:

Suppose that I have some eggs. I want to know whether any of the eggs are rotten. So I put all the eggs in some water, because I know that rotten eggs float. Some of the eggs do float, so I suspect that they're rotten. But then I decide that I also want to know the average weight of my eggs . So I take a handful of eggs within easy reach - the ones that happen to be floating - and weigh them.

Obviously, I've made a mistake. I've selected the eggs that weigh the least (the rotten ones) and then weighed them. They're not representative of all my eggs. Obviously, they will be lighter than the average. Obviously.

The "rotten" eggs are the easiest to grab for samples. But in this case, it is even worse than that because Conway and Siegelman did not even have the bowl (namely, a sampling frame) from which to draw the eggs. There is, of course, no "bowl" of ex-cult members and that is one of the limitations that anyone studying ex-cult members has to deal with. This is a limitation that needs to be kept in mind, even with studies that did use larger samples and standardized assessment methods, but with this study, there is no basis whatsoever to say that Scientology is the worst cult, much less proclaim it to the media, nearly 30 years later.