E-meter
[2][3][4] Since then, the Church of Scientology publishes disclaimers declaring that the E-Meter "by itself does nothing", is incapable of improving health, and is used solely for spiritual purposes.
I next attended a series of lectures being given by a very controversial figure, who several times emphasized that perhaps the major problem of psychotherapy was the difficulty of maintaining the communication of accurate or valid data from the patient to the therapist.
Wrote Hubbard: "Yesterday, we used an instrument called an E-Meter to register whether or not the process was still getting results so that the auditor would know how long to continue it.
[22]The Scientology meter was smaller, based on transistors rather than vacuum tubes, and powered by a low-voltage rechargeable battery rather than line voltage.
[29] Religion scholar Dorthe Refslund Christensen describes the e-meter as "a technical device that could help the auditor locate engrams and areas of change when auditing a preclear".
[30] Scientologists claim that in the hands of a trained operator, the meter can indicate whether a person has been relieved from the spiritual impediment of past experiences.
[31] In accordance with a 1974 federal court order, the Church of Scientology asserts that the E-meter is intended for use only in church-sanctioned auditing sessions; it is not a curative or medical device.
[39] Similar devices have been used as research tools in many human studies and as one of several components of the Leonarde Keeler's polygraph (lie detector) system, which has been widely criticized as ineffective and pseudoscientific by legal experts and psychologists.
The dial face is without numbers because the absolute resistance in ohms is relatively unimportant, while the operator watches primarily for characteristic needle motions.
[52] A simple E-meter powered by direct current, such as that used by the Scientologists and the like, displays several kinds of electrodermal activity (EDA) on the one dial without distinction, including changes in resistance and bioelectric potential.
[53] The E-Meter, measuring variations in electrodermal activity (which can be highly responsive to emotion[54]), functions on the same physiological data sources as one of the parts of the polygraph, or "lie detector".
[55] One account tells about Hubbard using the E-meter to determine whether or not fruits can experience pain, as in his 1968 assertion that tomatoes "scream when sliced".
[59][60] They propose an additional mechanism termed the "Tarchanoff Response", through which the cerebral cortex of the brain affects the current directly.
[62] In 1958, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seized and destroyed 21,000 Dianazene tablets from Hubbard's Distribution Center Inc., charging that they were falsely labeled as a treatment for radiation sickness.
[63][64][65] On January 4, 1963, in service of an FDA complaint, more than 100 US marshals and deputized longshoremen with drawn guns[66] raided the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C., and confiscated more than three tons of property,[10]: 135 including 5,000 books, 2,900 booklets, and several hundred E-meters.
[2]: 1151 [67] The FDA accused the Church of making false medical claims that the E-meters could treat physical and mental illnesses.
In the first trial beginning on April 3, 1967, the jury found that the Church misrepresented the E-meter, and the judge ordered the confiscated materials destroyed.
[10]: 136 [70] However, in 1969 the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed the verdict; the Church, it said, had made substantial showing that Scientology is a religion and the government had done nothing to rebut the claim.
[70] The US Court of Appeals wrote: [The Founding Church has] made no attempt to contradict the expert testimony introduced by the Government.
They have culled from their literature numerous statements disclaiming any intent to treat disease and recommending that Scientology practitioners send those under their care to doctors when organic defects may be found.
They have introduced through testimony a document which they assert all those who undergo auditing or processing must sign which states that Scientology is "a spiritual and religious guide intended to make persons more aware of themselves as spiritual beings, and not treating or diagnosing human ailments of body or mind, and not engaged in the teaching of medical arts or sciences * * *.
[71][72] The FDA appealed the decision, but in 1969, the US Supreme Court declined to review the case, commenting only that "Scientology meets the prima facie test of religion".
[73] In his 1973 judgment, District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell ruled that:Hubbard and his fellow Scientologists developed the notion of using an E-Meter to aid auditing.
An individual processed with the aid of the E-Meter was said to reach the intended goal of 'clear' and was led to believe that there was reliable scientific proof that once cleared many, indeed most, illnesses would successfully be cured.
[74]Judge Gesell also ordered the Church to pay all the government's legal fees and warehousing costs for the confiscated property for the nine years of litigation.
This plaintiff claimed that, after being audited with the device, she was encouraged to pay tens of thousands of euros for vitamins, books, and courses to improve her condition.
In 1964, the government of Victoria, Australia, held a Board of Inquiry into Scientology which returned its findings in a document colloquially known as the Anderson Report.
[4] The final report of the inquiry stated that the E-meter enabled Scientology to assume, intensify and retain control over the minds and wills of preclears.
Bob Thomas, senior executive of the Church of Scientology in the United States, described the E-meter ... "Some very early work on this was done by Jung, who used a list of words.
This test has actually been made and an increase of as much as thirty pounds, actually measured on scales, has been added to, and subtracted from, a body by creating "mental energy".
