10 Things We Learned From Scientology Doc ‘Going Clear’
Last night, HBO aired Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Alex Gibney’s documentary exposé of the Church of Scientology and its founder, science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. While much of the information contained within the film isn’t technically new (especially since the doc is based on executive producer Lawrence Wright’s book of the same name), it does forcefully, brutally put faces to many of the stories, and assembles a meticulous, damning case against the church. The organization had taken aggressive action to counterattack (including a full-page ad in The New York Times) after the movie’s premiere at Sundance last January, and now that the film has finally aired on the cable channel, they’re likely to go on the offensive as a whole new audience begins to discuss some of the Scientology’s more terrifying, disturbing practices. Here are 10 of Going Clear‘s biggest talking points.
1. L. Ron Hubbard’s life was built on a series of lies and bullying
Though much of Scientology’s early doctrine revolved around Hubbard having been cured of wounds and illnesses during his military service, the actual records paint a different story, suggesting that he only suffered from “mild arthritis and conjunctivitis.” He went on to use the threat of suicide to bully his second wife, Sara Northrup, into marrying him; the film recounts an incident when Hubbard violently woke her up for smiling in her sleep, which was allegedly indicative that she was thinking about another man. He later kidnapped their daughter, Alexis, and repeatedly claimed that he had hacked her into pieces before returning the still-alive child — only to take all of the couple’s money preceding their divorce.
2. Hubbard sent letters about Dianetics to the American Psychological Association
The religion’s early documents had a foundation of psychological concepts, such as the idea of “going clear,” based on a proposed distinction between separate halves of the brain. Yet as much as Hubbard claimed Scientology wasn’t a form of psychiatry or psychology, and even as the church eventually took the mental health professions to be its enemy, Hubbard sought validation from those some people, sending materials about the book to the American Psychological Association. But authorities took the work to be “psychological folk art” and dismissed it as “a passing fad, like the hula hoop,” suggesting a possible part of the reason for Hubbard’s later vehement disdain rage at the profession.