From "The Three Faces of Eve", Thigpen and Cleckey, 1957 (p. 137): "If learned people in our own time can gather and, through the nonsensical rites of dianetics (sic), work themselves into the conviction that they have recaptured memories from previous existences before the birth of Christ, how could we be confident that our own interest and enthusiasm had not contributed a great deal to what we seemed to be observing?" "The Three Faces of Eve" is one of the most famous clinical studies of multiple personality disorder. In this passage, the authors discuss the suspicion that their own bias coupled with the growing prevalence of psychiatric "pseudo science" could be producing or affecting the manifestations of multiple personalities in the patient, Eve White. Prefaced by a quote from Bernheim, "when a physician employs hypnosis with a patient it is wise always to be aware of who may be hypnotizing whom", the passage indicates that most practitioners of science or pseudoscience color the proceedings merely by their own subliminal emotional cues to the patient. In the case of Dianetics as practiced by the book at that time, the auditor by movement or changes in vocal tone involuntarily indicates approval to the preclear, causing him or her to try to augment the phenomenon that produced the response. The converse applies with disapproval when the preclear acts unfavorably. This implies not conscious fraud but only the fallacy inherent in all such methods of analysis. The dianeticist of that time, working from a book and not having years of schooling behind him, was probably more prone to this fallacy than others. Presumably the TR courses are meant to prevent this; however, it is impossible to rid oneself fully of reaction. Plus, the shallowness of affect displayed by those who have completed the TR courses can be compared to that shown by schizophrenics and sociopaths. -- Lianna Skywalker
http://freespeech.org/liannaskywalker

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