Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [95]
This was the culture the Church of Scientology found itself in after L. Ron Hubbard went into hiding and David Miscavige, having never experienced the "wog world" in any substantive way, began his ascent to power. Jeff Hawkins, who'd joined Scientology at the peak of its hippy-dippy era, was now charged, as head of strategic marketing, with selling the church to a new generation. With the approval of L. Ron Hubbard, and with the help of outside consultants, including a former creative executive from the ad agency Chiat/Day, Hawkins set about devising a strategy that would remove the word Scientology altogether from many promotions and replace it with what he and others saw as a safer substitute: Dianetics. This term, having died a quiet death in the 1950s, was unfamiliar to the population at large, making it the perfect name for a product that could be shaped to fit the current cultural moment and, Hawkins hoped, signify a new beginning for the movement.
To sell this new Dianetics, which was still Scientology, but with different packaging, Hawkins and his marketing team conducted national surveys. They discovered that what had worked in the 1960s and early 1970s—promoting Hubbard's ideas as a form of spiritual enlightenment, or alternatively, as rebellion against the status quo—would not work in the go-go 1980s. What might capture potential converts, they found, was promoting the philosophy as a form of self-improvement and, for those in need of it, "recovery" from the various indulgences of the past. This fit neatly with the entire premise of Dianetics, which had always been marketed as a set of techniques to increase physical and psychological health, self-confidence, and success.
The pitch Hawkins came up with, a promotion that would ultimately put the book Dianetics on the New York Times Best-Seller List, was "Invest in Yourself." The campaign kicked off in 1982. Over the next five or six years, as leaders were purged and longtime members departed Scientology in disillusionment, tens of thousands of new people were drawn into it through books on Dianetics, self-improvement seminars, and one-on-one evangelism. One of these new converts was a smart, assertive, impressionable young woman named Lisa McPherson.
Lisa was the younger of two children raised by Jim McPherson, an insurance salesman, and his wife, Fannie, a homemaker. Born in Dallas, Texas, she grew up in a middle-class neighborhood on the northeastern side of the city, where she was a popular, diligent student and a member of the drill team. Lisa was also pretty, with wavy light brown hair, a curvaceous figure, and a vivacity that typically made her the center of attention. Acquaintances recalled her as "fearless" when it came to making friends, a person who could start a conversation with anybody.
Lisa's outward joie de vivre masked a host of insecurities, however. As the daughter of alcoholics, she had endured a rocky childhood. Her mother often took her first drink at ten in the morning and continued imbibing throughout the day: more than once, Lisa would come home from school to find her mother passed out, sometimes wearing only her underwear. "I hated her for always being a drunk," Lisa later wrote.* But she rarely confronted her mother for fear of what she might do. Fannie was prone to drunken rages. "She let loose on me, not spanking but hitting," Lisa wrote.
This abuse also traumatized Lisa's older brother, Steve, who committed suicide when he was sixteen. Lisa, then fourteen, was devastated, and turned to sex and drugs to mask her anguish. Over the next several years, Lisa led an accomplished double life: maintaining a good-girl exterior while drinking, smoking pot, and, by her own admission, sleeping with virtually