Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [97]
Barnes and other staff members laid out their case. What was best for Lisa, they said, was for her to stay in the church and handle the situation with her husband, who was quite clearly a Suppressive Person. To make sure that Lisa understood just what that term meant, Barnes sat her down with Scientology's Technical Dictionary to look up its definition, directing her to Hubbard's statement that a Suppressive Person would "automatically and immediately ... curve any betterment activity into something evil or bad." The implication was that Don Boss fell into this category, and what was truly dangerous, Lisa was told, was that being connected to such a person made her a Potential Trouble Source, or PTS, which was someone susceptible to all kinds of physical and psychological illnesses. To lead a happier life, Lisa would have to free herself from Boss's suppression—and any other suppressive forces in her life—by either changing his mind about Scientology or disconnecting from him altogether.
Over the next several months, Lisa underwent a PTS Handling, a program Hubbard designed for members who are "roller coastering," or experiencing ups and downs or simply having doubts of one sort or another. She searched deep within herself to find her own flaws, and during the spring of 1982, she wrote extensive confessions—known as "overt/withhold write-ups." In these reports, she noted every sexual dalliance, flirtation, or "perverted" thought or act she'd ever committed, and with whom: pool boys, neighbors, friends of her brother's, a cousin of her husband's.
Prompted by Greg Barnes, Lisa also wrote an affidavit attesting to Boss's criminal history. "I was never informed as to exactly what was said [to him]," Lisa later recalled. "[But] the next time he phoned [the mission], one of his crimes was read off to him and he never contacted the mission again." After a year of this work, Lisa disconnected from Don, and the couple divorced. "Lisa was in an abusive relationship and we basically helped her end it," said Barnes.
Now liberated, Lisa was determined to follow the path toward self-improvement. Her first step was to enroll in a course whose purpose was to teach students how to study; according to her Scientologist friends, it would enable her to learn anything with ease. Lisa had always done well in school, but L. Ron Hubbard wrote that even the best students often didn't fully grasp what they were studying. They might find they'd read an entire page, or even an entire book chapter, without remembering it. They might suffer headaches or feel tired. While many people attributed this to boredom or distraction, Hubbard explained that all of these symptoms, and many others, were caused by three distinct blocks: the "lack of mass," or absence of physical examples to illustrate the subject being studied; "too steep a gradient," or moving to the next phase of study before the previous stage had been mastered, which could result in the feeling of being overwhelmed; and "the misunderstood word."
Originally conceived of in the 1960s by Charles and Ava Berner, Scientologists and teachers in California, "study technology" was co-opted and launched by Hubbard as his own during a series of lectures he delivered at Saint Hill in 1964. Over the years, it would become Scientology's main form of indoctrination and a central facet of the church's ongoing strategy to use what, in a mainstream context, might seem valuable, or even progressive,* to draw people deeper into Scientology's alternative universe. It was based on three principles: students learn at their own pace, use physical