Constructing a Plan for Survival: Scientology as Cold War Psychology

IF 0.3 3区 哲学 Q2 HISTORY
R. Genter
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

Abstract Developed in the early 1950s by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology was part of the larger postwar therapeutic culture that blended religion and psychology in a search for mental well-being. Unlike contemporaneous self-help gurus such as Norman Vincent Peale and Harry Overstreet, however, Hubbard painted a much bleaker portrait of modern life, one rife with forces of psychological and social control. Railing against communists, homosexuals, and feminists as well as against the decay of the family and the rise of the welfare state, Hubbard argued that Americans suffered from a waning sense of ontological security, living in a world that provided no support for self-identity. Hubbard refused, however, to shrink from such changes and lapse into nostalgia for a pre-modern, pre-technological world like Peale and others did; instead, he offered a way for individuals to appropriate the dynamism of modernity for themselves. As advanced industrialization erased distances between societies, revolutionized transportation, and computerized information systems, Hubbard reimagined the self as spiritual being possessing precisely those powers to manipulate time and space and to remake the world at large. Borrowing freely from Eastern religious ideas, cybernetic theory, and German idealism, Hubbard produced a philosophy that was staunchly libertarian, spiritual, and future-oriented, one that tapped into Cold War fears about psychological manipulation and waning personal autonomy and into dreams about the immanent power of human beings.
构建生存计划:冷战时期的山达基心理学
山达基在20世纪50年代早期由科幻作家l·罗恩·哈伯德发展起来,是战后更大的治疗文化的一部分,它将宗教和心理学融合在一起,寻求精神健康。然而,与诺曼·文森特·皮尔和哈里·奥弗斯特里特等同时代的自助大师不同,哈伯德描绘了一幅更为凄凉的现代生活图景,其中充斥着心理和社会控制的力量。哈伯德抨击共产主义者、同性恋者和女权主义者,反对家庭的衰败和福利国家的兴起,他认为美国人正遭受着本体论安全感的减弱,生活在一个没有为自我认同提供支持的世界里。然而,哈伯德拒绝从这些变化中退缩,并像皮尔和其他人一样陷入对前现代、前技术世界的怀旧之中;相反,他为个人提供了一种利用现代性活力的方式。随着先进的工业化消除了社会之间的距离,革命性的交通和计算机化的信息系统,哈伯德将自我重新想象为拥有操纵时间和空间以及重塑整个世界的能力的精神存在。哈伯德自由地借鉴了东方的宗教思想、控制论和德国的理想主义,创造了一种坚定的自由主义、精神主义和面向未来的哲学,这种哲学利用了冷战时期对心理操纵和个人自主性减弱的恐惧,并融入了对人类内在力量的梦想。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.40
自引率
25.00%
发文量
7
期刊介绍: Religion and American Culture is devoted to promoting the ongoing scholarly discussion of the nature, terms, and dynamics of religion in America. Embracing a diversity of methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives, this semiannual publication explores the interplay between religion and other spheres of American culture. Although concentrated on specific topics, articles illuminate larger patterns, implications, or contexts of American life. Edited by Philip Goff, Stephen Stein, and Peter Thuesen.
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