Scientology’s Tests, Scandals and Mysteries

Credit: Tom Ordelman

With Scientology back in the news with allegations of sexual abuse in Florida, Louis takes a look at how the “new religion” attracts future members

The building is fairly unnoticeable, nestled as it is between a casino and a Pret-a-Manger, just down the road from Goodge Street station. Or at least it would be, were it not for the large gold-on-red letters labelling it as the “Dianetics and Scientology Life Improvement Center”. Just in front, sidewalk boards advertise free stress and “personality analysis” tests, pointing passerbys into the centre. The “test” these boards refer to is the “Oxford Capacity Analysis” test, or OCA for short.

The OCA is a series of 200 questions which the Church of Scientology’s website says “identifies the 10 vital personality traits that influence your entire future”. The test has no link to the University of Oxford. The questions, which can be answered through a web-page or in person, range from the mundane, like “Are you likely to be jealous?” to the strangely specific, like “If we were invading another country, would you feel sympathetic towards conscientious objectors in this country?”. Once the test is finished, testees can choose to attend a follow-up one-on-one meeting with a Scientologist, where their results are explained in detail using a graph.

Ian Haworth is founder of the Cult Information Centre, and he says the consultation nearly always comes to the same conclusion. “It seems to suggest from what I’m told that ‘Ah, you’ve got a problem here where this point of the graph is and did you realise that and we have people who can help you with it’”.

The OCA has been met with skepticism from psychologists, who decry its lack of scientific basis, and been described by others as “arbitrary”, “dangerous” and “highly manipulative”.

These criticisms, along with a series of scandals involving the Church of Scientology, has led some countries to declare Scientology to be a “dangerous cult” and monitor the group through bodies like France’s MIVILUDES, or Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combatting Cultic Deviances. Sarah Harvey is Senior Research Officer for INFORM, a British charity that aims to provide information on minority religions and sects. She says that Britain considers the group differently. “The UK government has a more tolerant approach”, she explains, “there wouldn’t be an overarching group looking at groups which are just labelled as ‘new religions’”.