Chris Shelton breaks down wild interview with current Scientologist Katie Lohmann

[Andrew Gold and Katie Lohmann]

[Today’s guest post is by Chris Shelton]

YouTuber Andrew Gold, who has done a lot of Scientology-related content mostly focused around Tom Cruise, was reached out to by a Scientology celebrity named Katie Lohmann. She is a model, actress and most notably, a former Playboy Playmate from April 2001 (it appears the Playmate work was well before she got involved with Scientology).

She is not a high-level Scientologist in that she has not even achieved the state of Clear much less been exposed to any of the OT material. She made the rather shocking admission that she has seen what is on the Internet about Scientology’s Advanced Courses, and I can tell you from my experience that admitting to such a thing may bar her from ever doing them. The Church takes a rather dim view of anyone who is “out-security” with the content of the OT levels or who goes finding out about them before they are ready.

It’s doubtful Katie even knows that much, though, as she hasn’t gotten to the level where Scientology gets real and starts making real demands on your life. She is still in the rainbows-and-butterflies euphoria of someone who honestly feels she was helped and can see nothing wrong with that experience. And of course there isn’t anything wrong with that experience. She just doesn’t want to believe what we all say is coming next.

However, all that aside, Katie is a woman who is familiar with talking on a microphone, putting her best and most positive image forward, and framing her thoughts in such a way that they will come across reasonably well. Given what we have seen in the past from Scientology celebrities such as Jenna “What Are Your Crimes?” Elfman, Katie is a real breath of fresh air from the Scientology camp. Yet for all her good manners and literacy, this interview revealed more about her and Scientology’s nefarious side than she had any intention of showing.

Like the interview Tony got with the OT 7 field auditor a few weeks ago which I discussed in detail in a live stream last week, this interview is another master class in motivated reasoning, which basically just means how people can wrap their mind into a pretzel to make things make sense which don’t, in fact, actually make any sense at all. When someone encounters information that contradicts or somehow nullifies what they already think is true, or feel must be true, then the reasoning part of the brain goes into action to settle the matter and try to keep the belief true. The noise that is created in our heads from this is called cognitive dissonance because it can be quite uncomfortable.

Scientologists have to deal with this a lot because of the nature of Scientology’s beliefs and this is why you hear them say things that make you tilt your head and say,”Wait, wut? How can you possibly think that?” It’s because they have to believe that founder L. Ron Hubbard knows what he’s talking about, that David Miscavige is a great leader who means no harm, and that Tom Cruise is the literal embodiment of all that is good, right, and “OT” about Scientology. Like the fan boys who worship at the altar of Cruise, Scientologists think they too can be just like Tom Cruise if they are good enough, strong enough, and are willing to make any sacrifices they have to in order to realize their dreams. They have no concept of and refuse to acknowledge that pure luck had more to do with Tom Cruise’s rise to fame than his “natural talent” or his willingness to put stuntmen out of a job so he can show off. They believe what they want to about him and facts simply don’t matter.

So how can I say all this awful stuff about Scientologists with such surety? Because if you watch them, they tell you all this themselves, just like Katie Lohman did with interviewer Andrew Gold. And this thing really is a golden view into the headspace of a cult member, one who is quite articulate and level-headed and even reasonable about some points. So let me offer some thoughts I had while watching this and maybe they’ll be of some help in trying to understand how people can let themselves be controlled by an abusive cult without even realizing what’s happening.

First off, it might be of interest to know that Hubbard heavily discouraged regular Scientologists from doing what Katie did in reaching out to Andrew in the first place. For a period of time it was straight up forbidden for Scientologists to talk to the press, but he later changed that and said that they will only print bad news so it was not a fruitful activity and should be left up to Scientology Public Relations officers.

Katie is someone who is curious and obviously intelligent. She has seen the work of critics on television and the Internet and she felt upset that the “other side” was not being represented. This itself is a bit of a scathing commentary on the state of Scientology’s PR and imaging, when Scientologists get so sick of “all the lies” from us ex-members they feel they have to take it upon themselves to offer an interview. Given that there hasn’t been an effective or even remotely likable Scientology PR spokesperson since Mike Rinder escaped in 2007, it makes sense that after 15 years, Scientologists are starting to have more Internet presence now. There has been a recent increase in Scientologists, not just OSA bots, actually stepping up and attacking critics on social media as well. So it may well be that we are seeing a surge of some kind from regular Scientologists, or somehow the word has gotten around within the group that it is OK to go online and attack us critics and make a fuss. Unfortunately for Scientology, it isn’t going to help because Scientologists public-facing policy is “attack, never defend” and a few other gems which all add up to presenting a completely unhinged and even insane perspective about their religion and the facts us critics offer about Scientology’s abuses.

So how did Katie do? Well, pretty poorly judging from the comments to the video, but viewers definitely want more. Why? As one commenter put it, “The more they talk, the more cult activity they reveal.” Or as someone else wrote, “Welp, if I wasn’t 100 percent sure that Scientology wasn’t a cult before, I am 150 percent sure now.” So if Katie was trying to quell the anxiety about her cult and offer a kinder, gentler version of Scientology, she failed miserably.

Her views on psychiatry and therapy almost word-for-word parroted what Hubbard said. The fact is very few Scientologists have any idea what therapy is, how it works or what psychologists and psychiatrists actually do. They imagine that electroshock therapy is still the order of the day, that every psychotropic medication turns people immediately into zombies and that the AMA and APA are strong-arm groups enforcing the will of national governments against their citizens. One doesn’t even have to journey very far along in Scientology to start being spoon fed this nonsense. Since they don’t know much else about it, they think Hubbard knows what he’s talking about. So Katie parrots that “if you go and talk to a therapist, they’re going to try to tell you who you are. In Scientology, you make that discovery.” As someone who has studied therapeutic treatment modalities myself, has interviewed family and cult therapists at length and has received therapy for years, what Katie is describing is simply not true.

In contrast, isn’t it funny that Hubbard’s “Bridge to Total Freedom” is a one-size-fits-all approach where every single person in Scientology must walk through the same series of “gateways to Clear” (the lower Scientology Grades) and the exact same path to Operating Thetan (the OT Levels) no matter their background, experience, personality or desires? Isn’t it kind of odd that every single Scientologist is told (in no uncertain terms) that the “key incidents” of their past consist of things like “the Clam” and “Piltdown Man” and, of course, the universal Xenu narrative? Yet Katie is completely blind to the simple fact that Hubbard (and the Case Supervisors who oversee all Scientology auditing) are dictating at every turn what it is she is going to do in every one of her sessions. She simply cannot connect those dots, but she can make false claims that psychologists are telling their patients who they really are. This is exactly the kind of hypocrisy that lies at the heart of cultic thinking and makes it so difficult to talk rationally with members of totalist groups.

Perhaps one of the most entertaining parts of the interview was when Katie tried to find Andrew’s ruin and recruit him into Scientology. That was funny. But it does lead to my next point, which is when Katie said “Scientology doesn’t work for everyone. But if it does work for you, it’s amazing. If it works, it really works. It’s interesting because the people who left were in the Sea Org.” This appears to be a prepared line she had ready and used frequently, circling back around to the idea that “Scientology isn’t for everyone” again and again to dismiss the fact that people who leave it have valid and real experiences of abuse, even violent abuse.

Whether this is an official PR line that Scientology is adopting or one she made up has yet to be seen. If you think about it, it is a more reasonable sounding line, by far, than what we’ve heard from Scientologists until now. It hasn’t gone over well at all when Scientologists continually assert that all critics are just criminals and the only reason we left is because of our crimes. People know that’s nonsense, and here a Scientologist is adapting and trying a different approach. Again, slightly refreshing from the usual party lines, but unless you don’t know anything about Scientology, it’s not going to work any better than the Dissemination Drill steps that Katie tried to use on Andrew during the interview. She was not a very good disseminator, to be honest.

Which leads right to my next point: the use of the word “cult” in talking to her. This is a word I use often in my work but try to avoid using when in one-on-one discussions with cult members. It’s a loaded word with so many negative connotations that it’s generally not useful to use with cult members as it can be guaranteed to make them defensive and therefore unreachable. However, it was interesting that Andrew didn’t let up with it. Over the course of the interview, with the comments rolling in that it appeared she was also seeing, it was clear this word was making her very uncomfortable. She went from saying Scientology was not a cult to asserting it was not always a bad word and she could use it to describe Scientology after all. Turn the bad into the good. Make the negative a positive and that will settle the cognitive dissonance.

Perhaps one of the most important points of the interview was when Andrew compared Scientology to Nxivm, a subject Katie clearly knew almost nothing about but immediately asserted dominance in anyway. That was another funny thing to watch but it ended with this comment while joking around about a basketball game of Scientology vs Nxivm: “Scientology has no rival. It really stands on its own. We would win. We would totally win. If there was a game…if it’s a game, Scientology is going to win that game, for sure. Doesn’t even matter what the game is, we’re gonna win.”

The reason I say that may well have been the defining moment of the interview is because that is the unreasonable, ignorant certainty that drives every cultic belief system. In short: We are the best and the brightest. No one can stand against us. No matter what barriers or problems we encounter, we will beat them down and we will emerge victorious 100 percent of the time. Nothing will ever stop us. I cannot even conceive of failure.

Some people admire this attitude, mistaking it for positivity and confidence. They think this is how winners and successful people actually think, which is just more Grant Cardone-level nonsense. They don’t see that in a totalist system like Scientology, it is this very thinking which will drive its members to stay up for five days straight because they were ordered to; that it’s OK to abuse children or even throw them in a chain locker for getting in the way; that every action they take is taken solely to “save the world” and there is nothing else more important than what their cult is doing. This isn’t confidence or the reasonable expectation of a Michael Jordan or the tough talk of a boxing challenger. This is unreasonable, fanatical devotion to a cause. It’s an unreasonable expectation of nothing but success which cannot allow for any counter-thought. They call this “Tone 40” in Scientology and lots of other cults have lots of other terms for this. In the end, this is exactly the kind of thinking that guarantees failure, a lesson no cult member learns until it is too late and they have usually failed much harder than they ever imagined possible.

I could go on for pages about this interview but I think these points were the ones that stood out to me as the most important to comment on. I’m sure others will have other views as well. Personally, I want to thank Andrew Gold for getting this interview and for reaching out to me just before he did it so I could give him just a little bit of inspiration and guidance on where to go with it. He did a good job and let her talk. It showed quite clearly, just as Tony did with the field auditor interview, that Scientologists truly live in a bubble world where any outside facts or evidence simply has no place and are not wanted. That is the tragedy of what cults do to people’s minds. It is from that place that the abuses and atrocities can occur and that is why we have to push back.

— Chris Shelton

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

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