Unstable, volatile… but they didn’t get my $50!
THE SMILING woman outside the Church of Scientology on LA’s L Ron Hubbard Avenue hands me a leaflet offering a ‘free personality test’.
Yes, I’ve seen the documentaries and heard the horror stories from people who have left the church but my journalistic curiosity leads me inside.
I’m presented with the Oxford Capacity Analysis test, which I’m told is set by the University of Oxford (the university denies this). The 200 questions range from ‘Do you sleep well at night?’ to ‘Could you agree to strict discipline?’
While my results are calculated I’m told to hold a cylinder in each hand to measure my stress levels. I’m also offered another test but I refuse.
The results are in and they’re deeply worrying. I am apparently depressed, unstable and volatile. But it doesn’t have to stay this way, my tester says, as she probes for vulnerabilities: ‘Why did you come here today?’ ‘Has there been grief in your life?’ and ‘Do you abuse drugs and alcohol?’ Finally she asks: ‘Are you gay? ’I say: ‘No’, which earns me a smile and a blunt ‘Good’. To solve my ‘problems’, she says, I need to ‘invest $50’ in a course to give me ‘tools’ to fix my life. ‘Craig, you need this,’ she insists. I decline and finally make my way out with a bundle of reading material, a DVD and, crucially, all the money I went in with.