I’M sat at a wooden desk answering multiple choice questions with a pencil, occasionally erasing my answers and colouring in a different circle.
No, this isn’t a exam, although the rows of shiny books and touchscreen information movies might suggest we were in a particularly well-funded private school.
“Is your life a constant struggle for survival?” the paper asks.
“Do you get occasional twitches of your muscles, when there is no logical reason for it?”
“Is your voice monotonous rather than varied in pitch?”
The 200 questions range from the personal to the bizarre, covering my plans for children, my response to authority and my views on hunting and imprisonment.
I’m filling out a 1950s personality test called the Oxford Capacity Analysis, …show more content…
I am given 100 out of 100 for “unstable”. My levels of nervousness, uncertainty and unappreciativeness are also “unacceptable”, with only my active and aggressive qualities falling within a normal or “desirable” state.
A man in glasses called Pete* takes me through my results, asking me probing questions about whether I’d had a troubled childhood or difficult past relationships. His usual suggestion for someone like me, he said, would depend on which of my many issues I wanted to work on.
If it was my apparent depression, it would be a course or Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s book Dianetics, a set of theories concerning the metaphysical relationship between mind and body.
The courses are $55 and the books $25, or more with an accompanying DVD.
As someone who has never suffered from depression but knows many people who have, I wonder about the ethics of such recommendations. Another staff member, Tim*, explains that Scientologists don’t believe in “mind-altering drugs” such as antidepressants.
The controversial church, whose followers include Hollywood heavyweights John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Juliette Lewis and Elisabeth Moss, notoriously advocates a drug-free and a “silent birth”, in which mothers in labour avoid making noise, since it could have an adverse affect on the child later in
No, this isn’t a exam, although the rows of shiny books and touchscreen information movies might suggest we were in a particularly well-funded private school.
“Is your life a constant struggle for survival?” the paper asks.
“Do you get occasional twitches of your muscles, when there is no logical reason for it?”
“Is your voice monotonous rather than varied in pitch?”
The 200 questions range from the personal to the bizarre, covering my plans for children, my response to authority and my views on hunting and imprisonment.
I’m filling out a 1950s personality test called the Oxford Capacity Analysis, …show more content…
I am given 100 out of 100 for “unstable”. My levels of nervousness, uncertainty and unappreciativeness are also “unacceptable”, with only my active and aggressive qualities falling within a normal or “desirable” state.
A man in glasses called Pete* takes me through my results, asking me probing questions about whether I’d had a troubled childhood or difficult past relationships. His usual suggestion for someone like me, he said, would depend on which of my many issues I wanted to work on.
If it was my apparent depression, it would be a course or Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s book Dianetics, a set of theories concerning the metaphysical relationship between mind and body.
The courses are $55 and the books $25, or more with an accompanying DVD.
As someone who has never suffered from depression but knows many people who have, I wonder about the ethics of such recommendations. Another staff member, Tim*, explains that Scientologists don’t believe in “mind-altering drugs” such as antidepressants.
The controversial church, whose followers include Hollywood heavyweights John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Juliette Lewis and Elisabeth Moss, notoriously advocates a drug-free and a “silent birth”, in which mothers in labour avoid making noise, since it could have an adverse affect on the child later in