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The Scientology Mark VIII Ultra E-meter lying in its carry case. The device’s protective cover is shown standing at the back.
The E-meter, originally the electropsychometer, is an electronic device for displaying the electrodermal activity (EDA) of a human being. It is used for auditing in Scientology[1] and divergent groups.[2][3] The efficacy and legitimacy of Scientology’s use of the E-meter has been subject to extensive litigation[4][5][6] and in accordance with a federal court order, the Church of Scientology publishes disclaimers declaring that the E-meter “by itself does nothing”, is incapable of improving health, and is used specifically for spiritual purposes.[7]
Such devices have been used as research tools in many human studies, and as one of several components of the Leonarde Keeler‘s polygraph (lie detector) system, which has been widely criticized as ineffective and pseudoscientific by legal experts and psychologists.[8][9]
History
Main article: Electrodermal activity
Illustration provided by Volney Mathison in the original 1951 patent application for the E-meter, registered as U.S. Patent 2,684,670.
Electrodermal activity (EDA) is the changing electrical charges observed on the surface of the skin. EDA meters were first developed in 1889 in Russia, and psychotherapists began using them as tools for therapy in the 1900s.[10][11][12][13][14]
Volney Mathison built an EDA meter based on a Wheatstone bridge,[15] a vacuum tube amplifier, and a large moving-coil meter that projected an image of the needle on the wall. He patented his device in 1954 as an electropsychometer or E-meter,[16] and it came to be known as the “Mathison Electropsychometer”.[17] In Mathison’s words, the E-meter “has a needle that swings back and forth across a scale when a patient holds on to two electrical contacts”.[16] Mathison recorded in his book, Electropsychometry, that the idea of the E-meter came to him in 1950 while listening to a lecture by L. Ron Hubbard:[18]p. 64
In 1950 … I next attended a series of lectures being given by a very controversial figure, who several times emphasized that perhaps the major problem of psychotherapy was the difficulty of maintaining the communication of accurate or valid data from the patient to the therapist.[19]
and
it appeared to me that the psychogalvanometer showed most promise.[20]
Hubbard told of that encounter in a 1952 recorded lecture:
This machine, the electropsychometer, has been acting as a pilot since about the first of January 1952. Very early I wanted a pilot; I had to have some method of metering preclears which was not dependent at all upon opinion or judgment. And I went out and looked at the existing lie detector equipment and I could not find anything which would do a job of work. Now, Volney Mathison out on the Coast heard a talk out there one day, and I mentioned this fact. … I had one of the fanciest electroencephalographs made and it didn’t do anything very much, police detectors didn’t do anything very much, and Mathison went to work and he floated a current within a current. This machine is relatively simple, but it’s a current floating inside another current … And I am, by the way, very much indebted to Mathison just on this basis of all of a sudden having a pilot.[21]
Mathison began working with Hubbard in 1951[22] and that year filed application for his first E-meter patent, U.S. Patent 2,684,670. After the partnership broke up in 1954, Mathison continued improving his E-meters with additional patents (U.S. Patent 2,736,313, U.S. Patent 2,810,383), marketing them through his own company and publications, retaining many of the concepts and terms from his time with Hubbard.[23]
In a separate line of development, EDA monitors were incorporated in polygraph machines by Leonarde Keeler. Rigorous testing of the polygraph has yielded mixed results, and some critics classify polygraph operation as a pseudoscience.
Scientology
Mark Super VII Quantum E-meter, the previous standard model
The Mark VI E-meter
The E-meter was adopted for use in Dianetics and Scientology when Mathison collaborated with Hubbard in 1951.[22] Some sources say the E-meter was “developed by Volney Mathison following Hubbard’s designs”,[24] or that Hubbard invented it.[25] Hubbard falsely claimed to be the inventor of the E-meter, a claim which is in keeping with the Scientology stance that Hubbard is the “source”, or “the only originator of all Dianetics and Scientology material”.[26]
The E-meter was not part of the early days of Dianetics and Scientology. Auditing was composed of conversation and not led by a mechanical device. Hubbard introduced an E-meter prototype during the 1952 Philadelphia Doctorate Course but did not introduce his transistorized version until several years later. The E-meter became “the principal material artifact” of Dianetics and Scientology from the 1960s onward.[27]
In the book, L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman?, Bent Corydon wrote:
In late 1954 the use of the E-meter was discontinued by Hubbard. Wrote Hubbard: “Yesterday, we used an instrument called an E-Meter to register whether or not the process was still getting results so that the auditor would know how long to continue it. While the E-Meter is an interesting investigation instrument and has played its part in research, it is not today used by the auditor … As we long ago suspected, the intervention of a mechanical gadget between the auditor and the preclear had a tendency to depersonalize the session …”[28]
Though it seemed for a while that Scientology’s more advanced techniques would serve without an E-meter, a few months later in May 1955, Hubbard wrote:
And here come E-Meters back into the picture. The HASI is, at this moment, building a new and better E-Meter than has ever been built before, under the trademarked name of Physio-galvanometer, or O-Meter. It has very little in common with the old type E-Meter. Nevertheless, an old type E-Meter can be utilized.[29]
The Scientology meter was smaller, based on transistors rather than vacuum tubes, and powered by a low-voltage rechargeable battery rather than line voltage.
Mark V Electrometer
From then on, the E-meter was a required tool for Scientology ministers. The “Hubbard Mark II” E-meter was christened in 1960 and the Hubbard Mark III shortly after.[30] On December 6, 1966, Hubbard won a patent on the Mark V version under the name “Hubbard Electropsychometer”. Corydon wrote that the Hubbard E-meter was actually developed by Scientologists Don Breeding and Joe Wallis,[28] though the patent (U.S. Patent 3,290,589) does not list other developers.
Corydon’s account was said to be based on the memoirs of Hubbard’s son, Ronald DeWolf, but in 1987, DeWolf sued the publisher to prevent publication and swore an affidavit repudiating everything in the book.[31]
The Scientology E-meter has been redesigned and re-patented several times since its first introduction to Dianetics (e.g.: U.S. Patent 4,459,995, U.S. Patent 4,578,635, U.S. Patent 4,702,259).
In 1969, Scientology was accepted as a religion by the Court of Appeal and declared that the E-meter was useful in “bona fide religious counseling”. District Court Judge Gesell, while denying medical validity to the device, returned the e-meter to the Church. All e-meters from this point forward had to be inscribed with a disclaimer that it was not for medical or scientific diagnoses, treatment or prevention of any disease. The church reformulated the disclaimer into: “The Hubbard electrometer is a religious artifact. By itself, this meter does nothing. It is for religious use by students and Ministers of the church in Confessionals and pastoral counseling only.”[32]
Modern applications
A Scientologist administers a stress test using an e-meter.
EDA meters are used in both therapist-patient[33] and bio-feedback settings.[34][35] EDA is one of the factors recorded by polygraphs, and EDA meters are often used in human studies to gauge psychological responses.[36][37][38]
Scientology
E-meters are used in Scientology and Dianetics by Scientology ministers known as “auditors“. Scientology materials traditionally refer to the subject as the “preclear“, although auditors continue to use the meter on subjects who are well beyond the “clear” level. The auditor gives the preclear a series of commands or questions while the preclear holds a pair of cylindrical electrodes (“cans”) connected to the meter, and the auditor notes both the verbal response and the activity of the meter. Auditor training includes familiarization with a number of characteristic needle movements, each with a specific significance.[39] Religion scholar Dorthe Refslund Christensen describes the e-meter as “a technical device that could help the auditor locate engrams and areas of change when auditing a preclear“.[40]
Scientology concepts associated with the E-meter and its use are regarded by the scientific and medical communities as pseudoscience, and the E-meter has never been subjected to clinical trials as a therapeutic tool.[41]
Scientologists claim that in the hands of a trained operator, the meter can indicate whether a person has been relieved from the spiritual impediment of past experiences.[42] In accordance with a 1974 federal court order, the Church of Scientology asserts that the E-meter is intended for use only in church-sanctioned auditing sessions; it is not a curative or medical device.[43] The E-meters used by the Church were previously manufactured by Scientologists at their Gold Base facility,[44] but now are manufactured in Hong Kong and Taiwan.[44]
According to Hubbard, the E-meter is used by the operator for three vital functions:
- To determine what process to run and what to run it on.[45]
- To observe how well the process is running.[46]
- To know when the process should be stopped.[47]
The Church claims that the E-meter can be used to assess the emotion charge of single words, whole sentences, and questions, as well as indicating the general state of the subject when the operator is not speaking.[39] Few users of the E-meter claim that it does anything to the subject. To most, it does no more than suggest to the operator a change of mental, emotional, or parasympathetic nervous state or activity.[48][49]
New religious movement scholar Douglas Cowan writes that Scientologists cannot progress along the Bridge to Total Freedom without an E-meter, and that Hubbard even told Scientologists to buy two E-meters, in the event that one of them fails to operate.[27] According to anthropologist Roy Rappaport, the E-meter is a ritual object, an object that “stand[s] indexically for something intangible”.[50]
Functional description
Main article: Electrodermal activity
One of E-meter’s primary components is a Wheatstone bridge, an electrical circuit configuration invented in 1833[51] that enables the detection of very small differences between two electrical impedances (in this case, resistances). The E-meter is constructed so that one resistance is the subject’s body and the other is a rheostat controlled by the operator. A small voltage from the battery is applied to electrodes held in the subjects hands. As the electrical properties (electrodermal activity) of the subject’s body changes during the counseling,[52][53][54] the resulting changes in the small electric current are displayed in needle movements on a large analog panel meter. The dial face is without numbers because the absolute resistance in ohms is relatively unimportant, while the operator watches primarily for characteristic needle motions.[55][56][57] The voltage applied to the electrodes is less than 1.5 V, and the electric current through the subject’s body is less than a half a milliampere.[58][59]
In the Scientology E-meter, the large control, known as the “tone arm”, adjusts the meter bias, while a smaller one controls the gain. The operator manipulates the tone arm to keep the needle near the center of the dial so its motion is easily observed.[60] A simple E-meter powered by direct current, such as that used by the Scientologists and the like, displays several kinds of electrodermal activity (EDA) on the one dial without distinction, including changes in conductance, resistance, and bioelectric potential. Researchers in psychophysiology are also exploring admittance and impedance aspects of EDA that can be observed only with alternating current.[61]
The E-Meter, measuring variations in electrodermal activity (which can be highly responsive to emotion[62]), functions on the same physiological data sources as one of the parts of the polygraph, or “lie detector”. According to Scientology doctrine, the resistance corresponds to the “mental mass and energy” of the subject’s mind, which are claimed to change when the subject thinks of particular mental images (engrams).[63] One account tells about Hubbard using the E-meter to determine whether or not fruits can experience pain, as in his 1968 assertion that tomatoes “scream when sliced”.[64][65]
The traditional theory of EDA holds that skin resistance varies with the state of sweat glands in the skin. Sweating is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system,[66] Because sweat contains electrolytes (salt, etc.), conductivity is increased when the sweat glands are activated. But some advocates argue that the meter responds more quickly than would be possible by the exudation and drying of sweat.[67][68][69] They propose an additional mechanism termed the “Tarchanoff Response” through which the cerebral cortex of the brain affects the current directly.[70] This phenomenon is not completely understood, and further research needs to be performed.[71][72]