APA Dictionary of Psychology

n. a movement and belief system, first incorporated as a religion in 1953, that emphasizes the harmful effects of engrams (memory traces) of past traumatic experiences. Adherents practice a technique known as dianetics, in which interactions with an auditor and the use of a device called an E-meter (essentially a gauge of the electrodermal response; see galvanic skin response) can lead eventually to a posited liberated state known as being clear. Scientology also has its own elaborate cosmology, in which humans are believed to be reincarnated “thetans,” immaterial, divine beings who have become trapped in the material world. [founded by U.S. science-fiction writer L(afayette) Ron(ald) Hubbard (1911–1986)] —Scientologist n.