In the early 1950s, Jackins became acquainted with
L. Ron Hubbard's theory of
Dianetics. In 1952 Jackins formed Personal Counselors Inc. to "engage in, conduct and teach the art and science of Dianetics." At this time, Jackins used some of the terminology of Dianetics, such as "clearing up patterns", "rationality", "present time" and "passing distress by contagion". Psychiatrist Richard M. Childs claimed that Jackins' book
The Human Side of Human Beings (1965) plagiarized Hubbard's
Dianetics (1950), saying that Jackins "paraphrased Hubbard's terms by recasting them in his own jargon. Hubbard's '
Engrams' became Jackins' 'distress patterns', 'release' became 'discharge', and 'to become clear' became RC's 'to re-emerge'." In 1957, Hubbard's
Scientology organisation claimed that Jackins was describing himself as a "Dianetics Auditor". During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jackins systematized his views and in the 1960s and 1970s took RC from Seattle, where he first practised it, to the rest of the US and to Europe. From 1975 to 1990, he appointed local teachers, area representatives, regional leaders and representatives of groups such as blacks and gays. He wrote RC's Guidelines and decided on all major issues. His policies were ratified by a biennial conference. Tourish and Irving compared his system of management to the Communist state model of
democratic centralism. Jackins is said to have claimed that several governments were influenced by RC and to have thought that eventually religion will be replaced by Re-evaluation Counseling. Curious about the effect of this crying, he worked with others to develop a method of reciprocal counseling based on the recollection of psychological and physical traumas or "hurts" accompanied by various types of emotional
catharsis. He called these effects "discharge" (as in the discharge of a battery), which he came to believe led to clear thinking or "re-evaluation". He held that rational thinking was prevented by the accumulation of past hurts, which could be removed by repeated discharge through co-counseling. The objective of RC became the dissemination of this method of creating rational thinking, a process called "re-emergence". Re-evaluation counseling, it is held, can remove "oppression", which it considers to lie at the root of most of the problems in the world. In the mid-1990s, Jackins was criticized within RC for his views that homosexuality may be a form of "distress" arising from the mistreatment of young children, and that it may be "recovered" or removed. In a 1974 article entitled "Is Homosexuality a Distress Pattern?", Jackins said that homosexuality, "as distinct from the desire to touch or be close, is irrational, is the result of distress patterns (often very early in origin and chronic), and will disappear by the free choice of the individual with sufficient discharge and re-evaluation."
Allegations of sexual misconduct In the 1980s, RC members began to accuse Jackins of sexual misconduct, which was said to range from favoring attractive young women in the organization to rape. The first allegation of sexual abuse was made in 1981 by RC member Deborah Curren. Her claims were reported in the
Seattle Sun and on a local TV station,
KIRO TV. Following the allegations, Jackins was strongly criticized by the Minneapolis-St Paul RC group. Jackins disbanded the group and forty-five members of RC resigned in protest. Jackins wrote that "The use of these rumors to attack me and through me the Community has been a very nasty problem in the last few months, and there is some indication that some of the spook agencies of the government and their dirty tricks department have been involved in this." Curren took out a lawsuit against Jackins but withdrew it when Jackins filed for costs. == Criticism ==