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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E-meter | 1/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-meter | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:19:05.250291+00:00 | kb-cron |
The E-Meter (also electropsychometer and Hubbard Electrometer) is an electronic device used in Scientology that allegedly "registers emotional reactions". After claims by L. Ron Hubbard that the procedures of auditing, which used the E-Meter, could help heal diseases, the E-Meter became the subject of litigation. Since then, the Church of Scientology publishes disclaimers declaring that the E-Meter "by itself does nothing", is incapable of improving health, and is used solely for spiritual purposes.
== History ==
=== Mathison ===
Volney Mathison built an Electrodermal activity meter based on a Wheatstone bridge, 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, and it came to be known as the "Mathison Electropsychometer". 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". 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:
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. and
it appeared to me that the psychogalvanometer showed most promise. 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. Mathison began working with L. Ron Hubbard in 1951 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. 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.
=== Hubbard ===
The E-meter was adopted for use in Dianetics and Scientology when Mathison collaborated with Hubbard in 1951. Some sources say the E-meter was "developed by Volney Mathison following Hubbard's designs", or that Hubbard invented it. 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". 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. 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 ..." 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. The Scientology meter was smaller, based on transistors rather than vacuum tubes, and powered by a low-voltage rechargeable battery rather than line voltage. 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. 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, though the patent (U.S. patent 3,290,589) does not list other developers. 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).
=== Earlier similar devices === Electrodermal activity meters were first developed in 1889 in Russia, and psychotherapists began using them as tools for therapy in the 1900s.
== Use in Scientology ==