Talk:Harvey Jackins/Archive 1

Archive 1

Jan, Feb 2006

Someone keeps re-introducing the lines about "Jackins developed the theory with close co-worker John Heron..." etc, I have removed these as there is no evidence that Heron had any connection with Jackins before the mid-70s and his name does not for example appear in RC publications before then. I assume this is being introduced by a CCI member anxious to amplify Heron's role in the formation of RC, which as far as I can discover was minimal. I would be pleased to hear information to the contrary, please mention it here if you know of any factual evidence to support this. Thanks - Sarah. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SarahWilliams (talk • contribs) 00:56, 2 February 2006 UTC.

I restored information that was deleted without discussion by an anonymous editor; you removed not only the information above, which you claim is inaccurate, but also information about Jenkins' early involvement with Dianetics (which, as you can see from the citation, is backed by evidence) and the Category:Free Zone tag, which is what attracted my attention. I am not "a CCI member anxious to amplify Heron's role"; I have no involvement with CCI or RC and I'll be pleased if it stays that way. The fact that the material was removed once without edit summary or explanation was a cause for concern; the fact that a whole paragraph was removed, again without edit summary, and with an explanation that only addressed why parts of the paragraph was removed and not why the other part of the paragraph and the category tag were removed. -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:47, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Looks like we're back to the mindless "knocking Harvey Jackins" wars that took place on the co-counselling page. The re-inserted para just repeats the usual rubbish, namely (1) that John Heron was some sort of founder member of RC, he wasn't, he started about 20 years after Jackins did and (2) that RC = Dianetics, it doesn't, Jackins was influenced by it but discarded it. Until we all come clean about the angle we're coming from, I will continue to remove these slurs - Antaeus, what is your angle? If you're not a CCI bod, why are you keen to misportray him as a close collaborator and founder of RC with HJ? Rgds Sarah —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SarahWilliams (talk • contribs) 20:00, 2 February 2006 UTC.

Please be aware that we have a policy here called Wikipedia:Assume good faith. By jumping to the conclusion that I am here to "knock" Harvey Jenkins, that I must have some "angle" I'm not "coming clean" about if I revert your removal of verified information, you are violating that policy. You will also want to familiarize yourself with WP:NPOV, since you seem to think that information you don't agree with, you are entitled to remove. -- Antaeus Feldspar 20:43, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the censorship loaded by user Feldspar. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SarahWilliams (talk • contribs) 20:50, 2 February 2006 UTC.

No, what you have done is once more removed the same blocks of information, including parts which are verified and cited, because you believe other parts to be incorrect. "removed the censorship"? Perhaps you might explain to me what you mean by that, because this has to be the first time I've read the person who removed information using the term "censorship" to describe the presence of the information. -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:22, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

In what sense are they "verified"? The fact that you describe what is actually just a statement of opinion (Heron was a founder of RC), and widely agreed in the counselling communities to be false, makes it obvious that you do in fact have a strong point of view yourself. You then try to hide behind the rules of wikipedia making it look as though your endless repetition of this falsehood (which you also claim is cited - anything can be "cited" by reference to some dubious web page or other) is in some way justified by the rules. What exactly is your angle? Why don't you just come across and say why you are insisting this bogus story be included? I will ask other people to remove it. Sarah. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SarahWilliams (talk • contribs) 21:36, 2 February 2006 UTC.

I have no opinion on Heron. I see the evidence that Personal Counselors was first incorporated to "engage in, conduct and teach the art and science of Dianetics." I see you claiming that you know the bit about Heron to be false -- and then removing the verified and cited portions along with that bit. I don't have to have ever heard of Heron before (which I haven't) to know that that's not a good edit. And your behavior here on the talk page only reinforces the impression that you don't really "get" Wikipedia yet, that you think it's a battlefield (it's not) and that the thing to do with information you disapprove of (such as "just a statement of opinion" that doesn't happen to be your opinion) is to remove it and maybe most of what's surrounding it, rather than to acknowledge the existence of the belief and respond appropriately by providing the reader with better evidence for what you think is the correct state of affairs. -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:02, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree with Antaeus' view and I think Sarah was right to remove that para - the problem with it is that it isn't part of a biography of Jackins, it essentially concerns the basis of how RC was founded, if it is part of Dianetics and if John Heron was a founder member of RC. Those issues I think belong on the co-counseling page, or on the CCI page. The wording of the para is also just a repetition of something from another site and I would expect wikipedia writers to create their own words on the whole rather than just paste in text from another website. So I've removed it as well. Mark Thomas, London, England. This comment, claiming to be from 'Mark Thomas', was posted by 81.159.47.230 (talk · contribs) [1] 10:31, 3 February 2006 UTC.

Mark Thomas - I edited the contentious paragraph, but I think there is still a problem with it in that it tends to repeat information already stated above and below it. I also removed the Scientology stub, this keeps being re-introduced and is a confusion about Jackins - he never was a Scientologist, partly because Scientology was not created until years after he ended his association with Hubbard (proven in the cited source where Scientology declares RC to be suppressive) and partly because both evolved from an understanding of General Semantics and Rogerian psycotherapy. Therefore I tend to the view that the Scientology reference is a smear. This comment, claiming to be an unnamed person agreeing with 'Mark Thomas', was also posted by 81.159.47.230 (talk · contribs) [2] 15:18, 3 February 2006 UTC.

First of all, the {{Scientology-stub}} tag does not mean "this person is (or ever was) a Scientologist". It means that it is a stub article relating to Scientology, as you can see by looking at Category:Scientology stubs. Secondly, if you are disputing the factual accuracy of the statement that "Jackins first incorporated Personal Counselors Inc. in 1952, to 'engage in, conduct and teach the art and science of Dianetics'", then explain what the opposite POV is and attribute it. If you are not disputing its factual accuracy it is improper to add phrases such as "According to sources critical of Re-evaluation Counseling", implying that only sources who are critical of RC accept the claim as factually true. I will point out that the citation for the claim displays what certainly appears to be the first page of an Articles of Incorporation document signed by the Secretary of State; is it being claimed that this document is a forgery? -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:51, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I have to say Antaeus you sound pretty knowledgeable about this subject for someone with no knowledge or background in it. Perhaps you do after all have certain views on the subject yourself:-) I've checked the Scientology stubs page you kindly indicate and it appears that all of the organisations or subjects mentioned are either parts of the Scientology organisation or past parts of it, or direct affiliates or people strongly affiliated. I'm still not clear why you believe therefore that Harvey Jackins biog should be listed in this way - is it that you are of the opinion that he is or was a Scientologist? I think if so that this indicates a limited knowledge on your part of the history of LRH's development of Scientology, which he evolved from Dianetics and after 1959, long after the split between him and HJ. On the factual accuracy of the foundation of RC and HJ originally founding Personal Counselors Inc as a Dianetics body, I don't dispute the factual accuracy of the latter and incidentally neither did HJ himself in private conversations, but the issue is how it is depicted in the biog. I am having a think about the wordings here because "Personal Counselors" is seen within RC as a separate body and perhaps whilst HJ used it to slightly obfuscate the way he controlled RC, it is nevertheless I think misleading to give it such prominence right at the top of the HJ biog, since the thing he is most noted for is RC and that evolved later. I will think carefully about a rewording and then try posting it in a few days and see what you think then - perhaps we could all do with a breathing and reflection space anyway, as this page and other RC-related ones clearly get people into controversial and disputed areas. Best regards, Mark. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.159.47.230 (talk • contribs) 18:18, 3 February 2006 UTC.

I have to say Antaeus you sound pretty knowledgeable about this subject for someone with no knowledge or background in it. Perhaps you do after all have certain views on the subject yourself:-) Well, I may sound pretty knowledgeable, but I just did what anyone else could have done in under ten minutes, which is to read the articles and check the link that is provided as a source; I do not in fact have any prior knowledge of Jackins, of the various co-counselling entities, or any of the rest of it. Of Dianetics and Scientology, I do have enough previous knowledge to recognize that a lot of the terminology in co-counselling and a lot of the basic paradigm, as described in the articles, shows some similarities. As for whether sounding "knowledgeable" on the subject implies that one has "certain views", well, I have to ask: how is it possible to disagree with you on this subject? If people who sound too knowledgeable must have "certain views" (you) or "angles" (Sarah) that render them suspect, and people who aren't knowledgeable on the subject obviously can't challenge your thinking meaningfully, then what does that leave?

I've checked the Scientology stubs page you kindly indicate and it appears that all of the organisations or subjects mentioned are either parts of the Scientology organisation or past parts of it, or direct affiliates or people strongly affiliated. Mmmm, then I think you'll want to check again, more carefully this time. Andreas Heldal-Lund, Bare-faced Messiah, Cyril Vosper, Ford Greene, Jesse Prince, Lawrence A. Wollersheim, Ronald DeWolf and Tilman Hausherr are all there, and the closest any of them come to being "parts of the Scientology organisation or past parts of it, or direct affiliates or people strongly affiliated" is that some of them were Scientologists in the past; others, though, never were Scientologists. "Related to Scientology" in this context means just that, it doesn't mean "pro-Scientology".

As for how the fact of Jackins' early involvement in Dianetics is presented, I do agree with you on that score. Jackins may have seen Dianetics as promising in the 1950's but so did a lot of people, and many of them had nothing to do with it later afterwards when the initial glowing reports of success turned out to be ... well, let's just say "open to question". As I said, I don't know much about Jackins and co-counseling and the rest, so I don't know how deep a connection there really is. What I do know, though, is that when there's any doubt, it's better to err on the side of addressing an issue than of prejudging for the reader that it's unimportant -- which is why the edits that removed information which came with a citation, I reverted, even though I had no idea at all who John Heron was and had my own doubts whether the fact about Jackins' early Dianetics involvement was actually significant enough to merit being mentioned so early.

As far as breathing and reflection space, that sounds like a good idea; trying alternative rewordings, an excellent idea. I should mention that I've also left a note at the Scientology WikiProject; hopefully the people there will be able to bring some knowledge to bear on this situation, and find a way to express the situation so that neither side feels that anything is being unduly stressed or on the other hand unduly minimized. -- Antaeus Feldspar 21:36, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I would like to remove the Psychotherapy categorisation - HJ was not a psychotherapist and was actually very anti it. Doesn't categorisation imply belonging on Wikipedia? Mark. 81.159.40.76 23:39, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes but not always. I checked the category description for Category:Psychotherapy and it seems pretty broad; if what Jackins did doesn't fall under that description, how should it be described/categorized? -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Antaeus, and apologies if I appear to be anonymous, for some reason I'm not sure about the system won't keep me logged in, my techie pal here is helping and should get this resolved soon. Whatever Jackins was, he emphatically was not a psychotherapist, since that field has it's dominant aim the "cure of psychological problems" (I quote from several key ethical bodies' guidelines) and Jackins was not a believer in "psychological problems", he envisaged all such issues as resolvable through natural processes of discharge. Therefore he placed both himself and RC outside the "mainstream" of psychology and psychotherapy at least as they exist as defined within that mainstream by people like Carl Rogers. However he was to some extent an admirer of Freud and so I haven't been against keeping the Psychology category. If he was anything, he was a social radical and leftist movement organiser who believed that the particular methods of his co-counselling theory, when used routinely, would boost people's ability to combay oppression and the effects of oppression on the individual and their lives. So he is more in line with something like Liberation Theology, radical Marxist theorists or radical psychologists like RD Laing. (I note that R.D.Laing is categorised as a Psychologist also. Hope this helps. Mark Thomas 81.159.173.45 15:18, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to throw loads of stuff out Anteus, but one more page worth looking at in relation to this is anti-psychiatry - Jackins and Re-evaluation Counseling have quite a lot in common with the positions described there. This also to some extent accounts for the common confusion of RC and Jackins with Scientology, given their similar views on the subject. Jackins may originally have picked up his bias against Psychiatry from his relationship with Hubbard, but later evolved it into a more "liberation-minded" approach focusing on recovery from the hurts that RC people see the mental health system as imposing on people. "Softer" therapies like Psychotherapy would not be viewed so negatively by RC'ers and Jackins, but merely as mistakes. Mark Thomas. 81.159.173.45 15:28, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Removed the Free Zone categorisation (Jackins never had anything to do with the CoS and therefore could never have been anything to do with the FZ) and also edited out (again!) the references to John Heron's key role - this is a biog of Harvey Jackins, who had relationships with hundreds of people worldwide who were interested in starting new organisations based on RC, one (relatively minor) one of whom was John Heron (from 1974 to 1976) who was therefore about 20 years too late to have had anything to do with founding RC. If this immature vandalism stuff from CCI'ers persists I will complain to the vandalism police. Mark Thomas. 81.159.173.45 15:02, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Fraudulent Postings Must Stop

It is fraudulent to post comments claiming to be two different people who agree with each other from different places, yet they originate within minutes or hours from the same IP address. It must stop, and it won't work. A similar pattern of fraudulent postings has occurred on the Talk:Co-counselling page. The proper way to post is to sign posts by appending them with four tildes ~~~~ to create an automatic signature with user ID or IP and time and date stamps. It is highly recommended to register a username and use it consistently for continuity. Hu 21:15, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Tried doing this before and it didn't seem to work, will try again now! Sorry if screwing up - new to this. No deliberate fraud intended, just seeking to correct obvious misinterpretations, falsehoods or distortions of Re-evaluation Counseling. 81.159.40.76 23:37, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Removed the incorrect categorisation as scientology stub - this is an incorrect way of using wikipedia as it is an attempt to criticise RC and Harvey Jackins by indicating they have a connection to Scientology, which is false. People wanting to make a case for this should produce evidence rather than being sly. They would also have to explain why Scientology attacked RC if it's true. 81.159.173.45 08:49, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

You know, it's hard to believe that you're editing in good faith when you're ignoring what has been explained several times. The presence of a {{Scientology-stub}} tag does not mean or imply a friendly relationship with Scientology. This has been explained several times before. If the tags were being removed by someone who understood the criteria and claimed that Jackins did not meet the criteria and could have good faith assumed of them, then it would be acceptable. However, when posts like this show that the person has not even read the criteria, and therefore has not even read the talk page, there is no reason to think the change is valid. It is being restored until we have actual reason to believe that Jackins does not meet the actual criteria. -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:39, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you don't accept my good faith in this. First off, I do realise that it does not imply "a friendly relationship with Scientology" to categorise in Wikipedia. However, surely it does imply a close connection or relatedness? My argument is that Harvey Jackins had nothing to do with Scientology, but I am also arguing that the original addition of the Scientology categorisation is a sort of sneaky way of commenting; because there are no direct _citatations_ that prove a connection, this method is used. Isn't this in fact me correcting a POV fake categorisation? Also, you are in effect asking me to prove a negative - "we will keep saying Jackins was a Scientologist until you can prove otherwise"! I see from your page that you interested in being anti-cult at least in principle and in fact therefore don't you have a POV which is that "someone on a cult monitoring site has said that RC is Scientology-influenced - therefore it's a cult" (I know this may not be your exact view but I am being indicative - with respect, isn't it therefore the case that we both have something to prove here? RC is not part of Scientology and never was. It was actually (I repeat for the nth time!) declared SUPPRESSIVE by the CoS - not something they do to their friends! Jackins did - along with thousands of other US citizens - have early dealings with Hubbard pre-1954 - something he later came to regret. He did therefore have connections with Dianetics at that time. That isn't the same as Scientology as you and I have already agreed. Antaeus, I respect your good intentions but this really isn't a cult target page - Harvey Jackins' biography is important as he influenced a lot of people and ideas in the late 20th C. I'm asking for us to be objective and this includes surely the categorisations. Kind regards, Mark Thomas, London England. 81.159.173.45 17:32, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

RC is not part of Scientology and never was. It was actually (I repeat for the nth time!) declared SUPPRESSIVE by the CoS - not something they do to their friends! Yes! And if the question was "is Jackins a friend to Scientology?" then the answer would be, by the evidence given, "no"! But that is not the question; the question is "is Harvey Jackins relevant to the subject of Scientology?" This is something that's already been explained! How can it be that you are given the exact titles of half-a-dozen articles from that category, all of which are about people or works that are very strongly critical of Scientology, and yet you still believe "Well, Jackins can't fit in that category, because he's not a friend of Scientology!"? Don't you realize that the fact that RC was declared suppressive makes it more deserving of the tag, rather than less?

Now, I am not saying that Jackins has a relatedness of any nature to Scientology that is strong enough to merit the tag. Frankly, I don't know, because contrary to your assumption that my POV is "someone on a cult monitoring site has said that RC is Scientology-influenced - therefore it's a cult", I've never read anything about Jackins or RC or CCI or any of the whole schmiel on anything but Wikipedia. I don't know whether the cult label is accurate or inaccurate. I don't expect a negative to be proved. What I do expect is for the dispute to be resolved, with care, in the Wikipedian way. Saying "It doesn't meet criteria X" (when it has already been explained that X is only a subset of the relevant criteria) "and besides I personally know it to be false, so the discussion ends here" is not good enough.

Let me make my position clear, here -- and it's a pretty complicated one, so please, I really ask of you, please pay attention to what I'm saying, and please don't say "Oh, I read his user page and that tells me what his position is" because frankly that's rather rude. My position is this: Everyone who works on Wikipedia must wear two different hats: the hat of a reader, and the hat of an editor. And because the powers of the editor are greater, so are the responsibilities and the standards that must be upheld. As a reader, I might read that so-and-so is making such-and-such a claim, and I may know enough about the subject to say "that's complete bullshit." That's completely fine. But then if I switch to my editor hat, I have to ask myself not "do I think this is bullshit?" but "do I know that this is bullshit to the degree that I remove it from the article, and prevent other readers from getting the opportunity to make up their own minds whether it's bullshit or not?" I hope you can see why that second bar has to be set very, very high indeed. -- Antaeus Feldspar 20:23, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, and yes, I understand totally where you are coming from now. Probably my beef is with Wikipedia itself then, because I still think that the average reader glancing at a page and seeing the category "Scientology" will assume the worst, not just some vague concept of relatedness... Mark 81.159.173.45 20:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Stubs versus Categories

I removed the stub tags because the page is no longer a stub page. I converted the psychologist stub tag to American Psychologist category, because there is no American Psychotherapist or therapist category. Without getting into the details of the debate, Jackins was at least generally involved in psychological issues at least at a semi-professional level. The Free Zone category seems to be more specific to this article than a broad Scientology category and keeps it in that general area, once again without getting into a debate about specific issues. In all cases, articles are of course the best conveyor of facts and nuances, and categories are only indicative, not definitive (though categories should be specific when possible). As a general comment, I might remark that recent edits seem to be adding rather than deleting material and that is a good general trend. Hu 18:48, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Hu, and I realise you don't want an argument about it, and I will go away and spend some time studying the categories pages to make sure I understand what is meant by a Wikipedia category. However, I have to say at this stage that my understanding of "Free Zone" is that it implies a previous direct affiliation with Scientology and the CoS specifically, which is not the case with HJ, although he was involved with LRH and with Dianetics. Perhaps there is a need for a category of "influenced by LRH" or "influenced by Dianetics" or "influenced by General Semantics" or some such! How does one go about creating a new category out of interest? Thanks, Mark Thomas. 81.159.173.45 19:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Unrealistic claims

I'm new to Wikipedia, and not clear on the etiquette. That said, I removed the sentence about HJ believing immortality could be achieved through discharge. He always spoke and wrote of it in terms of scientific progress. Although some people in RC did put forwrd the position that is attributed to HJ here, he was consistently on the other side of the debate. The RC journal "Forever and Ever" is a good reference for this - there was only ever one issue.Shawjonathan 23:26, 8 February 2006 (UTC) Thanks for this Jonathan, it would be useful to have a reference for that if it's on the nets. Perhaps the article should say something like "it was often attributed to HJ" that he held that position - it is a very widely held view of him that he thought that IME, both in and out of RC and is often used to ridicule him. I think this is a common thing with Jackins - "he said this" or "he said that" when he didn't - but did he encourage this, through making somewhat preposterous remarks on other things, so that it was easy to believe the latest one? MarkThomas 07:49, 9 February 2006 (UTC) I went searching for reference on this, and found nothing on the internet, but in the only issue of the RC journal "Forever and Ever" (Rational Island, some time inthe 1980s) Harvey Jackins has an article acknowledging that at least one person in the RC communities argues for the position that discharge will lead to immortality, a position he dissociates himself from.Shawjonathan 19:36, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Albania

I couldn't find any reference to HJ's views on Albania on a brief search, so I edited out the anonymous POV on this by user 86.203.202.9. The Maoist stuff is already in there, but I also removed the point about HJ basing his certainty that RC would grow on Mao; I think it's clear he based this view on the attractiveness of people who have discharged extensively. Please sign in and sign contribution or discuss in line with accepted Wikipedia norms if you feel I'm wrong. Thanks. MarkThomas 13:44, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

HJ wrote several times of his sympathy for the Albanian system (in, I think "rational views on a future society" for example). Fundamentally, he kept his old maoist views afetr he gave up politics to do co counselling... so he didn't change when almost all the other maoists realized they had been wrong. It doesn't seem to me to be a grave accusation - HJ spent fifty years working on how to help people with emotional hurt; if he didn't understand politics very well, that seems to me to be secondary - a lot of people don't !Johncmullen1960 15:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Clean-up I have done some cleaning up. Some of the paragraphs were just too weaselly for words. :=) It sounded like there had been at least one wikipedian with a personal grudge writing :=) Johncmullen1960 15:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

November 2006

Mark suggested w etake proposals for editing one at once. I don't have a lot of time, but here is first suggestions - to cut the following sentence :

In RC publications, Jackins stated that he was repeatedly and sometimes viciously attacked in this period; some RC members who later met Jackins ex-colleagues have stated that he was well liked and was not physically attacked. As there is no firm evidence either way, this and other aspects of Jackin's own version of his origins remain subject to some doubt.

Because 1) Is this really important and encyclopedic? 2) It is weaselly "some RC members" etc. 3) It is unfair - any public figure has someoine somewhere who says he is dishonest; we could add similar sentences to any article. It's not encyclopedic. 4) It is fundamentally diffamatory, beause it says that he didn't normally tell the truth. This is impossible to check, and, on this kind of detail of biography, fundamentally unimportant.

For other accusations, I think accusations should only be mentioned if there has been a legal procedure, and the result should be given (ie Thingy was investigated for baubling but was found innocent). Even in wikipedia, one is innocent until proved guilty! It is just too easy for me to write "Elvis Presley tried to attack my gerbil." Noone can disprove it.

OK that's the first point. Mark - if you agree with some of this could you cit or change the bits in question ? THanks Johncmullen1960 08:23, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Just one more point - in an encyclopedic article, I don't think the section on criticisms shoudl be LONGER than the other sections ! Johncmullen1960 08:24, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems to be getting better this article Johncmullen1960 16:10, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Source Material

I have added at least once R.D. Rosen, Psychobabble, 1975, chapter on Jackins and Co-counselling; Publisher: Avon Books (Mm) (April 1979); ISBN 0-380422-91-3 as this contains relevant material; it is out of print, but certainly available from libraries, and Amazon.

--TonyinJersey 06:22, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Daniel Le Bon

I have added a sentence about Le Bon - I was present at the time. Johncmullen1960 (talk) 10:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Lies

I changed the first paragraph in this section because the subject of the first sentence was 'claims' but the example given in the next sentence seemed to be an example of a lie not a claim. Had a citation proving the lie been provided I would have left it alone, but as it was not, the change seemed warranted. Even if the claim had been verified and sourced, the confusion of language introducing the subject 'claim' and the subsequent changing of the subject to 'proved lie' would have required editing for style. Baon (talk) 22:11, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

his race

seems odd to me that no mention is made of this here. was he "white"? why is this not mentioned? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.31.234.59 (talk) 22:41, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

interesting, well why because none of us can think rationally in an oppressive white cultural hegemony, why do you think movie posters have only white people in them?

Citations

This article needs far more citations from impartial sources. I have made some edits, removing waffle and unreferenced speculation of the "some people say" variety. Marshall46 (talk) 17:04, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I have tagged some of the unsupported statements with . Any editors with access to sources for this article is invited to add citations. If there are no citations for these statement after a reasonable period of time, I will go through the article and edit or remove them. I am posting a similar comment on the Re-evaluation counselling talk page. Marshall46 (talk) 10:19, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I have removed several passages. It seems that little has been published about this man, and even his organisation, Re-evaluation counselling has almost nothing about him on its website. This must raise questions about his notability. Marshall46 (talk) 14:48, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Social and political views

I am removing this section, which has no citations:

Although Jackins did not frequently mention influences on him other than those from socialist history, he also appears to have been strongly affected by US and international science fiction; also by early forms of what later became the techno-progressive movement; and by the popular and influential General Semantics theory. Some people have discerned in particular the style and interests of US science fiction authors A. E. van Vogt and Robert A. Heinlein in his published writings, particularly those dwelling on the evolution of mankind and the development of supermen. Jackins was photographed with Van Vogt in the 1950s at a meeting of the Board of Dianetics. There are also some similarities between Jackins' theories and those of Zen Buddhism (for example, the reaching of clear states of mind), a connection either derived from California new age philosophy or Jackins' own broad reading of religion and philosophy. Perhaps the key point is that the same rich mix of cultural, social and philosophical trends in postwar US west coast culture which gave rise to movements like Scientology and New Age religions also stimulated Jackins, although he was later contemptuous of some of them, and refused to declare Re-evaluation Counseling a religious viewpoint, insisting instead that it was rational.

Marshall46 (talk) 12:00, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

National Coalition Building Institute

I have removed the section that said Jackins supervised "the dissemination of RC ideas through the setting up of the National Coalition Building Institute in 1984 (ref: National Coalition Building Institute - About the Institute)" as the reference given does not support this claim. Marshall46 (talk) 16:46, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Redundant

I removed the sentence "Some claims or statements by Jackins are viewed as unscientific," which was the lead sentence in the 'Criticisms' section. The sentence offers no additional information that is not in the example the follows it and has several other stylistic problems. A better (less polemical) version might have been constructed, viz., "Jackins has been said to have unscientific views </ref>" but, as the same information is in the Le Bon example, and as I have no other references for the claim, I thought it better to simply delete the redundancy. Baon (talk) 17:59, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Harvey Jackins/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

*15 citations, nice... Could use a coupla images... Smee 08:17, 1 April 2007 (UTC).

Last edited at 08:17, 1 April 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 14:55, 1 May 2016 (UTC)