Scientology's®
Claims
From: publicrelations@scientology.org
Why is Scientology opposed to psychiatry?
What the Church opposes are brutal, inhumane psychiatric treatments. It
does so for three principal reasons: 1) procedures such as electro-
shock, drugs and lobotomy injure, maim and destroy people in the guise
of help; 2) psychiatry is not a science and has no proven methods to
justify the billions of dollars of government funds that are poured
into it; and 3) psychiatric theories that man is a mere animal have
been used to rationalize, for example, the wholesale slaughter of human
beings in World Wars I and II.
Scientologists abhor "treatments" which harm people and
particularly dislike it when those responsible refuse to take
responsibility for their acts or to institute reforms in their own
field. Scientologists are instinctively opposed to those who abuse
their power or who harm the innocent and weak. Scientologists
particularly object to the materialistic view advanced by psychiatry
that man is a soulless animal.
The words psychiatry and psychology both come from the Greek word
"psyche," meaning "the soul." The word psychology
originally meant "study of the soul." In 1879, however, German
professor Wilhelm Wundt of Leipzig University advanced the idea that
investigating the soul or spirit was fruitless, that man was simply
another animal, and that he could be studied in the same manner as an
animal.
Scientologists, on the other hand, hold that man is a spiritual being.
Furthermore, by the Creed of the Church, the healing of mentally caused
ills should not be condoned in non-religious fields.
Scientologists aim to create a world without war, without insanity and
without criminality. Psychiatric practices, on the other hand, destroy
minds and reduce man to a robotized and drugged state where he can be
controlled. Despite psychiatry’s vast absorption of government funds,
crime, illiteracy and drug addiction -- social problems that would
decline if psychiatry were doing its self-imposed job of handling the
problems of the mind -- continue to proliferate.
Even when psychiatric treatments do not tear apart living tissue,
psychiatrists routinely tell their patients what they think is
"wrong" with them, thus interjecting the psychiatrists' own
prejudices, preferences and falsehoods into the therapy and so denying
the patient a chance of recovery.
A true therapy would enable a person to find out for himself the source
of his troubles and give him the ability to improve conditions in his
own life, relationships and environment.
Violent psychiatric therapies create not only physical but spiritual
traumas. At best, psychiatry suppresses life's problems; at worst it
causes severe damage and irreversible setbacks in a person’s life and
even death.
Robert
And now for the truth
The reasons why the Scientology organization hates the mental health
industry have been covered in some detail in
Scientology's Mad Messiah Begs for Psychiatric
Help, also within Lies Debunked: Citizens
Commission on Human Rights, and in the web page called
L. Ron Hubard's Rampat Drug Abuse Problems.
Since it's covered elsewhere I won't bother addressing the usual
outrageous claims that Scientologys spokesperson above made.
Instead I'll note that Scientology's pathologicall insane hatred of the
mental health industry is unacceptably dangerous to people who are
not followers or the criminal enterprise. Because Scientology's more
unfortunate ringleaders actively work to stop people from getting the
psychiatric help they need, Scientology's activities are deadly.
The Scientology organization tells its followers that the psychiatric
industry is being controlled by the Marcabs from outer space to keep
humanity enslaved and that Scientology is the only hope and salvation
for humanity. Obviously such unfortunate notions are the result of
the delusional insanity of Scientology's mad messiah L. Ron Hubbard
and it wouldn't really matter to anyone outside of the Scientology
organization if followers are told to believe such things. When the
organization's ringleaders work hard to inflict their insanity upon
the innocent populace, however, innocent people who swallow Scientology's
insane claims and doesn't seek professional psychiatric assistance
because of it often wind up killing themselves.
One of Hubbard's biggest problem was the fact that the mental health
industry ignored him and his insane claims outright. Being ignored
by an organization which Hubbard believe should have given him a
Nobel Prize drove Hubbard to increasing levels of paranoid insanity.
But because the criminal enterprise constitutes such a danger to people
the mental health industry has from time to time been forced to note
the quack claims of the criminal enterprise. Here's an example:
We read with great interest your article in the October 18 issue on
the Church of Scientology's Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR)
titled "APA Helps Members Respond to Scientology's Attacks."
We would like to present some firsthand information concerning the
destructive influence of the CCHR.
In 1986 the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Subcommission on
Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities submitted a
report that was published and widely distributed by the United Nations.
The report (known as the "Daes Report" but officially titled
"Principles, Guidelines, and Guarantees for the Protection of
Persons Detained on Grounds of Mental III Health or Suffering from
Mental Disorder") was presented as "A contribution to: (a) the
protection of the fundamental freedoms, human and legal rights of persons
who are mentally ill or suffering from mental disorder; (b) the abolition
of psychiatric abuses; (c) the promotion of mental health law and medical
practice; and (d) the improvement of mental health care and mental
institutions."
In fact, the report was an attack on psychiatry embodying all the
distortions and outright lies invented and promulgated by the
antipsychiatry movement over the years. The contribution of
Scientology's CCHR, as one of the special organizations whose advice
was sought by the Rapporteur, was prominently mentioned in the report.
The United Nations document, quoting from the CCHR, included the
following:
"All over the world, branches of CCHR offered help to members of
parliaments to increase their awareness of mental health situations,
so that actual reform could occur. CCHR made the following basic
suggestions in connection with the subject under study:
"(a) Governments should start immediately to investigate psychiatry
and the mental health field and get the real facts;
"(b) The CCHR and others should provide governments with workable
methods to handle the mentally ill;
"(c) An amnesty should be granted to all psychiatrists who admit
to having engaged in abusive practices and human rights violations and
who have ceased to do so;
"(d) All community health centers and other mental care homes
should be run by churches or other religious groups who have a real
care for patients and a workable method;
"(e) The use of all drugs, whether street drugs or
psychopharmacological drugs, should be discontinued.
"The conclusion of CCHR is, 'There will be peace on earth when
the mental health field has been reformed and is clean'."
In a 1986 "report" submitted to the International Congress on
Law and Psychiatry, the CCHR used scurrilous and inflammatory statements
to denounce the professions of psychiatry and psychology including the
following:
"It is no longer a case of 'the cure being worse than disease.' It
is now a matter of the 'cure' causing the 'disease.' Psychiatry has long
looked upon and dealt with nearly all behavior and manifestations of
life from a purely biological, genetic, and medical viewpoint, i.e., 'man
is an animal.' Perhaps it is now time to apply this medical viewpoint to
the field of psychiatry and to eradicate this criminal 'cancer' that is
consuming society.
"Most of the famous assassins and mass murderers are products of
psychiatry and the mental health profession."
We were most dismayed at this brazen step to incorporate the malicious
CCHR position in a United Nations document and began strenuous efforts
to oppose it. In collaboration with colleagues at home and abroad,
including an APA task force, we were able to mount a coordinated
counterattack involving the World Psychiatric Association, the World
Health Organization, and many others. As a result of our efforts,
revised guidelines consistent with principles long accepted by American
psychiatry were eventually approved by the U.N. General Assembly in a
resolution adopted December 17, 1991.
In retrospect, instead of resting on our laurels, we should have called
for eternal vigilance regarding CCHR activities and for rapid response
by APA and other mental health organizations to the diabolical
misrepresentations by CCHR. It is gratifying to see that APA, at the
urging of the California Psychiatric Association, is undertaking a
reasoned and responsible rebuttal.
We note that APA President Harold Eist, M.D., and Dorothy W. Cantor,
Psy.D., president of the American Psychological Association, are working
together to combat the policies and practices of the managed care
industry that impede psychiatric and psychological treatment of mental
illness. We urge Drs. Eist and Cantor to join forces to deal with the
CCHR's anti-mental health
depredations.
Amusingly, Scientology's head ringleader David Miscaviage claimed that
Scientology was going to destroy and replace the mental health industry
by the year 2000. Such delusional megalomania might be amusing yet when
such individuals have some 40,000 followers world wide, they constitute
a serious threat to people's health and safety.
Scientologists are told to believe they're infested with invisible
murdered aliens from outer space they call "Body Thetans." The
organization has the "cure," however: "Auditing," a
quack medical fraud where subjects hold on to a device that's basically
an Ohm meter and, as they're asked questions, these invisible space
aliens which infest the subject are "blown."
Scientology's demand that "The CCHR and others should provide
governments with workable methods to handle the mentally ill" is a
demand that Scientology be allowed to scrape off people's "Body
Thetan" infestation and that real psychiatric help be halted
entirely is a notion which is at times both amusing and deadly.
Subject: Why is Scientology Opposed to Psychiatry?
Date: 2000/03/06
A Response to Scientology
By Abraham L. Halpern, M.D., and Alfred M. Freedman, M.D.
(Psychiatric News, December 6, 1996)
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