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[endless psych]

Originally Posted by Bunnylingus

Why the hate for scientologists?

From the letters page of the BPS psychologist magazine

Beware of false prophets

I AM sure we are all delighted that Craig Newnes has received a human rights award from the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) for his opposition to psychiatric medication and the over-labelling of children (News, July 2005). Readers should know that the CCHR is a front organisation of the Church of Scientology and has its own therapies and philosophies to promote. The Wikipedia entry on Scientology is perhaps better balanced than many other views of this controversial belief system (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology), and provides links to their own view of the scandals that have accompanied their history, as well as those of critics and sceptics of the movement.
Attempting to accurately and fairly summarise their model of mental aberration could be said to bias argument against them – at least for more Earth-based and unimaginative thinkers – as the theory involves a galactic tyrant (Xenu) who stacked hundreds of billions of frozen souls (thetans) around Earth’s volcanoes 75 million years ago before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing the survivors with virtual reality films for 36 days. The traumatised thetans subsequently entered human bodies where they manifest residual PTSD from the cataclysm, which we now observe as psychopathology. Removal of thetans requires specialist techniques known only to specialist Scientologist counsellors.
Given the foregoing, it seems at least possible that their leader, L.R. Hubbard, was a better pulp science-fiction writer than he was messiah, scientist, or psychotherapist. We are right to be cautious about the over-prescribing of medication for psychological and behavioural problems, and the gratuitous over-diagnosis of arbitrary (rather than empirically observed and replicable) conditions. We should also be cautious that any humane and legitimate critique of psychiatric (and occasionally psychological) hegemony is not hijacked by more irrational political, religious and social movements (let alone proselytising celebrities) discrediting what would otherwise be a legitimate argument.
Vincent Egan
Glasgow Caledonian University