Scientology and psychiatry

In 2003, a man with untreated schizophrenia murdered his mother after his paranoid delusions caused him to become convinced that the Scientology-approved vitamins she was giving him in lieu of effective medication were poisonous.

[14] While in Savannah, Hubbard began working on a "book of psychology" about "the cause and cure of nervous tension"; the next year, he published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

Some, like Thompson and White, would later be remembered favorably—Hubbard explicitly cited both as sources for his work,[18] and he and the Church of Scientology have used these hagiographic stories to "authenticate" Hubbard's background in mental health techniques.

In 1923, L. Ron Hubbard met fellow passenger Joseph "Snake" Thompson, a Navy medical officer and psychoanalyst, on a voyage from Seattle to Washington D.C. via the Panama Canal.

"[20][21]: 2 [6]: 23–25, 230 In 1953, Hubbard argued "It's very odd to realize, as I did one day, that in subsequent years I have approximated to a very remarkable degree the career of Commander Thompson – to show you what an impressed – impressionable boy can have handed to him suddenly.

[24] In 1958, Hubbard told an audience: "I have made people feel better by using straight Freudian analysis the way I got it from Commander Thompson who imported it to the US Navy, not via Catherine [sic] Horney".

Beginning in June 1948, the nationally syndicated wire service United Press ran a story on an American Legion-sponsored psychiatric ward in Savannah, Georgia, which sought to keep mentally ill war veterans out of jail.

[39] In January 1949, Hubbard wrote that he was working on a "book of psychology" about "the cause and cure of nervous tension", which he was going to call The Dark Sword, Excalibur or Science of the Mind.

[6]: 144 In April 1949, Hubbard wrote from Savannah to inform the Gerontological Society at Baltimore City Hospital that he was preparing a paper entitled Certain Discoveries and Researches Leading to the Removal of Early Traumatic Experiences Including Attempted Abortion, Birth Shock and Infant Illnesses and Accidents with an Examination of their Effects Physiological and Psychological and their Potential Influence on Longevity on the Adult Individual with an Account of the Techniques Evolved and Employed.

[47] By September 1950, the American Psychological Association's governing body unanimously adopted a resolution advising its members against using Hubbard's techniques with their patients and leading psychologists spoke out against Dianetics.

In 1951, Hubbard's wife Sara went to a psychiatrist to obtain advice about his increasingly violent and irrational behaviour, and was told that he probably needed to be institutionalized and that she was in serious danger.

Two decades later, in 1972, Hubbard would write to followers: the NY Times Literary Section began an attack and a lot of violent track ran by which included DR. MEYER-ZELIG, a psychiatrist in San Francisco master-minding a kidnapping of me to fly me to St. Louis and be put away.

MILES HOLLISTER, formerly a psych student, got hold of SARA NORTHRUP (really Komknoidominoff) (or ov) and handed her over to Zelig who put her in deep hypnosis, fixated her on the idea I was trying to kill her and spun her in, in which state she has remained since.

"[21]: 72 She was bundled into the back of a car and driven to San Bernardino, California, where Hubbard attempted to find a doctor to examine his wife and declare her insane.

She agreed but Hubbard reneged on the deal and flew to Chicago, where he found a psychologist who wrote a favorable report about his mental condition to refute Northrup's accusations.

Her allegations produced more lurid headlines: not only was Hubbard accused of bigamy and kidnapping, but she had been subjected to "systematic torture, including loss of sleep, beatings, and strangulations and scientific experiments".

[57] In a letter addressed to the FBI dated July 11, Hubbard reports having been the victim of an "attack made by psychiatrists using evidently Communist connected personnel".

It is up to us to realize, then, that psychoanalysis in its pure practice is dead the moment the spirit of humanity in which Freud developed the work is betrayed by the handing over of a patient to the merciless misconduct which passes today for treatment.

[64] In 1966 Hubbard declared all-out war on psychiatry, telling Scientologists that "We want at least one bad mark on every psychiatrist in England, a murder, an assault, or a rape or more than one."

He committed the Church of Scientology to the goal of eradicating psychiatry in 1969, announcing that "Our war has been forced to become 'To take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms.

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.

[69]An October 2006 article in the Evening Standard underlines the strong opposition of Scientology toward the psychiatric profession: Up front, David Miscavige is dramatically — and somewhat bizarrely — attacking psychiatrists, his words backed by clips from a Scientology-produced DVD are broadcast on four giant high-definition TV screens and sensationally called: Psychiatry: an industry of death [...].

Psychology professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi's short review of Psychiatrists: The Men Behind Hitler states: Scientology has attracted much attention through its propaganda effort against what it calls psychiatry.

If the book Psychiatrists: The Men Behind Hitler (Roder, Kubillus, & Burwell, 1995) is a representative example, and I believe it is, it proves decisively that the campaign is rooted in total paranoia and pathetic ignorance.

[21]: 293 Tom Cruise has been highly vocal in attacking the use of psychiatric medication, gaining particular attention for becoming extremely animated on the subject during an interview on Today on June 25, 2005.

Brian J. Anderson, the then Commanding Officer of the Church's Office of Special Affairs (OSA) in Clearwater, said in his sworn statement:[108] I saw the handwritten notes, gave a cursory look to see if the summary—see if they matched and matched, and I threw the handwritten reports in my shred basket, and I had the report, kept the report.McPherson's "care logs" narrate the last seventeen days of her life: she was incoherent and sometimes violent, her nails were cut so she would not scratch herself or the staff, she bruised her fists and feet while hitting the wall.

[110] On December 5, 1995, the Church staffers contacted David Minkoff, a Scientologist medical doctor who twice prescribed McPherson Valium and chloral hydrate without examining her.

Advocates of the anti-psychiatric world view such as David Cooper, R. D. Laing and Michel Foucault had ties with the political left of the 1960s; Thomas Szasz, with the civil libertarians of the right, as well as an outspoken atheist.

By contrast, Hubbard referred to "schizophrenics" in his writings on Scientology theory,[127] and developed the emotional tone scale to, in part, gauge the health of a person's mental state.