http://newhavenadvocate.com/gbase/Lifestyle/content?oid=oid:126922

Weird Scientology
Tom Cruise is bad for your mental health.
by Steven Novella - September 22, 2005

Scientology spiritual home of Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley, Jenna Elfman and
a

lot of Hollywood actors you've never heard ofhas gotten a lot of press for
what some say is its cult-like devotion to secrecy, not to mention its
hefty charges for counseling services.

(See "Battlefield New Haven," Nov. 4, 2004, newhavenadvocate.com.) But
it's

not Scientology's recruiting strategies, nor its finances, that could
cause

the most harm; from the point of view of public nuisance, what's most
worrying is Scientology's opposition to anti-depressants, and its general
denial of chemical imbalances in the brain and organic mental illness.

Take, for example, Tom Cruise's public spat with Brooke Shields last
summer, as he derided her use of anti-depressants to cope with post-partum
depression.

As laid out in Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's book, Dianetics , the
real causes of everyone's mental distress are painful memories suppressed
from childhood, even the womb.

These traumatic memories create "engrams" on our brains. The only way to
be

mentally healthy is to be "cleared" of these traumatic memories, which can
only be accomplished through scientology "auditing." (In the cult-jargon
of

scientology, the rest of us are PC, or pre-clear.) And auditing costs
money.

But wait, there's more.

Talk about traumatic memories and engrams is just another covera
superficial scientology "reality level."

Scientology's real dogma is that we are all suffering from the traumatic
memories of aliens, called thetans, who were murdered on Earth millions of
years ago by the evil overlord Xenu, who trapped them in a volcano and
then

blew them up with nuclear weapons (hence the volcano reference on the
cover

of Dianetics ). So what we all need to be cleared of are parasitic alien
ghosts haunting us with bad memories.

This quasi-religious, sci-fi belief system has been widely mocked for
being

silly (which of course it is); but it also puts Scientologists directly at
odds with the mental health profession, in the exact same way that
religious creationists are at odds with natural historians and
evolutionary

biologists. Scientologists are the creationists of mental health. This
casts them in the role of deniersdenying a vast and growing body of
scientific evidence in the field of behavioral neuroscience.

Tom Cruise has insisted, bluntly, "There is no biochemical imbalance."
And,

of course, that means all medication for mood or cognitive symptoms are
out; taking lithium, in this view, is equated with taking recreational
street drugs. As a cure for depression-like feelings, Cruise offers
instead

diet and exercise (at least at the first reality level, until you are told
the whole thing about the distraught thetan spirits).

Interestingly, Scientologists aren't the only deniers of mental illness.
Beginning in the 1960s, psychiatrist Thomas Szaszwho has been known to
attend Scientology functionsbegan from the point of view of legitimate
criticism of the practice of psychiatry or mental health, but he then went
beyond all reason to the denial of the very existence of mental illness.

Such ideas were first formulated, however, before the revolution of
neuroscience, which has enabled us, for example, to actually image the
activity of neurotransmitters in the brain. We can now see the biochemical
imbalance. Given what we now know, denial of mental illness denies the
basic fact that the brain is an organ, just like the liver and kidneys,
only vastly more complex.

This denial is particularly sad in an age that has seen rapid strides in
the treatment of mental illness. Today, some people who 20 years ago would
have been potential suicides are now treatable with one of dozens of new
drugs. Those drugs don't work for everybody, and they don't make one's
life

perfect, but they can help keep depression from becoming crippling; they
can allow people to lead relatively normal lives.

It is a shame that the Church of Scientology has chosen to target
Hollywood

stars for recruitment, then have them as spokespersons. But perhaps the
Scientologists, like the Democratic Party, have overestimated the cache of
entertainment celebrity. The more Cruise publicly rants against the mental
health profession, the more the public seems to believe that he is in need
of their services. I wonder if that is on his reality level.

Steven Novella is an assistant professor of neurology at Yale and
president

of the New England Skeptical Society; theness.com.

---
http://www.ElmerFudd.US/ http://www.notserver.com/
http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/otiii-gif.html
http://www.rightard.org/ http://www.thedarkwind.org/
Bush is a Christian. Get over it!

So what we all need to be cleared of are parasitic alien
ghosts haunting us with bad memories.

Interestingly, Scientologists aren't the only deniers of mental illness.

It is a shame that the Church of Scientology has chosen to target Hollywood
stars for recruitment, then have them as spokespersons.

The more Cruise publicly rants against the mental health profession,
the more the public seems to believe that he is in need of their
services. I wonder if that is on his reality level.