CCHR people are amazing.
They churn out an apparently endless stream of accusations about psychiatry that complain about the psychs doing exactly what they do every day- and utterly devoid of irony.
Forced labor? How about being on staff in a scientology org? Or even more, in the Sea Org?
Money motivation?
Labelling people? This is perhaps the most ironic of all.
Wogs. PTS. SP. Type 3. etc etc etc
Apart from the different labels, the only thing this cartoon has wrong is that the person would be directed to the registrar rather than a nurse.
“Please deposit your wages here” — so we may spend them for you on this nuttiness.
This absolutely sickens me. As the sister of an older brother who suffered with Schizophrenia from his young adult years….this makes me want to scream.
The ONLY thing that kept my brother from “hearing the voices” was pharmaceutical drugs…..those same drugs that he would stop taking because once they kicked in…..he thought he was CURED…..Damned “BACKWARDS LOGIC”…..I.E. “only sick people take drugs…I am no longer sick so I won’t take them anymore”….
He IS and always WILL BE his own worst enemy….his refusal to accept he NEEDS these meds cause him to be like a ping pong ball…bouncing in & out of mental hospitals for decades. Under MEDICAL SUPERVISION where he is FORCED more or less to take the meds…he does well….otherwise….forget it…he’s off fighting the demons that will haunt him the rest of his life because his mental state refused to accept his diagnosis.
I had to cut ties with him decades ago…I CANNOT HELP SOMEONE WHO WON’T HELP THEMSELVES……horrific….yes……of course….but it is exactly like “The Song That Never Ends”….this scenario goes on and on…….ssssoooo sad….
Is it me or are these ‘comics’ by Verde total anti-Semitic twaddle. His ‘psychs’ in almost every ‘comic’ have the old nazi anti-Semitic propaganda look.
Also, his usage of “Please deposit your wages here” instead of ‘Please leave a donation’ must be for a reason. Why use the term ‘wages’?
I had immediately the same thought about anti-Semitic …
Clear? Is that the reason it is so easy to see through all of these con artists and charlatans?
Here’s how CCHR can get their stats up:
Take down the Psychiatry Industry of Death exhibit as it’s too much of a downer, not to mention a big lie, and in its place highlight the actual conditions of the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) with slides and video. I’m sure a lot more people would be interested and attendance would be highest ever!
Abreaction/Dianetics MIGHT have been a valid psychotherapeutic TOOL, but it wasn’t the be-all, do-all Hubbard said it was
Jere, abreaction was being abandoned by the late 1940s because careful study showed it not to really be effective, in spite of sometimes producing promising-seeming patient responses. It also had an unacceptably high rate of adverse outcomes such as patients getting worse rather than better, or even going psychotic – which I would say all also pretty well describes the overall results of dianetics and auditing (including in Scientology) as a derivitive that inherited abreaction’s shortcomings and dangers.
Hubbard may have seen abreaction in use at Naval hospitals, but within just a couple of years, by about 1947, its practice there had ceased as psychiatrists and psychologists started to pay closer attention to actual, measurable longer-term outcomes. Typically, Hubbard was just sloppily plagiarizing what had been the leading edge of some discipline, and was actually behind the curve and making the same sorts of novice mistakes that others were already moving beyond.
Exactly, Peacemaker. SCIENCE reviews its results in an open and transparent manner. Peers review the published findings and publish their OWN results, so ALL can benefit. Ron couldn’t STAND the idea that HIS thoughts on any matter might not be 100% accepted by everyone else, so he dealt only in secrecy and required all concerned be just as secretive. Because he considered his merest thought on a matter to be superior to everything else, NOTHING can be changed of the first thing he dashes off or dictates on a whim. Thus scientology can’t change, can’t improve. Eventually, science will catch up and surpass his best efforts and results. It can’t help but do so. He didn’t EDIT, which made it worse. Too many passages are vague & contradictory.
Upon review, the Shrink Tank” should have a good label for the nurse with the meds.
I’m thinking, from her expression, “Passive Agressive”
passive aggressive and covert hostility are so similar, I think Ron wasted his time renaming the syndrome, along many other things he wasted effort redefining to his tastes.
After my burst brain aneurysm and subsequent emergency surgery,I spent a month in the hospital and was petrified.Once I got home I was in a bad place.Severe PTSD,flashbacks,anxiety disorder,panic attacks and severe depression.My husband’s cousin’s wife recommended her psychiatrist to me.She has been a great help to me.I cannot speak for other people,but I get billed through my husband’s insurance.I pay nothing up front.The insurance also covers my meds.I see her once a month but since the Corona Virus outbreak we have telephone appointments.I regressed a little bit since March but am working very hard on getting my anxiety under control.It is just a matter of searching for a doctor that is a good fit for you.I am very satisfied with my physicians.Some of them actually do want to help their patients get better.Not all of them are dishonest.The prospective patient just has to do a little research to find the doctor that specializes in their disorders.
Nancy, I agree that mental health PROFESSIONALS can be incredibly helpful; scientology has nothing to compare to a real, live, compassionate *person* actually listening. Auditors are trained to robotically go through the set-in-stone motions and ignore any actual emotions coming from the person in front of them
Jere, Yes and this rote auditor stuff got worse with the Golden Age of Tech stuff. There were “What do you do” drills where you were given a situation and asked what do you do? There was only one answer and if you knew two or three answers based on LRH writings, you had to ditch all other answers except the ONE that was on the drill. It made really robotic auditors.
MORE robotic auditors, Cindy. Ron always did prefer that auditors do only exactly what he told them to do, not actually THINK, except to recall his exact instructions, verbatim.
Davey just took it to the extreme –about the other side of the observable universe extreme. I pity those training to Davey-Boy’s “standards”, and even more the poor PCs who experience the results.
Jerre, Amen to that! You’re right!
And, as a programmer, I once sketched out a program which could fairly easily remove the human element of auditing which Ron, and Dave, have found so troublesome.
Never thought it was worth any real effort, since the ‘tech’ was clearly so immature, but it was an interesting thought experiment. Hooking the computer into an e-meter hadn’t been done by then, so I would have had to create that tool first. NOT worth the effort; perhaps too costly to do, risking too many peoples’ sanity. Science, once it discovers it CAN do something, should next answer:”SHOULD it be done?” NOT that what Ron thought up was truly scientific, but eventually science might get to the point where his techniques might bear looking into from an experimental perspective … actually applying the scientific method to the enterprise. NAAH! Dwarfenführer® or his unworthy successors would hit them with copyright & trademark infringement to protect scn’s money flow.
If I ever decide it’s worth the effort, current computers should be capable of doing the job. Just pick the computer voice to give the commands, read the meter’s reaction, and we’re OFF!
Nancy, CONGRATS on surviving your stroke.
It IS scary when brain cells die wholesale, and not nearly as much fun as doing so retail with alcohol, etc.
I had a “right-hemisphere” blood clot and was thankful that I could still understand the Doctor tell me how close it had been to ALL the brain just “going away”. Up until then, it wasn’t quite clear what had happened since the whole left side of my body just disappeared; I didn’t even realize it wasn’t talking to me: no pain, no sensation to speak of. 12 years later it’s still only real when I want to DO something with the left side systems. What keeps me from getting really down is focusing on what I can still DO, with difficulty, whereas what I CAN’T do is a thoroughly depressing, LONG list. It’s about the only time that scientology training has been helpful in 40 years: Whatever happens, pick yourself up and carry on.
CCHR: Crackpot Community of Hypocritical Revisionists.
Scribe recalled us with:
“CCHR: Crackpot Community of Hypocritical Revisionists.”
Not bad….
Scientology has all the credibility of the old Soviets (I was a cold warrior in the Army) or the NSDAP, none at all. How many times do I have to say this?
optherles, repeat as often as necessary to feel good. But remember that the rest of us are “the choir”.
Actually on topic for once. 🙂
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With the support of Scientology front-group Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), Nation of Islam Brother Rizza Islam exposes Psychiatry and ECT for Mental Health Day:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CGLuPE1Jfne/
Perhaps Brother Rizza Islam will discuss the subject when he speaks at the Black Agenda Conference today, 10/11/20:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CGMdfi1FmB6/
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Whether he did or didn’t depends on what his handlers (Dwarfenführer’s® minions) told him he can say. AFAICT, he’s a scientologist through-and-through. His goings on with his Mom in California confirm it
Wait a minute! Am I to understand that the psychs didn’t cause the Holocaust? My whole world is turned upside down. I need an L1C, CS53, L&N and Int Rundown as I’m PTS, interiorized with a wrong item and have an ARCx of Long Duration. The tech will protect me, right?
I find it quite bizarre that they have conducted this crazy war against the psychs ever since Flubbard first wrote them begging for their endorsement and they replied they thought he was nuts and should just get lost.
I don’t understand the reason why they still carry on this crazy war after all this time. I’m guessing this is one of the very few activities in which these nutbars engage that does not make them any money. It may well be the only such activity. Can anyone suggest a reason why they would keep on fighting this crazy battle that just seems to be a waste of money?
They’ve defined psychiatry as this big powerful boogeyman, that they have to rally the faithful against .
It motivates Scientologists with anger and fear against a common ‘evil’ enemy ….. And that can lead to more donations
Scribe, it SCARES me that I still recognize that alphabet soup after all these years, even flashed on what the prepared lists looked like.
Your item is Rinder.
Good! One of the good guys™
Jere, here’s the latest tech discovery, the 21st Law of Listing and Nulling:
If while listing on a PTS Rundown, the only reading PTS item on the list is ‘Hubbard’ or ‘Miscavige’ the item is incorrect.
It’s been true throughout: No scientologist apparently in *good standing*™ could/can be an SP. That always puzzled me as too many were being declared SP even in the early years.
Fighting “SPs” is just another income strategy.
I used to work for the NY State office of mental health. Virtually no one who works there knows about the CCHR. A few remember Tom Szasz, bot only as a cautionary tale.
Great news, Zee. Maybe that tidbit will start a chain reaction from our OSA monitors out through the rank-and-file: No one CARES about CCHR & scn because they make NO impact upon the REAL world; only upon those unlucky enough to contact them at a wrong time in their lives.
CCHR … hypocrisy … Isn’t that being redundant?
scientologists are carefully trained away from self-assessment.
Standard Scientologists follow L. Ron Hubbard’s writings.
Another reason for a need for someone, somewhere, to become an “outside the movement” complete “expert” of ALL of Hubbard’s writings and lectures, policies, secret “advices” orders, the whole history and context of the whole Hubbard corpus.
As offensive and sinister and sociopathic are all these Hubbard operative writings, someone needs at some time to become an “outside the movement” legitimate expert.
Mike, I wish you somehow help influence this longer range goal.
Someone needs to still do this.
Because Hubbard’s writings still will have effect, no matter what comes.
Longer range, the subject, as offensive and bad as Hubbard truly is responsible for it, needs to do the deep full research and become a top to bottom, full history expert and read and understand all the stuff.
I can only think a university or legit non profit institution which has really strong legs, does fund this.
The real long range problem I think, is future persons continually coming along, finding the Hubbard corpus, and trying their hand at the nastiness.
This interview you recently did, is the all time best, coverage of just so much, a truly satisfying interview, great interviewer just let you talk, and you talked and summarized so well so much, a truly satisfying great interview letting you talk the details.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2GCOfdNE1c
I came into Sea Org in Dec 1975 at Flag, Clearwater, and I got out in 2003 in LA, but I appreciate truly how much you’ve been through and do today.
Thankyou so much Mike.
chuckbeattyx75to03 said:
“Another reason for a need for someone, somewhere, to become an “outside the movement” complete “expert” of ALL of Hubbard’s writings and lectures, policies, secret “advices” orders, the whole history and context of the whole Hubbard corpus.
Isn’t that Jon Atack?(sorry if it’s misspelled).
Chuck Beatty opined:
“Longer range, the subject, as offensive and bad as Hubbard truly is responsible for it, needs to do the deep full research and become a top to bottom, full history expert and read and understand all the stuff.”
Aw, GEE, do we gotta? Might I suggest rounding up one of the XIIs and/or FEBCs since they’ve already studied all of it once? Also, it’d have to be an indie since they’re the ones with a hope and chance to keep scn alive. There aren’t any left in corporate scn who haven’t signed on to DM’s squirreling. A proper analysis by someone INTERESTED in making things right might just find a way to root out the absolute crap, leaving, perhaps, something workable. I’m neither volunteering nor holding my breath, because I think it’d be a fool’s errand; Ain’t nothing salvageable amongst Hubbard’s word salad.
DIANETICS: Cult-monopolized Therapy Now Outmoded by Better Psychotherapies!
Dianetics, the psychotherapy which L. Ron Hubbard took full credit for, was the “Abreaction Therapy” developed earlier by psychologist Alfred Korzybski. Hubbard added the E-meter invented by Volney Mathison, to whom he gave no credit or compensation. It indicates to the auditor (Dianetics therapist) emotional responses and lies.
Dianetics is the cult (“Church”) of Scientology’s biggest hook. Their “dissemination drill” requires the subject’s divulging their worst emotional upset or fear, then states that Scientology can handle (cure) it. Early experiences with Dianetics are often impressive enough to convince the person of this, and he or she is thus hooked, willing to ignore or rationalize away the objectionable aspects of Scientology for fear of losing access to their auditing (therapy). Dianetics, monopolized by Hubbard’s “Church” of Scientology, is not covered by medical insurance and is prohibitively expensive to most unless one is willing to join Scientology staff to work as a near-slave. Psychotherapy and medical-psychiatric treatments are affordable and usually covered by medical insurance.
When originated in the early 1950s, Dianetics was probably the most effective psychotherapy available. Fearing the development by medical-psychiatric science of superior therapies, Hubbard launched a hateful campaign to smear psychiatry, exposing abuses that pale into insignificance compared to those within his Scientology cult. He hypocritically condemned medical and recreational mind-affecting drugs (he used them himself), and forbade Scientologists from using them.
Unlike Scientology, the therapies offered by psychologists and psychiatrists respect your personal privacy. These professionals do not interrogate you under pressure for your “overts,” sensitive personal information that once disclosed can be used for intimidation or coercion. The personal, intimate secrets you must reveal in Scientology/Dianetics auditing sessions are NOT kept confidential, despite claims they are. Everything you say in session is written down or otherwise recorded. By standard policy – Guardian’s Order 121669 – such information is routinely “culled” from Scientology’s dossiers (PC folders) on you for possible use in intimidation, extortion, and blackmail.
Professional therapists enforce no self-serving code of “ethics” on you as Scientology does. Fail to conform to Scientology’s freedom-restricting dictates and you are subject to often demeaning punitive actions, and until completed you are not allowed auditing.
As psychology and psychiatry are medical sciences they are constantly evolving and becoming more effective. As Scientology is a “religion” (for legal purposes such as tax avoidance and being exempt from fair labor laws), its “tech” (technology) is based on Hubbard’s “scripture” and changes are prohibited. Dianetics will always be as it has been.
Dianetics is not available outside of the Scientology cult. An auditor that leaves and tries to set up an independent practice gets sued for copyright violations and is otherwise harassed out of business.
Scientology ignores the central role the brain plays in mind and body function. They would like you to believe it is all in the spirit (“thetan”) and not physical, though neurologists have shown actual though usually reversible brain/mind injury results from pain or trauma. The “reactive mind” of Scientology resides in one area of the brain; the conscious mind elsewhere. The reactive mind holds such incidents as “engrams,” painful memories, below the level of consciousness, from which they cause undesirable emotions or impair mind or body function. Dianetics auditing or other therapy releases them to be recalled and held as normal, non-impairing memories. More recently developed therapies more efficiently, more effectively, and less expensively achieve this therapeutic process.
Many professional therapists today use a multidisciplinary approach. They can choose from a number of therapeutic options those that can best benefit the patient, sometimes including the use of medical drugs. Scientology/Dianetics frowns on all drugs and “other practices” to the extent that undertaking any can result in “ethics” disciplinary actions and denial of auditing. Attempting to modify auditing is “altering the tech” and strictly prohibited. Their way is the only way, and you must accept that.
Legitimate therapists do not proselytize or aggressively seek new patients. Like ambulance-chasing lawyers, Scientology sends “volunteer ministers” to disaster scenes to give psychological “assists” to highly vulnerable traumatized victims in hopes of seducing them into the cult.
Competent therapists know good physical health is necessary for good mental health and will refer you to a doctor when disease is suspected. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor that specializes in mental health. Scientology subordinates the health of staff to the productive value of their underpaid service, denigrates psychiatry, and minimizes the value of medical treatment in general. Among other things, cult guru L. Ron Hubbard was a chain smoker and actually stated that “Not enough smoking causes lung cancer.” He died of a stroke, his “Church” then lying that he “causatively [at will] dropped his body.” Vistaril® was found in his body – a psychiatric drug used to calm frantic or overly anxious patients. Witnesses testified that Hubbard died acting like a raving lunatic, despite his states of Clear and OT (see below).
No doctor or legitimate therapist will demand payment before service is rendered. To receive Dianetics one must join Scientology, and Dianetics must be prepaid in blocks (“intensives”) of many hours. All along you are subject to frequent pressure for advance payments for services necessary to go up Scientology’s “bridge to total freedom.” The goal of Dianetics is the state of “Clear;” Clear has been redefined over the years, but basically it is freedom from or the erasure of the reactive mind. The state of Clear is NOT stable; one is always vulnerable to acquiring new engrams. Following Dianetics are the “grades,” which can be beneficial but are often rushed through to get you to the “OT” levels, OT meaning Operating Thetan or free spirit/soul. These are very expensive, of little if any value, and constitute a SCAM. You are expected to make advance payments of many thousands of dollars without being told of the material these levels contain. You are intimidated by claims the information would make you very sick if divulged before you are prepared for it. The material if divulged would actually expose their SCAM before they take your money! It is based on an absurd science fiction fable – Hubbard was a sci-fi writer before he decided that “the way to really make money is by starting your own religion.” His fable states that we are all surrounded and affected by “body thetans,” the spirits of aliens killed millennia ago by an evil galactic ruler named Xenu. You must self-audit for many hours to exorcise your body thetans to become OT. You can find the details online at http://www.xenu.net/ and read them for a laugh. The cult has never been able to present anyone with the superhuman mental/spiritual powers they claim the OT levels deliver. Many people have lost all their life savings, property, and investments to this ultimate CON GAME.
Thank you Howard. All you said is totally true and perfectly written. It is just what I saw and experienced in my many decades in the cult.
Thank you!
Howard, TELL me how unstable “clear” is. Attesting to “clear”(by whatever definition was active in ’78) is primarily what got me kicked to the curb like a useless DB in ’80. It Felt great for a while as a new ‘clear’, but then came the crash Flag couldn’t even *try* to address. I couldn’t even just talk to a friend and say how bad I felt, which MIGHT have been sufficient.
Now, I wonder if Dianetics ever WAS an effective psychotherapy. Perhaps with a real human as an Auditor, but that wasn’t possible/legal in the ’70s; robotic was the rule.
Effective to a degree in my opinion, but today’s therapies are better. I have experienced EMDR, and was surprised at it’s efficacy and the relatively low cost and time required compared to Dianetics. I was a “Clear,” but that term is now meaningless to me.
Howard, I don’t think it’s correct to say that Dianetics was ever that effective a therapy. While it may have been about as ineffective as traditional Freudian analysis, it also posed the dangers of being based on faulty theories and disguised use of hypnosis, and was mostly administered by inadequately trained and unprofessional amateurs, inducing new pathologies such as the false memory syndrome imaginings of prenatal membories and past lives, ultimately leading in some cases to psychosis and suicide.
And typically, Hubbard was actually behind the curve, with Freudian analysis and other less effective or even pseudo-scientific aspects of psychiatry and psychology on the way out, replace by more effective evidence-based therapies as well as new developments in pharmaceuticals. The predecessor of the APA (American Psychological Association) had started going in a more empirical direction decades earlier, and analysis was being challenged by diagnostic approaches and dynamic psychiatry, particularly marked by the publication of the DSM-I in the early 1950s.
For the most part you are right, but I consider it very possible that reincarnation is real. Science has not as yet penetrated the field of spirituality, which may involve other-dimensional principles we do not as yet understand. Keep an open mind.
Howard, if reincarnation is real Scientology is certainly not onto the truth or reality of it, with their halls full of bogus Jesus claimants (per Karen de la C), armies of imagined reincarnated Nazis (apparently a lot of the Sea Org), etc.
Neither Scientology nor anyone else has yet to provide a verifiable example of reincarnation, particularly someone who can remember details they have no other way of knowing – the cases passed around as anecdotes, all fall apart on such accounts when scrutinized – much less, for instance, understand and speak a foreign language they have no other way of knowing, a simple point on which even the various cases of supposed claimants fail utterly.
Also, Hubbard’s subjects and followers suffer from a long-recogized fundamental problem that many imagine the same famous (in our Western culture – almost never others) historical figures – Jesus, Anthony or Cleopatra, etc. – and lives that turn out to overlap in time (Paul Revere and Abraham Lincoln would be such a mis-match, as a lot of people think of them as from different eras and wouldn’t be aware their lives overlapped by about a decade). That’s probably partly why Hubbard created the theory of BTs, to be able to explain away such obviously falsifiable aspects of the theory he adopted.
Actually, if you want to be somewhat scientific about it, the Akashic Record or collective species memory is a better model on a number of accounts, including being simpler and then explaining some of the obvious problems such as why many people claim to have memories of being the same historical figures. I think it’s typical that Hubbard chose the most egoistic and self-aggrandizing, though obviously inaccurate if not entirely faulty, theory; plus it was also useful for his purposes of control and exploitation, to get followers to believe they had lived before and would live again, making it easier to influence them to sacrifice their personal interests in this life and often their family as well, one of the most insidious and brainwashing-like aspects of Scientology.
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There was one individual – an “ethics officer” – that immediately gave me the impression as being a reincarnated Nazi. His appearance, demeanor, and attitude all reflected it – he was like a hostile robot. Of course this is anecdotal, just my impression (though my wife also saw him and agreed) as are many more specific claims re. reincarnation. Still, I would not rule it out, nor should anyone with a truly open mind. Science has not yet penetrated the field of the spirit or the occult, and I have had a few truly psychic experiences that today’s science cannot explain. Physicists will tell you there are other dimensions, not observable to us, in which the rules of physics here may not apply. Yes, there may be a spirit world.
Howard, a slight quibble: Dianetics really isn’t available WITHIN Davey’s tiny little cult. He up and changed everything to suit his purposes. What’s left is a pure grift machine.
It was money-motivated almost from the start. As Flubbard said, “The way to really get rich is to start your own religion.”
Howard, I believe I saw you dithering on whether to use “cult” or “church”. It sure ain’t no church by any normal definition, cult is a null word, so I tend to use “organization, which is strictly true and non-pejorative to most people.
Sometimes when I’m a bit more snarky, I substitute “enterprise, or cult-national enterprise, which can bring in implications of “criminal multi-national enterprise”, which is how I see it operating as.
As an agnostic that considers religion one of the most harmful forces in human history, the word “cult” is appropriate in my opinion. ALL religions start as cults. “Cult” has the negative connotation that is appropriate; “church” has a positive connotation for most.
Howard said, in part:
“Dianetics is not available outside of the Scientology cult. An auditor that leaves and tries to set up an independent practice gets sued for copyright violations and is otherwise harassed out of business.”
As long as you don’t use their trade marks, like calling it Dn or scn or variants on them, if you REALLY wanted to deliver it, who’s going to know?
BUT: What’s the use of THAT? long Term, the subject’s invalid, unworkable, and often dangerous.
Jere, and Howard, actually, the California Association of Dianetic Auditors has existed as an independent organization since 1950, with grandfathered-in rights to use the name. And there are plenty of examples of other independents who manage to practice while avoiding intellectual property hassles; in recent years it even seems that they can get away with using the term Scientology now.
It’s not that Dianetics is not available outside of the cult, just that outside of the self-reinforcing hothouse of the CofS there is no real interest in it, resulting from the fact that despite the passage of well over half a century, there’s no compelling evidence of its effectiveness. Sarge Gerbode’s efforts to distill it into TIR (Traumatic Incident Reduction) produced results that proper peer-reviewed research showed were better than placebo, but still mediocre compared to other modern talk therapies.
I never considered lying on a couch saying whatever came to mind was very therapeutic. Those you must pay to act like a friend are just scammers, charlatans, though not as bad as Flubbard was. Psychologists and psychiatrists, once seen with disdain by me when in the cult of $cientology, have advanced their therapeutic methodologies sufficiently to be considered superior to Dianetics. I know this from experience. Still, my experience with Dianetics was positive, despite that cult, and did me good.