Dr Breggin's assessment that "Modern biological psychiatry is a materialistic religion masquerading as a science" is quite a revelation for many people. A question many would ask is how could science in any form be religious in nature. A good source for that question is a book called "A World Without Women" It chronicles the history of the religious/misogynistic aspects of science going back to the roots of Christianity. Even more interesting is Dr Breggin's applause of Tom Cruise for publicly lambasting biological psychiatry as a total hoax on the public. I applaud Tom Cruise for taking on the drug issue but Scientology itself also needs to be further exposed. Cruise is for no drugs at all calling it all a fraud, effectively a form of biological mind control. But what does Scientology promote as a replacement for drugs, a non-biological form of Mind Control. It's as additive as any drug can be but does not leave any trace at all. Dr Breggan's analysis of the abusive use of drugs in psychiatry is laudable but let's not give the impression that Tom Cruise has the answer in Scientology without comment.
In the early 1970's I had one Scientology moment and I didn't need another. It was my first job after college and a new friend at work invited me to visit her church one evening. It turns out to be the Church of Scientology. It was located right outside Kenmore Square in Boston. I happen to live right down the street from the Church so when my friend invited me (recruited) I didn't hesitate. I didn't know anything about Scientology at that time. I think it had just opened inBoston recently. I was open to new ideas even though I not particularly intersted in joining any religious groups.
We arrived in the early summer evening as the sun was setting. We walked into the entryway which opened up into a large receiving area filled with small groups of people chatting and milling around.We were greeted by a well scrubbed young man wearing a very clean cut outfit, white shirt and tie, whom my friend was delighted to see. As the three of us began to talk, the young man looked deeply into my eyes and suddenly I had strange feeling come over me. My mind felt in a way it had never before. It felt invaded, literally invaded and I knew it was the young man with the piercing eyes taking liberties with me. Fortunately I realized he didn't know that I was aware he had entered by sanctuary, my mind! I also sensed if he knew I was aware of his presence he'd might try to hide inside my brain or become more controlling. I just stayed as cool as I could. I kept smiling sweetly and nodding in agreement to every thing he suggested. When our time was up I even bought one of Ron Hubbard's books just to keep him from suspecting that I was about to escape!!!
Tom Cruise I feel sorry for you. Yea no drugs Dr Breggin but pure mind control none the less.
07.17.2005 Dr. Peter Breggin Thanks Tom Cruise
On June 25, 2005 Tom Cruise did the unthinkable on TV. Actually, he did several “unthinkables” in a filmed interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer for the Today Show. First, Tom stopped smiling. He deprived us of that multi-million dollar grin and got serious. For a star to do this to the American public was unthinkable. Second, Tom pointed out that Matt Lauer actually was very “glib” (shallow) and didn’t know what he was talking about. He also urged Matt to be “more responsible” and to learn something about psychiatry before touting it. For a star to do this to a media personality was unthinkable. Since nearly all of them are shallow, this was a threat of potentially epidemic proportions. Suppose other guests began pointing out that media hosts don’t know what they are talking about and are shallow? Third, he got serious about one of the most important issues in our personal lives, in this case our widespread use of psychiatric drugs to solve our personal distress and anguish. Tom concluded, “I’m passionate about life.” For anyone to speak this way on television, except perhaps on the Catholic channel, is truly beyond the TV pale; and even the Catholic channel doesn’t criticize psychiatry. Fourth, he criticized psychiatry and drew attention to its genuine flaws and failings. I suspect he’s actually read my book, Toxic Psychiatry. Tom said that psychiatry had a long history of abusing people, including electroshock. He said, “There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.” He said that antidepressants can only “mask the problem” and that “these drugs are very dangerous.” He called psychiatry a “pseudoscience” and suggested that there are better approaches. He was right about all of this. A few days later NBC invited me to New York City as a psychiatric expert to discuss the Tom Cruise affair on the Today Show, and when I began by saying it sounded like Tom had been doing some serious reading about psychiatry, I got cut off, again and again, throughout the show. Why was the media both drawn into the story and shocked by it? It was too good a story to simply ignore: “Tom Cruise Gone Wild” was the theme. It should have been, “Tom Cruise gets serious.” The media would have liked to attack Tom on the grounds that he’s a Scientologist. Scientologists seem to share a number of views about psychiatry with me, including everything Tom said. In fact, I’d go further. Modern biological psychiatry is a materialistic religion masquerading as a science. How can I say that my profession of psychiatry is a materialistic religion? Because modern psychiatry makes believe that psychological and spiritual problems, such as anxiety and depression, are caused by mechanical failures in the physical brain, and because psychiatry then attempts to correct these psychological and spiritual problems with physical interventions such as drugs and electroshock. Modern biological psychiatry takes these views and implements these interventions on faith and it has won a lot of converts with the help of billion-dollar marketing campaigns. If you want more detailed analyses of the faith and fake science behind the claims of modern psychiatry, you’ll find them in my books such as Toxic Psychiatry (1991), Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry (1997), Talking Back to Ritalin (Revised, 2001), the Antidepressant Fact Book (2001) and the Ritalin Fact Book (2002). You can find my scientific papers on my website. In my books and on the website you’ll also find discussions of the many drug-free alternatives that are available for helping people with problems such as anxiety and depression. The media kept hinting that the problem was Tom’s Scientology beliefs but they didn’t want to say it. To some extent it’s not politically correct to criticize someone’s religion, especially when people like Tom and John Travolta are members. But that was really not the issue. The media is afraid of Scientology because the religion has been extremely aggressive toward media critics, often charging them or threatening to charge them with libel and slander. I was also invited on to CNBC’s the Donny Deutche talk show. This time I remained in Ithaca, New York, only a few blocks from my office in a high tech TV studio. I was kept waiting in front of the live camera for almost an hour and a half to get a word in as I watched Tom get excoriated. Although I could see the show on the uplink for this entire time as I sat waiting at any moment to be called upon, they decided not to link me into the show at all and I never got to say a thing in Tom’s defense or in criticism of biological psychiatry, drugs and electroshock. Sitting upright that long without twitching in anticipation of momentarily appearing on millions of televisions was hard enough, but listening to Donny was worse. While I sat listening to the CNBC show that I was never brought onto, I felt a mixture of outrage and sadness. Outrage that the show host Donny Deutche bragged up his work in advertising where he helped to produce the Zoloft TV ads with their clever little bouncing faces that made the antidepressant so much more “accessible,” in his words, to millions of Americans. Donny was bragging about an actual fraud—ads that falsely suggest that Zoloft corrects biochemical imbalances and that leave out the warning that the drug causes mania, not to mention psychosis, violence and suicide. What was tragic? Donny’s guest was Jane Pauley who was flogging her new book, Out of the Blue. Jane is the epitome of a media personality, having anchored the Today Show with Tom Brokaw and Bryant Gumbel, and having earned many broadcast awards. Jane is also a promoter of psychiatry. She admitted to having developed “hypomanic” (milder than full-blown mania) symptoms on an antidepressant. At the time, she explained, her mind and thoughts were racing and she couldn’t control them. But then she added that of course the drug didn’t make her become manic; the drug just “brought out” her underlying or pre-existing bipolar disorder. Of course, I don’t know anything about Jane Pauley except what she’s told us and she’s not really the issue. Celebrities are actively recruited by marketing departments to promote medical and psychiatric treatments. I do know that psychiatrists often lie to patients to protect themselves and their drugs. My colleagues lie by saying the antidepressant merely “brought out” their mania, psychosis, violence or depression, rather than the drug caused it in the otherwise innocent victim. Jane Pauley thinks she is a victim of bipolar disorder when she sounds to me like a victim of psychiatry. It’s no small matter to falsely inform a person that their drug-induced mania shows they have bipolar disorder. It results in a false diagnosis and a stigmatizing label (bipolar or manic-depressive disorder) that follows people for the rest of their lives. It leads to additional medications, often including antipsychotic drugs like Zyprexa and Risperdal that can cause lethal diabetes and pancreatitis, and tardive dyskinesia, a potentially disfiguring and disabling neurological disorder characterized by bizarre-looking abnormal movements. So the media personalities had a feast promoting their religion, psychiatry, while Tom Cruise got hammered for criticizing psychiatry, and indirectly promoting his religion, Scientology. No, I’m not a Scientologist. Except when they occasionally say hello to me at conferences, I have hardly spoken to a Scientologist in more than thirty years. But when I saw Tom’s bravery come out from behind his marvelous smile, I wanted to help, and I made clear I wanted to defend him. Well, Tom, you said on TV things I’ve been saying in the media and in my books and scientific articles for three decades—but boy did you generate a lot more attention to the issues. Thanks! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/featuredposts.html#a004284
Recent Comments