"Never treat a war like a skirmish. Treat all skirmishes like wars." - L. Ron Hubbard

The Church of Scientology is the biggest player in the anti-psychology brigade.  They have a lot of money to spend, and a "religion" to spread.  Most of their anti-psychology antics are carried out through an arm of Scientology called the "Citizens Commission on Human Rights" (CCHR), so sometimes you don't even know it's them.

It's a bit difficult to speak out against Scientology as I'm about to, because they have what's called a "Fair Game" policy that promotes vicious (sometimes violent) attacks.  In part, the original Fair Game Doctrine reads:

Suppressive Person Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed. -L. Ron Hubbard: PENALTIES FOR LOWER CONDITIONS, HCO Policy Letter of 18 October 1967

Like I said, I'm going to carry on anyways, because their attack on attention deficit disorder, is an attack on you and I as individuals!

Scientology's war on psychology is bigger than you may realize.  Sure, you thought it was funny watching Tom Cruise talking with Matt Lauer on the "Today" show as he belittled Brooke Shields and said psychiatry was a "pseudo-science", but their antics are no joke.

Through CCHR, they have promoted legislation throughout the US and in many other countries attempting to discredit psychiatry and drug therapies.  They have even attempted to criminalize teachers who recommend a student see a psychologist.  They have also successfully infiltrated the public schools, usually starting with a seemingly harmless anti-drug message.  They are successful in their missions, because they go by pseudonyms like CCHR instead of stating that they're the Church of Scientology.

Nobody really knows for sure why L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was so vehemently against psychiatry, but it appears to be connected with psychiatry's take on his book "Dianetics", published in 1950.  Soon after it was released, the American Psychological Association advised its members against using the book's prescribed techniques.

Anti-Psychology:

In 1969 Hubbard wrote the article, "Today's Terrorism," in a Scientology journal, where he claimed that "the psychiatrist and his front groups operate straight out of the terrorist textbooks. The Mafia looks like a convention of Sunday school teachers compared to these terrorist groups." CCHR was created the same year, and on their website they state, "No mental 'diseases' have ever been proven to medically exist." And he also links psychiatry to Nazism, apartheid and school violence.

David Figueroa, president of the group's Florida chapter says that mental illness, as defined by the psychiatric community, does not exist, and "there is zero amount of proof that schizophrenia exists as a singular mental illness."

About ADHD Figueroa says, "Our contention from the very beginning is that these mental disorders are a scam. We know that there has never been any biological proof to any of these so-called mental illnesses these kids have been tagged with, whether it's ADD or ADHD. They don't exist. It's 100 percent fraud."

Well ... I could go on for quite awhile and piling up lots of evidence about their anti-psychology stance, but this isn't about their endless tactics and techniques for attacking psychiatry, the question really, is WHY?

You wouldn't believe in psychiatry either if you believed what they believe!

Founder:

Scientology was created in 1954 by the pulp science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.  During the 1940's, he was a struggling writer, flat-broke, he even sold his typewriter just to get by.  He was persistent, however.  Long fascinated with mental phenomena and the mysteries of life, he sought psychiatric treatment in 1947, but was denied.

In the mid-1940's, Hubbard met John Parsons, a rocket fuel scientist and protege of satanist Aleister Crowley. They lived in a mansion on Orange Grove Ave. in Pasadena, CA, along with many other bohemian artists, writers, and occultists, where they performed "sex magic", an 11-day ritual intended to produce a child of superior intellect and powers.  Hubbard also continued on with his writing.

In early 1950, Hubbard published an article in a science fiction magazine, claiming to have uncovered the source of man's problems. He then turned the article into a book, written in one draft in 30 days called "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health". He claimed Dianetics could restore withered limbs, erase wrinkles, mend broken bones, and improve intelligence.  The psychological community said his methods and theories were "dangerous", giving people a false sense of hope in simple, arbitrary solutions to very complex psychological issues.

The book became a best-seller, but as they do, book sales started to diminish.  With the psychological communities attacks increasing, and sales down, he was bent on proving his theories correct.  So being the top-notch self promoter that he was, Hubbard added a new "twist" to dianetics, and Scientology was born.

What was his new "twist"?  Theology!

Members of the Church of Scientology pay to take training courses.  The individual training courses teach a portion of Hubbard's theories, but to gain the "deeper" knowledge of Scientology, one has to take course after course.  Each time a member passes a course, they climb in rank.  Each time they climb in rank, there is another, yet more expensive course to be taken, which will offer the member more "enlightenment" or whatever.  Taking courses and whatnot really isn't what's important here.  It's their belief system (theology) that IS important.

Theology:

The following information, which you have to be a high-ranking Scientologist to learn, is available from court documents, Scientology documents, and 40 years of transcripts from Hubbard's many lectures.

About 75 million years ago, there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu who ruled 76 planets in our part of the galaxy, including Earth, which at the time was named Teegeeack. Unfortunately, each planet had an average population of 178 billion people per planet, forcing Xenu to devise a plan to eliminate "overpopulation".

With the help of psychiatrists, Xenu rounded-up billions of people on false income tax charges and injected them with a mix of alcohol and glycol paralyzing them. He then put them in space planes (that look just like DC-8s with rockets instead of propellers), and sent them off to Teegeeack (Earth). Upon arrival, he had these billions of paralyzed people stacked one atop another around the bases of volcanoes. Once the last person was put on the stack, Xenu lowered hydrogen-bombs into the volcanoes and detonated them, killing billions at once.

Each person is considered to have a soul, called a thetan, which reincarnates for billions of years into new body after new body. In killing billions at once, this act left billions of thetans blowing about in the nuclear winds without a new body to enter. Xenu therefore, had special electronic traps made to capture each thetan. During captivity, each thetan was taken to a special 3-D movie theater, and "implanted" with sexual perversion, religion and other notions to obscure their memory of what Xenu had done. Since groups of thetans were shown each 3-D movie at the same time, they were in essence, the same person, so they had to cluster together and live in one body.

The goal of Scientology is to purge the painful and unwanted memories of this event, because they cause emotional and physical problems. These bad memories carried by the many thetans in your body are called engrams, and may also have been "implanted" by other past events, for example a galactic war or by other "bad" thetans. As the many thetans which inhabit your body become "clear", they remember who they really are and leave your body until there's only one thetan left - the one that is you.

You clear your thetans through "auditing". Initially, you are "audited" by someone else, but eventually you learn how to "audit" yourself. Your "auditing" may include past-life recall, electropsychometer (e-meter) confessionals, so-called spiritual awareness processing, and other procedures developed by Hubbard.

The e-meter is the most well-known "auditing" instrument, and is really nothing more than a crude lie-detector. Scientologists believe the e-meter helps you locate your engrams so you can "clear" all the thetans in your body of these negative memories to set them free. The more training courses you take and pass, the "clearer" you become, thus ending all psychological and physical issues.

Summary:

That's the belief system of Scientology in a nutshell. While there are certainly many other anti-psychiatry crusaders who certainly aren't Scientologists, always remember, Scientology is the predominate force against psychiatry. They are against psychiatry because they believe all you have to do is "clear" the alien souls (thetans) in your body of "implanted" bad memories known as "engrams". Once all but your one dominant thetan is released, you will be healthy.

Remember also, that the Church of Scientology operates under many different names, even successfully enacting legislation. Make sure you question carefully anyone who you feel has a genuine argument that ADHD is a myth. Dig deep. They very likely may be promoting the beliefs of Scientology.

Then again ... if you wish to believe in Xenu and the rest of this wild theology over a century of scientific research and data, go ahead. Personally, I rather rely on the medical community, not the story of a galactic ruler (who is still alive, but now imprisoned) named Xenu.

Resources:

Stop Scientology Abuses

Operation Clambake

Los Angeles Times - The Scientology Story

Time Magazine - The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power

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