| | The question is, why would a bunch of allegedly sane people (i.e. those who haven't yet had a psychiatrist diagnose them with something) go along with Hubbard's schizophrenic ravings?
I know! I'll bet they're all schizophrenic, too! Yeah, that must be it!
During the press conference, David Rice, President of the National Coalition of Human Rights Activists, makes a blanket insinuation about the mental health of all Scientologists and then suggests that Tom Cruise's agitation against psychiatry "ought to be against the law in the USA."
I have no love lost for Scientologists, but I think we also ought to question the sanity of people who fly off their handles anytime someone suggests that psychiatry's psychotropic medications should be considered in more complex terms than simply as "life-saving health care." That goes double for odious censors like Mr. Rice.
From the comments section of the article, an excellent post by a Mr. Jerry Ross:
Scientology is nuts, but schizophrenia is not necessarily so.
The term "schizophrenia" simply means "broken brain". Anyone who undergoes acute trauma of any sort, are oftentimes diagnosable with schizophrenia in the immediate aftermath of the trauma. It's not really that different from post-traumatic stress disorder, otherwise known as "PTSD", which results from some acute life trauma.
It's utterly wrong to use the label of schizophrenia to dismiss L. Ron Hubbard's ideas. His ideas are wrong for logical, objective reasons that have nothing to do with schizophrenia. It's childish, underhanded and lazy to throw the term "schizophrenia" at Hubbard, rather than expend the energy to logically decipher his stated facts as impossible -- or at least highly unlikely -- paranoia.
Along these lines, the mental health system, as practiced today, is largely mystical rubbish whose purpose is little more than intimidating and stigmatizing society's dissenters into frightened conformity to the status quo, no matter how corrupt that status quo.
Had Hubbard based his denunciation of the industry on this sort of rationale, it would hold water. But because he chalked it up to "space aliens" or whatever, all subsequent criticism of the industry has been falsely dismissed as "crazy" talk, simply by association with these mad notions of one deranged man.
The automatic dismissal of the notion that the mental health industry is corrupt, based on the preachings of one maniac, is a logical falsehood known in philosophy as an "ad hominem" attack, meaning "attack against the person, rather than the merits of their argument". It's a dishonest and unethical form of attack, in addition to being just plain false.
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