The important thing to recognize about Scientology is that it is opposed to any treatment by mental health professionals.

This would include any help offered through counseling by licensed marriage and family counselors, psychologists or psychiatrists.

Any psychological counseling or testing if any kind within a school setting, social service agency or community counseling center.

Any treatment whatsoever offered regarding a mental illness at a hospital, residential treatment facility or rehab.

Scientology will at times attempt to find wedge issues such as ADHD, various medications like Ritalin etc. to attack very specifically, but this is only a fraction of its wider agenda.

Scientology is actually against and would like to terminate the whole mental health field, which includes any treatment and/or care of any kind whatsoever provided by mental health professionals and related facilities.

yes, I realize that they have a larger agenda. to a degree I share in that agenda. their critique of psychiatry goes well beyond the use of psychiatric drugs. actually, so does mine.

I would not want to live in a world where therapy and counselling got outlawed. however, we do live in a world where a police officer can get you put in a psych ward, where after a cursory examination a psychiatrist can do the same (it happened to me) and where a judge can court order counselling or a stay in a psych ward. psychiatry functions at least as much as an arm of the legal system as it does into medicine. but I don't want to disgress...

if the Church of Scientology went bankrupt tomorrow I would punch my fist in the air and go whoo!

in no small part because they have thoroughly smeared any debate over psychiatry. every time I bring it up I feel I have to make a mandatory disclaimer.

the nut of it is: [b:0e3e554bb0] where are the exceptional results ? [/b:0e3e554bb0] ... Scientology has positioned itself as being in the possession of an extrordinary technology that can change the essential nature of mankind, yet the general run of the mill Scientology has surprisingly little to show for itself... a handful of celebrities who are nuttier by the season, no great artistic accomplishments, no great novels, no symphonies, no major scientific breakthroughs, no world leaders, no nobel prizes, [b:0e3e554bb0] how could a belief system which claims universal relevance and universal applicability find itself working within the limits of a glitzy, shallow entertainment ghetto and not much else ? How ? Where's the beef ? [/b:0e3e554bb0]

Compare this with the introduction of usable electrification, courtesy of Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse, and the financier Alfred Loomis... none of whom, to the best of my knowedge were Scientologists, which did literally transform the world. As soon as the principles of alternating current were understood, the world rapidly, universally embraced electrification [b:0e3e554bb0] in spite of its' many initial dangers and imperfections [/b:0e3e554bb0] ... or you could consider the massive growth of cell phone usage today... there you have 2 examples of the public embrace of [b:0e3e554bb0] technologies that actually deliver on their promises [/b:0e3e554bb0] ...

Did [b:0e3e554bb0] Xenu [/b:0e3e554bb0] sabotage electrification ? Antibiotics ? Transistors ? Cell Phones ?

Did body thetans get involved with the evolution of the automobile ? Is Bill Gates an Operating Thetan or is just a smart guy ?

Was L. Ron Hubbard more or less significant to American history than, ummm, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jonas Salk, Gordon Moore, or perhaps Steven King ?

Sometimes you just have to face the embarrassing facts. [b:0e3e554bb0] Scientology isn't bringing home the bacon [/b:0e3e554bb0] and everyone with a brain in their head can see that quite plainly.

Durham? Let me guess: We are unwilling to learn, right?
.

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Acid Reindeer
yes, I realize that they have a larger agenda. to a degree I share in that agenda. their critique of psychiatry goes well beyond the use of psychiatric drugs. actually, so does mine.

I would not want to live in a world where therapy and counselling got outlawed. however, we do live in a world where a police officer can get you put in a psych ward, where after a cursory examination a psychiatrist can do the same (it happened to me) and where a judge can court order counselling or a stay in a psych ward. psychiatry functions at least as much as an arm of the legal system as it does into medicine. but I don't want to disgress...

if the Church of Scientology went bankrupt tomorrow I would punch my fist in the air and go whoo!

in no small part because they have thoroughly smeared any debate over psychiatry. every time I bring it up I feel I have to make a mandatory disclaimer.

Well LRH was attacking practices in psychiatry since the 50s-that's where most of the attacks against Scientology stem from.
I think any organised group attacking psychiatry is going to get attacked right back (the powerful people behind psychiatry may not be positive but they're not stupid). And without organisation I don't think you're going to achieve much against psychiatry given how big and powerful it is.

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upsidedownnewspaper
Durham? Let me guess: We are unwilling to learn, right?
.

Well tell me you'd like to believe Scientology contains techniques to improve mental and spiritual wellbeing, learn faster and gain evidence of your own immortality. Tell me that you're willing to accept the critics could be wrong and that you want to make sure you've understood what Scientology is first and then reassess whether the critics are right or not. :)

Durham:

You either talk in circles or don't respond to real issues.

The critics of Scientology are very often former Scientologists who were at far higher OT Levels than you. As you have not even made OT1 yet, you really don't know what Scientology is all about.

For example, Xenu and the spaceships is revealed at OT3.

Criticism directed at Scientology and its overwhelmingly bad press, is neither about or from psychiatrists, it's much more basic than that.

Tragedies like Lisa McPherson dying while under Scientology care, or the church lying about and harassing Bonnie Woods, which it was forced by the courts to apologize about publicly. And the criminal indictment of Scientologists in the early 1980s that resulted in L. Ron Hubbard's wife going to prison.

This is the bad behavior of Scientology and Scientologists, not psychiatry or psychiatrists.

You really are not making much sense here. Many of your posts verge on nonsensical.

It sounds like a CD mix disk stuck in a player and set on repeat.

Technical note from the NLP behavior studies department: What you are witnessing [b:5d34a7c4ce] is [/b:5d34a7c4ce] a behavior , a repetitive, programmed behavior such as one lears about in animal behavior class... the "primitive" mammalian, or meso-limbic brain has a strong tenedency to obsessive and repetitive behaviors... it is this region of the brain that cults and gurus tap into, and they do this by using techniques that weaken the regulation of the frontal cortex...

Durham is an excellent case study so let him say his thing and play close attention to the [b:5d34a7c4ce] structure [/b:5d34a7c4ce] of his behavior. Notice especially how his brain has been programmed to [b:5d34a7c4ce] selectively process information [/b:5d34a7c4ce] and [b:5d34a7c4ce] selectively eliminate any discrepant information [/b:5d34a7c4ce] ... this is the hallmark of the Scientology "experience", by the way... an extremely powerful technique of [b:5d34a7c4ce] negative hallucination [/b:5d34a7c4ce] (See Wolinsky, Steven for a detailed elucidation of this internal process) which deletes any knowledge, experience, or thought which competes with the Scientology model. George Orwell also gave detailed contemplations of exactly this set of mental operations in his novel [b:5d34a7c4ce] 1984 [/b:5d34a7c4ce]

One of the most important interal uses of the E-Meter in Dianetic/Scientology practice is to locate any critical, negative, or non agreement thought with regard to Scientology, then [b:5d34a7c4ce] reframe [/b:5d34a7c4ce] this thought as a "negative energy" which must be handled... E-Metering (technically speaking, a moderately sophisticated Galvanic Skin Resistance guage) ... so what the E-Meter does is allow the higher levels of the Org to efficiently discover and filter out anyone who might Go Suppresive on them ( i.e. have the capacity to think for themselves ) ... of course, Scientology has this cutesy-poo thing they call the Tone Scale, which they use to "prove" that it is You (always you, never them) with The Problem...

Durham has been so well cooked you could serve him up for lunch.

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durham

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upsidedownnewspaper
Durham? Let me guess: We are unwilling to learn, right?

Well tell me you'd like to believe Scientology contains techniques to improve mental and spiritual wellbeing, learn faster and gain evidence of your own immortality. Tell me that you're willing to accept the critics could be wrong and that you want to make sure you've understood what Scientology is first and then reassess whether the critics are right or not. :)

Why would I tell you that? It is immaterial to me whether or not Scientology can help one learn faster, gain spiritual and mental health, and provide one with evidence of immortality. I am very underwhelmed by the prospect. In fact, you make Scientology sound a little like remedial school.

Is that it? Is Scientology for people who don't learn sufficiently fast? For those who stayed behind in school?

Surely not. Is there anybody else reading this forum who can do the Church of Scientology justice? All I want is to be told what is remarkable about Scientology, and how it achieves these things.

For goodness sakes, I am practically screaming out, "I WANT TO BE A SCIENTOLOGIST!"

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durham
Well LRH was attacking practices in psychiatry since the 50s-that's where most of the attacks against Scientology stem from.
I think any organised group attacking psychiatry is going to get attacked right back (the powerful people behind psychiatry may not be positive but they're not stupid). And without organisation I don't think you're going to achieve much against psychiatry given how big and powerful it is.

put up or shut up, durham. show us some proof of this smear campaign. I backed up my statements about SSRI's with web links to news stories. yeah, I know, you left the hard evidence in your other pants. and then the cat ate it.