Scientology and psychiatry

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Since the founding of the Church of Scientology in 1954 by L. Ron Hubbard, the relationship between Scientology and psychiatry has been dominated by strong opposition by the organization against the medical specialty of psychiatry and of psychology with themes relating to this opposition occurring repeatedly throughout Scientology literature and doctrine. According to the Church of Scientology, psychiatry has a long history of improper and abusive care. The group's views have been disputed, criticized, and condemned by experts in the medical and scientific community and have been a source of public controversy. L. Ron Hubbard had a complex and changing relationship with psychiatry. He recalled positive experiences with psychiatrists in his youth and requested psychiatric treatment in adulthood. By 1948, Hubbard claimed to volunteer in a psychiatric clinic and two years later published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. In 1951, however, Hubbard's wife Sara Northrup Hollister reportedly consulted psychiatrists who recommended Hubbard be institutionalized; thereafter, Hubbard was increasingly hostile towards psychiatry. In 1995, Scientologist Lisa McPherson died at Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization (FSO) at Flag Land Base after leaving a hospital where she refused psychiatric treatment. In 2003, a man with untreated schizophrenia murdered his mother after his paranoid delusions caused him to become convinced that the Scientology approved vitamins she was giving him in lieu of effective medication were poisonous. In 2005, celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise strongly asserted his public opposition to psychiatry.

L. Ron Hubbard was an American author of science fiction and fantasy stories. Hubbard reported many encounters with psychiatrists from the age of 12 onward. During World War II, Hubbard was hospitalized; in 1947, Hubbard requested psychiatric treatment and the following year moved with his wife to Savannah, Georgia, where he was reportedly associated with a psychiatric clinic. In 1950, Hubbard published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. In 1951, it was publicly reported that Hubbard's wife Sara had been advised by a psychiatrist that Hubbard should be institutionalized for treatment of paranoid schizophrenia. They divorced, and the following year, Hubbard founded Scientology, an anti psychiatry religious movement.

Hubbard's views on psychiatry evolved over time. Hubbard spoke positively of his childhood and teen encounters with psychiatrists in the 1920s and 30s. At the age of 12, Hubbard was accompanied by Navy psychiatrist Joseph Thompson on an ocean trip from Seattle to Washington, D. C. Hubbard likewise wrote positively of teenage/young adult encounters with D. C. based psychiatrist William Alanson White. Some of Hubbard's later works included acknowledgements of both Thompson and White, and Hubbard would later claim to have received clinical training from both Thompson and White. In contrast, Hubbard spoke more critically of his later encounters with psychiatrists and psychiatric institutions. Although Hubbard had written positively of psychiatric hospital superintendent William Alanson White, White's successor (Winfred Overholser) was singled out for criticism. Hubbard likewise spoke critically of his encounters with a Washington, D. C., institution for the treatment of schizophrenia called "Walnut Lodge" (presumably Chestnut Lodge). During the Second World War, Hubbard was hospitalized at Oak Knoll Military Hospital. In 1947, Hubbard wrote a letter to the VA requesting psychiatric treatment. The following year, Hubbard and his wife Sara moved to Savannah, Georgia, where Hubbard would later recall having been associated with a charity mental health clinic. According to Hubbard, he worked as a volunteer helping to treat charity patients during his time in Savannah. While in Savannah, Hubbard began working on a "book of psychology" about "the cause and cure of nervous tension"; the next year, he published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. In 1951, Hubbard's wife Sara reportedly consulted a psychiatrist who recommended Hubbard be institutionalized. Hubbard initially responded by kidnapping Sara. Thereafter, he took their daughter and fled to Havana. After Sara went public with her story, Hubbard returned her daughter. In his final known encounter with a psychiatrist, Hubbard consulted a practitioner in order to rebut public claims of his own mental illness. Thereafter, Hubbard was increasingly hostile towards psychiatry. In the 50s, Hubbard sought to identify "Subversive" psychiatrists or other "Potential Subversives". By the early 70s, Hubbard wrote of having redefined the word "psychiatrist" to mean "an antisocial enemy of the people".

Hubbard claimed to have personal encounters with several named psychiatrists beginning in his childhood. Some, like Thompson and White, would later be remembered favorably—Hubbard explicitly cited both as sources for his work. Others, such as Overholser and Center, were the subject of scorn.

William Alanson White was an American neurologist and psychiatrist who served as superintendent of St. Elizabeths Hospital. A letter from the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International to the FBI, dated June 12, 1954, claims that Hubbard was trained by both Joseph Thompson and William Alanson White. Hubbard recalled "Dr. William Alanson White, a very fine man. He was head of the big St. Elizabeth’s, the big mental institution there in Washington, D. C., and he had been a friend of mine for quite a while. I had met him through other friends of Dr. Thompson's". In a lecture, Hubbard described consulting White about a theoretical calculation of human memory capacity, apparently during Hubbard's university days. Hubbard recalled that "he [White] used to see me every once in a while". For two years in the 1920s, White had opened the doors of St. Elizabeths to Alfred Korzybski, enabling Korzybski to directly study mental illness, research that contributed heavily to Korzybski's 1933 Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. Hubbard cited the relationship between Korzybski and White in his lectures. White died in 1937, thirteen years before the publication of Dianetics. White was included in the Acknowledgements section of 1951's Science of Survival, as was Joseph Thompson.

During World War Two, Hubbard was hospitalized at a California military hospital. After his release, he wrote to the Veterans Administration to request further treatment. Thereafter, he and his wife moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he was reportedly associated with a charity mental health clinic.

In 1945, Hubbard was a patient at Oak Knoll Military Hospital. Hubbard's estranged son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., later known as Ron DeWolf, would later state that Hubbard received psychiatric treatment during his hospitalization. Hubbard would later cite his time with psychiatric patients at Oak Knoll "using a park bench as a consulting room" as a major influence on his development of Dianetics.

After his discharge, Hubbard sought out psychiatric help to treat his "long periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations" but reported that he could not afford it. A letter dated October 15, 1947, which Hubbard wrote to the Veterans Administration (VA) begins: "This is a request for treatment". The letter continues:

The following year, Hubbard and his wife moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he was associated with a charity psychiatric clinic.

After his arrival in Savannah, Hubbard began to describe himself as mental health practitioner, ultimately authoring Dianetics.

Beginning in June 1948, the nationally syndicated wire service United Press ran a story on an American Legion sponsored psychiatric ward in Savannah, Georgia, which sought to keep mentally ill war veterans out of jail. That summer, Hubbard was arrested by the San Luis Obispo sheriff on a charge of petty theft for passing a fraudulent check. In late 1948, Hubbard and his second wife Sara moved from California to Savannah, Georgia, where he would later claim to have "worked" as a "volunteer" in the psychiatric clinic, where he claimed he "processed an awful lot of Negroes". Hubbard later wrote of having observed a "Dr. Center" in Savannah: I well recall a conversation I had with a Dr. Center in Savannah, Georgia, in 1949. It well expresses the arrogance and complete contempt for law and order of the psychiatrist. A man had just called to inquire after his wife who was "under treatment" in Center’s hospital. Center asked him, "Do you have the money ? That’s right, thirty thousand well you better get it or I’ll have to send your dear wife to the state institution and you know what will happen then!" I was there doing work on charity patients the local psychiatrists wouldn’t touch. Center had forgotten I was in the room. In a 1966 interview, Hubbard recalled a man receiving a bill for psychoanalysis: "These people, you know, in psychoanalysis, they worked on somebody for a year just to find out if they could help him and then they charged him about 9000 quid for having not helped him".

In January 1949, Hubbard wrote that he was working on a "book of psychology" about "the cause and cure of nervous tension", which he was going to call The Dark Sword, Excalibur or Science of the Mind. In April 1949, Hubbard wrote from Savannah to inform the Gerontological Society at Baltimore City Hospital that he was preparing a paper entitled Certain Discoveries and Researches Leading to the Removal of Early Traumatic Experiences Including Attempted Abortion, Birth Shock and Infant Illnesses and Accidents with an Examination of their Effects Physiological and Psychological and their Potential Influence on Longevity on the Adult Individual with an Account of the Techniques Evolved and Employed. The Society apparently declined involvement. He also wrote to the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association. These letters, and their responses, have not been published, though Hubbard later said that they had been negative. Hubbard later wrote, "In 1948 I wrote a thesis on an elementary technique of application and submitted it to the medical and psychiatric professions for their use or consideration. The data was not utilized." In December 1949, Hubbard composed a letter to publisher John Campbell in which he provided an article entitled "A Criticism of Dianetics" to be published under the pen name Irving R. Kutzman, M. D. (ostensibly an opponent of Dianetic auditing). In his letter to Campbell, Hubbard described synthesizing the opinions of multiple doctors: The philosophic derivation comments are direct quote from Davies of APA. The comment on operators is direct quote from Craig, MD PhD of Savannah. The pre frontal lobotomy angle (changed only to trans orbital leukotomy) is a direct quote from Delchamp, MD PhD. You heard nearly all these things repeated by Kahn, MD and he did not diverge in any particular from the standard attitude toward Dianetics, General Semantics (quote on this from Davies of APA), Cybernetics (Boswell, MD) etc. etc. This article would be found by an MD psychiatrist to be a pretty valid statement of their case because they have so stated the case many times. The following year, Hubbard authored Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health, a handbook for "the psychiatrist, psycho analyst and intelligent layman". By September 1950, the American Psychological Association's governing body unanimously adopted a resolution advising its members against using Hubbard's techniques with their patients and leading psychologists spoke out against Dianetics. Thereafter, Hubbard was critical of psychiatry. Winfred Overholser was superintendent of St. Elizabeths Hospital after 1937. By 1950, he was president of the American Psychiatric Association. In a 1953 lecture, Hubbard claimed: Doctor Upholstered is in charge of he’s in charge of the rest home for feeble minded government officials here in Washington, Saint Elizabeths. In 1972, Hubbard recalled: blockquote|he [Overholser] blew the whistle on Dianetics when St. Elizabeth psychiatrists were just beginning to use it and were for the first time getting results on patients at the National Asylum. He forbade them to use it but they disagreed heavily and privately used it for many years under cover. This broke up introducing Dianetics on regular channels – May 1950. Thereafter a violent and gory attack was mounted. It was begun by Oberholser, went over to George Wash U. Psychology Dept at once and there a student of the first Dianetics class (Dolly Jones) also a psychology student was hypnotized, beaten, told to go crazy, did so and we had to hospitalize her. [ ] He (Oberholser) was a member of the Club. In late 1950, Hubbard criticized mainstream psychiatry but still wrote positively of Sigmund Freud as a fellow persecuted trailblazer, arguing that "to talk of the faults of Freud, as do those who practice psychoanalysis today, is ungenerous. This great pioneer, against the violent objections of medical doctors and the psychiatrists of his day, ventured to put forth the theory that memory was connected with present time behavior" Hubbard elaborated: "Freud was so thoroughly shunned by neurologists of his day and medicine ever since, that only his great literary skill brought his work as far as it has come."

In 1951, Hubbard's wife Sara sought advice from a psychiatrist who recommend Hubbard be institutionalized. Upon learning of the plan, Hubbard initially kidnapped Sara; After her release, Hubbard fled to Havana with their young daughter. Hubbard then underwent a public divorce in which his wife publicly alleged that Hubbard had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Upon his return to the US, Hubbard consulted with a psychiatrist to rebut public claims of his mental illness.

Following legal actions involving the Church of Scientology's relationship with its members, it has become standard practice within the group for members to sign lengthy legal contracts and waivers before engaging in Scientology services. In 2003, a series of media reports examined the legal contracts required by Scientology, which require that, among other things, Scientology followers deny any and all psychiatric care that their doctors may prescribe to them:

I do not believe in or subscribe to psychiatric labels for individuals. It is my strongly held religious belief that all mental problems are spiritual in nature and that there is no such thing as a mentally incompetent person — only those suffering from spiritual upset of one kind or another dramatized by an individual. I reject all psychiatric labels and intend for this Contract to clearly memorialize my desire to be helped exclusively through religious, spiritual means and not through any form of psychiatric treatment, specifically including involuntary commitment based on so called lack of competence. Under no circumstances, at any time, do I wish to be denied my right to care from members of my religion to the exclusion of psychiatric care or psychiatric directed care, regardless of what any psychiatrist, medical person, designated member of the state or family member may assert supposedly on my behalf.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an institution set up by Scientology and Thomas Szasz, also claims that the real nature of psychiatry is that of human rights abuse. In 1966, Hubbard declared all out war on psychiatry, telling Scientologists that "We want at least one bad mark on every psychiatrist in England, a murder, an assault, or a rape or more than one." He committed the Church of Scientology to the goal of eradicating psychiatry in 1969, announcing that "Our war has been forced to become 'To take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms.'" and individuals suffering from depression. In January 2004, Cruise made the controversial statement "I think psychiatry should be outlawed." Further controversy erupted in 2005 after he openly criticized actress Brooke Shields for using the drug Paxil (paroxetine), an anti depressant to which Shields attributes her recovery from postpartum depression after the birth of her first daughter in 2003. Cruise asserted that there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance and that psychiatry is a form of pseudoscience. Shields responded that Cruise "should stick to saving the world from aliens and let women who are experiencing postpartum depression decide what treatment options are best for them". This led to a heated argument between Matt Lauer and Cruise on NBC's Today on June 24, 2005. Medical authorities view Cruise's comments as furthering the social stigma of mental illness. Shields herself called Cruise's comments "a disservice to mothers everywhere." In late August 2006, Cruise apologized in person to Shields for his comments. Scientology is well known for its opposition to mainstream psychiatry and the psychoactive drugs which are routinely prescribed for treatment. It was reported that Cruise's anti psychiatry actions led to a rift with director Steven Spielberg. Spielberg had reportedly mentioned in Cruise's presence the name of a doctor friend who prescribed psychiatric medication. Shortly thereafter, the doctor's office was picketed by Scientologists, reportedly angering Spielberg.

Bruce Wiseman from CCHR published the book Psychiatry: The Ultimate Betrayal (Scientology's Freedom Publications, 1995), in which he portrays psychiatry as creating Adolf Hitler. The German Scientologists Thomas Roder and Volker Kubillus wrote the book Psychiatrists: the Men Behind Hitler (also published by Scientology's Freedom Publications, 1995–2001), that advances a conspiracy theory of all powerful psychiatrists to overwhelm the world.

In 1994, Scientologist Lisa McPherson moved from Dallas, Texas, to Clearwater, Florida, with her employer, AMC Publishing, which was at that time owned by Bennetta Slaughter and operated and staffed primarily by Scientologists. During June 1995, the church placed McPherson in an "introspection rundown" due to perceived mental instability. Lisa completed the rundown, and she attested to the state of Clear in September. On November 18, 1995, McPherson was involved in a minor car accident. Paramedics initially left her alone because she was ambulatory, but after she began to remove her clothes, the paramedics decided to take her to the hospital. She remarked to the paramedics that she had taken off her clothes in hopes of obtaining counseling. Hospital staff agreed that she was unharmed, but recommended keeping her overnight for observation. Following intervention by fellow Scientologists, McPherson refused psychiatric observation or admission at the hospital and checked herself out after a short evaluation. Lisa McPherson refused psychiatric observation or admission at the hospital; she expressly stated her desire to receive the religious care and assistance from her fellow congregants that she and they wanted her to have. McPherson was then taken to the Flag Land Base for "rest and relaxation" according to the Church of Scientology, but sworn statements demonstrate that McPherson was brought there for another introspection rundown. Mark McGarry, an attorney with the Florida Office of the State Attorney, characterized McPherson's stay at the Flag Land Base as an "isolation watch": Most of these logs were kept but the logs for the last three days were summarized from the originals and the originals shredded. Brian J. Anderson, the then Commanding Officer of the Church's Office of Special Affairs (OSA) in Clearwater, said in his sworn statement:
I saw the handwritten notes, gave a cursory look to see if the summary—see if they matched and matched, and I threw the handwritten reports in my shred basket, and I had the report, kept the report. McPherson's "care logs" narrate the last seventeen days of her life: she was incoherent and sometimes violent, her nails were cut so she would not scratch herself or the staff, she bruised her fists and feet while hitting the wall. She had trouble sleeping and was being given natural supplements and the drug chloral hydrate to help her sleep. A Church staffer noted that McPherson "looked ill like measles or chicken pox on her face." On repeated occasions she refused food and protein shakes that the staff offered. On November 26 and 30 and December 3 to 4, the staff attempted to force feed her, noting that she spat the food out. She was noted to be very weak, not standing up nor on some days moving at all. Scientologists who questioned this handling were told to "butt out". On December 5, 1995, the Church staffers contacted David Minkoff, a Scientologist medical doctor who twice prescribed McPherson Valium and chloral hydrate without examining her. They requested for him to prescribe an antibiotic to McPherson because she seemed to have an infection. Minkoff refused and stated that McPherson should be taken to a hospital and he needed to see her before prescribing anything.

On March 13, 2003, Scientologist Jeremy Perkins killed his mother, Elli, by stabbing her 77 times. Jeremy, previously diagnosed with schizophrenia, never received treatment after previous incidents with violence and hallucinations. His mother, active in the Buffalo Church of Scientology, felt that vitamins and Scientology routines were better than psychological counseling and anti psychotic medication.

On July 5, 2007, a 25 year old Australian woman, Linda Waliki, killed her 52 year old father Michael, 15 year old sister Kathryn, and injured her mother Sue with a knife. Her name was released in the print edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, on July 7, 2007. It was previously unreleased due to one of the victims being under age. She was diagnosed with a psychiatric illness, but her parents denied her continued psychiatric treatment due to their Scientology beliefs. Instead they replaced this medication with one specially imported from Scientologists in the United States.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co founded by anti psychiatrist Thomas Szasz and the Church of Scientology in 1969. Some anti psychiatry websites and psychiatric survivors groups have sought to distance themselves from Scientology and the CCHR. In particular, the organisation Mind Freedom has specifically made public statements to emphasise that it is not connected with either CCHR or the Church of Scientology. Despite sharing notable anti psychiatry views on some issues with the secular critics, Scientology doctrine does differ in some respects. Scientology has promoted psychiatry related conspiracy theories, including that psychiatrists were behind the Yugoslav Wars and that September 11 was caused by psychiatrists. Scientologists are committed never to take psychiatric drugs and to reject psychology outright. The socio political roots of the movements have different origins. Advocates of the anti psychiatric world view such as David Cooper, R. D. Laing and Michel Foucault had ties with the political left of the 1960s; Thomas Szasz, with the civil libertarians of the right, as well as an outspoken atheist. Many advocates of the anti psychiatry movement have stated that they consider the idea of "mental illness" as a convenient and inaccurate label assigned by society rather than an objective biomedical state, rejecting psychiatric terms such as schizophrenia which they may see as stigmatizing. By contrast, Hubbard referred to "schizophrenics" in his writings on Scientology theory, and developed the emotional tone scale to, in part, gauge the health of a person's mental state. Furthermore, in his Science of Survival Hubbard suggested putting people very low on the scale into quarantine, a practice at odds with, for instance, the aim of the American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization: an organization co founded by Szasz to end involuntary commitment.