When what is popularly termed the “pandemic” struck more than a year ago, I had just started to recover from a more local catastrophe. Early on Thanksgiving morning, the apartment complex in which I was living went up in flames. To my knowledge, the cause of the fire has yet to be determined, or at least I am still unaware of any explanation for the cause of the fire. (Cue in Billy Joel)
Fortunately, almost none of my belongings were damaged, and everyone was able to evacuate the premises safely, without injury. Shortly thereafter, I came down with the dreaded corona. Toward the end of the third week of illness, when I could hardly breathe at all, I thought that I might be knocking on heaven’s door. To add insult to injury, the powers that be at my place of employment determined that I was not an “essential worker”. I felt like a real rolling stone. Needless to say, I suddenly had a lot more time to watch Netflix.
And watch Netflix I did. Hulu too. While battling the ‘rona, I watched all of Cobra Kai and Stranger Things. Thankfully, the Lord preserved my life, which meant that I could also tackle every episode of Seinfeld and The Office. Not too long after that, I discovered an amazing Netflix Series: Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.
Until that point in my life, my interactions with Scientologists, like my interactions with Jehovah’s Witnesses, had been very few and far between. While I was laboring as a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Southern Italy, one of my companions and I set foot for the first time in a Scientology building. I remember that it felt very dark, and that we left promptly. More than twenty years later, my friend and I entered a Church of Scientology in Florida. I gathered as many pamphlets as I could carry, and after a brief conversation with a few of the representatives, we left.
The more that I researched this strange “religion”, the more I was intrigued. Who was this L. Ron Hubbard? What did Scientologists believe? How could I learn more about them?
As soon as I finished the first episode of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, I was hooked. I finished watching the series, and I purchased copies of Dianetics and Russell Miller’s fantastic biography Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard. It was all stranger than pulp-fiction.
Hubbard was a charlatan. It would probably be correct to call him a psychopath. But he was not stupid. Nor, would I argue, was he completely insane. Mostly insane, yes. But not completely.
Please don’t mistake my meaning. Hubbard was a con-man whose actions wrecked terrible havoc and caused the unspeakable suffering of many innocent people. Leah Remini and Mike Rinder did wonderful work in Scientology and the Aftermath, and Russell Miller did wonderful work in his biography, to reveal just how pernicious and how loathsome an individual Hubbard was. It was necessary for them to do so, and I commend them for bringing to light the abuses and the harm that have been, and continue to be, inflicted upon so many innocent victims of this false “religion”.
However, I diverge from their interpretation of Hubbard in at least one important particular. He may have been wrong about almost everything, but he was not entirely wrong about psychiatry. Even though Hubbard was a disciple of Freud, as most moderns unwittingly are, he despised psychiatry. In fact, one of the major tenets of the “religion” of Scientology is to wage war against psychiatry and the modern American medical establishment.
Strangely enough, Hubbard’s entire enterprise, which includes warfare against psychiatry, is an outgrowth of his own studies in, and fascination with, that same pseudo-scientific system of slavery that originated in the life and thought of Sigmund Freud. Freud was a fraud, like his teacher Charcot, and Hubbard put a terrible new twist on their teachings. In essence, Hubbard turned Freud’s fraudulence into the false religion of Scientology. Dianetics is, in effect, the false Bible of the false religion of Scientology.
Why does any of this matter?
In the first place, it matters because Leah Remini and Mike Rinder have been trying to rescue the victims of Scientology from its terrible tentacles. Second, it matters because too many people attempt to invoke Scientology as an excuse to delegitimize the anti-psychiatry movement. Third, it matters because some very misguided people have attempted to draw a parallel between Scientology and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (see also here), between L. Ron Hubbard and the Prophet Joseph Smith. I have already addressed the first point. The second and the third point require further elucidation.
Hubbard founded the “church” of Scientology with the express purpose of eradicating psychiatry from the face of this earth, and he recruited Dr. Thomas Szasz to help form the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. Around the same time, Szasz published his most famous book The Myth of Mental Illness. Szasz’s remarks at the 35th Anniversary and Human Rights Awards Dinner demonstrate that he continued to support the Citizens Commission on Human Rights even though he was emphatically not a Scientologist.
Whereas Hubbard was more than a little bit bonkers, Szasz was one of the most prolific and sober critics of psychiatric coercion. Although he was a libertarian and an atheist, Szasz was also a brilliant thinker and an able author. He was a fierce defender of liberty and responsibility. He was trained as a professional psychiatrist, but he was well versed in the great works of literature, philosophy, history, and science. A short list of some of his book titles serves as a helpful introduction to his work:
- The Medicalization of Everyday Life
- The Manufacture of Madness
- Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America
- Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry
- Psychiatric Slavery
- Psychiatric Justice
- The Therapeutic State
- The Theology of Medicine
- Psychiatry: The Science of Lies
- Coercion as Cure
- Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry
- The Myth of Psychotherapy
- The Ethics of Psychoanalysis
- The Myth of Mental Illness
- Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared
- The Meaning of Mind
- Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus’s Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry
Thus Szasz shared Hubbard’s disgust for psychiatry, but had he read Dianetics more carefully, Szasz would have discovered that Scientology and psychiatry, like statism and extreme individualism, are two sides of the same coin. The attempt to delegitimize antipsychiatry by highlighting Szasz’s affiliation with CCHR rests on the faulty assumption that Scientology and antipsychiatry are completely intertwined. They are not. In fact, Szasz own work shows that both psychiatry and Scientology ought to be resisted and rejected because both are based on coercion and have foundations in the fraudulence of Freud.
As for the misguided attempt to draw a parallel between Scientology and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there are no two institutions on earth that are radically different as these two. Furthermore, in almost every respect, the Prophet Joseph Smith was the polar opposite of Hubbard the huckster. Perhaps the only trait that they held in common is that they were both powerful and charismatic leaders, Joseph Smith for good, and L. Ron Hubbard – in spite of his justified abhorrence of psychiatry – for evil.
Joseph Smith communed with God the Father and Jesus Christ, translated the Book of Mormon by the power of God, and “has done more, csave Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it.” (D&C 135:3) By contrast, L. Ron Hubbard left a trail of suffering and sorrow in his wake, abusing and tormenting his wives, his offspring, and his followers. Joseph Smith was motivated by the love of God and his fellowman, whereas L. Ron Hubbard had an insatiable lust for lucre and a passion for power. Joseph Smith was instrumental in the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and in laying the foundations for the Kingdom of God on the earth in preparation for the Savior’s Second Coming. L. Ron Hubbard created a false religion based on the fraudulent philosophies of Freud and the fantasies of his frenzied mind.
There is much more to both stories, and I suspect that the contrast between them – between Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard, and between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the “Church” of Scientology – will become increasingly apparent in coming days. Until then, let us do what we can to rescue victims from both Scientology and psychiatry, and point them to Jesus Christ, the Great Physician, the Master Healer, the King of Kings.
The Torch 