Out for a lovely stroll on Labor Day in Harvard Square, I noticed that the empty storefront that had previously housed a popular local bookstore was now open, though the windows were covered with black sheets. "Free exhibit" a sign beckoned, and as I came closer I saw a poster of two child psychiatrists at Massachusetts General Hospital, long the subject of critical newspaper articles about their connections to the pharmaceutical industry. I knew both of them personally, so it was an odd experience to see them on a poster, as if they were wanted men, in the middle of Harvard Square.
I read on and peeked inside: "How psychiatry kills children" was the theme of one wall, with pictures and captions, and videotapes including interviews with authors of books critical of the psychiatric profession. A young woman sat at the entrance, not to take money since it was all "free", but to monitor, I suppose, who entered and who did not.
Outside, four college-age students stood, their noses and mouths covered with bandanas, with a homemade sign: "The exhibit is full of lies."
Now for the many of you who do not reside in or near Cambridge, Massachusetts, let me inform you that Harvard Square is about as expensive as it gets in the Northeast, perhaps only after Manhattan. That "free" exhibit cost somebody a lot of money.
To their credit, because I suppose they could have tried to hide it, the wanted poster stated at the bottom that the exhibit was supported by the Church of Scientology. Now we know where the money comes for the exhibit. And despite its expense, I suppose the celebrity worshippers of that church, who make more in a year than some Central American countries, may have been of assistance.
In my Crosstalk posting in discussion with Lawrence Diller, I suggested that many critics of academic psychiatry, especially those who attack links to the pharmaceutical industry, suffer from postmodern nihilism. They do not believe in any truths; thus they see the manipulative interests of private enterprise and the greedy search for wealth behind everything.
Scientologists cannot be accused of that motivation. If anything, they are true believers; the problem is that their beliefs completely contrast with the existence of psychiatry as a profession. Apparently, the doctrines of Scientology involve a metaphysics about mental health at its core; thus, to them psychiatry is a definitive enemy. Something like how monotheists in Abraham's era must have had to handle polytheists. They could not both coexist.
It is interesting that in its origins, Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard attacked the powers of academic psychiatry of their age, which, in the 1970s and earlier, was the psychoanalytic profession. Now, they attack biological psychiatrists, who have completely opposed views. It does not seem to matter what your take on psychiatry is, whatever you think will run afoul of Scientology (unless you accept Scientology). Heaven knows that psychiatry - the old psychoanalysis as well as the new biological approach - is open to much critique. But being seen as the enemy of a specific religion, and one with deep pockets, is unfortunate, for it only polarizes discussion. Any honest critiques of psychiatry will be viewed by members of the profession as aiding and abetting Scientology; and any defenses of the profession or of its views will be seen by critics, influenced by Scientology, as simply a circling of the wagons.
All the world will be black or white, and the truth will not matter.
Now I suppose some coexistence should be possible; after all, we even have Communists and anarchists in America. It is a free country, as long as people do not physically harm each other. On the other hand, ideas have consequences, as the history of totalitarianism shows us. If nihilism is harmful, the dogmatism of false doctrine is no better.
