While psychiatry had US government agencies infiltrating, raiding and investigating the Church in the early and mid-1960s, and inquiries in Australia and Great Britain underway during the same decade, the technologies of Scientology and Dianetics were widely available in five countries. Despite unabated attacks, these technologies became available in five more countries by the mid-1970s, in fifty-six countries in the late 1980s, and in seventy-four countries by the turn of the 1990s. All of which demonstrates that psychiatry has been about as effective in stopping Scientology as it has been in treating mental illness.
It has, in fact, become increasingly evident that psychiatry offers no valuable contribution to society whatsoever. Electric shock, brain operations, and indiscriminate drugging of patients in nineteenth-century-like horror chambers passed off as mental hospitals, have killed and maimed people on a daily basis. And during the period psychiatry has held its position of authority, the most dramatic era of social unrest, civil disobedience, drug proliferation and criminality in the history of the Western world has gained momentum.
Today, there are 500 Dianeticists and Scientologists to every psychiatrist, and while Scientology expands, enrollment in psychiatric university curriculums has slid to a drastic low since a peak in the 1960s. Without government appropriations, even these few psychiatrists would not be able to economically survive, for they have nothing to offer worth a cent of the public’s money. Hence, while Scientology is more visible than ever, with churches dotting every continent on Earth and millions of parishioners around the world, one is hard pressed to find even a single psychiatrist with a shingle on his door. True, one can still find them in scuffed-linoleum offices of state and county hospitals, and lodged in the federal bureaucracy. But when was the last time anyone saw a sign advertising lobotomies, electric shock and seriously incapacitating drugs?
In short, then, while psychiatry, which lives off government handouts, is shrinking, Scientology, which receives only public donations from people who know it works, is growing faster than any religion in the world. And if Scientology had anything to hide, it would not have survived the relentless attacks detailed in this chapter.
Thus the story of the attacks against Scientology is basically very simple. Dianetics and Scientology cut across vested interests which then ruthlessly attempted to destroy it. The issue was never any wrongdoing by the Church, merely encroachment on turf claimed by a mental health industry who would stop at nothing to preserve their stake.
Still, while psychiatry’s offensive against Scientology has been all but defeated, the battle is not over. True, their allies among US government agencies have retired from the conflict. And finally their staunchest battering ram, the IRS, has also recognized the Church and its benefit to society. But psychiatry’s traditional allies and symbiotic partners have always been the drug companies. Psychiatry invents the “disease”-the pharmaceutical companies invent the “cure.” The side effects of the drugs ensure that the patient stays with the psychiatrist and, based upon these symptoms, a new disease is created. Which is the tail and which the dog in this vicious circle is debatable, but in any event, the drug companies jumped on the bandwagon. They stand to lose literally billions of dollars a year when people fully discover that ills and addictions can be resolved without mind-bending and mood-altering chemicals.
It would be well to remember, then, that when alarming reports are heard about Dianetics and Scientology, they stem from those who would prefer to manhandle problems with mind-altering drugs or enough electricity to throw a pig into convulsions-and as any fool knows, sticking one’s finger in a light socket or clamping electrodes to one’s skull cures nothing. (Even psychiatrists are not that stupid. When widely offered $10,000 to undergo their own “treatment,” not one has ever agreed to subject himself to electroconvulsive therapy.)
The lessons of history provide the best context within which to consider such attacks. Every great movement which has opened new vistas and shaken the strongholds of archaic thought has been attacked by those who profit from the persistence of outmoded ideas. Thus, as Scientologists continue their work toward a new civilization without insanity, criminality or war, those with billion-dollar vested interests in just those ills will continue to lash out.
Yet it is ironic to view these attacks in the context of time. Scientology did not choose to fight this battle with psychiatry and, indeed, was not the one to fire the opening salvos. Mr. Hubbard was simply the one to come up with real answers to problems of the mind. Perhaps sensing that implicit in a solution to the mind lay their own demise, psychiatrists decided to destroy him and his technology. And just as they feared, Scientology has become their nemesis, exposing their brutality and their crimes.
Recognition of the Church by the IRS in 1993 has been welcomed as a major turn in this tide. Truth has once again demonstrated its power by prevailing against odds that would have overwhelmed any lesser cause.
What remains of the old guard stands increasingly alone and the shrill voices of their heirs grow fainter and fainter. For try as they might to maintain their privileged positions and spread their falsehoods, the ears and eyes of the world have changed. Truth, after all, sheds light. The dark shadows in which they have hidden have grown ever more insubstantial.
But even as their tirades drone on, there is another point they should consider: The world which they helped create, a world where the wasted insane wander aimlessly through our inner cities, where senseless criminality claims a new life every few minutes, and entire generations sag under the double onslaught of drug dependency and illiteracy, this is a world in which they too must live.
And so, in the end, even those who attempted to stop Scientology will ultimately benefit from its victory.
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