Scientology vs. Psychiatry and a World Gone Crazy
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The Huffington Post recently published an article by author Bruce E. Levine (Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy) on psychiatry, Scientology, and the alienation of the individual from society. The following is an excerpt.
For many Americans who gain their information solely from television, all critics of psychiatry are Scientologists, exemplified by Tom Cruise spewing at Matt Lauer, “You don’t know the history of psychiatry. . . . Matt, you’re so glib.” The mass media has been highly successful in convincing Americans to associate criticism of psychiatry with anti-drug zealots from the Church of Scientology, the lucrative invention of science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.
However, Americans who gain their information outside of television and beyond the mass media may be aware of a secular, progressive tradition that is critical of how psychiatry has diverted us from examining societal sources of our malaise. This secular, humanistic concern was articulated, perhaps most famously, by the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1900-1980).
In The Sane Society (1955), Fromm wrote:
“Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of ‘unadjusted’ individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself.”
Is American society a healthy one, and are those having difficulties adjusting to it mentally ill? Or is American society an unhealthy one, and are many Americans with emotional difficulties simply alienated rather than ill? For Fromm:
“An unhealthy society is one which creates mutual hostility [and] distrust, which transforms man into an instrument of use and exploitation for others, which deprives him of a sense of self, except inasmuch as he submits to others or becomes an automaton.”
Fromm viewed American society as an increasingly unhealthy one, in which people routinely experience painful alienation that fuels emotional and behavioral difficulties.
Unlike Tom Cruise, Fromm would not have been terribly upset that actress Brooke Shields found happiness in antidepressants. No genuinely humanistic critic of psychiatry believes that adults who choose prescription psychotropic drugs should be mocked, shamed, or prohibited from using them. Rather, humanist critics of establishment psychiatry advocate for informed choice about all treatments.
The essential confrontation for Fromm is not about psychiatric drugs per se (though he would be sad that so many Americans nowadays, especially children, are prescribed psychotropic drugs in order to fit into inhospitable environments). His essential confrontation was directed at all mental health professionals — including non-prescribers (such as psychologists, social workers, and counselors) — who merely assist their patients to adjust, but neglect to validate their patients’ alienation from society.
