My written response to the Scientology movie

In My Humble Opinion
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Continued from here: Scientology film shown in psych class-help! - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board

Our assignment was to write a two page paper on some aspect of the movie. This is what I came up with. It’s not very good but I can’t spend much energy on it. Any and all comments welcome.
propaganda: information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
–Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary

In 1995, David Miscavige, the church’s current leader, addressed the International Association of Scientologists in Copenhagen. He told the faithful that the church had two goals as the new millennium approached, dutifully noted by International Scientology News: “Objective one - place Scientology at the absolute center of society. Objective two - eliminate psychiatry in all its forms.”
–Katherine Mieszkowski, “Scientology’s War on Psychiatry,” salon.com, 2005

The aspect of the film “Psychiatry—An Institution of Death” that most affected me was its deliberate combination of distorted facts, exaggeration and outright misinformation, its hysteric tone, its jumbled litany of “facts and figures” stated without any pretense of objectivity or relevance or actual truth. Its bias was naked and vitriolic. There was not a shred of scientific method or actual scholarship in the entire movie. It was a virulent, dangerous hatchet job.

There are untold numbers of people whose lives have been saved by SSRIs, mood stabilizers, and other psychiatric medications. A movie that claims there is no such thing as mental illness or chemical imbalance is a slap in the face to such people.

The anti-medication faction among psychiatrists and psychologists is very small, but it exists. I’m sure there are other, more reasoned arguments outlining these ideas. A movie that equates psychiatry with Nazi Germany, apartheid in South Africa, and 9-11 is not an effective educational tool.

I look very much forward to the class time spent covering the opposite viewpoint than the one presented in the movie.

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I think I would take out the last line and replace it with something along the lines of “Something that struck me as odd is that in class we have had no debate about this movie and have discussed nothing about the other side of the spectrum. In a class such as this, where meds and psychiatric counseling are the corner stone of the field that we are entering, it seems odd that we are being given information like this” Does that sorta make sense. I would use this paper as a way to show how disgusted you are with the class (ooo, disgusted, I always like using that word in these situations) and how you feel like this class has been a waste of a semester and poisoning the minds of the students etc etc etc and then send a copy of it to the chair of the department as wells as any and all appropriate deans in the school and anywhere else you can think to send it.

Or course as we were saying in the other thread, this might also get you kicked out of the class (or at least failed).

So yeah, that’s all easier said then done. So maybe leave it your way for now and write a letter after you’ve completed the class.

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If you get a chance I would contact the certifying agency that deals with the school. This woman needs to go as well as the Dean.

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True enough, but there’s people whose lives have been destroyed by SSRIs & psychiatry as well. There’s a reason why all antidepressants carry a black box warning.

Scientology’s still a crock, though.