Introduction to Scientology Vs Psychiatry

It is a concern that Scientology engages in misinformation regarding this field of medicine, and it is an even bigger concern that many recipients of that misinformation often do not know its full context and source. The purpose of these pages is to act as a publicly available resource documenting both this misinformation and the marketing techniques used to distribute it.

These scans of a Scientology staff contract serve to illustrate the fervency of this opposition to psychiatry. From section 4g:

“Scientology is unalterably opposed, as a matter of religious belief, to the practice of psychiatry, and espouses as a religious belief that the study of mind and the healing of mentally caused ills should not be alienated from religion or condoned in non-religious fields. It is my strongly held religious belief that all mental problems are spiritual in nature and that there is no such thing as a mentally incompetent person – only those suffering from spiritual upset of one kind or another dramatized by an individual.”

The phrase ‘dramatized’ may seem odd to those unfamiliar with Scientology teachings. The core tenant of Scientology is that the traumatic memories (called ‘engrams’ in Scientology) of a person’s past can become ‘restimulated’ or ‘dramatized’, resulting in those traumatic memories overwhelming the logical and rational faculties of that person. Scientology holds that all personal problems, including mental illnesses, are due to these traumatic memories. In this way Scientologists hold Scientology to be the cure for mental problems rather than psychiatry, and this one of the reasons they hold such opposition.

By providing the full background to the issue of Scientology’s opposition to psychiatry, as well giving illustrative examples where necessary, it is hoped that readers of these pages will become better informed. Having more knowledge and a better understanding of this problem will help in combating it. While these pages focus on Scientology it is worth mentioning that much of the analysis herein generalises to other groups. It is common that groups exercising undue influence upon their members tend to be fiercely skeptical of medicine in general and psychiatry in particular.

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