Bootleg Scientology Orientation Video

[Forty-Two]

I found this on one of the blogs (http://www.avclub.com/content/node/49875) I read -- a link to another blog featuring a bootleg copy of the Scientology orientation film Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (http://www.jossip.com/gossip/scientology/welcome-to-scientology-please-silence-your-cell-phones-20060626.php).

It includes such brilliant rhetoric as, "If you leave this room after seeing this film and walk out and never mention Scientology again, you are perfectly free to do so...You can also dive off a bridge, or blow your brains out. That is your choice."

Who can argue with that logic?

[Forty-Two]

Shoot! I meant this to be in the religion section! Oh, well, I suppose it could work here.

[KingMerv00]

"What's true is what's true to you."

Heh.

[Serenity]

Wow, the government tried to wrestle Dianetics from L. Ron. He of course rebuffed their demands; for our benefit, of course. They orchestrated a campaign against him, But L. Ron was too strong… too persistent.

What a racket!

The testimonials were unbearable. It was unsettling to see Isaac Hayes, among others, in the line-up. Where was Cruise?

So Psychology and psychiatry are proven failures, revealling what occurs when you address the brain; not the spirit? Someone needs to tell this to Martin Seligman (http://www.edge.org/video/dsl/seligman.html).

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/seligman04/seligman_index.html (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/seligman04/seligman_index.html)
The domain of psychology that I come from — clinical psychology, social psychology — has one major medal on its chest: If you look back to 1945 to 1950, no major mental illness was treatable. It was entirely smoke and mirrors. The National Institute of Mental Health essentially invested between $20 and $30 billion — It's never been the National Institute of Mental Health by the way; it's always been Mental Illness — on the question of the relief of mental illness. And by my count, the $20 billion, 50-year investment produced the following two great achievements.

The first is that 14 major mental illnesses are now treatable. Two of them are curable, either by specific forms of psychotherapy or specific drugs. The two curable ones, people always ask, are probably panic disorder and blood and injury phobia. So the first great thing that psychology and psychiatry did in our lifetime was to be able to relieve an enormous amount of suffering.

The second thing, which is even better from where I sit, is that a science of mental illness developed such that we found that we could measure fuzzy states like sadness, alcoholism, and schizophrenia with psychometric precision. Secondly, we developed a classification, a DSM, so that people in London and in Philadelphia can agree that they're both seeing a bipolar depressive.

Third, we are able to look at the causal skein of mental illness and unravel it, either by longitudinal studies — the same people over time — or experimental studies, which would get rid of third variables.

Fourth, we're able to create treatments — drugs, psychotherapy — and do random assignment placebo control studies to find out which ones really worked and which ones were inert. That led to the following medal: that psychology and psychiatry can make miserable people less miserable. That's great. I'm all for it.

[senorpogo]

The testimonials were unbearable. It was unsettling to see Isaac Hayes, among others, in the line-up. Where was Cruise?

It's probably several sizable donations before you even get to see Jerry Maguire.

[Zep]

What about the other Hollywood Scientologists too? John Travolta, for example?

[gfunkusarelius]

haha, i liked the quote (roughly) "since scientology is a relatively new religion, you may hear the question asked 'is scientology a bona fide religion?' let me assure you, it is........according to 65 court decisions."
man when you have to appeal to court decisions to lend credibility to your religion i think you are in serious trouble. i guess this isnt really new.

anyway, after watching a lot of that, holy cow, i am no less baffled by how anyone could believe in any of this

[eri]

I love how they then felt the need to read all those court descisions to us. Feeling insecure much?

[Dunstan]

And yet, Scientology used to claim it wasn't a religion. They changed their tune once they saw the tax and other advantages.