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A relatively small proportion of a race, about 20 percent, possess antisocial characteristics. They cause trouble for the remaining 80 percent out of proportion to their number.
[Scientology Handbook (1994), p. 414]
It is no coincidence that the Scientology Handbook, a glossy 871-page overview of Scientology's beliefs, illustrates this particular claim with a photo of eight smiling people standing in a sunny field alongside a photo of two scowling people, dressed as scientists, with an atomic explosion behind them (see http://www.scientologyhandbook.org/img/pg414_1.jpg). For fifty years, Scientology has waged a ferocious war of attrition against science and medicine, to the extent that it has become (as the Boston Globe newspaper put it ["Boston U.'s Scientology connection", Boston Globe, 16 September 1998]) "one of the leading anti-intellectual movements of our time." Rejectionism underlies Scientology and its Narconon offshoot. Indeed, it is the reason for the existence of both. Scientology's predecessor Dianetics has long been described as "the only workable science of the mind", rejecting outright orthodox psychology and psychiatry. Scientology itself is claimed to be the only viable solution to the problems of "livingness" (sic), with Hubbard telling his followers that "The planet is doomed if we don't operate." [Hubbard, "State of OT", lecture of 23 May 1963] The detoxification methods used in Narconon are held to be "the first and only regimen in existence" that effectively and safely reduces toxins in the body, with "no breakthrough made at all" until Hubbard turned his attention to the field. [Dr. Megan Shields, in Hubbard, Clear Body, Clear Mind (1988), p. 1]
Scientology reserves particular venom for psychiatry, which it sees - quite literally - as the prime force for evil in the universe. In a 1982 bulletin entitled "Pain and Sex", Hubbard declares that "pain and sex were the INVENTED TOOLS of degradation", having been devised eons ago by psychiatrists "who have been on the [time] track a long time and are the sole cause of decline in this universe." [Hubbard, "Pain and Sex", HCO Bulletin of 26 August 1982] In a scarcely less believable vein, Scientology claims that psychiatry was responsible for World War I, the rise of Hitler and Stalin, the decline in education standards in the United States, the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and even the September 11th attacks. [See respectively "Criminals and Psychiatry" <http://freedom.lronhubbard.org/page104a.htm>, "Psychiatrists: The Men Behind Hitler" <http://www.cchr.org/mbh1.htm>, "Psychiatry's Failures" <http://violence.freedommag.org/page36a.htm>, "Educational and Social Ruin" <http://www.cchr.org/educate/e_sr.htm>, "Bosnia & Kosovo: On The Trail Of Psychiatric Genocide" <http://www.cchr.org/failure/eng/page42.htm>, "Searching for Answers Behind the Terror" <http://www.freedommag.org/English/vol34i1/page02.htm>]
But Scientology's attacks on psychiatry go far beyond mere rhetoric. At a 1995 conference of Scientologists, it was announced by David Miscavige, the de facto leader of the Church of Scientology, that it would "eradicate psychiatry" by the year 2000. Conventions of psychiatric conventions around the world are picketed by a traveling circus of Scientologists, who call such events "Psychbusts". The Church of Scientology also puts a major effort into physically disrupting psychiatry. Each year Scientology leaders inform their flock of the success they have had in "crushing psychiatry", through the Citizen's Commission in Human Rights (Scientology's main front for attacking psychiatry):
[CCHR is] our emanation point for a massive assault that has the psychs reeling...
This past year alone, prosecutors have brought criminal charges against 694 psychiatrists, a new highest ever.
As we arm prosecutors with our evidence, they are having greater success than ever putting these criminals where they really belong. The number of psychs jailed this year was 222, another highest ever. But not only are we putting more psychs behind bars, we are eradicating their habitat. In the past year alone, 489 facilities have closed their doors. That's more than double last year and another highest ever.
[Mike Rinder, Executive Director of the Church of Scientology International's Office of Special Affairs, in Impact magazine #98 (Dec 2001), p. 19]
Scientologists take this uncompromising hostile attitude to occasionally extremely distasteful extremes. After the World Trade Center disaster in New York, a claimed total of 450 Scientologist "volunteer ministers" were dispatched to the scene to provide (strictly Scientological) assistance. They were somewhat put out to find that the city authorities had mobilised "3000 psychs" to provide trauma counseling. A senior Canadian Scientologist, Simon Hare, described in an e-mail circulated widely to Scientologists how the "volunteer ministers" had tackled the infestation of "psychs":
Additionally we are trying to move in and knock the psychs out of counseling to the grieving families and that could take another 100 plus people right now. Due to some brilliant maneuvering by some simply genius Sea Org Members we tied up the majority of the psychs who were attempting to get to families yesterday in Q&A, bullbait and wrangling. They have a hard time completing cycles of action and are pretty easy to disperse. But today they are out in full force and circling like vultures over these people and all of our resources are tied up in the support efforts in the disaster zone at present ...
The other religions here with their ministers have shown their true colors and are working hand in hand with the psychs to give these people as much false data and restimulation as they can.
[Simon Hare, "READ THIS - Sea Org & Volunteer Ministers in NY", e-mail of 13 September 2001 - <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=4WFQ3J1O37149.5691666667%40frog.gilgamesh.org&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>]
At the same time, the Church of Scientology managed to get Fox News to display an on-screen crawling banner giving the Scientology 800 help line under the name of "National Mental Health Assistance" - not coincidentally, virtually identical to the name of the psychiatric National Mental Health Association, which promptly put out an angry statement warning the public to "Beware Scientologists Claiming To Be Mental Health Professionals". [National Mental Health Association, "Beware Scientologists Claiming To Be Mental Health Professionals", 17 September 2001 - <http://www.nmha.org/newsroom/system/news.vw.cfm?do=vw&rid=341>]
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