Dr. Steve Wiseman Investigates Thomas Szasz Scientology [1/6]

Dr. Stephen Wiseman is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, and Consultant Psychiatrist at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, BC. For a number of years he has been researching Scientology, its inventor L. Ron Hubbard, and the organization's anti-psychiatry arm, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights

The Canadian Psychiatric Association 60th Annual Conference is September 23-26 in Toronto at the Westin Harbour Castle.

On Friday the 24th Dr. Stephen Wiseman is delivering a 75-minute workshop on Scientology v. Psychiatry.

The conference program schedule at p. A4, W06: "No Pleasure Cruise: The Troubled Relationship Between Psychiatry and the Church of Scientology - Stephen Wiseman, MD"

Scientology has standardly organized protests at CPA or APA conferences, and this year should be the same. Scientology head David Miscavige has given no indication that he has re-thought the decades-long war he has his Scientologist troops wage on psychiatry and psychiatrists. If anything, in recent years he has stepped it up, in bellicosity and activity.

Dr. Wiseman describes what he and two colleagues have undertaken as a push back against Scientology in the name of his profession. This is the first such effort, certainly in the English-speaking world, and is long overdue. In the past, several individual psychiatrists speaking for themselves have stood up to Scientology and faced its organized and heavily-funded hostility. Until now, however, no group of psychiatrists or professional organization such as the American Psychiatric Association has confronted or pushed back against the distortions and falsehoods of Scientology, and this has emboldened Miscavige's organization considerably over the years. With the work of Dr. Wiseman and his colleagues, these days are now over.

For more info---http://forums.whyweprotest.net/291-scientology-discussion/dr-stephen-wise­man-cpa-conference-toronto-sept-23-26-a-69577/#post1290419

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[tridentmovies]

Thomas Szasz is not a scientologist. Their views on psychiatry are the same.

But this does not mean Szasz shares the other beliefs of scientologists. To claim so is the same as claiming that anyone who agrees with Hitler that the Earth is round, must himself also be a Nazi. It's a non sequitur, and an obvious and pathetic one at that.

[whiff1962]

Dr. Szasz left Hungary, with his father and brother, to avoid the Nazis. The assertion, at the beginning of the video, that he (Szasz) left Hungary to "avoid the war", seems rather underhanded a statement.

[Mrscientificmethod]

@Transmintosity I fully agree with your position. I am currently attempting to debate 13Heathens about Szasz... I feel I am losing.. probably because my intellect is inferior to Szasz and I cannot compete with the Anonymous totalitarian herd. Bah!!

[Transmintosity]

... to conceal their role as agents of social control and the role of the hospital as total institution. The reason why so many patients are are resistent to the coercive interventions is because they are fully cognisant of the fact that psychiatrists are not acting in their best interests (a rationale used by inquisitors and slaveowners), but acting in the interests of themselves, third-parties, the pharmaceutical companies etc.

[Transmintosity]

You say the vast majority of psychiatrists are dedicated and empathic, but this is what I call the majority fallacy, the belief that the majority are unimpeachable, a preponderant misconception, but in my opinion, this is irreconcilable to the true mandate of the psychiatrist. Psychiatrists work, in their many situational contexts, usually in the interests of the social and political hegemony, only it has always used the iconography of the hospital and the idiom of medicine and caring...

[Transmintosity]

Persianelephant claims that if Szasz had had a friend who went through what he did, he wouldn't be so dismissive. I've had these some problems mislabeled as mental illnesses and am aquainted with many people as I have on de facto mental prisons at both ends of the socio-economic spectrum, and I agree with Szasz. Love does not furnish you with insight into people's problems. Szasz's view does not marginalize, it empowers the patient who labours against his wishes under psychiatric tutelage.

[Transmintosity]

@Mrscientificmethod Exactly, and the reason why Mr Weaselman refuses to acknowledge that words are not mere labels and means of communicating, is because the meaning and the effect are in the eyes of the stigmatised and the wise, and not in the eyes of those who do the stigmatising and avail themselves of the instrumental-function of those words, like slaveowners availed themselves of them.

[Mrscientificmethod]

Dr Wiseman states 'In fact what he (Szasz) talks about, what he’s talked about in his entire career, as far as I can tell, are simply words and definitions.' Dr Wiseman... what do you use to talk with apart from words and the definition of those words?

[Mrscientificmethod]

@persianelephant You show your ignorance of what Szasz is saying. He does not say that 'mental illness' does not exist. Only that it is not a 'disease'. That this term is metaphorical which has become literalised. The results of this misunderstanding have been catastophic. Even today millions of young children are being forcibly drugged in order to change their behavious on the pretense that they are 'ill' and need to be 'cured' . This is outrageous.

[anonymous915]

Szasz's views don't just come from libertarianism - they are soundly based in science. In the absence of pathological evidence there is no "illness" - if there was it would be handled by neurologists.

[whiff1962]

@nicmart It is a feature of present-day society, and very much an extra-legal means of punitive sanction, certainly used against individuals that the state finds to be problematic, i.e. whose political act cannot be justified, only pathlogized. Most psychiatrists work for the state in an important capacity.

[nicmart]

@whiff1962

As Szasz has noted, there was never a time when psychiatry was not coercive.