You may have noticed the empty Hollywood Video site near the corner of Broadway and East Olive Way is lively again—but only until 8:00 p.m. today. That’s because it is the temporary home of the museum Psychiatry: An Industry of Death. The “museum” is run by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which is not revealed to be a Church of Scientology affiliate until the final exhibit in the hall.

I stopped in last Thursday. The place was empty except for a few staffers, one of whom turned on the intro video for me. I was prepared to be hounded, but they didn’t disturb me for the rest of the hour I spent there.

After the intro video, there were 13 more exhibits. Every exhibit had an accompanying video, but I gave up after the fifth one. You can watch them all here if you want. This museum would be a great place to hang out if you’re homeless and it’s raining—free, moderately warm, and a room full of excuses to sit down and loiter.

There were disturbing photos from concentration camps, slave plantations, and gulags. I’d heard before about Scientology’s work on psychiatry and their use of shock images as a form of argument. However, I am probably the wrong person to try and shock since I voluntarily watch films like Salo, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, and Nekromantik, so I didn’t find the museum too shocking. The thing that creeped me out most were the photos of ice-pick lobotomies.

The conclusion they seem to present is that psychiatry is an inhumane pseudoscience, with an especially nasty pharmacological cult that turns people into figurative zombies. Though they never explicitly said it, I guess we are to assume that believing in Xenu, an alien who came to Earth in a spaceship 75 million years ago and used hydrogen bombs to kill scores of people in a volcano, is better for your sanity than dropping a Xanax. Because that is what Scientologists believe.

They tailored the exhibit to King County at the end with charts showing the number of people in county psychiatric care from year-to-year. Not many have been “cured,” so their point is that we’re wasting money on the system. I guess it would be cheaper for us to enroll every psych patient in Scientology and buy them up to Operating Thetan Level VIII? Hey Dow Constantine, I found an efficiency for you!

Scientologists have some points about psychiatry. It upsets me to see humans suffer. It’s easy to see how psychiatry can be manipulated to achieve political ends, as it was in the Soviet Union. The problem is that they go too far. They want us to believe that nearly every bad thing in our world comes from a shadowy cabal of evil psychiatrists: the Holocaust, slavery, Ernest Hemingway’s suicide.

Video evidence of the sanity of psychology-free Scientologist Tom Cruise after the jump!

If you’re curious, go check it out. Today is the final day—again, they close at 8 p.m. They didn’t do anything weird to me. I had a fake story about being a grad student in Russian literature all ready to go, but no one asked me any questions. There was another lady there with an expensive camera, probably another journalist. At least by the end of it, you might no longer be glib and might actually know what Ritalin is.

16 replies on “Scientology Caravan Comes to Capitol Hill”

  1. Scientologists have some points about psychiatry.

    Your entire premise falls apart the minute you move past this to even offer 0.01% of a defense of Scientology. The active worship of Emperor Palpatine of Naboo as the Living God of the Universe has as much social, ethical, moral, and plausibility value as the whole of Scientology combined.

    ALL HAIL XENU

  2. In before Steven from the CCHR shows up .. he’s been manifesting over to the Capitol Hill blog …
    They put up a good fight, but it’s as loose-leaf as their “solutions” to the problem of mental health. Their smoking gun between psychiatry and Auchwitz: the American father of psychiatry, Benjamin Rush, was an early proponent of evolutionary breeding, which could be called eugenics. (He was also a premature opponent to slavery, but the CCHR isn’t going to tell you that.)
    I urge you to read their information of what they want to replace psychiatry with. See if you can make sense of it. It looks to me like they expect that all people need is to stop acting cray-cray and get a good night’s sleep.

  3. Every time I see 4chan folks with those anonymous masks, I stop and personally thank them for dedicating their time to harass these scientology freaks on 3rd & Pine.

    One of them tried to hand me a pamplet and for what reason, I immediatly became enraged and slapped the pamplet out of his hand and onto the sidewalk “Dont you even talk to me jerk!”. Very odd, im normally not that hostile to other religions and im a former Jehovas Witness (my dad pulled us out of that cult when i was 6).

    Any religion that requires money up front, is an obvious scam.

  4. I was wondering when y’all were gonna post about this. I assumed it was Zenu related. They’ve got a billboard truck with “psychiatry…death” back in the parking lot too.

    Thanks for braving Zenu’s lair for us!

  5. They may not have been mentioning anything about Scientology, but the whole sidewalk has fairly reeked of Xenu’s spoor every time I walked by the place.

  6. I see these guys giving out free personality tests sometimes at Westlake center. They dress like valets and I laugh as I pass buy. They must take this as a sign of interest because they always approach me after I smile. I can’t help it.

  7. @ 3,6 — Every time I pass their office downtown on the #14, it makes me feel angry. Glad to hear I’m not the only one.

    @4 — I got a smile on my face the very first day I saw their poster. I knew what was up thanks to that BBC reporter John Sweeney who they tried to smear with the YouTube screaming video.

  8. Why do people need to believe so much nonsense? Not just Scientology, all of them. Why isn’t there enough wonder and beauty in the real universe for people?

  9. Scientology has done more to undermine legitimate, genuine critique and criticism of psychology and psychiatry than the APA and Big Pharma could possibly hope for.

    Luby, the fact you had to go to a scientology exibit to hear criticism of psychology makes me question your ability to do research.

  11. @9 — You’re talking to someone who has a worthless Master’s degree in Slavic & East European Studies, or what used to be called Soviet Studies. I think I have heard of punitive psychiatry at least once before I went to this exhibit. But hey, thanks for assuming.

  12. People hate on Scientology, but don’t mind God on their money. A cult is a cult is a cult. I wish we could print “In Xenu we trust” on our bills until enough people get the idea. Or better yet, Hypnotoad.

  13. I’m no Scientologist, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just scores of people that were supposedly blown up in those volcanoes. I believe you meant scores of millions, right?

  16. What 1 said. It’s true that psychiatry has, in the past, been responsible for some abuses, but Scientology’s attack on Psychiatry is purely an effort to tear down their competition for customers. It is not at all honest. Scientology is an inhumane pseudoscience with an especially nasty faux mental health service cult that exists purely to separate the gullible from their money.

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