A small contingent of brave souls has come to Seattle to save us
from an evil group that, they say, has popped up throughout history to
invent racism, kick off the Holocaust, and kill our most beloved
celebrities. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights has temporarily
opened a museum in the University District to save us from…
psychiatrists?
Psychiatry: An Industry of Death (PAID)—which was
founded by the Church of Scientology, the religion created by
science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard—set up shop in the heart of
the University District early
this month, across the street from
the University Book Store, for a two-week exhibition.
Scientologists have been vocal critics of psychiatry, claiming that
“brutal,
inhumane psychiatric treatments” stand in the way of
creating a “world without war… insanity…[or] criminality.”
On November 7, a tall, gray-haired man dressed like a funeral-home
director stood on the rainy street politely shouting at passers-by.
“Psychiatry is the industry of death,” he yelled. As the man caught the
attention of a handful of young UW students, he coaxed them into a
dark, exposed-brick room, formerly inhabited by Tower Records and a
second-hand clothing shop.
The room was lined with large flat-screen TVs playing flashy,
incomprehensible videos—and was filled with wall-sized collages
featuring images of Hitler, Columbine, Kurt Cobain, and indecipherable
statistics (psychiatry: $2 trillion industry; cures: zero!).
After sitting in front of one video for a few minutes, a young man
with his backpack over his shoulder stood up. “Do you know who’s behind
all this?” he asked. “This is all
very dodgy.”
According to the videos, more people have died in psychiatric
hospitals than in all U.S. wars; 40 percent of German psychiatrists had
joined the Nazi SS by 1943; and psychiatry ruined/killed/sucked the
life out of Billie Holiday, Kurt Cobain, Judy Garland, and about a
dozen other celebrities.
Several of the talking heads in the
videos later told the
Tampa Tribune they were not aware of the film’s message when
they were interviewed.
A handful of UW students milled around for a few minutes, looking
quizzically at the displays before leaving. “The first video made
sense,” one woman said. When asked about the rest of the videos, she
gave an apathetic shrug. 
